The bronze crown had a split in it.
Selka had noticed it twenty years ago when the casting cooled. A flaw, the founder said; not deep enough to matter. He had fitted a collar over it and hammered the pin home. The frame's arms had covered the collar ever since.
Now the collar stood clear.
She took Iven's spare cutting tool from the landing's bench and crossed the wet floor. A guard stepped into her path. Ruun moved between them, taking the blade along its upper arm. Water spilled. The god struck the man's wrist with the edge of its hand, the stone finger foremost, and the weapon fell.
It could not hit the anchor. It could hit someone who was trying to stop her.
Selka knelt at the crown. The pin was wide, sunk almost flush. She wedged the cutting tool under its head and pulled. Nothing.
Voss came around the lever.
“You think it will keep her alive because she saved it?”
Selka looked toward the landing. Iven's hands moved on the bellows. Anet's hair lay spread across the blanket, still full of salt from the lock rescue.
“I don't know.”
“I can keep her alive.”
She drove the tool deeper under the pin.
Voss seized her wrist. She struck him with the hammer she had carried from the road. Not hard enough. He knocked it out of her hand, caught her by the throat and forced her back against the bronze.
She had never fought a man like this. She had stood behind men who did. His strength was ordinary and overwhelming.
“You still know how to say yes,” he told her.
She felt the hot crown against her spine. Her foot found the fallen hammer. She dragged it closer, let him press her down, and kicked it upward into his shin.
He cried out and loosened his grip. She tore free. Ruun came toward them, slow and bleeding, and Voss retreated to the lever. He pulled it with both hands. The broken branch gave only a sputter. The arms did not close over the crown.
Selka took up the hammer. The pin head had lifted enough for her to catch the edge. She struck it sideways.
Once. The tool shook loose.
Twice. The pin moved.
Behind her a bell rang. She turned, terrified. Iven had struck it because the guards were trying to force the landing. Kerr and the freed men came to hold them back. Iven set the bell down and returned to the handles. Sorell kept the mouthpiece fitted to Anet's face; her eyes stayed on Anet's chest.
Selka hit the pin again. It sprang out and vanished into the water.
The collar loosened. She dragged it away from the crown. Bronze burned through the cloth wrapped around her palm, the same palm Ruun had burned on the bridge. She pushed the tool into the old split and hammered.
Ruun stood beside her. She could have asked it now. Promise. Leave her. Leave us. She had spent the journey looking for a way to make the answer safe.
It watched the hammer, not her face.
She struck again.
The crown broke along the flaw. One side dropped, taking the fixed inner bar with it. From beneath the anchor came a noise she had heard only once before: water with room to run.
Ruun's folded irons opened.
Not all at once. A strip lifted from its chest; the lower bar split apart; its stone feet dissolved into moving water. The body straightened beyond the height of a human, then beyond the chamber beam. Selka backed away, the hammer hanging uselessly from her hand.
The god was free.
Voss pulled the dead lever again. The water rose over his boots. He looked at Selka as if she had broken a piece of machinery he would require her to pay for.
Then the river came through the chamber wall.
It knocked him down, carried the lever assembly across the floor and tore the stair rail out of its stone. Selka caught a broken frame arm. Ruun moved around her, deep and cold now, a reach of water filling the room without fitting any body she knew.
She shouted for Anet.
The god did not answer.