Sable Arden's Arc

Chapter 4 of 3

The new copies stacked high beside the press. Words and melody together now, four hundred sheets that could teach the song to any eye. But they sat trapped underground. Sable had memorized the vault's single stair. It climbed to a grate that opened onto the street. If she surfaced carrying the sheets, enforcers would take the pages and her voice. She needed a way up that no one watched. The rat woman spoke of two people who could help. One knew every locked door in the city. One knew every patrol route. Sable sent word through the vent tunnels and waited. The old engineer came first. He stooped through the low door, a battered tube under his arm. He did not greet her. He set the tube on the press and unrolled a yellowed schematic. His finger tapped a thin corridor near the east gate. "Section seven," he said. "Maintenance run. I built the walls. I know their weak points." He looked at the drawing, not at her. "I signed off this joint knowing the numbers were short. Never walked it since." "Does it reach the surface?" Sable asked. "It reaches past the checkpoint. No cameras. No sweep." He rolled the tube shut. "I can open the seal. That's all I'll do." The silver-haired runner arrived through the tunnel, her stolen uniform hanging loose on lean shoulders. A laminated pass swung from her collar. She glanced at the stacked sheets, then at Sable. "That's a lot of paper to lose," she said. "You carry that up a stair, you're finished before the second step." "Then how?" Sable said. Jade tapped the pass at her throat. "I run packages through locked sectors. Guards wave me past. Split the load into ration crates. I take them out one delivery at a time, past the checkpoints, into the quarters." She looked at the engineer's schematic. "That corridor gets me the first hundred. The rest go on my normal routes." Sable weighed it. The pages would leave the vault in Jade's crates, not on Sable's back. Her voice stayed hidden. The song would still travel. They worked fast. Kael pried the section-seven seal loose with a wrench, his hands shaking on the metal. The panel groaned open onto dead air and dust. "Short numbers," he muttered, stepping through first. "Held after all." Jade loaded the first crate, sheets pressed flat under a false floor of dried beans. Sable helped stack the last hundred. Jade shouldered the crate and clipped the pass straight. "First drop's at a repair stall," she said. "Woman there trades to half the quarter. She'll spread them faster than any of us." The crate went up through the corridor. The seal shut behind it. Sable stood in the quiet vault, the stacks now shrinking. The song was moving. But it was leaving her hands, into strangers she could not follow, and she no longer controlled where it landed.