Shift Seven: Washing the Linens

How much weight could an apron pocket hold before an orderly noticed the linen tearing? Pima gripped the edge of the wicker laundry hamper with both hands, stepping down the narrow stone steps into the basement washhouse to keep the heavy iron key from knocking against her thigh. She needed Jala to tell her what lay past the locked stairwell before Sari finished the dispensary count, and she had only twenty minutes of wash time to force the truth out of him.

The laundry cellar was ten degrees warmer than the wards above, heavy with the reek of boiled lime, caustic lye, and scorched tallow. A solitary oil lantern hung from a corroded ceiling pipe, casting yellow reflections across puddles of alkaline water on the flagstones. In the center of the room sat the hospice's main drum washer, an iron beast with an overhead copper drive belt that chattered against a greased wooden pulley.

Jala dropped his hamper onto the sorting bench with a dull thud. He turned around slowly, wiped gray foam from his forearms with a rag, and looked straight at the right side of her apron.

"You took the latch key off the inner nail," Jala said. His voice was a flat gravel rumble, barely louder than the clanking drive chain. "Sari checks the lock on the stair gate every dawn. If she sees a fresh pick scratch in the salt scale, she docks your ration and locks you in the intake cell."

"She didn't see the scratch," Pima said, setting her hamper down beside his. "And you didn't tell her."

"I don't get paid to report what orderlies put in their pockets," Jala said. He picked up a wooden paddle and began shoving salt-caked bedsheets into the open hopper. "I get paid to wash twelve hampers before the third bell rings. When people start poking around the eastern bulkheads, they stop showing up for the morning shift. I like having two people on the heavy lifting."

"Tano was on the heavy lifting," Pima said, leaning against the sorting bench to hold his gaze. "Muka said his name. He said Tano went below."

Jala's paddle paused for a fraction of a second inside the hopper before resuming its stroke. "Muka is full of salt and root-flesh. Half his brain is dry wood."

"You knew my brother," she pressed. "The key in my pocket smells like his clove tincture. He had that key. Why was it hanging inside the locked gate?"

Before Jala could reply, the iron washer let out a sharp metallic screech. The drive belt skipped across the wooden pulley, sending a bitter puff of burning leather through the humid air. The drum shuddered violently, jammed midway through a rotation, and the overhead pulley began to smoke as the drive shaft ground against immovable resistance.

"Damn intake teeth," Jala muttered, dropping the paddle. He grabbed a heavy iron crowbar from the wall rack and jammed the tip into the drum housing, putting his entire weight against it. "The belt's going to snap. If that copper braid shears, Sari will have us scrubbing every sheet by hand with pumice stones until dawn."

"Stop hauling on it," Pima said, stepping in and pushing his shoulder back. "You'll crack the cast housing, and then we're both dead."

"The drum is locked tight," Jala grunted, sweat glistening across his shaved scalp. "The drive gear won't clear the stop."

"It's not the gear," Pima said. She knelt beside the housing, ignoring the greasy water soaking through her trousers. She leaned her ear toward the iron casing, listening past the vibration of the straining belt. The sound wasn't the sharp clink of broken teeth, but a dull, fibrous bind. "It's the intake axle. The sheets from cot nine were full of calcified runner fibers. They wound around the shaft behind the seal flange."

She pulled the brass scraper and the carved cherry-wood leverage peg from her kit. Working by touch beneath the scalding hot casing, she wedged the tapered wooden peg into the narrow gap between the drive pulley and the iron wall to relieve the torque on the belt. With the tension anchored, she slid the thin brass scraper into the axle collar, slicing backward through three tightly braided cords of gray, root-laced linen that had choked the spindle.

The fibers parted with three distinct wet snaps.

Pima yanked the peg free. Instantly, the copper drive belt gripped the wood, the drum surged forward with a deep mechanical groan, and the washer settled back into its rhythmic, churning rotation.

Jala slowly lowered his crowbar. He looked from the spinning pulley down to Pima's hands, where the brass scraper dripped with shredded fiber and gray lye.

"They teach you to clear heavy machinery at that fancy academy?" he asked.

"Academy taught me to read diagrams," Pima said, wiping the blade on her apron. "My father's boat shed taught me what happens when a wet rope wraps around an active winch."

Jala let out a short, dry huff through his nose—the closest thing to a laugh she had heard since entering Kaba. "Linen usually smells better when it's soaked in blood," he said mildly, picking up the paddle again. "Once the root-matter gets into the weave, the wash water turns sour enough to peel paint."

"You haven't answered my question, Jala."

He dumped the last load of sheets into the hopper and slammed the iron hatch shut. He rested his thick palms on the top rim, staring down into the frothing inspection glass.

"Your brother wasn't an orderly," Jala said quietly. "He came in with the senior scholars from the capital four weeks back. They had brass passes and sealed permits from the harbor ministry. They set up their tables down in the lower sump vault, right where the drainage lines from the deep bedrock discharge into the sea."

"What were they doing down there?"

"They were measuring the growth rate," Jala said. "Tano spent every night at the intake hatch, taking core samples from the sump walls. Then twelve nights ago, the scholars went back to the harbor on the supply cutter. Tano didn't go with them. He stayed below after the hatch was locked from the outside."

Pima's pulse quickened. "And the key I found?"

"That key opens the drainage bypass hatch below the south sluice," Jala said. "Tano kept it hidden on that nail in case he needed to pull samples when Sari was sleeping. If you're planning on using it, don't go down there alone. Whatever is breathing in that lower shaft isn't the sea tide."

He reached for the brass drainage lever on the side of the machine. "Shift's moving. Help me purge the rinse cycle so we can haul the dry loads."

Jala wrenched the lever downward to open the floor valve.

A normal rinse flush rushed out with a clean, churning hiss of gray soapy water. But as the valve opened fully, the cast-iron drainage pipe beneath the flagstones convulsed with a violent, guttural heave.

A thick, bubbling surge spilled over the rim of the floor catch-basin. It was not soapy water. It was a warm, heavy tide of oily black sludge, reeking of rotting marsh and brackish mud, spreading rapidly across the stone and coating the toes of their leather boots.