Reedgate had hung fresh cloth over the burned buildings.
Blue for Torren, rust-red for Merrow. The strips met above the receiving enclosure, where soldiers from both sides guarded a platform that smelled of new-cut wood. Beyond it the river docks were crowded with civilian boats, kept away from the exchange by a boom and two armed launches.
Selka saw a polished bell in the stern of a small working boat. She thought of Anet, then turned back to the task before her. Every foundry made bells. Every river town bought them.
Darr walked beside the prisoner fence as though each step hurt. The men inside wore blankets over thin shirts. Some sat, some leaned on the rails, some stared at the arriving god without much interest. They had been offered miracles before.
“Kerr,” Darr called.
No one moved.
He went farther, spoke the name again, and a man near the rear of the enclosure raised his head.
The brothers looked less alike than Selka expected. Kerr was narrow and dark-eyed, with a beard down to his collarbone. Darr had told her once, while repairing the harness, that Kerr used to be vain about his chin.
“You took your time,” the prisoner said.
Darr laughed. It came out wrong. He caught the rail with both hands.
“Come here.”
“They don't let us pick the beds.”
Kerr stood slowly. One leg dragged. He reached the fence and put his fingers through. Darr held them, pressing his forehead against the rail. For a moment Selka looked away. She saw Ruun watching them from its carriage, unable to look away if it wanted to.
A Torren official called for the interpreter.
Voss was already on the platform. He had come down the river by dispatch launch while they hauled the carriage over broken roads and salt flats. He wore a new coat with both countries' colors at the cuff. Beside him waited three older men and a woman holding the transfer tools. Selka recognized the tools before she recognized the woman: a narrow catch, a spreading brace, the long hooked key used below Harrowmere.
“The journey was harder than expected,” Voss said.
“You could have asked the roads.”
“And Ruun?”
“Wounded. Alive.”
“Then you've done well.”
Selka wanted to strike him for saying it in the same tone with which she might praise a student. Instead she stepped onto the platform and looked beneath the cloth covering its center.
Bronze gleamed. A receiving hearth. Larger than a release stand needed to be.
“May I inspect?”
Voss's fingers brushed the corner of his mouth. “Of course. We need you certain of the sequence.”
She knelt. Under the stand ran three pipes: one to the river, one back toward the Merrow enclosure, one disappearing under the Torren delegation's tent. A release needed somewhere for the irons to drop and enough water for the freed body to find its shape. It did not need a distribution branch.
“You've built quickly,” she said.
The woman with the tools looked at Voss, then answered. “We had men working night and day.”
Selka put a hand on the bronze. It was warm already.
Behind her the crowd began singing the peace song. Someone had taught the first verse in both languages. The second fell apart, then joined again on the refrain.
Darr came to the foot of the steps. His face had changed; he was smiling without knowing it.
“He walks,” he said. “Badly. But he walks.”
Selka looked at the pipe beneath her hand. She took it away before he could see her fingers shaking.
“Get your men near the prisoners,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because that's what you came for.”
The carriage rolled up beside the platform. Ruun lifted its head toward the new hearth. Selka heard the sound it made, low enough to be lost beneath the song.
It was the same sound it had made when the spear entered its ribs.