Rescuing Kest presented three practical problems.

The first was distance. The second was my lack of legs. The third was that the people carrying her had both.

Greymarrow pushed a fractured map through the restored vein. The cage was moving along an upper salvage corridor toward the old tollhouse. Between us lay a rising service passage, a dry cistern, and one stair designed without consideration for mobile furniture.

Fast, Greymarrow urged.

“An excellent suggestion. I’ll add it to my anatomy.”

Tallow climbed onto my lid and wound one arm through an iron strap. His horn had recovered to a weak amber flame. He tapped my left edge once, then my right, as if testing reins.

“I refuse to become accustomed to this.”

Tok-tok.

I flexed my base against the floor. Resistance gathered through Stored Tension. I released before the pressure reached my cracked board, and the burst shoved me several feet up the passage.

Left tap. I twisted my lid against the wall and charged again.

Right tap. Release.

We developed a method that was faster than crawling and only somewhat less controlled than falling down a mountain. Tallow leaned into each turn while Greymarrow pulsed directions through the blue vein beneath us. Every launch pulled at the wax sealing my split board. By the time we crossed the dry cistern, one warm strand had peeled loose.

Level 2 had made my body more responsive. It had not made cedar enjoy being fired from an invisible catapult.

The service passage ended below a grated opening. Voices traveled through it.

“Set the cage on the declaration scale,” a woman said.

I recognized her from the collapsed intake. The Guild clerk who had noticed that my death report contradicted my survey dates.

A cage struck stone above us. Kest gave a scraping cry, anger forced through pain.

“Live salvage isn’t on the manifest,” the woman continued. “It doesn’t leave until it’s entered.”

“Provost Veyr wants the collection wagon gone before noon,” a man replied. I recognized him too. He had called me a rotten coffer before removing the brace that dropped a ceiling on us.

“Then Provost Veyr can sign the addition himself.”

“Careful, Clerk Thorn.”

So the woman had a name. Ressa Thorn. I stored it beside the inconvenient fact that she appeared to possess professional standards.

The old tollhouse weighing chamber sat directly above us. Before Greymarrow became a licensed dungeon, caravans had passed through it to use the mountain road. Traders declared their cargo, placed it on a slate platform, and paid by weight. Greymarrow’s builders had improved the arrangement after smugglers learned to bribe the toll clerks.

If the declared weight and the platform disagreed, the cargo went sideways.

I pressed my keyplate to the wall. The mechanism emerged through vibration: a balance beam beneath the floor, two counterweights inside the eastern pier, and an inspection cradle behind a sliding stone shutter. Most of the assembly was intact. The Guild had removed the operating crank, assuming that made the system harmless.

They had left the variance latch because it looked like a structural pin.

Appraisers were paid to know the difference. Good ones were occasionally murdered for it.

“Greymarrow, can you open the inspection shutter?”

Cold hesitation crossed the lattice.

One movement. Then dark.

One movement of a failing mechanism. After that, this branch of the restored vein would exhaust itself. If the timing failed, we would lose Kest and the only useful route toward her.

I showed Greymarrow the sequence I wanted: release the latch, tip the scale, open the shutter, close it behind the cage.

The dungeon answered with an image of the cracked counterweight guide.

It could open the shutter or close it. Not both.

“Open it,” I decided. “I’ll handle closing.”

Tallow slid from my lid. I guided him to a narrow slot beneath the scale and touched the variance latch with one inner fiber. Mineral deposits had fused the bronze pin to its housing.

Tallow understood. He squeezed into the slot and pressed his horn to the bronze.

Above us, Ressa turned a page on her clipboard. “Where was it found?”

“East roost.”

“That habitat was marked empty.”

“Then your appraiser missed something before he got himself killed.”

The words struck harder than they should have. I had marked the east roost. I remembered its sealed stone door, the claw scoring around its upper vent, and the faint movement I had classified as vermin activity because the Guild schedule allowed six minutes per chamber.

Accurate enough for valuation, I had told myself.

The cage scraped onto the slate platform.

Tallow’s horn brightened beneath it. Hot pitch and wet metal filled the service passage. The variance pin shifted, but did not release.

I caught the maintenance cord between my lid and lower rim. Its hooked end circled the pin. I dragged backward until the cord tightened and Stored Tension began winding through my bands.

My left board complained at once.

Above, Ressa said, “The tag carries no warrant number.”

“It carries Veyr’s seal.”

“Those are not the same thing.”

Kest threw herself against the cage. The platform rocked. Dust sifted over me.

The chain man swore. “Hold still, you ugly little roof rat.”

Tallow’s flame flashed white.

The bronze pin softened within its crust. I released Stored Tension.

The cord snapped tight. The variance latch tore free.

For one breathless moment, nothing happened.

Then the platform tipped.

Stone ground against stone. The cage slid sideways as Greymarrow spent the last strength in the branch. A concealed shutter rose from the wall, revealing the inspection cradle.

The cage struck its threshold and stopped halfway.

Kest had hooked the claws of her uninjured wing through the bars. She clung to the platform while the cage tilted beneath her.

“Let go,” I clicked at a creature who could not hear thoughts through stone.

The chain man grabbed the cage handle. “Help me pull it back.”

Ressa caught his sleeve. “The floor mechanism is active. Don’t put your arm in there.”

He shook her off and pulled.

The inspection branch went cold. Greymarrow had opened the shutter. Closing it was mine.

I charged Stored Tension against the floor and launched myself through the maintenance opening. My lid struck the underside of the cage. Pain rang through every band. The impact knocked Kest’s claws loose and drove the cage fully into the inspection cradle.

The chain man’s hand came with it.

He released the handle a moment before my lid closed on his glove. I tasted leather, lamp oil, and human fear. Hunger surged through my fibers.

I spat the glove through the narrowing gap.

Tallow landed beside the manual shutter lever. I slammed my lid against it and pushed. Pressure gathered. The cracked board split another inch beneath its wax patch.

The chain man thrust his pry bar through the opening.

I released.

The lever dropped. The stone shutter fell and struck the pry bar hard enough to bend it. The man jerked his hand clear. The chamber vanished behind a wall of stone.

Darkness enclosed the inspection bay.

On the other side, the workers shouted over one another.

“Get the emergency crank,” the chain man said.

Ressa’s voice cut through his. “No blasting. The support marks show this wall carries the toll arch, and there is still a live specimen inside.”

“Veyr won’t like the delay.”

“He can put that in writing too.”

Boots retreated toward the southern store.

I valued our available time at five minutes, perhaps less if the Guild had finally hired someone competent.

Amber light rose behind me. Tallow stood beside the cage.

Kest was smaller than the image Greymarrow had sent, though fury made an effort to correct the impression. She had a narrow, scaled body covered in stone-grey down and four limbs ending in black climbing claws. Membranes stretched from her forelegs to her flanks. One wing sagged at an unnatural angle. A brass collection tag pierced the other near its outer edge and connected by a fine chain to the cage door.

Her bright yellow eyes fixed on me.

“Open this cage,” she said, “or I start with your hinges.”

Her voice was rough but perfectly clear.

“I crossed two chambers and assaulted a weighing system to reach you. I was hoping for a more favorable first impression.”

My lid produced three wooden knocks.

Kest’s eyes narrowed. “Either you’re a chest or I hit my head harder than I thought.”

Tallow hurried into view.

Kest’s threat died unfinished. “Tallow?”

He pressed both hands to the bars. His horn bent toward her injured wing.

Greymarrow’s presence seeped weakly into the inspection floor.

Kest. Calder. Mimic. Help.

She stared at me again. Fear moved beneath her anger.

“Mimics are dead.”

“So I have been informed.”

She tested the cage door. The collection chain tightened through her wing, and blue light flared around the tag. Her legs buckled. Tallow squeaked and reached through the bars, but Kest bared her teeth until he stopped.

I touched the cage with my keyplate. The door lock was ordinary. The tag was not. Three enchantment lines ran through the brass: one suppressed the captive when the chain tightened, one reported its position to a collection receiver, and one carried a Guild inventory designation. Cutting the chain would trigger all three.

Consuming the tag would destroy them together.

The problem was that it remained embedded in Kest’s living wing.

“I can remove it,” I said through Greymarrow’s weak connection. “But my fibers must touch the tag.”

Kest looked into my hollow. The pale strands there leaned toward the brass with an eagerness I disliked.

“And if they touch me?”

“I cannot claim living material.”

“Cannot or will not?”

“Both.”

Metal scraped beyond the shutter. The workers had found the crank sooner than estimated.

Kest looked at Tallow. He tapped the cage twice.

Tok-tok.

She extended her injured wing.

“If you eat so much as one feather,” she said, “I will discover whether mimics need hinges.”

I opened around the bars. My fibers passed through and wrapped the brass without touching the torn membrane. The tag tasted of cheap alloy, structured mana, and the particular arrogance of an institution that stamped its ownership onto living things.

I invoked Claim Property.

The brass dissolved into blue-red light. Its pin vanished from Kest’s wing; the chain collapsed soundlessly to the floor. Three properties separated themselves inside my awareness.

[CLAIM: GUILD COLLECTION TAG]

Signal Recognition: Sense active collection beacons within a limited range.

Restraint Pulse: On direct contact, briefly impair the movement of a tagged target.

Inventory Designation: Present the copied salvage classification to basic Guild inventory wards.

Choose one.

Inventory Designation was the clever choice. It might let me pass as registered Guild property, perhaps even cross simple wards. It was also an early step toward the sort of authority that had made my species worth exterminating.

Restraint Pulse offered an immediate weapon. It required a tagged victim, direct contact, and a willingness to preserve the Guild’s definition of that victim.

Signal Recognition would not open a door or stop a blade. It would tell me when hunters had marked something for collection.

Greymarrow still held frightened lives I could not see.

I chose Signal Recognition.

[PROPERTY LEARNED: SIGNAL RECOGNITION]

Pattern Vault: 2 learned | Active slots: 2/3

Instability: Stable

A cold rhythm appeared at the edge of my perception. The Guild receiver waited beyond the shutter, moving with the workers as they fitted the emergency crank. I could sense its distance and direction, but nothing else. Useful. Limited. Honest.

The cage lock still needed opening. Without the tag’s enchantment reinforcing it, Kest solved that problem herself. She drove both rear claws into the door and pulled. The cheap hinge screws tore from damp wood.

“I had a plan for that,” I said.

“Make faster plans.”

The emergency crank engaged. The shutter shivered upward the width of a coin.

Tallow darted to the rear wall and pressed his horn into a dark seam. Heat outlined a maintenance panel Greymarrow no longer had the strength to open. Kest hooked her good wing-claw into the seam. I wedged my lid beneath the lower edge and charged Stored Tension.

Together we tore the panel free.

Tallow slipped through first. Kest followed sideways, dragging her damaged wing. I released one last shallow burst and forced my cracked body into the resident passage beyond.

The panel fell back as the inspection shutter rose behind us.

We did not stop until the receiver’s cold rhythm weakened to a distant pulse.

The resident passage ended in a round chamber lined with dead lamps. Tallow touched the nearest wickstone, and a small amber light returned. Kest lowered herself beneath it, breathing hard.

Greymarrow’s presence gathered around us with exhausted relief.

Safe. Together.

Kest studied the split in my board, the bent strap, and the wax holding both in place.

“Calder,” she said. “That is what Greymarrow called you.”

I went still.

“Yes.”

“Calder what?”

The easiest answer was a lie. I had used easy answers often enough while alive.

“Voss.”

Kest’s good wing opened between Tallow and me like a shield.

“The Guild appraiser?”

“Formerly.”

Her yellow eyes hardened.

“You put the white mark on my door.”

Memory returned: a sealed east-roost chamber, pale chalk across its frame, and six minutes left on my inspection schedule.

Kest’s voice dropped to a whisper sharper than any accusation shouted through stone.

“The Guild found me because of you.”