CHAPTER 182: FRAGILE CARGO PART 2

"Already staged cold wraps," Sera said, pointing to a stack of gray wool. "Soaked in river water. Won’t hurt."

Lyra walked the perimeter like an archer marking her shooting lanes. Her eyes snagged on a hairline crack in the annex’s ceiling. "You’re sure the braces will hold while we move weight?"

"For an hour," Ves said. "Two if you don’t dawdle. Ground’s settled for now. Tide shifts are—"

The stone under their feet made a short, unhappy sound. Everyone stopped. Dust sifted from the crack and hesitated in the air like it hadn’t decided which way the world would go. Then the moment passed. Corin swallowed.

"—periodic," Ves finished calmly, as if nothing had happened. "Lift smooth. Carry smooth. No sudden drops."

"Chain of custody first," Corin said, feeling safer in paperwork than in geology. He produced a leather folder with triplicate forms. Sera laid a stylus on top. Inigo read and signed where indicated; Lyra initialed each line with crisp, unembellished strokes. Sera countersigned. Wax seals caught the light.

"Alright," Inigo said, rising. "We’ll bring the beast to the door. Got a flat dolly or two?"

"Two," Sera said, already moving. "Wheels greased this morning."

They became a machine. Ves kept nonessential bodies out of their way. Corin fetched and stood pointedly back. Sera and Lyra each took a dolly; Inigo jogged up the stairs, the smell of vinegar and chalk chasing him into the yard.

He brought the JLTV around to the alchemy wing’s side hatch, where a pair of wide doors opened onto a ramp that had been hastily reinforced with planks. He killed the engine, set the brake, and jumped out to drop the tailgate and swing the rear doors open. The interior yawned—clean, square, ready to be complicated.

He pulled out the tie-downs, set anchor hooks into the floor rails, and laid a crisscross of straps ready to cinch. He spread the oilskin tarp along the bay’s floor—waterproof and, more importantly, nonreactive to most of what alchemists thought was a good idea. Lyra appeared a moment later with the first dolly. The crate’s red sigil looked like a scraped wound in the dim light.

"Corner?" she asked.

"Centerline," he said. "Ease it—no bump."

They rolled the dolly up the ramp. The JLTV’s rear lip caught the light and threw it back into the annex; for a heartbeat, Lyra saw their reflections—her, small and taut and tired in a beautiful way; Inigo, behind the crate, mouth set in that patient line he wore whenever physics had to be obeyed or lost. They set the crate down on the tarp gently, an inch at a time. The springs inside did their soft, voiceless work.

He cinched the first X of straps, hands confident and clean. Lyra tested the tension by rocking a hip lightly against the crate’s corner. It didn’t shift. "Next," she said.

Two ambers went in—one on either side of the red—then the second red, then the last amber behind. Inigo laid wool wraps over each, tucking them around like a medic wrapping a wound. He ran the tarp over the whole, folded it tight, and tied it fore-and-aft. He set two shock wedges at the rear wheel wells and ratcheted the last straps with short, controlled pulls.

"You’ve done this before," Sera said, somewhere between impressed and offended.

"Not with your toys," Inigo said, "but inertia doesn’t care what you call it."

The ground murmured again, the sort of sound you heard in your teeth. Ves’s head snapped toward the main vault. "That’s enough time underground," she said to no one specific and everyone at once.

Corin thrust one last ledger form at them. "Sign for receipt."

They did—Inigo neat, Lyra quick. Ves gave the courtyard a captain’s sweep and nodded once, a grant of permission and a dismissal both. "North gate," she said. "We’ll open on your approach. Stay on the high road until you hit the fork past the water cut. If you see men with gray pennants," she added, almost as an afterthought, "don’t pretend they’re friendly."

"Smugglers?" Lyra asked.

"Worse," Ves said. "Neighbors with more ambition than sense. They know we’re thin this week."

"And now they know you pulled something worth guarding," Inigo said.

Ves didn’t deny it. "Word rides faster than horses. Faster than whatever that is," she added, flicking a glance at the JLTV.

He climbed into the cab, Lyra already buckled in with one foot braced against the dash like a woman who’d learned to trust her balance more than the world’s. Sera stood at the tailgate and—for the first time—smiled like a person, not a technician. "Bring it back in one piece," she said.

"The cart or the cargo?" Inigo asked.

"Yes," Sera said, and Lyra liked her more for it.

They rolled to the north gate. The horn blew again—less surprised now, more like a ritual—and the doors opened to a strip of road cut like a shelf along the cliff face. The mountain rose on their right, the world fell away on their left. The JLTV took the first switchback with a promise in the engine, weight steady, straps thrumming once like plucked strings as inertia argued and was overruled.

Half a mile out, Lyra craned her head and watched the mirrors for a long breath. "Dust," she said.

Inigo saw it—faint, a smudge where the road’s edge dropped. Could be wind. Could be hooves. He didn’t change speed. He didn’t touch the brake. He did let his eyes trace the possible pull-outs where a vehicle like his could tuck in and unspool an unpleasant surprise.

They took the second switchback. The cliff gave them a cut where water had chewed the rock—shadow, cool and close, a perfect place to catch your breath or regret your choices. Lyra leaned forward, knuckles white on the dash for just a heartbeat, then relaxed. "Something shiny at the cut," she said. "Left wall. Low."

Inigo slowed a hair—enough to matter to the vehicle, not enough to advertise nerves. The cut flared open. On the left, near ankle height, a shard of glass sat embedded in a crease of rock at an angle too clean to be chance. A signal. "We’re counted," he said.

Lyra nodded once. "Gray pennants?"

"Could be," he said. He checked the mirror again. The dust plume was thicker, resolved now into two thin ghosts where the road pinched. "Two riders at least. Maybe three. Keeping their distance."

"Test," Lyra said. "They want to see if we panic."

"We don’t," Inigo said. "We get off this wall and onto ground where we have options. Then we decide if we teach or avoid."

She settled deeper into her seat, eyes scanning, every inch of her humming like a bowstring at full draw. "I hate the part before the plan."

"That’s the plan," he said. "Get to the fork. Take the old quarry road. Trees and cover. If they follow, we pick where we talk."

"And if they don’t?"

"Then we wave at the glass and keep going."

They took the next curve, the JLTV steady as a metronome, the crates behind a muffled chorus of straps and wool. Below, a hawk cut a clean letter through the air. Ahead, the road shouldered through a notch and threw the mountains open like a door.

Behind, dust rose, paler now in the full light. Lyra didn’t reach for an arrow yet. Inigo didn’t reach for the safety yet. The world held its breath—or maybe that was just them—and the cliff pressed its cold hand along the JLTV’s flank as if to remind them of the stakes.

"Tell me again," Lyra said, just above the engine’s song, "that we’ll have breakfast before the next suicide job."

"We had breakfast," Inigo said.

She huffed. "Then tell me we’ll have dinner after this one."

"We’ll have dinner," he said, and because promises mattered, he meant it.

The fork came into view—a split like a choice between two kinds of trouble. Inigo flicked the turn signal out of habit; a tiny orange light blinked absurdly into a world that didn’t know what to make of it. He took the quarry road without drama.

The dust behind them thickened.

"Alright," Lyra said softly, and her hand went to her bow at last. "Let’s see who wants to talk."