The bell hand did not look at the clappers first.
He looked at the bell record.
That was the first useful thing Sable saw when Cassian brought him below with the lower runner from the throat and laid the wrapped metal beside the old map on the table. Rowan sat where they had left her, straight-backed in the bolted chair, her attention moving with the same ugly precision that had shaped the last weeks of their lives. Jace leaned by the stair. The two captured men stood between guards with frost still clinging to their clothes and failure still clinging harder.
Cassian unwrapped the clappers and set them beside the old line of posts marked on the record. "The throat is down," he said. "The clappers are mine. The lower runner is mine. The bell hand is mine. So now you tell me where the line crosses next."
The bell hand said nothing.
Rowan looked at the metal, then at Sable. "You keep finding the wrong things too quickly."
