The dyers started the freight lift by hand.
The wheel had not moved since the flood. Taya ordered water diverted down the emergency channel, and the current turned the rusted shaft. The platform rose out of the floor with mud, leaves and the smell of the northern quarter.
Lenny, the monkey and six people with stretchers stood on it.
"We get one trip up," Taya said. "Then the axle will snap."
We sent the wounded and the eggs up. The beasts that could move followed the stone dog through the service tunnel. We did not drag out those who were hiding. Mira came down to meet us and left open carriers beside them.
Rem wanted to stay with the ledger until the end.
"We need you outside," Cole said.
"To verify the records?"
"So people can ask what you signed."
The assessor allowed himself to be placed on a stretcher.
The lift carried us into the academy courtyard. People whose names Lily had managed to read over the channel were already gathering there.
An elderly woman saw the stone dog and covered her mouth with both hands. The plaque beside his cell bore the name of her daughter, who had died six years earlier. The woman sank to her knees, but did not call to him.
The dog approached, sniffed her sleeve and lay down beside Rem's stretcher.
The woman wept quietly, making no attempt to lead him away.
Another beast recognised its former owner and leapt onto his shoulder of its own accord. At the sight of its family, a firebird darted towards the roof. A man in an expensive cloak demanded the return of a spirit he had once surrendered against a debt.
"It belongs to my house."
Lenny set the dead plaque in front of him.
"The plaque only says who paid."
"Move aside, boy."
The monkey stepped up beside Lenny without being told, and the man backed away.
They opened the courtyard gates. On one side were carriers, food and people ready to offer a new bond. On the other began the road to the river and the Wildlands.
Some creatures left at once.
Some stayed.
Some could not choose that day.
No one closed the gate.
The documents still burned above the city, and people read them aloud. In one street debt seals were being torn down; in another, residents demanded that Kane be given back control before the herd returned. The truth had stripped him of legitimacy, but it had not destroyed fear.
Kane did not answer with a speech.
The tower drew in the white marks he had gathered after the battle at the wall. Light flowed from the Wildlands, from debt contracts and from the bodies of beasts still bound to the old seals. They collapsed in the streets. Their owners tried to hold them up, but lost their own strength.
The chain basilisk coiled around the tower. Golden rings sank into the stone.
Mira looked at the diagram and went pale.
"The Predator Crown no longer waits for consent. It will determine ownership by the number of bonds consumed."
A panel opened before my eyes.
"Higher evolution path detected."
The System showed Styx as she had been: vast scarlet wings, a single swarm, captains with no right of refusal. To reclaim that form, she had to enter the Crown and defeat Kane.
Then a second line appeared.
"Defeated owner will be absorbed together with all bonds."
Kane did not intend merely to hold the city.
He wanted to force the System itself to choose between us.
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