XIV.

Light.

I climb through—eyes shut against it—and stumble out from the hatch into a brightness so complete it does not admit distinction. I loiter for a moment, one arm across my face, the other extended like a prodding tentacle.

I step forward. It is not ten paces before I strike something at waist-level.

The mass flinches.

“Pardon me,” I say. “I did not mean to startle you. I am only trying to regain my sight.”

It mutters a string of guttural noises, then resumes its activity—cutlery against plate, teeth against buttery flesh. Another dinner; another delay.

I hold where I am, listening. The rhythm is tamer than downstairs. Things being taken up and set down with domestic unhurriedness, the cadence of familiar sizes.

I stagger back and slowly open my eyes.

The light arranges itself in increments. The Table emerges first, then the hands upon it, then the figures to whom those hands belong. What I had taken for a single mass splinters into three. The distance between them is less than I expected, such that I cannot be sure whom I bumped into.

My wife sits to the left. She eats. Her hands move with their usual economy, without apparent interruption. Diesel sits opposite her, though not squarely. His shoulders hunch forward. The food before him has been disturbed but not diminished. He shuffles it from one part of the plate to another, then returns it, as if correcting a prior arrangement. His face is pale. He does not look up.

Erwan Bergot sits between them, or just behind, depending on where I stand. His posture is fixed. He eats in measured intervals, each action separated from the next by a conscious diaphragmatic breath.

I remain where I am a moment longer, waiting for the Table to open up to me.

It does not.

I step to the side. The space alters with me, yet not enough to admit entry. The edge of the table draws inward, so that the interval I had intended to occupy no longer exists in the same proportion. I adjust my position again, this time nearer to my wife. I estimate that I could just slip in beside her, but there is no chair.

I turn and quickly locate one at a short remove, set back from the Table at an angle that suggests it had been used and then abandoned. I take hold of it and bring it forward.

The legs screech along the floor. “Pardon me,” I say, blushing. “I did not intend to arrive so late. Please, carry on as you are. I shall find my own place.”

I lift the chair, advance a pace, and attempt to set it down between my wife and Diesel. But the gap has shrunk.

I am forced to withdraw the chair and try again, this time nearer to Erwan. As I move, the Table appears to contract so that the distance I had just crossed is no longer available to me in the same way.

Diesel sighs and continues to shift the contents of his plate. My wife reaches for her cup, brings it not quite to her lips, then puts it back down without drinking. She repeats this gesture every few minutes. Erwan’s stocky hands rest flat on the Table for a moment, as though trying to hold it still.

I stand aside, chair in my hands, glancing between their faces. The arrangement is complete without me. I can see this now. Plate, cup, utensil—each set in relation to the others in such a manner that any addition would disrupt the harmony. I hesitate to introduce such a disturbance.

Still, my appetite has returned, and so I move in again, circling the Table, the chair growing heavy in my arms with each lap. From one angle, it appears there might be room at the far side, where the light falls unevenly. I go there and attempt to set the chair down, working it this way and that, but nothing takes.

Diesel presses his fork into a brown, stewed cube and drags it across the plate. My wife smooths the serviette beside her, though it is already perfectly creaseless. Erwan leans forward by small degrees. The shift is sufficient to alter the spacing of the entire Table. What had seemed almost possible a moment ago is no longer so.

Clearing my throat, I announce, “I will promptly return the chair to its corner.” I carry it once more around the table, though I no longer expect to find a suitable position. The path I take does not return me to where I began. The meal continues.

“You will report at first light,” Erwan says, without raising his head. “The basin has already been filled and placed at the Grounds. You will not concern yourself with its depth. That, I have already measured.”

Diesel nods.

“The descent is to be continuous,” Erwan adds. “No interruption between submersion and completion. You will maintain contact at the back of the neck. Not the collar—there is a tendency to grip the cloth—but the meat of the neck itself. Otherwise, you risk losing control in the event of a sudden thrashing. And what happens then, boy?”

“It produces an unnecessary delay,” he says flatly. The entire contents of his plate has arrived at the very edge, but nothing spills from it onto the Tablecloth.

“Yes, good, that’s right,” Erwan says. “Recall: the subject may struggle. Adjust your position in response, calmly, maintaining ample distance. If the subject’s arms present themselves, what do you do?”

“Ignore them,” Diesel says by rote. “Though they may alarm me, they cannot work their way around to me.”

My wife reaches for the bread basket. She draws it towards her, then pauses, her hand resting lightly upon it.

“You will wait for the signal,” Erwan says. “Not before. Not after. I have noted in you a bad habit of anticipating, and then acting on that anticipation. You will not anticipate. You will follow the procedure. Tomorrow is the day we make record time in the Kingdom. The Conductor expects nothing less.”

“Yes,” says Diesel, though his voice no longer carries beyond the edge of his plate.

My wife tears the bread and places a portion beside him.

“Have some bread, won’t you?” she says. “You’ve barely touched your supper tonight, Nokweed.”

The word trembles in my ears.

Diesel does not move. Nor does he correct her. The piece of bread sits untouched. My wife quickly withdraws her hand and returns to the business of her own plate. Erwan seems to lose his train of thought and lowers his gaze to the congealing sauce in his bowl.

I notice the chair is still in my hands. I drop it where I stand. There is nothing further to be done here. I must take rest before tomorrow’s drowning.

I slip past the table with ease; it has grown so small that the three of them are not only touching shoulders now, they are practically overlapping.

At the ladder, I place my hand upon the first rung and begin to climb.

Below, the rhythm continues.

I do not look back.