Frederick kept the route plate braced on the ledge rail and did not blink.
The eastern line was brightening fast enough to end the argument.
"We move now," he said.
Below them, Loomhollow was still counting itself awake. Bells. Shutters. Runners. Arguments in three quarters at once. The kind of city noise that meant no one in charge knew yet which lie they were supposed to commit to.
Void watched the east line hold against the plate's face.
Grey City had answered.
That mattered more than Loomhollow's embarrassment, more than the Weavers' grievance, more than the Keepers' panic. If the old cold break beneath Grey City was active again, delay was not caution. It was surrendering initiative to people who liked seals more than truth.
Ezekiel leaned one shoulder against the ledge wall and tried not to look like the bridge had taken half his bones out of proper order.
"Tell me we're not climbing back through the part of the city that already hates us."
"Not hates," Frederick said. "Counts."
"That was supposed to sound better?"
"It was more accurate."
Frederick lifted the spindle over the plate. The bright east line shifted a fraction.
"Upper east gate is wrong," he said. "Too much new closure work over an old freight bearing. They'll lock the pretty route first. We need the load route."
Void looked out over the eastern quarter.
Past the polished museum fronts, Loomhollow dropped into work. Dye canals. Loading courts. Rope lines. Hoist frames. Wet brick. Lower bridges built for weight instead of ceremony. The eastern line was not going toward the quarter that pretended to govern the city. It was threading through the parts that kept it standing.
Of course it was.
"Down," Void said.
They took the maintenance stair two steps at a time. Frederick moved fastest where the walls were oldest. Ezekiel swore once under his breath when the bridge strain caught him across the ribs. Void heard it and kept moving. Sympathy was less useful than distance.
At the first landing, the city had already started writing.
Two registry clerks stood below in the cross-passage with a board between them, taking statements from the museum apron woman and the bell-runner from the bridge. One clerk held a wet copying sheet. The other was asking short questions in the voice of a man who wanted facts to become categories as soon as possible.
"Three men?" he said.
"Yes."
"Armed?"
"Enough."
"Affiliation cloth?"
"None."
"Marks?"
The bell-runner looked up the stair and saw them first.
Good instincts again. He did not shout.
He stepped on the hem of the museum woman's apron as if by accident. She turned to swear at him. The clerk with the board looked down. In that one crooked second the bell-runner kicked the wet copy sheet loose and sent it sliding into the drain cut under the stairs.
Then he looked straight at Frederick.
"Wash stair," he said, too loudly, as if complaining to the clerk. "If you want the east laundry count, take the wash stair. The upper bridge is shut."
The clerk frowned.
"Who asked about laundry?"
"No one," the bell-runner said. "That is the problem with this city."
Ezekiel almost laughed and wisely did not.
Void did not thank the man. Neither did Frederick. They turned into the wash stair at once.
Behind them the clerk snapped, "You. Stop."
Void cut the lamp rope as he passed the corner.
Dark took the landing. Not full dark. Enough.
By the time the clerks got their light back, the trio was already dropping through steam, wet cloth stink, and the hammering rhythm of lower-quarter work starting too early because rich districts never learned the difference between dawn and convenience.
The wash stair emptied into a dye-service hall with hot vats on one side and stacked bolt frames on the other. Half the workers inside were staring at changed cloth tags instead of doing their jobs. One old woman had two affiliation tabs in her hand and looked ready to bite someone over whichever one had been hidden first.
Frederick did not slow.
"East freight cut?" he asked.
No one answered until Ezekiel came through behind him, moving stiff and obvious and marked enough now that even tired workers could read the strain across his throat.
Then the old woman jerked her chin toward the far arch.
"If you're running from the upper fools, use the spool drain. They are sealing the registry lane."
"Why help us?" Ezekiel asked.
She looked at him as if the question itself were wasteful.
"Because I watched the quarter nearly drop a bridge on a child while the polished side argued about procedure."
Fair.
They cut through the far arch. Steam gave way to colder air and the hard mineral stink of canal water. Ahead, through a grated opening, Void could see the registry lane.
Sealed already.
Keeper closures were going up across the proper eastward crossing in neat white lines from post to post. Not military work. Administrative work. Worse in cities. A team of quarter men with hook poles was dragging a portable barrier into place while a Weaver on the opposite balcony shouted that the lower lanes were being stolen by men afraid of memory.
Everyone had found a script faster than Void would have preferred.
Frederick stopped at the grate and bared his teeth.
"See? Pretty route. Dead route."
He dropped to one knee and set the plate against the wall. The east line bent down instead of across.
"Spool drain," he said. "Old freight spill under the lane. If they retired it honestly, we can use it."
"And if they didn't?" Ezekiel said.
Frederick looked up at the sealed proper lane.
"Then we can use it faster."
The spool drain gate sat under the registry lane behind a slatted service wall and three years' worth of civic neglect. The iron wheel beside it had been painted over so often it looked ceremonial. The chain housing above was newer than the wall and older than the city's story about it.
Void touched the housing once.
Keeper closure added later. Of course.
Not enough to hold if the old freight bearing woke underneath it.
Which it was doing now.
He heard shouting from the proper lane. The clerks from above had reached the lower quarter. The word three men was moving faster than the men themselves.
Frederick jammed the spindle into the wheel housing and swore at the first answer it gave him.
"Locked by count order. Not weight order."
"Speak like a person," Ezekiel said.
"It means the city locked a freight gate as if paper moved through it."
"That does sound stupid."
"Yes."
He put his shoulder into the wheel. Nothing.
Ezekiel took the other side and the chain above gave one hard clack before stopping dead.
"Stuck."
"Loaded," Frederick corrected.
Void looked up.
The closure line from the proper lane had been fed through the newer housing to keep the lower gate obedient. That would hold as long as the city believed its own map.
Loomhollow had just stopped being that polite.
"Hold it when it drops," Void said.
Ezekiel looked at the chain housing, then at his own hands.
"Again?"
"Yes."
He did not complain a second time. Good. Complaint wasted breath and breath already had work.
Void climbed the slatted wall, got one boot into the rotten brace, and cut the closure feed where it crossed the older chain bracket.
The wheel kicked in Frederick's hands.
"Now," Frederick said.
They turned together.
The gate rose a handspan, then another, then stuck again as the lower channel took old load for the first time in years.
Not enough.
Behind them came running feet.
Not workers.
Too certain.
Weavers first. Two of them. Hook cutters low, cloth masks up, trying to come in through the service arch before the Keepers could turn the registry lane fully into paper law.
"You are leaving with us," the first one said.
Ezekiel, still on the wheel, said, "See, this is why no one likes meetings."
The second Weaver lunged for the plate.
Void dropped off the wall, cut the man's wrist strap, and let the stolen momentum carry him face-first into the painted housing. The plate stayed with Frederick. The Weaver did not.
The first one checked his step.
Good.
He had heard enough from the bell court to want a cleaner version of this than he was going to get.
"The city will name you whether you like it or not," he said.
"It already does that to everyone," Frederick said, straining on the wheel. "Some of us simply noticed."
Better use of breath.
The gate rose another foot.
On the far side lay the freight drain: low brick, wet stone, eastbound canal noise, and enough room to crawl now and walk if they got the gate higher.
The service arch behind the Weavers filled with new white thread.
Keepers.
Of course.
The Keeper leading them took one look at the half-open gate and said, "Drop it."
Frederick did not even turn.
"No."
"That exit is under quarter seal."
"Then the quarter sealed the wrong thing."
The Keeper raised his pole. White closure fed toward the gate housing.
The old woman from the dye hall hit him in the shoulder with a vat hook.
Not hard enough to kill. Hard enough to ruin his angle.
"Take your seal out of my work drain," she said.
The lower hall behind her had filled with labor now. Not a mob. Worse for officials. Witnesses with opinions and actual jobs to get back to. They had seen too much changed cloth in one morning to trust another clean order.
That was the real opening.
Not sympathy, but disgust.
Ezekiel got the gate to chest height and then it tried to come down all at once.
He caught it under both palms and made the same noise he had made at the bridge, only lower this time.
The burden marks answered.
Frederick shoved the spindle into the lifted bracket and pinned the wheel half-open.
"Go," he said.
Void took the plate from him and went through first. Frederick next. Ezekiel last because, apparently, that was what life wanted from him now: every ugly bit of weight at the back of the line.
He ducked under the gate, released it, and nearly got crushed by the downswing anyway. Void caught the collar edge long enough to throw the weight sideways into the old wall channel. The gate slammed shut. White Keeper thread hit it a beat later and found only dead paint, old freight iron, and a city that had stopped obeying its better manners.
For three breaths no one moved.
Canal water knocked under the east bricks.
Above them, Loomhollow kept ringing.
Then Frederick said, "Walk."
The freight drain spat them out behind an east loading court half a street beyond the sealed quarter lane. Wagons were already being turned. Two canal skiffs were taking on rolled cloth under shouted orders. A courier horse stamped beside the east post while a clerk tied oilskin packets into a tube case.
Frederick saw the case and went still in a way Void disliked.
"What?" Ezekiel said.
The bell-runner's stolen copy sheet was still tucked into Frederick's belt. He pulled it free and opened it under the loading-court light.
The writing was fast and ugly.
Three men.
One dark-haired.
One dwarf with cut hands.
One marked at the throat.
Bridge failure.
Museum quarter.
Question for custody.
Frederick looked from the sheet to the courier tube.
Same quarter seal.
Too neat. Too fast.
"They copied us already," Ezekiel said.
Void looked east.
The courier was not waiting for law. He was waiting for the road to clear.
And the road was clearing now.
Workers flattened to let the horse through. A canal master waved one skiff off first. The city had made its choice. Get the copies moving first. Ask harder questions later.
"Can we still beat it?" Ezekiel asked.
Frederick took the plate back and looked at the east line.
"Not if we use the road they expect."
The courier mounted.
Void watched the tube at his saddle catch the first full gray light of morning.
That tube carried their shapes east before their bodies could.
He turned toward the low canal cut beyond the loading court where the plate's line bent away from the public road and into older brick.
"Then we do not use the road," he said.
Behind them, the first courier left Loomhollow with their descriptions.