For the first days, Selka slept in pieces.
Sorell slept in other pieces. Iven took shifts and cursed the handles when his hands cramped. Anet woke angry, frightened, sometimes too tired for either. There were hours when she could breathe without help and hours when no one left the bellows box closed. The ordinary work did not become easy because the miracle was gone.
They stayed in the baker's upper room. The baker had found enough fuel for one oven, and people brought her wood from broken buildings. Bread tasted of smoke. Selka learned the sound of Anet asking for water instead of anticipating it. Sometimes she still anticipated it, and the girl snapped at her, and afterward they apologized badly.
Pel was buried on the hillside above the lock. Kerr helped dig beside the freed man he had helped out of Reedgate. They buried Darr in the next row. Selka stood between the graves and remembered the captain pricking his thumb on a borrowed needle, the keeper worrying about shutters while his room filled with danger.
More graves climbed the hill. No one could agree how many belonged to the flood, the taking, the fighting, or to needs that had outlived the hearth. Selka stopped listening when the arguments began. She carried the next spade where it was needed.
Voss was not found. The broken anchor lay in pieces under the lock, and there was no frame left to hold another captive. Men argued over power in Harrowmere. Some still wanted Selka arrested. None had enough command to send an organized pursuit into the flooded streets. She did not mistake this for a pardon.
Kerr left with two freed prisoners to find their families. He gave Selka Darr's mending needle.
“He said you should have learned to do your own strap,” he told her.
“He never said that to me.”
“I'm saying it for him.”
She put it in the little packet beside her burned palm cloth.
Anet could sit outside by the end of the second week. That first afternoon she asked them to carry her to Pel's grave.
“I cut the pipe while he was still connected,” she said, resting a hand on the raw soil.
Selka set her burned hand beside Anet's. Neither moved until Sorell said they had to take her back.
The autumn sun warmed the baker's landing for an hour each afternoon. Sorell brought a small board and charcoal. Iven had found the third bell in the mud below the ruined stair. The coastal buyer had sent word: they still wanted it. The scratch could be polished out. The sound was another matter.
“I can't work the furnace,” Anet said.
Sorell laid a fresh sheet on the board. “We'll give you work you can do.”
“Not just until I'm better.”
“No. Different work.”
Anet looked down at her hands. The furnace floor had been the place she wanted most, before the cut took the strength she needed for it. She turned the charcoal between her fingers.
“I can draw the pattern. Someone else can pour it badly and blame me.”
“That's most of the trade.”
Anet smiled. Selka sat in the doorway, mending a strap with Darr's needle. The leather resisted every stitch. She had once been proud of how little time she wasted on work other people could do.
Three weeks after the flood, Sorell's boat was ready. It had a patched bow, no temple stone, and a breathing station fitted where the bell basket had been. Friends at the coast had offered rooms near the workshop; there would be lighter craft work, shifts of help, and days that failed. Selka had asked about the winter stairs. Sorell had found a room on the lower floor, and Anet had chosen it herself.
“You could stay in the upper room for winter,” Selka told Anet. “The baker said—”
“I know.”
Selka stopped sewing.
“I've decided.”
“I heard you.”
Her daughter waited. Selka took the needle out of the strap and set it on the window ledge.
“May I come as far as the dock?”
Anet nodded.
They went slowly. The city smelled of river mud and new-cut timber. People were repairing doors, dragging furniture from houses, arguing about which road to reopen first. Selka saw the woman from the failed throat band carrying a basket past them. She was alive, with no pipe connecting her to the wall. She did not recognize Selka. That was a relief.
At the dock Iven helped Anet aboard. The girl held the rail, waited, then crossed the last distance herself. Selka placed the charcoal board on the bench and laid the mended carrying strap across it. Beneath the leather she set Darr's needle.
“For the strap,” she said.
“It's awful.”
“I know.”
Anet touched the crooked stitching. “Thank you.”
They embraced carefully. Her daughter's breath caught against Selka's shoulder. She waited for it to return without reaching for the pendant that no longer glowed.
“I'm still angry,” Anet said.
“You can be.”
“I'll write.”
“About the bell.”
“Among other things.”
Selka stepped ashore. Sorell pushed off, Iven raised the patched sail, and Anet settled where she could see the water. The boat turned toward the open river.
Beyond it a small tide crossed the channel against the current. Selka had seen it at intervals since the lock, never where people called for it, never following any road they could lay out. Now it moved toward the river mouth. For a moment the sunlight passed through it, showing a depth less than it had once possessed and more than a human could measure.
Anet lifted her hand to it. The tide did not stop.
Selka stood until the boat passed the bend. Then she picked up the empty bell cloth Sorell had left on the dock and carried it back through the city.