Chapter 143 - 141 — The Cost of Crossing I
**POV: Jace**
---
Hana got to a hundred and twenty and stopped.
*"It has not started again,"* Krüger said. *"There is a seep. Nothing more than that."*
"Then the strap stays off and it does not go back on unless it runs. Say what you can see."
*"An opening about the width of two fingers on the outside of the calf, and a bruise round it that has come up since."*
"Depth."
*"I am not going to guess at that."*
"Good answer." She had both hands on the pillar and her eyes shut, which is apparently how that woman listens. "Then here is what she has got and I want all six of us to hear it the same way."
---
"Her bleeding is controlled. The foot is warm, which means the leg is getting blood, which is the whole of the good news and it is a great deal of good news."
*"And the rest."*
"The rest is that a muscle has been opened and it has not been repaired. She can stand on it. She can walk on it."
"She cannot run on it and she cannot turn on it under load. If she does either, the opening gets bigger and we go back to the strap."
---
Then somebody else spoke and it took me a second to place the voice, because I have heard Mara Viteri say perhaps forty words and none of them through a stone column.
*"I can walk. I cannot run and I cannot turn on it. Those are two different sentences and I want them treated as two different sentences."*
"Understood."
*"Because the way this usually goes is that somebody hears the second one and stops asking me to do the first one."*
---
*"Withdrawal,"* Krüger said.
He said it flatly and he said it early, which is correct, and there was about two seconds of silence after it that nobody enjoyed.
*"It is available. We can take it from anywhere on this floor. Viteri walks out with a bad leg and a failed attempt and comes back in a month, and nobody here has to make any of the other decisions."*
*"No,"* Mara said.
*"That is not a vote. I am putting it on the table because it belongs on the table."*
*"And I am telling you it does not come off the table until somebody has looked at a second route."* Nothing in her voice had moved at all.
*"We have six maps, two cities and a man on the other side standing in a district we cannot see. Ask him first."*
---
"I am here," I said. "Give me the shape of your problem."
*"The shape of our problem is four hundred metres of straight open avenue between us and the first turn,"* Theo said.
*"It runs east from the bridgehead and there is nothing on it. No side streets for the first two hundred, intact buildings both sides, and the patrol we met is working it at about eleven minutes."*
"And if you are on it when they come round."
*"Then we are three people in a stone corridor and one of us cannot run."*
---
"Then do not go down the avenue."
*"There is nowhere else."*
"There is nowhere else *on your map*," I said, and got both sheets out onto the top of the pillar. "Anton."
He already had his out and had already found it.
---
There is a block on both maps between the bridgehead and the first turn, and on my sheet it is drawn as a single outline with four courtyards inside it, which is how a cartographer draws a thing he could not walk through.
On theirs it is drawn the same way.
"That is a civic complex," Hana said, looking over my arm. "Four courts and the ranges round them. Every city has one and they are all the same shape."
"And on your side," I said, "it is a building."
*"It is a building with doors we have not opened,"* Krüger said.
---
"On mine it is not a building any more."
I got up and went out of the junction to where the street runs east, and I could see the whole of it from there, and I described it while I was looking at it.
"Your north range is down. All of it. The roof is in the courtyard and both long walls have gone out, and I am looking at the inside of a building that on your side is closed."
*"Say what is in it."*
---
"A corridor," I said.
"It runs the length of that range, inside the outer wall, and I can see it because the wall above it has fallen and the corridor floor has not. It has a stone barrel over it that is still standing in sections."
*"A service corridor,"* Theo said, and he said it the way a man says a word he has been waiting all day to use.
"It runs from the west end of that range to the east end. On my side it comes out at the courtyard because the courtyard is open. On yours it comes out wherever a door is."
---
There was a pause on the other side and then a great deal of talking I could not hear, and then Theo again.
*"How many openings off it."*
I counted.
"Nine on the courtyard side. Three on the street side. And at the east end it does not stop, it turns south and goes out of my sight under a piece of the second range that is still up."
*"Nine and three and a turn at the end."*
"Nine and three and a turn."
---
*"Then it is the same corridor,"* Theo said. *"We are standing against the outside of that west wall right now and there is a door in it, and I have been looking at that door for twenty minutes assuming it was a cupboard."*
*"It is not a cupboard,"* Mara said.
*"It is not a cupboard."*
---
*"Four hundred metres of avenue,"* Krüger said, *"against four hundred metres of covered corridor with twelve openings off it."*
"And the twelve openings are the problem."
*"The twelve openings are the reason it is better than the avenue."* Mara again. *"On the avenue there is nowhere to be. In there, every one of those openings is a place where three people can stand and only one thing can come at them at a time."*
---
*"Can you hold a doorway on that leg,"* Hana said.
A short pause.
*"I can hold a doorway. I cannot chase anything out of one."*
*"That is not what I asked and you know it. Can you stand in a frame for two minutes with your weight on both feet."*
*"Yes."*
*"Then say so like that, because I am going to have to make decisions on what you tell me and I cannot do it from the other side of a city if you are being brave at me."*
Another pause, longer.
*"Understood."*
---
*"We go through the corridor,"* Krüger said. *"Nolan, we are going to need you on the next window. You are looking at the inside of a building we are walking through blind."*
"Understood."
*"And we will be moving. So if you are not at a pillar when we are at one, we are in there on our own with a map that does not have the openings on it."*
"Then I will be at one."
---
We went east and we went fast, and it cost us.
The Inner City on this side is four-metre streets and collapsed frontages and I put us through two blocks that I would not have chosen if Krüger’s next window had been ten minutes later.
Sokolov went over a slope of fallen masonry that he should have gone round and came down the far side badly and did not say anything about it for six minutes.
Hana said something about pace once, at the end of the second block, and I did not slow down, and she did not say it again, and that is on me rather than on her.
---
We got to the next pillar with about forty seconds to spare and it is set into the outer face of that civic complex, about fifteen metres from where the north range has come down.
I could see the whole corridor from beside it. That is presumably why the pillar is there.
The silver came up and I put my palm flat and waited with the map in my other hand, and when it flared I had already started talking.
---
"Nolan, at the pillar on the north face. I can see the entire corridor. Say where you are."
*"Inside it. West end. We have been in here four minutes."*
"Then listen to this in order and do not answer until I finish."
*"Go."*
---
"From your end. First opening on your right is a courtyard door and it is open on my side and it has rubble across it to about waist height. Do not take it."
*"Noted."*
"Second on the right is the same and it is clear. Third on the right is not an opening any more, the lintel has come down and it is a wall."
*"How far along is that."*
"About ninety metres from where you came in. It will be a blind alcove on your side."
---
"On your left, the street side, there are three. The first one is at forty metres and it goes straight out into the avenue."
*"Which is the thing we are avoiding."*
"Which is the thing you are avoiding, and it is also your way out if everything else fails, so count it."
*"Counted."*
---
"Then the east end. The corridor turns south at about three hundred and seventy and goes under a standing range, and I cannot see any part of it after the turn."
*"How much is not visible."*
"Perhaps thirty metres. Then it comes out the far side into the second court, and the second court has one exit onto the turn you want, which is where you are going."
*"So the last thirty metres is blind on both sides."*
"The last thirty metres is blind on both sides."
---
They went.
That is an odd sentence to write down and it was an odd thing to do.
Standing beside a black column in an orange street with a map in your hand, looking at the floor of a corridor in another world, telling three people where the rubble is.
The window closed at about a hundred seconds and I stayed where I was.