Page 156 of Zenith Court

Each plate covered the point where a walkway’s channel entered the ring. Water had worn the stone smooth around their corners, but the lead still pinned the release closed.

Caspian met my eyes once, then forced his bleeding fingers farther beneath the first plate.

I reached through the opened join and caught the current before it disappeared into the founding stone.

It seized my hand, then my forearm. The force of it folded me over the rim. My knees struck stone, and for a moment my shoulder was the only thing keeping my face out of the water.

The current was already committed. It carried the First Chair’s reserve downward and outward through channels laid beneath the Court, feeding the field that held thousands of Marks silent. I set my hand against its course and tried to turn it toward the release.

I tried to turn it too soon. Pain drove from my palm to the base of my skull, and the current slipped from me without changing course. The basin rose another inch. Water covered the First Chair’s forearms and crawled toward her elbows.

She shut her eyes and her knees loosened. Then her fingers spread beneath the surface, bracing against the pull, and the braid steadied between us.

I set one boot under me, then the other, and rose as far as the current allowed.

Coin flooded my mouth. The three lines at my wrist burned together, each distinct beneath the pain. Sweat cooled between my shoulders. I tasted blood where I had bitten my cheek.

Across the basin, the First Chair watched my hand hold steady in the current.

“Stop.” Her voice broke on the word.

My hand was already past the part of the current she controlled.

Thousands of suppressed lines waited beyond the chamber, felt only as pressure against the field. I kept my attention on the structure around them—the basin, the channel-mouths, the overlapping seam beneath my hand.

The current tried to follow the easier paths into living lines. I held it against stone until my arm shook.

The first lead anchor broke beneath Caspian’s boot. The crack in its face widened with a soft metallic snap.

The seam moved.

One edge lifted from the other. Water rushed into the space between them, and the pressure around my wrist eased by a fraction.

That fraction showed me how the release worked. It opened in stages, each anchor taking part of the strain so no single channel received the First Chair’s whole reserve.

“Again,” I said.

Caspian was already at the second plate. Jonah caught a rite-guard climbing from the channel beside him and drove the man back with both hands. Delphine shifted to close the gap Jonah left. Kieran crossed behind her long enough to turn a blade, then returned to the near door before another guard could take it.

Caspian tore the second anchor plate free.

A crack split the basin’s polished rim. Water sprayed across my face. The narrow braid between the First Chair’s wrists twisted hard enough to wrench one of her hands against the stone.

She made no sound, but one finger bent sideways. Her other hand closed around it beneath the water and held it still. The rite continued to draw from her whether she could bear it or not.

“You cannot direct all of it,” she said.

“I’m not trying to.”

I turned the current toward the release join.

The force traveled through my shoulder and down both legs. The chamber tilted, corrected, and tilted again. I fixed my gaze on the black rim and kept the current away from the lives behind the field.

The third anchor broke. This one came apart in Caspian’s hands, leaving a gray streak across both palms.

Water reversed in the nearest floor channel, rose against its old direction, then ran away from the basin. The next channel followed. A tremor passed through the walkways as buried current found routes it had been denied for generations.

The change reached the far threshold. Water climbed over Delphine’s boots and rushed into the corridor behind her, striking the rite-guards at the ankles. Their formation broke. She used the opening to drive them back two steps and set herself in the doorway again.