CHAPTER 181: FRAGILE CARGO PART 1

The north yard of Cindralock was a skeleton of scaffolds and shored timbers, ropes creaking, the air shot through with chalk dust and a tang like vinegar left too long in sun. Commander Ves walked like the rock belonged to her, cutting across the courtyard toward the black-edged door without looking back to see if they followed. Inigo fell in step, Lyra ghosting his shoulder, eyes doing their habitual sweep—archways, rooflines, the rhythm of people’s hands. The JLTV ticked over behind them at idle, a square-jawed dog waiting for the command to heel.

"Alchemy wing took the worst of it," Ves called over her shoulder as they ducked under a strut where a mason wedged a length of oak against a cracked lintel. "North wall sloughed. We’ve braced load points, but I’d prefer your visit brief."

"How brief?" Inigo asked.

"If the cliff decides to shrug again," Ves said, "I’d rather it didn’t happen with strangers in the basement."

"Charmed," Lyra muttered, then winced at the smell hitting them past the threshold—ozone, sour ferment, something medicinal gone wrong.

The corridor beyond had been handsome once—white limewash, neat slate floor. It wore today like a battlefield dressing: scorched patches, spidering cracks, lintel stones out of plumb and propped by angled timber. They passed a pair of technicians in gray-trim coats kneeling over a crate to paint a sigil—triple chevron in blue. The younger one glanced up at Inigo’s boots, eyes flicking to the rifle, to the foreign buckles on his vest, to his hands. She looked back down as if embarrassed to have looked.

"Sigils color-coded?" Inigo asked, because it paid to know what rules you were breaking if you had to.

Ves didn’t slow. "Green band for stable. Amber for reactive. Red for don’t jostle, don’t warm, don’t even breathe at wrong angle. You’ll be taking four ambers and two reds." She glanced at his face like she was memorizing any flinch.

He didn’t give her one. "Manifests?"

"Signed. You’ll countersign when you load. Chain of custody goes to Elandra’s Alchemist Guildmaster, not the guild hall. Avoid detours."

"We’re fond of straight lines," Lyra said dryly.

They reached a stairwell that felt like a throat, cool and close. A guard at the top nodded Ves through, then stared at the JLTV’s outline visible through the yard door like he was trying to decide if it had been a dream. The stairs turned twice, the air getting colder, the smell wetter. Inigo’s breath fogged once, then didn’t—temperature eddies where the rock had shifted.

At the bottom: a chamber like the nave of a small, stern church, barrel-vaulted, niches down one side. The blowout was obvious—north wall buckled in, slabs of stone keeled inward like fallen books on a shelf, timbers bracing a jag between floor and vault where blackness tried to pour in. Someone had whitewashed "DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING" across a section of wall in the kind of handwriting that suggested a long night.

Three alchemists waited amid the shoring. Two wore copper-stitched sleeves like Ves’s; the third had plain gray, sleeves rolled, hands gloved to the elbow. The plain-sleeve one was speaking to the wall as if it would argue.

"—and I told you, Corin, if we use heat to soften the pitch in that seam, we risk flashing the whole panel. You want to write the report to the Tower on why we cooked our remaining stabilizer? Be my guest."

Corin, taller, copper-stitch, pinched the bridge of his nose and turned to Ves like she was a reasonable person in a world of fools. Then he saw Inigo and Lyra, blinked, recalibrated. "You’re the escort."

"Lyra and Inigo," Ves supplied. "This is Corin, Master bonded to the wing. Sera," she added, nodding to the gray-sleeve, "has been doing three people’s work since the wall tried to go to the river."

Sera peeled a glove off with her teeth and offered a hand to shake before she thought better of offering a contaminated glove and simply nodded. "You’re the ones with the... machine." She said it like a new word she’d tasted once and wasn’t sure she liked yet.

"It carries and stops when I tell it," Inigo said. "Like a mule that doesn’t complain."

"That’s reassuring," Corin said without registering sarcasm. His gaze moved to Lyra’s bow, then back to Inigo’s rifle. "Discretion was requested, Commander."

"Discretion is two people who finish jobs," Ves said, and Corin let that stand.

They showed them the vault. It wasn’t a door so much as a plug—thick slate set into thicker stone, an iron wheel set into it like a ship’s helm. Soot blacked the edges where someone had tried heat before Sera shamed them out of it. A chalkboard leaned nearby with two columns: OUT and STAYS. OUT had six items, written with severe patience.

— Red Band: Ampoule Set (Vol. 2)—Stabilizer, liquid

— Red Band: Powder Jar (Vine-Mark)—Stabilizer, dry

— Amber Band: Catalytic Pellets—sealed tube

— Amber Band: Ether-Solvent—sealed, stoppered

— Amber Band: Binder Resin—low temp

— Amber Band: Neutral Salt—silica jar

STAYS had plenty more, and all of it had "Later" written beside it with varying degrees of hope.

"Seals held," Sera said, tapping the chalk beside OUT. "We breeched the secondary panel at dawn. These are staged in the annex. We kept them cool. We didn’t bring them into this room because—" She gestured to the charred edges of the plug. "People get ideas."

"The annex," Ves said, and Sera led, torch throwing ropey light. The annex had taken the collapse like a boxer—drawn bruises, a split lip. Shelves intact against one wall. On a table: four wood crates with sigils—two painted amber, two red. Wax seals on leather thongs. A fifth crate half-closed, a sixth still wrapped in canvas.

Inigo moved closer, read the cramped script on a tag: Red Band—Ampoules (2). He looked at the crate’s corners. "Shock pins?" he asked, testing the joint.

Sera’s mouth quirked. "We’re not savages. Cork, felt, and springs. We’d have preferred a proper suspension but—" She shrugged at the state of the world.

"Springs will do," Inigo murmured. He knelt, fingers under the crate’s side, lifted an inch to feel the weight. Heavy, denser than he liked. "We’ll want these centered over the axle line," he said to Lyra. "Reds between ambers. Tie to the midline in an X. Tarp and blankets to keep the sun off."