IM AN ORC?

Then they made sure the Ember Warrens knew why.

The first proof came from the river.

A low horn sounded from the mouth of the lower forge tunnel. Everyone in the cavern turned. The horn was not Court-made. It carried the uneven breath of someone who had run too far and still refused to stop.

A kobold scout stumbled into the forge.

She was small even beside Pik, with a cracked leather hood and a crossbow strapped across her back. One side of her face was blackened by soot. She saw the broken listening engine, the workers standing free, Keth with his chains gone, and stopped so hard her boots skidded in the dust.

"Pik?" she whispered.

Pik ran to her. "Tessa. What happened?"

Tessa caught his shoulders, looked him over, then gripped his face as if checking that he was real. "The river lines lit. Drae left the forge before the old shift bell. She is taking the core train east, but she sent the second mark to the bridge road. The Court is breaking the bank at Durn Ford."

Ruk came closer. "How long?"

"They began before I escaped. The village is still there. For now."

Zree listened to the floor. Her expression tightened with every breath.

"The second mark is active," she said. "It is stronger than the ones at Orrin's Ford. The Court is using the river rise to carry the false note outward."

The freed horned woman pushed herself upright from where Zira had settled her against an ore cart. Her fur was soaked with sweat, and dried wire marks circled her wrists.

"Durn Ford has a stone bridge," she said. Her voice was hoarse but firm. "A lot of families crossed there when the lower land flooded. If the seam opens beneath it—"

"The bridge takes them with it," Grasha finished.

Keth looked toward the east tunnel. "Drae took the core train toward the Warrens. If we chase Durn Ford, she reaches the deep gates first."

"If we chase Drae, a village falls," Ruk replied.

The cavern quieted around that choice.

Nym opened the ledger pages she had taken from Orrin's Ford and spread them on a crate. Her fingers moved across the routes. "The core train cannot use the open ridge road. Too many patrols. It will take the ash rail through the old slag cut. That track meets the bridge road north of Durn Ford." She looked up. "We can intercept both if we move now."

"With what force?" Karg asked.

Nym pointed to the forge workers. "The Court expects them to remain trapped or scattered. They have the rail map. They know the tunnels."

Pik's mother stepped forward from the workers. She was older than him, her scales dark with furnace soot, one hand wrapped in a scorched cloth.

"We know the furnace lines," she said. "We know where Drae hides ore when she thinks the Court inspectors are coming. Give us weapons and we can delay the train."

Keth stared at her. "Mira, you have not held a weapon in years."

She met his eyes. "I held a hammer yesterday. The Court just told me what to hit."

Ruk looked at Grasha.

The orc commander had been watching the workers since the fight began. Not their size. Their hands. Their posture. The way they moved when the Court guards stopped giving orders.

"They can hold a choke point if they have a leader and an exit path," Grasha said. "Not against trained soldiers for long. Against a train guard, maybe."

"I stay with them," Keth said.

"No," Ruk said. "You guide us to Durn Ford. You know what the Court will do to a river seam. Mira holds the slag cut with Grasha and Karg. Nym gives them the rail plan."

Grasha stepped toward Mira. "You take anyone who wants to fight. You do not force the frightened. You block the track, break the signal lines, and leave before the Court can surround you. Your goal is delay, not glory."

Mira nodded once.

The workers began moving with purpose.

The forge had been a prison an hour earlier. Now it became a staging ground. Picks were reshaped into spears. Ore carts were stripped for iron plates. Nym marked the slag-cut map with charcoal and sent Tessa to lead the fastest scouts ahead. Zira moved among the injured workers, sealing cuts and leaving small vials for those who could not travel.

Ruk watched it happen and felt something shift.

The Court had built its power by turning people into tools. It had expected those tools to break when the grip loosened. Instead, they were choosing where to stand.

"Ruk," Zree called.

She stood near the collapsed listening engine, one hand against a cracked hollow-metal rib. "The third river mark is waking too. Not fully. But the Court is testing the triangle. If they finish all three, the marks will reinforce each other."

"Where is the third?"

Her amber eyes searched the distant sound. "Southwest. Near the old station under the river road. Too far to reach before Durn Ford."

"Then we stop the second and take the path to the third from there."

They left the lower forge in two columns.

Grasha, Karg, Mira, and twenty workers turned east toward the slag cut. The workers carried improvised weapons and the fierce, uncertain look of people walking toward danger because the place behind them was worse.

Ruk's group took the north passage: Ruk, Zira, Zree, Nym, Sorn, Keth, Pik, Tessa, and the horned woman, who had given her name as Tala. She refused to be left with the injured.

"I know Durn Ford," Tala said as they climbed. "My people trade hides there. The bridge road has old drainage channels under it. If Drae is building a mark, she will use them."

The rain found them again when they reached the open ground.

Durn Ford lay below in a river valley, the stone bridge crossing a swollen channel between two low hills. Villagers crowded both sides of the bridge with carts, animals, bundles, and children. The far bank road had already begun to crumble into the river.

At the center of the bridge, four Court figures worked around a ring of dark-metal anchors hammered into the stone.

Drae stood with them.

She had reached Durn Ford before Ruk.

Her iron staff rested against the bridge parapet. Behind her, a chain of rail carts emerged from the eastern slope, not carrying the core train but carrying Court soldiers.

Nym saw them and swore quietly.

"The train was bait too. She wanted Grasha at the slag cut and us here without the full force."

Ruk looked at the crowded bridge.

The anchors glowed.

The river beneath them began to pull inward.

"Get the people off the bridge," he ordered.

Zira and Tala ran for the north approach. Pik and Tessa sprinted toward the south side. Keth jumped down the slope toward the drainage channel. Sorn and Nym disappeared into the wet grass, angling for Drae's rear line.

Ruk, Zree, and Karg moved toward the bridge.

Drae saw them coming. Her staff rose.

The second mark answered.

Stone split under the bridge's center span.

The first cart on the bridge dropped one wheel into the crack.

A child screamed.