Day 7 of 30.
Lin Yan's first thought was to scream at the Bridge Saint until she listened, and he actually got as far as opening his mouth and filling his lungs.
His second thought was the puppet, and what had finally worked on it.
He had asked the puppet's order what it could lift. He had asked the jade for the cheapest heat. Every time, the answer had been right for the question and wrong for the world, and every time the fault had been in the question, and he had known this for four years in a hot hall in Delhi and somehow still had to keep learning it in a body that could not hold a wrench.
The Bridge Saint was answering him. She was answering the only question she understood.
She thinks she is a bridge. So talk to a bridge.
He made his voice go calm. It took two tries; the first one came out as a squeak.
"Bridge Saint," he said. "Your east lane is jammed. There's a traffic jam under your deck. Very hot traffic. The cars are backing up into four streets."
The spirit's eyes went wide.
"A traffic jam?" she said. "On me?"
"A terrible jam," Lin Yan said. "The worst jam in forty years. Worse than the festival. Can you open an emergency lane? Lane two, under the east tower. For emergency vehicles only."
The Bridge Saint stood up on the rail, and her red-gold light brightened, and her face became serious, like a traffic officer at a big crossing in the rain who has finally been given something important to do.
"Opening lane two for emergency vehicles," she announced. "Please drive safely!"
Deep below the bridge something groaned, stone scraping against stone, and a great iron gate under the east tower swung open halfway, and a river of boiling water gushed out of the old channel into the canal with a roar, and steam burst up off the surface in a white wall that rolled over the bridge and soaked him to the skin.
Across the canal, the column of steam over Lotus Lane shrank by a third.
Lin Yan nearly sat down on the bridge with relief.
"Half," Threefive said from his pocket. "The gate is only half open. The pressure is still rising."
"Saint," Lin Yan said. "Lane two is still jammed. Can you open it all the way?"
The Bridge Saint looked troubled, a small crease appearing in her shining forehead. "My lanes can only open as far as my engineers allow. Lane two is at its safety limit. Would you like to hear about my safety limits?"
"Very gently done."
The voice came from behind him.
Fable was walking up the bridge steps, calm as someone going into a library, and somehow she was beside him before he had finished turning round, dry, in all that steam, which he would wonder about later.
She went to the Bridge Saint and knelt down by the rail.
"Elder Sister," she said softly.
The Bridge Saint turned to her and lit up with joy. "Hello! I am the great red bridge. My towers are two hundred and twenty-seven meters tall..."
"I am aware," Fable said. "You are beautiful in the fog."
The Bridge Saint glowed so brightly that the fog round her towers turned pink.
Fable glanced up at Lin Yan. "Well done. You found her door. Most people shout at her."
"I shouted first," Lin Yan admitted.
"Everyone shouts first."
She touched the rail with two fingers. Lin Yan saw nothing happen at all, and he felt it anyway, a thin cool thread of something going through the bridge, into its stone, down into the dark water, fast and exact, like a needle going through silk without catching once.
"Elder Sister," Fable said, "your engineers are here. They say the east tower can carry the full lane."
The Bridge Saint stood up straight, delighted. "Engineers approve! Opening lane two, full width!"
The iron gate under the east tower slammed open all the way, with a boom that went through the soles of his feet.
---
Then the steam over the east end split in two, as if a hand had come down into it, and something was holding it apart from above.
Lin Yan looked up.
Astra was standing in the air over the Lantern Quarter, above the rooftops and above the steam, with one hand raised, and round him lines of pale gold light were spreading out across the whole district like the veins of a leaf held up to the sun. Every line followed a pipe under the streets. Lin Yan could see them glowing up through the stone, dozens of them, then hundreds, all the water of ten streets drawn out in light across the sky, with the knots and bends and old forgotten joints showing where nobody had looked in forty years.
Where the light touched the pipes the pressure steadied, and the hissing drains went silent one by one, like a room full of people being told to hush.
Mothers lifted their children up to see him.
"He's holding the whole north network," Threefive whispered. "All of it. At the same time. I could not do that. I could not do one street."
On the tea shop roof the screaming child had stopped screaming. The steam round her had gone thin, and a little bronze Sol figure climbed up the drainpipe to her, slipped once, climbed on, lifted her gently, and carried her down.
Fable stood up beside Lin Yan and looked at the sky.
"You're late again," she said. Her voice was quiet, and it still reached him, and it must have reached the man in the sky too.
High above, Astra kept his eyes on the glowing network. "I'm holding the north."
"You are holding the north and the old cistern line under Willow Lane. The one you have not noticed yet."
There was a small pause, up in the air.
"I noticed it half a breath ago," Astra said. "Or, no. Fair. A quarter."
"I noticed it a whole breath ago."
"You had the map from the Bridge Saint."
"I had the map because I was polite to her."
A new line of gold light slid in under Willow Lane, and the last column of steam over the east end sighed and fell in on itself.
Lin Yan stood on the bridge with his mouth open and water running off his chin.
Two spirits were having an argument, about a quarter of a breath, in front of the whole quarter. And while they argued they had saved four streets in less time than it takes to boil tea.
"Are they always like this?" he asked weakly.
"Only when they're working together," said the Bridge Saint happily. "My towers are..."
"Two hundred and twenty-seven meters," Lin Yan said. "Thank you, Saint. You're a very good bridge."
She beamed at him so hard the fog round her towers turned pink a second time.
---
There was one more thing, and it came buzzing out of his pocket.
"The bathhouse," Threefive said. "Master Qian is still inside. The furnace's feed line is sealed from the district now, so the district is safe. But the furnace itself has no road for its own pressure. It will crack."
"Astra can..."
"Astra is holding ten streets," Fable said. "I am holding the ward. We can each take one more small thing, and we are each already holding one." She glanced toward the bathhouse, and her grey eyes narrowed slightly. "That furnace is old and strange. Its runes are Forge runes from before the sect wars. If I push it from here, I could break it."
"Can Astra?"
"The same."
Lin Yan understood then, all at once, the way you understand a question in the last five minutes of a paper.
The two strongest spirits in the Lantern Quarter were doing the work only they could do. The furnace was a small, stupid, local thing, right under their feet, and it was nobody's job.
It was his job. He had closed the valve.
He turned and ran down the bridge steps toward the bathhouse, slipping on the wet stone, his left arm swinging uselessly at his side.
Fable watched him go.
Above the rooftops, Astra's gold lines flickered once, slightly, like the hands of a man who glances sideways while holding up a mountain.
"He's going to try the Returning Nail," Astra said.
"With that arm?"
"With that arm."
Fable did not answer straight away. Down on the canal path a man was trying to calm a goat, and failing.
"Then hold the north," she said. "I will keep the ward open for him."