The funeral bell struck Jiang through the floor before the dry shirt touched him.
Its note entered his numb breast and shook water from his feathers. A second note answered farther inside the royal-road stone.
"That is the east death call," Aylin said.
She knew what the palace would do with the sound. The approach would empty, the flood bars would fall, and every gate line would turn its hooks toward the name carried inside the final note.
"Will they wait for witnesses?" Pell asked.
"The call was built for a body that could not answer," Aylin said. "Waiting would defeat it."
The doubting glassworker wrapped his overshirt around Jiang anyway. It had two sleeves, six buttons, and no useful opening for a beak. Jiang endured the design because the cloth was warm.
"Pell, take Nemi and the burned hands," Ista ordered. "Use the upper stair."
Brann's hammer sounded from the underwheel hatch. "Upper stair has lost its bottom landing. Royal flood gallery is the only road still above water."
Pell looked at Aylin. "The palace road? With her?"
"You may stay here and boil if the company troubles you," Ista said.
Pell lifted Nemi onto his back.
The gallery opened behind First Row's shattered chimney. A royal crown had been cut into every third arch, though furnace soot had blackened the gold leaf and made the kings look as tired as everyone beneath them.
Tovin met them at the first turn with the guide rope around his waist. His wrapped hand hung against his chest. His useful hand held Torren's doubled knot and the broken end of Whitewake's horn cord.
"Last Gate is settling again," he said. "The way behind will not remain a way."
Dagna took the guide rope from him without taking the knot. "You carry the high turns. I carry the people who ignore them."
"Then your hands will be full."
The crown arch behind Tovin began lowering an iron tongue into the gallery. He threw the guide rope around its upper chain and pulled with his useful hand, but the chain only rattled against the descending weight.
Brann struck the wall below the carved crown. "River crews released these from the floor. Palace boots stayed dry and never learned how."
Aylin set Jiang down in Pell's overshirt.
Cold had taken the grip from his right claws. He pushed himself forward on his belly, using the warm cloth as a sled until his beak reached the dark water beneath the crown.
A copper peg hid under the lowest stone lip. Jiang caught its ring with his cracked beak and leaned backward. Pain ran through his jaw, but the peg came free.
Dagna pulled Tovin's line while Brann lifted with the hammer handle. The iron tongue stopped high enough for one bent human at a time.
Jiang could have walked beneath without bending. He resented needing that advantage while Aylin picked him up from the freezing floor.
The funeral bell struck a third time.
Water jumped between the gallery stones. Black-green light ran beneath it, carrying scraps of voices gathered in the furnace cellar.
Nemi called from the current, though Pell held the living girl against his back.
"Master, I slipped again."
Ista's foot moved toward the sound.
Jiang bit the hem of her coat.
She looked down at him, then at Nemi's burned sleeve hanging beside Pell's elbow.
"It heard her call me Master on the ledge," Ista said.
Brann climbed through the chimney hatch and landed behind them. "Then the river stole it honestly. Keep moving."
Aylin carried Jiang against her uninjured side. The worker's shirt trapped a little heat around his breast, but every bell note made his right claws tremble. Frostwake had left nothing in them worth spending.
The gallery floor sloped toward the palace. Clear runoff moved one way while the black-green shine threaded between its ripples and moved faster.
Jiang watched from Aylin's arm until he saw the shine divide.
One branch entered the old white salt beneath the crowns. The stone ahead rang with Aylin's funeral call and Edric's borrowed voice, already beyond every hand in the gallery.
Aylin wanted to run after that voice. Jiang felt the choice in the way her arm tightened and her next step lengthened toward the palace.
Then she heard Nemi call from the water behind them and stopped.
The fresh branch climbed Dagna's wet guide rope.
Jiang struck Aylin's buckle and pointed his beak.
Dagna saw the green line reach Torren's knot. She caught the rope below it and held the contaminated length away from Tovin's wrist.
"It came with us," she said.
"It came on the rescue line," Rian answered. "That branch has heard all of us."
From the rope, Brann's voice said, "The dry break is ahead."
The living Brann swore. "I was about to say that."
"Say something less useful," Ista told him.
He pointed with his hammer. The gallery crossed an old air shaft where two arches had pulled apart. No saltglass joined them. A narrow service bridge spanned the black drop, its planks dry above the flood.
"River-Open never reached that gap," Brann said. "The old signal is already across inside the crown stones. The fresh water needs our rope or a wet body to follow."
Ossin looked toward the ringing palace road. "We can still run the older branch."
"And arrive after it with every new voice attached," Rian said.
The floor cracked behind them.
Floodwater lifted a crown plate and threw it against the arch. Pell crossed the service bridge with Nemi while two workers carried the burned woman between them. The remaining survivors followed under Dagna's calls.
Each wet boot left a dark print on the planks. Ista threw dry furnace sand over every mark before the black-green shine reached it.
Her pouch emptied halfway across.
"Core-sand bin behind First Row," she said. "I saved what the furnace did not take."
The copied Nemi began crying from Dagna's rope.
Pell tightened his arms around the living girl. "That voice is going to make me hate water."
"Become a glassworker," Nemi said against his shoulder. "We hate everything evenly."
The service bridge lurched.
One support chain tore from the near arch. Rian caught it around his forearm before the planks rolled. Ossin drove his hook through a dry beam and took the chain across its shaft.
"Move, or the bridge takes you," Ossin ordered.
Aylin stepped onto the bridge with Jiang. Behind her, Brann and Ista crossed carrying the remaining sand between them. Dagna held the contaminated rope out over the shaft while Tovin fed it through his useful hand.
The black-green thread reached the first plank.
Dry sand dulled it. Wet fibers brightened again wherever the rope bent.
Jiang's body shook inside the overshirt. Aylin adjusted him higher, but her burned coat sleeve caught under his damaged cradle and pulled his failed flipper against her ribs.
He tapped the buckle once.
She stopped in the middle of the failing bridge and loosened the cloth.
"I know," she said. "It still has to be your body when we arrive."
Behind them, the gallery wall opened with a grinding crack.
Black water filled the near arch. Rian's feet slid to the bridge edge. Ossin leaned backward on the hook until its shaft bowed between them.
"Aylin, clear the bridge!" Dagna shouted.
Aylin cleared the final plank.
Brann and Ista followed. Tovin came next, his useful hand locked around Torren's knot. Dagna crossed last with the contaminated rope extended behind her like a fuse.
The black-green line carried every fresh voice it had taken.
Ista begged from the fibers for Nemi to come back. Ossin ordered Whitewake to lower its hooks. Brann warned that the bridge would fail. Pell cursed Aylin. Aylin's own voice admitted she had opened the gate.
The copies overlapped until none sounded human.
Dagna threw the rope onto the dry stones.
Ista buried the wet length beneath her remaining furnace sand. The voices thinned, then returned from the end still hanging across the gap.
The old funeral bell rang ahead.
Aylin looked toward it. She could chase a warning that had already reached the palace or cut away the people the enemy had learned tonight.
"If we cut this, the gallery behind us is gone," Brann said.
Ista nodded toward Pell, Nemi, and the workers waiting beyond the shaft. "The witnesses we saved are already on this side."
Ossin listened to the funeral bell ahead. "The old voice keeps the lead either way."
Aylin looked down at Jiang. He shook inside the borrowed shirt, watching the contaminated rope instead of the bell. She listened to her father's voice for one final beat, then turned her back on it.
"Give me the knife," she said.
Dagna put her belt blade in Aylin's good hand.
The rescue rope was swollen and tough. Aylin sawed through the first braid while the copies used Brann's voice to name the scouring notch and Nemi's voice to scream for Ista.
Jiang climbed out of the overshirt far enough to plant both feet on the buried rope. His unreliable foot bent. His belly supplied the weight it could not.
Aylin cut the second braid.
The near gallery collapsed.
Rian and Ossin released the support chain together. Stone, black water, and the far half of the service bridge fell into the shaft.
The final braid snapped under Jiang's breast.
Fresh voices dropped with it.
The sand at their feet went dark, then quiet. Brann's living curse behind Jiang was the only Brann left in the gallery.
Ahead, Edric's old borrowed voice continued through the crown stones.
"My daughter is dead."
Aylin returned Dagna's knife.
"That one was already across," she said.
She started uphill while the borrowed voice kept speaking.
The royal flood gallery climbed through a gatehouse drain and opened beneath the palace approach.
Cold evening air reached Jiang first. Then came torchlight on white walls, the iron teeth of the royal gate, and Whitewake hunters standing in ranks above them.
The palace had already dressed itself for Aylin's death. White salt burned in wall cups along the bridge. Black cloth covered the inner doors, and a funeral chain hung across the stairs where a returning royal would normally dismount.
Nobody had prepared a place for a living woman to climb out of a drain beneath her own mourners.
They saw Aylin in a burned coat. They saw Jiang wrapped in a glassworker's shirt against her side. They saw Ossin without a horn, Rian without an order, Ista and Brann covered in river mud, and the Glasswash survivors climbing behind them.
One palace hunter recognized Ossin and raised a hand. The captain beside him forced it down before it became a welcome.
Nemi slid from Pell's back and stood on her burned leg. Ista tried to hold her, but the apprentice remained upright where the gate could count her among the living.
The funeral bell beyond the gate gave its final note.
Palace hooks lowered toward the living princess.