Chapter 47: Best and Final

Ashby Merritt delivered fourteen folding chairs and called it community engagement. Winnie sent them back because two pinched and one had gum underneath. Sau-lin heard the exchange through the cellar wall. It had spent the day forcing her through every open road it could find, and she came back from each with the taste of brass on her tongue and another refusal lodged in the network. The new heart struck under the drain. Gray bins shivered against the walls, their labels turned outward in a neat ring, plot numbers arranged for retrieval. C-417 appeared twice. One label belonged to the fragment Mara had carried to Waverly. The other marked a larger bin holding what Ashby Merritt's contractors had gathered from Lincoln Park. Sau-lin could feel herself in both. She could not move her wrists. Black wood had thickened around them since morning into dark cuffs that entered the bone. The…