Water had already covered Aylin's elbows. Cold had numbed the old rope burns across her ribs, which frightened her more than pain would have.
She stood against the midpoint wall because the ledge had disappeared beneath her boots. Behind her, the closed outlet flap shuddered whenever the armada hook pulled the feeder cradle outside.
Warm black-gray tissue moved under her left palm.
It was not stone. It yielded with a slow living pressure, tightening the white ridges around the old iron groove. Beyond that scar, the female emperor called and waited through an unfinished second note.
Aylin pulled the guide twice.
Jiang answered from the fractured breath spine. Two pulls, then a pause. He had not mistaken her signal for rescue.
"Water is rising," she called.
He heard the shape of her voice through the wall, not the words. More traveled through the guide: a tremor from her shivering hands and the slow drag of water against the root braid.
