By evening the red crack had reached the outer trestle.
A memory storm already hung above it. Strange hands, open doors and faces that vanished before they could be recognised emerged in the grey cloud. Every image reached towards the heat of the communal stoves. If the storm touched all three casings at once, the strike would enter the Ring of Silence through the lower supports and tear the barrier apart from within.
Marek wanted to place direct sparks on the trestle. Saya stopped him.
"It feeds on what we show it. Give it twelve defenders and you'll get twelve new voices inside the cloud."
Ordinary salt could disperse the storm in an open field, but the residential stoves stood between the Soot and the field. There was nowhere to divert the cloud. Then Irsa spread in a thin, gleaming layer over two sparks. Their heat reflected in her and became the silhouettes of an entire squad.
Marek saw the new form before it had time to set.
A mirror could bear no weight, seal no cracks and deliver no blow. It showed the storm movement and heat where no one was.
But nine active sparks were not enough to carry the false choir across the whole trestle. Twenty-four bodies lay in the dry siding without a key. New forms required a working stove, and all three belonged to the Soot.
Dara opened the middle casing herself. She measured out ninety grammes of purified ash and stationed two stokers at the valves. Marek could adjust the heat with only a single outer lever.
"One cycle," she said. "If you try to take a second without my word, I'll flood the stove with salt."
Marek agreed. For seven minutes the people did not take their eyes off the gauge. The stove could assemble six sparks, but there was only enough material for three. When the shutter opened, three flat forms with smooth, dark surfaces emerged.
There were thirty-six intact bodies in the Soot again: twelve active and twenty-four motionless. The new network did not yet exist. For the first time, the district had granted permission it could withdraw.
Marek placed the three mirrors on the empty freight branch line and led the other nine sparks behind them in short dashes. In the reflections, each appeared to be four at once. From a distance, a large, hot choir was moving along the rails.
The storm turned.
Irsa altered the silhouettes, trying to make them more convincing. One grew taller, another limped, a third carried a long tool over its shoulder. Then a short-haired girl appeared in the leading mirror. She raised her hand and beat five knocks on an invisible kettle.
Marek severed the mirror's line.
The mirror fell onto the rail as a black plate. The storm swayed back towards the stoves.
"Not her," Marek said.
Irsa tried to rise, but took none of her familiar forms. She remained a colourless wisp above the extinguished mirror.
"I need an image the storm will follow," Marek continued. "Ella is already in your memory. You only have to repeat the movement."
Irsa did not obey.
She did not say "no" or argue. No spark took Ella's face. For the first time, the network's anchor refused not a dangerous act, but a lie that suited Marek.
The red crack reached the next support. Beneath the trestle, people began putting out their household fires so the cloud would not see them through the gaps.
Saya removed the silver thread from her wrist and stretched it between two mirrors.
"Train lamps," she said. "They all move the same way, but none of them pretends to be human."
Yuna supplied the rhythm: two lights in front, one behind, a brief darkness on the bend. That was the signal for a service train that could not be stopped inside a tunnel. Beran shifted the manual points towards the abandoned salt field.
The mirrors set off again. This time they showed no faces, only a chain of warm rectangles. The storm followed the movement. It tried to mould passengers inside the false train, but the reflections went dark before the figures developed features.
At the edge of the field, Marek released the direct lines. The mirrors settled into shallow ditches. Oven's guardsmen, who had yet to receive a new captain, opened the salt towers. White dust struck upwards and tore the cloud into shreds that could no longer hold the faces of strangers.
Not one spark entered the storm. Not one stranger's echo became a weapon. The people of the Soot watched from the rooftops as living ash saved them without putting on the faces of the dead.
Then the city pipes spoke above the district.
Rador did not deny what had been seen. He gave the number saved, the duration of the manoeuvre and the quantity of salt expended by the Guard. Then he told them something that had never appeared in any public record.
When the Old Choir failed, his wife and eight-year-old son had been in a neighbouring city. That choir, too, had begun with a promise to hear everyone. When a single command demanded that the barrier be held at any cost, thousands of echoes ceased to distinguish friend from stranger. Rador received his family's last messages at the same moment as the order to close the shutter. He obeyed the order and did not answer.
"I know the cost of a voice that believes itself kind," said the First Keeper. "Today Marek Sol diverted a threat he himself brought to your stoves. Tomorrow his choir will decide it knows better than you whom to save."
The pipes fell silent.
Instead of thanking him, several people demanded that the communal stoves be closed. Someone asked why the storm had found the old support in the first place. Others looked at the three new mirrors and the twenty-four motionless forms still waiting for a volunteer's memory.
Dara climbed onto the middle casing.
"The stoves will open," she said. "But none of them will become his hand. Each will have someone from the Soot, a salt cut-off and the right to refuse Marek."
Marek looked at Irsa. She had finally pulled herself together, but remained beside the mirrors instead of returning to his shoulder.
For the network to grow, he would have to give the people not only the work, but the right to disobey.
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