Page 108 of Zenith Tower

For several seconds, everyone on the dock moved at once.

The courier crouched to rewrap the soap. “That cart leaves in under a minute.”

“Will the foreman know your name?”

“He’ll know the name I gave.”

“And after today?”

“I won’t be back.”

He replaced the soap and pulled the rope tight around the crate.

“Tell Delphine that Lior kept the letters,” he said. “Tell her he wants her home.”

“I will.”

“Tell Astra the Hall is building toward a hearing. They need proof from inside the Tower before the Council sends someone to take control of the case.”

“Someone besides Marrow?”

“That’s what Juno expects.”

The patrol steward reached the foreman.

The courier lifted the soap crate and carried it toward the confusion around the second cart. He did not look back.

I took the opposite side of the platform and moved an empty crate into the storeroom. By the time the steward returned, the courier had joined the workers guiding the first cart into the tunnel.

“Where is he?” the steward demanded.

I looked toward the departing cart. “The foreman sent him to clear the turn.”

The steward swore and strode after it.

The tunnel doors closed before he reached them.

I finished the shift with splinters in both palms and Lior’s message repeating in my head with every crate I lifted.

The Council had forbidden Astra from touching an unfamiliar Mark. It had restricted our movement, placed the administrator under review, and returned Marrow to our corridor with more stewards than before.

Outside the mountain, a boy had kept his sister’s letters for two years.

Rev, Cosima, and Juno were building a record.

The Council might send someone with authority over Marrow before the Hall could force a hearing.

I carried the empty inventory slate back toward the residential wing. The stewards would search me when I returned.

They would find nothing Lior had sent.

Astra

Caspian returned from the lower dock with splinters in his palms and a fear I had not felt when he left.

I felt him enter the residential wing before I heard the stewards unlock the junction. Caspian’s line at my wrist cooled, then steadied. Whatever had happened below, he had brought it back under control before they returned him to us.

Marrow searched him at the end of the corridor.