The thing jumped before I had decided whether the gauntlet was too heavy. Michaelangelo reached it first. The axe opened with a sound like a lock breaking, and the creature came apart in the space between Zeke and the repair bench. Black-gold fluid struck the floor. A drop hit the toe of my boot and began to smoke. "Do not stand in it," Izzy said. I moved. That was all she gave me. No question about why I had the Bishop's Gauntlet strapped to my arm. No time to ask whether I knew how to use it. Another shape was already scratching inside the roof vent, and the pressure line along my forearm had started to hum. The repair man nearest the wall made a strangled noise. "Down," Zeke said. He said it mildly. That was how he always sounded just before he became the worst thing in a room. The second Cinderling dropped through the vent and hit the bench in a spray of soot and splinters. It was child-sized only in scale. Up close it looked like something built from the memory of a body rather than a real one—too many joints in the arms, shoulders cut too narrow, skin grey and stretched glossy over a ribcage that fluttered as if trying to hatch something inside it. It sprang for the repair man. I moved before I had time to decide I should not. The gauntlet drove up into the creature's side with a hard metallic crack. I did not discharge the piston. I only hit it. That was enough to throw it sideways into the vice bench. The impact folded it around the iron jaw and dropped it to the floor, shrieking. "Finish it," Izzy said. Zeke did. Michaelangelo came down once. The sound stopped. Something banged under the floorboards. The drainage grate near the rear bench leapt half an inch. A grey hand with too many knuckles hooked through the gap. One of the repair men screamed. I got there first, set my boot on the grate, and drove the gauntlet down onto the hand. Bone cracked beneath iron. The thing below shrieked and yanked backward, trying to take the grate with it. I fired. The Bishop's Gauntlet discharged with a brutal internal slam that shook my arm to the shoulder. Iron met iron. The grate crashed flat into its housing. Something beneath it burst with a wet compact sound, and black-gold vapour hissed up through the seams. Pain flashed through my wrist. The left seal gave a thin, high whine. Izzy was beside me at once. "Again and you'll split the trim," she said. I looked at the seal housing. Steam leaked from the edge in a thread no thicker than string. "It held." "Barely." Zeke's eyes flicked from the gauntlet to my face. "You did not learn that by accident." "No." That was all I said. Outside, voices rose in the yard. A shout. Another. Then the metallic crash of something heavy striking stone. Zeke turned toward the front. "If they're coming through the service drains, this room won't matter in five minutes." Izzy was already gathering tools into her satchel. Wrench roll. Pressure key. Lamp. Spare seal wrap. Oil rag. Binding cloth. "The southern maintenance lanes connect the workshop, coal run, pressure house, and river access," she said. "If the breach is there, they spread under half the grounds before anyone at the main yard knows where to stand." Zeke looked at me. "You can walk with that thing?" "Yes." "Can you use it without taking your own arm off?" "I think so." "I hate that answer." "It's the only one I have." He nodded once. Izzy crossed to the repair staff. "You three stay here. Bar both shutters again after we leave. If anything gets in, burn the waste oil and close the inner door." One of them swallowed. "Miss, what if they come through the floor?" "Then run before they finish climbing." She pushed past him to the front. The yard outside looked wrong in the way a room looks wrong when a lamp has been moved and the shadows no longer understand themselves. Steam drifted low from somewhere near the stable wall. A horse was screaming in one of the outer stalls. Two constables were dragging a third man backward by the shoulders while he kicked at an open drain. Near the carriage shed, a lay brother sat against the wall with blood running through both hands. Zeke stepped into the yard like he had been invited. "Where?" One constable pointed south, toward the narrow cut between the coal shed and the workshop annex. "Service lanes! They came up there first!" Izzy saw the angle of the steam, the drain, the line of panic, and made her decision at once. "South first," she said. "If they reach the pressure house, they spread. If they reach the river route, they vanish." We moved. The service entrance was only an arch of black brick and old soot, but the air changed under it at once. Warmer below. Wetter. Full of rust, coal dust, and the stale metallic smell of water that had sat too long in iron channels. Pipes ran overhead, sweating into the dark. Drain lines crossed underfoot behind narrow grates. The walls were close enough that Zeke had to angle Michaelangelo to keep the blades from catching the brick. Izzy went first. That surprised me until I remembered she knew these routes better than anyone alive who had not built them. Her lamp remained shuttered in one hand, pry bar in the other, satchel thumping lightly against her hip. Zeke took the center a step behind her. I moved last, turning often enough to watch the rear bend. "Left branch goes to the coal run," Izzy said. "Straight ahead to the pressure junction. Right drop leads under the east sheds, but that grate was welded last winter." A noise ran overhead. Not on the roof. Inside the pipe rack. Three quick impacts, then silence. I looked up. So did Zeke. "It learns routes fast," I said. "Or was released into them by someone who already knew them," Izzy replied. At the next junction, we found the first body. A maintenance porter lay on his side against the wall with both arms over his head. One boot was gone. Blood sheeted down his ankle and pooled in the groove beside the drain. He flinched when Zeke knelt beside him. "How many?" Zeke asked. The man shook his head. "Small ones," he whispered. "Three. Four. They came from the pipe hatch." Izzy crouched by the wall and looked at the hatch in question. The bolts lay on the ground in a neat row. Not ripped out. Removed. "That wasn't forced," she said. I looked down too. The hatch had been opened with a tool, not claws. Zeke looked at the porter. "Who was here before they came?" The man swallowed hard. "No one. I only heard... something being dragged." "Dragged where?" He pointed down the lane toward the pressure junction. Izzy bound his ankle with a strip of cloth from her satchel. "Can you stand?" she asked. He nodded once. "Then get back to the workshop and keep to the wall. If anything moves, shout before it bites." He limped away. We continued. The pressure junction opened into a wider pocket where four lanes met around a cluster of vertical pipes, valve wheels, and an old central manifold wrapped in sweating insulation. Crates had been stacked against the far wall, three high. One lay broken open. The wood had split at the front, but the lid had been unfastened neatly first. The iron transport clasps hung open. Straw packing littered the floor, damp with black-gold stains. On one shard of the inner plank, black thread had caught beneath a nail. It had been pulled tight enough to bite into the wood. For a moment I only looked at it. I had seen thread like that before: worked through dead flesh at Blackwood, dark against pale skin, too neat to be repair and too deliberate to be burial. I had not known what it meant then. I still did not know enough now. Izzy knelt beside the crate. "Church seal," she said. There had been one, once. Half the wax still clung to the side panel, pressed with the broken outline of a diocesan mark. Zeke looked down the lane from which we had come, then the two exits ahead. "They didn't escape." I heard my own voice answer before I knew I meant to speak. "They were let out." Nobody contradicted me. Izzy touched the open clasp with the tip of her pry bar. "Unlocked," she said. "Not burst." She turned one of the clasps gently. "Whoever did this had the correct tool. They knew the route. They knew the hatch. And they knew which drain would make everyone run in the wrong direction." Zeke's jaw tightened. Another sound came from the dark beyond the manifold. Not one set of claws. Several. Then an answering scrape behind us from the lane we had just cleared. Zeke took one step backward until he stood between me and the front approach. I set my case down beside the manifold. I did not open it. He heard the case touch stone. "Tell me that isn't important," he said. "It is." "Useful important or alarming important?" I looked at the shapes beginning to move in the dark. "Not now." That answer was enough. Izzy drew a pressure key from her satchel and slid left toward the valve cluster. "What are you doing?" I asked. "If they like the pipe rack, they can meet the pipe steam." "Can you vent it?" "For three seconds." The first Cinderling dropped from the overhead rack. Zeke turned into it, but the lane was too narrow to fully open the lower blade. Michaelangelo struck the wall in a shower of sparks and checked half its arc. The creature twisted under the shortened swing and hit him high in the shoulder, claws skating across leather and cloth without finding flesh. The second came low from the drain channel toward Izzy. I moved. The gauntlet hit brick first, then creature. The piston discharged late, slamming all its force crooked through my forearm into the wall. Pain burst to the elbow. Stone cracked. Steam whined louder from the damaged seal. But the Cinderling flew sideways into the base of the manifold hard enough to lose all shape before it slid down shrieking. Izzy did not thank me. She spun the pressure key into the bleed valve. A white jet of steam roared from the side pipe and filled the junction in a boiling sheet. The thing on the pipe rack screamed. So did the one by the rear bend. Through the steam I saw Zeke hook Michaelangelo upward with both hands and drag the upper blade across a moving shape on the rack. Something fell. Something else kept moving. My left hand had gone partly numb. I flexed my fingers inside the gauntlet and felt the mechanism answer with a tired metallic click. One more full discharge, perhaps two if I was lucky. No more than that. The steam thinned. For a second the junction looked empty. Then, from somewhere deeper in the service lanes, beyond the manifold and around a bend no lamp reached, there came the slow turning groan of a larger valve wheel. Izzy went still. "What is that?" Zeke asked. She listened once, face tightening. "East service line," she said. "Where does it go?" She did not answer at once. Then she said, "Back toward the House." The black thread caught beneath the crate nail trembled in the escaping steam. I picked up my case. This time, Zeke did not ask what was inside it.

Chapter 44: The Service Lanes