Chapter 36: The Stair That Turned Right

The gate clerk fed the wire through the slot an inch at a time, and the brass tag on its end clicked against the stone. Ilan was on his knees in the south alcove before the second click. The old one lay along the wall with its horned head at the slot and one long arm across the gap, and the clerk, breathing through his mouth, worked the wire into the crack between arm and stone. The arm came round over it. He shoved harder. Ilan put his left palm flat over the mouth of the slot, and the wire went into the meat of it, where the heat course had skinned it. The alcove smelled of lime and old heat. He did not take the hand away. It was the afternoon of the twenty-first, three days after the stone rang, and Ilan had slept through two of them. Pryor…