A wooden hand cleared the tower floor.
A hooked chain snapped around its wrist and tore it back through the stone.
Stone buckled around the hole. A broad man in a dust-gray coat came up behind the chain, boots braced on a root below the broken grating. He wrapped the links around one forearm and hauled until the thing beneath him struck the underside of the street.
"Varn!" Hest shouted from the doors.
"Stop standing on my ceiling," Varn Coil shouted back.
Under his boot, the wooden hand opened.
Four more pushed through the floor around him.
Varn released the chain and climbed into the Glass tower before the roots split under his weight. Delver hooks crossed his back, worn bright where the chain ran through them. He looked once at Kedra, once at Aylin, and longer at Jiang wrapped beside a salt brick.
"Why is there a penguin in the healer tower?"
"He found the wash valve," Pava said.
