CHAPTER 738: WHEN A FLOOR WANTS TO HUM (2)

"Sentinel," Thalatha said.

The Guardian lifted the coffin-door and stood where the first rebound usually thought it was welcome. The reeds tested them with a timid cone. The Sentinel angled right and poured the breath into a quiet corner like water back into a jar.

Behind, two soldiers—tired, solid—fell into each other’s cadence. Their boots clicked together, polite and wrong.

Thalatha’s hand cut the air. It was the kind of gesture that makes a body remember all the times not dying felt like this. The pair broke their mirror mid-step, one taking a longer pause, the other adding a heel drag. No echo landed.

"Thanks," one breathed, not looking at her.

She didn’t answer with words. She gave him the smallest nod. It was enough.

They crossed. The reeds stayed bored. The room kept its opinion private.

Two rooms later, the air smelled like copper and old quiet. A script pillar rose in the centre—bone polished by patience—bell crowns nested around it like white flowers that had learned to dislike applause.

"A choir node," Mikhailis said. "Punishes neat feet. Hates jokes."

He lifted his palms at the Archivist. The Wretch knelt and brushed dust with the care of a conservator. Lines appeared—hold, attend, bar—small commandments cut clean by a careful hand in some other year.

"Crown-light low," Thalatha said.

The Regent Necrolord drifted forward, her presence like a candle in a sickroom: bright enough to see, not bright enough to insult. She laid Pin-1 with a single exact touch, then stepped back.

The Hypnoveil breathed a thin shawl of trance over the pillar—no smothering, just a polite suggestion.

The Crymber pair took the seam by turns: a brief kiss of heat, then a cool correction. Stone replied with a tiny sigh you felt under your toes. Workers came in with calcium sap, palms pressing as if smoothing a blanket over a sleeping shoulder.

"One cut," Thalatha said.

The Necrolord obliged. The counter-rot line landed with the sound of a book closed at the right page.

Mikhailis did not push. He placed a permission under the seam like a note slid beneath a door. Stand. Heel. Hall.

The bells dimmed from threat to courtesy. The pillar’s posture changed—still proud, no longer eager to punish.

Rodion labeled it.

ALLY. Polite. Please do not teach it jokes.

Mikhailis winked at the pillar. "I’ll leave the jokes in my pocket, then." Elowen would raise one eyebrow so high it would leave orbit.

They took the far door and nearly got seduced.

The tunnel was sleek as a promise in a recruiting poster. The floor gleamed. A soft down-draft stroked their shins. The smell in it was sweet and wrong, like fruit left too long in a bowl.

Rodion’s ribbon faltered at twenty paces. It came back off-key.

Out of phase. Breathing wrong. I don’t like this song.

"Probe," Thalatha said.

A yawn pebble found Mikhailis’s palm. He weighed it and glanced at the ring of faint scuffs Rodion drew. He pitched it, easy and precise.

One click. A good click. The floor took a breath and then tugged, greedy and down.

The Hound planted like an anchor. The Gate Warden cracked a side vent to thicken the air. The front row felt the tug in their boot leather.

"Abort," Thalatha said, already turning the machine that was their line.

No panic. No noise. A half-step back on the crooked beat, then another. The tunnel sulked like a proud person you refused to fight.

The Archivist hung a firm bone tab:

SLIDE RISK • PRIME-STEP ZONE ENDS

"Another time," Mikhailis told the dark. "When we bring skates and bad life choices."

They peeled onto the Bone Viaduct. Pendulum ribs ticked in slow arcs, the weight at each end glinting dull as old coins. The air here had the manners of an old museum—cool, patient, smelling faintly of dust and polish. Boots scuffed soft. Voices shrank on their own.

Doctrine validated. See? Boredom is nutritious.

"I keep telling people," he said, deadpan. "Nobody believes me until the floor tries to eat a shin."

A few workers clicked laughter through mandibles and then pretended they hadn’t. The sound made the space feel warmer without giving the Echo anything to hold.

They took ten minutes of competence that tasted like tea. No sitting—just the soft storm of right hands doing right jobs. A nurse moved down the line with a water-skin, tipping a measured swallow into dry mouths, the same for everyone. One soldier tried to wave her off. She waited, eyes calm, until he drank. He did.

Workers shaved glowcap gills with curved blades, thumbs guiding, palms catching the spores in neat cloth cups. The smell was earthy-sweet. A nurse marked each pouch with quick ink dots—two for rations, one for salve, one for bartering with the reluctant. A runner wrote it onto the ledger slate with a stylus that clicked in a steady, polite rhythm. Nobody copied that rhythm with their feet.

"Soldiers first," Thalatha said. "Then workers." Her tone left no room for pride to argue, so it didn’t.

Rations moved. No throats cleared. No eyes rolled. A junior nurse adjusted a strap on a tired worker without asking; the worker squeezed her elbow once—thank you, keep moving.

The queen-to-be sketched watering lanes around a damp well with small precise taps of her forelegs. Short lines for steady flow, a longer loop for juveniles. She put a tiny cross at a choke point: exchange there, never leave a gap. Two nurses leaned over, read it, and nodded at the same time, shoulders making the same small movement. They dispersed to set it up, antennae writing short commands in the air. The lanes formed like a thought becoming neat speech.

Skeleton pairs moved to brood-mouth distance and turned their backs in unison. It still surprised people the first time. Not now. It felt like a habit with honor in it. Mikhailis watched, and that small ridiculous tenderness came up again.

We learned this. We kept it. Nobody had to lecture us twice. Lira would approve. She’d smooth my collar and tell me not to preen about it. Cerys would stare until I stopped explaining. Serelith would take notes and pretend it was for magic.

Rodion tagged salvage piles with small blue dots on the console.

Blue dots: chitin, jawbone, good resin. Morale: stable-positive. Continue being boring.

"Finally," Mikhailis murmured. "A diet I can stick to."

Thalatha cut across a trickle of traffic to a nurse who was rewrapping a wrist. She knelt, two fingers checking pulse at the thumb base, then pressed the wrap flatter with her palm. Their hands touched for half a heartbeat. Thanks moved between them without a word and stuck. The nurse’s shoulders lowered a thumb’s width. She rose, saluted without flourish, and returned to her line.

Mikhailis unrolled a spare veil hem to check stress lines. He held the cloth up to the light and followed the stitch with two fingers, more like reading than inspection. A juvenile worker stopped, head cocked. She watched his hands. Then she reached up, lifted the far corner, and corrected his fold with a smart little flick, turning slack into clean diagonals.

Mikhailis bowed to her like she was a master of some old craft and he was the apprentice. He did not add a joke.

You’re learning the house. I’m learning to keep my mouth shut when the house has better hands than me. Progress, idiot. Keep it.

The viaduct narrowed to a thin catwalk over a slow, quiet dark. The dark wasn’t water exactly. It had the texture of something thinking in a very old way. Pendulum ribs hung from the ceiling and swung in patient arcs, never rushing, never stopping. Each swing sighed through the air, a calm, repeating breath.

At the far side, a ragged tail of Carapace remnant beetles had arranged themselves into something like order. Their plates overlapped with stubborn hope. Mandibles clicked, then quieted as they tried to listen for a beat to love. The pack wasn’t a pack yet. But it wanted to be.

"Keep them bored," Thalatha said.

The Hypnoveil went tall for once. The mantle rose like a dull gray sail and drifted forward, turning shine into cloth. The pendulums’ glossy arcs lost their theater. They kept moving, but they didn’t advertise.

Rodion painted green dots at the far-lean of each swing, a dotted path that only made sense if your body had learned ugly timing.

Cross on the exhale only. If you inhale while stepping, I reserve the right to scold you later.

"Permission granted," Mikhailis said. "I love a scolding."