They left the church with the sun like a question mark hanging low over the city. Dawn came with a thin, metallic light that made the ruined buildings look like a row of broken teeth. Kade strapped the book against his chest and felt its pulse under the leather as keenly as if it were another organ. He had the odd, private habit of laying a thumb along the spine sometimes, like touching another person's skin to make sure they were breathing. He never admitted that to anyone; not Jun, not Mara, not the yawning ghosts of the city that watched them pass. But it was true—he touched it because the book made the world feel capable of carrying meaning.
Jun moved like a shadow that had learned to be useful. She could cross a courtyard without making a sound if she wanted to; sometimes she used that skill for scouting, sometimes she used it to sneak a cigarette behind an alcove and watch smoke curl like a private ritual. This morning she kept close, eyes scanning the horizon for the Sable's black-sun marks or a new symbol Mara had warned them about. The city had a grammar, and most people here read slang into the scrapings on walls—scrawled arrows, painted circles, tied ribbons. You could tell a neighborhood's politics by the way the graffiti layered.
They walked toward the river because everything pointed that way—people always talked about the sea as if it were another country where laws were invented from salt rather than fear. The map's ink had an east-south swerve that suggested water, and maps promise things like a stone promises weight. They had to follow it. That was the poor poetry of their lives: you either followed maps or you were tripped by them.
The first hours were mercifully uneventful. A child with a bandaged foot peddled a rickety cart of scavenged glass jars and offered them a cup of sour water. Kade paid a coin he'd stolen from a corpse weeks ago—he never liked looking at the face that owned it—and the boy gave him a nod of something that might have meant gratitude or might have been practice in politeness. Jun traded him a strip of dried meat and a story about the Sable's last raid; the boy laughed like a thing that had survived being told hard tales and decided to become a teller of them.
Kade watched Jun watch the boy and thought of all the small, private templatetables people had: how to talk to children, how to barter with women, how to lie about where you slept last night. He used to imagine that people had private wardrobes of manners suited to each occasion. The Fall had thinned those wardrobes down to one ragged cloak. You wore it until it fell off.
The river came at midday in a narrow, choked ribbon that moved like a rumor. It was not the wide sea-edge the map implied but a stern, kept waterway, tired from carrying the city's runoff. Boats floated, half-sunken, tied to posts that leaned like sleepwalkers. A man with a face like an old coin sat on a pile of tires and called himself a ferryman. His name was Tomas, and he had a grin like a business advertisement no one wanted to believe.
"You need a crossing?" Tomas asked, seeing the two of them approach. His boat was a patched thing held together by hope and wire. He smelled of petrol and dried fish. He had the look of someone who had spent his life on the margins, and on those margins people traded stories for fares.
Kade studied him. Ferrymen out here liked licenses and reasons. They liked knowing your cargo because it determined whether they would be paid with coin or with consequences. Kade could have lied and said they were just travelers looking for a trade route. He could have thrown a coin and moved on. Instead he found himself saying, plainly, "Yes. We need to cross."
Tomas leaned back, unperturbed. "Depends. Where you heading?" He squinted at Kade as if he could read maps off people's foreheads.
Kade hesitated. Marlow had told the truth too often and had it used against him. Telling a ferryman where you were going was like telling a window how to open. "South," he said. "Toward the mouth of the river and beyond."
Tomas's grin sharpened into a knife of curiosity. "You know where? Many people say they do. Few means it."
"We mean it," Jun said before he could stop her. She had that way of being honest when she thought honesty might cut faster than lying. Tomas's gaze shifted to her; he took her measure more carefully—muscle, hunger, the borne-stiffness of someone who had seen men die without ceremony.
"You got cash?" Tomas asked.
Kade unzipped his pack and let a handful of coins clink onto the boat's edge. They were enough to buy them passage but not much else. Tomas took the coins with a palm that did not tremble. "I'll take you across. I take cargo too, for extra pay. If you have anything special, I'll ask for a bigger price."
Kade had rehearsed the lie and felt it die in his throat. Secrets stick to your teeth. He tucked the book under his jacket, nearer his chest. "No cargo," he said. "Just us."
Tomas looked at him and smiled like a man who had killed gullibility with time. "All right. You get on."
They pushed off. The river licked at Tomas's boat with small, hungry waves. The city's silhouette retreated into a smeared horizon. Kade let his breath, long held, go out with the city. Crossing the water felt like turning a page. Water had a way of making edges soft. On the other side the world might be the same, or gloriously worse. Maps rarely promised kindness.
Halfway through the crossing, a shout broke the air. Tomas glanced up, face immediately folding into business. A cloud of dust appeared on the skyline—people moving too hurriedly. Another boat cut across the river's mouth in a spray of water and spray that smelled of oil. Leather coats flapped. Men with bandoliers leaned like wolves to the wind.
Tomas swore softly, gripping his paddle. "River rippers," he said. "They take tolls without asking."
Kade's fingers found the book under his jacket. He felt a cold curiosity, less like fear and more like the anxious, urgent hunger of someone who could not un-know that someone else wanted what he had. The river rippers were known for taking passengers and cargo by force. They were not choosy; they took what they could and let the rest bleed.
One of the band ran along the opposite bank and shouted something in a tongue that quickened the boatmen's blood: "Hey! Ferrymen! That boat with the travelers—stop!"
Tomas's jaw clenched. "Not today," he muttered, and pushed his paddle harder. The other boat veered, trying to cut them off. Shouts turned into the more efficient language of gunfire. Bullets spit over the water, kissing the sides of Tomas's boat and throwing up small geysers of spray. The boat rocked and the river answered with an angry ripple.
Kade dropped low and felt the leather of the map press against his ribs, as if it too were shrinking. Tomas cursed, leaning into rowing. Jun's hand found the butt of her rifle and held it like a promise. The other boat tried to flank them, engines snarling.
"You got cash!" one voice shrieked from the other boat. "Give us cargo and your lives are spared!"
"If you want the cargo, take it from the people on the bank!" Tomas shouted back. "We're not playing."
The other boat's captain barked orders, and two men kicked out with boards meant to swing them alongside. Tomas swung the helm, making the ride rough. Kade felt a splinter of panic in his chest. They had been lucky; chance had favored them once. Luck was a currency that ran out fast.
One of the ripper's men launched toward their boat on a boarding plank. Kade's instincts—old, practiced, unromantic—took over. He grabbed one of the planks that Tomas kept for repairs and swung it like a club. The man hit water with a shriek and slipped. The other ripper's men cursed and opened fire. Bullets chewed through Tomas's hull, or at least splintered its plaster, and the boat lurched. Water came over the side like a new kind of mercy.
Kade didn't think to be brave. He thought to keep breathing and to keep the map with him. He hit one man across the head with the plank and then another, using a rhythm that had less to do with skill than with stubbornness. Jun fired without ceremony and hit a man in the shoulder; the man fell with a curse, his gun spinning away into the river. Tomas rowed like a man who'd decided the present was nonnegotiable and rented his life back by the stroke.
They made it across, or rather the ripper boat lost pursuit because its engine fouled on the debris at the mouth of the river; the man who'd been struck in the head floated like a mute question in the water. Tomas guided them to a low bank lined with reeds that swept like a green wave. They scrambled out, coughing and shivering, both from cold and the aftertaste of adrenaline.
"Thanks," Tomas said, voice raw. "That could've gone worse."
Jun spat the taste of river into the dirt. "No kidding."
Kade said nothing, but his palms had the smell of river and of the ripper's leather. The book under his jacket was damp with sweat and something else. He found himself thinking of Mara's ledger and wondering how far the city's gossip had already run. People pried at rumors like children at packages; the map's rumor was a new bright thing under the tree and would be noticed. If the ripper men had been on the lookout, the Sable would be too.
They left Tomas with two days' worth of small coin and a promise to return if they ever had more to trade. Tomas nodded and pushed his boat back into the dingy current, rowing like he believed in chores as absolution. He watched them go with a look that was half prayer, half accounting. People like Tomas kept lists in their heads—when you rowed someone across, you marked whether they cried in gratitude or whether they greeted you with a plan for how to steal your boat.
The map's ink told them to follow a particular line—southwest, hugging a broken rail line that ran toward a place listed under a single circled name: Miriam's Well. The letters were etched small, as if the map's creator wanted them private but wanted them found by the right eyes. Miriam's Well sounded like a story out of a story; wells in this world are miraculous because water is politics and water is life and life needs a center somewhere to spin around.
They found the rail line in the afternoon. It ran across a scarred plain dotted with the skeletons of market stalls and the occasional statue missing faces. The wind arranged the trash into a sound like distant applause. Jun kept walking with a steady gait—she did not talk about fear because in her mind fear was a thing that could be rationed or hoarded depending on need. Kade thought of Miriam as he had thought of names before: a gloved touch in a dark glovebox. A name can be a compass, but it can also be a trap.
At dusk they came upon a settlement leaning against a low hill where the railroad dipped into a culvert. It was not much—makeshift huts stitched together from corrugated metal and tarpaulin, a communal fire pit, a line of drying clothes. But what caught Kade's eye was the well in the center, ringed by stones and guarded by a stout woman who sat with a crossbow across her knees and a braid that hung like a noose. She was all angles and the look of someone whose life had taught her to measure joy in practical terms. Around her knee sat a cart filled with jars of water, each labeled in a handwriting that took effort to be steady.
Miriam. The name made Kade's palms itch. She looked up when they approached. There was no surprise on her face—surprise was a young person's thing here. She simply set the crossbow aside and studied them.
"You travelers or trouble?" she asked.
"Travelers," Jun said. "We cross. We pass."
Miriam's eyes flicked to Kade's chest. He felt naked in the way you can feel naked when someone knows the secret of the thing you call your center. She did not ask for the map. Instead she gestured to the jars. "If you want water, you work. Water's not charity here."
Kade's hands, which had once done study and scripture and then adapted to stealing and synagogue of survival, flexed. He knew that the coin in his pockets was worth less than hard labor around a well. He chopped wood, and Jun hauled cinder blocks. Miriam watched with the sort of scrutiny that indicated a ledger, an accounting of sweat against coin. People like Miriam kept balances because when you live on the edge of nothing, the scales must not wobble.
While he worked, Kade watched the settlement. There were children under the eaves playing a game of stone-hurling and a man mending a sail for a boat that would not float for months. The community had the look of people who'd agreed to keep each other's secrets in exchange for shared bread. Kade saw, too, the subtle marks around the fences—tiny loops of thread knotted in a pattern he had seen on a lamppost earlier. The same language. Someone here had been watching, or leaving signs.
When the day cooled, Miriam sat him down by the well and asked vainly polite questions: where they came from, where they were headed, whether they had family in the city. Kade answered in practiced small truths. He told her that they had been in the city and were heading south. He did not tell her about the book. He did not tell her that his fingers sometimes dreamed of lines and threads and the ink's faint smell like old rain.
Instead, Miriam told him a story. "There's a place," she said, "downriver where the water goes deep and the stones remember. People say the currents hide things. They say a woman once dug a well there and buried what she could not carry. She left a mark, a stone with a hole, and people took good note. If you find the stone, the currents will lead you home."
Kade felt something like a rusted key turn in his chest. The map's marginal notes had said something about currents and hiding places. Miriam's story did not feel like a coincidence. It felt like a confirmation, like a stamp in an old passport.
"Do you know this woman?" he asked.
She laughed without warmth. "We all know women who bury things. People bury their sins; they bury their best clothes. Miriam's Well is a story to keep the curious away. But if you want to know if it's real—you look for the stone with a hole."
Jun, who'd been listening quietly, cut in with a mercenary's practicality. "Where is it?"
Miriam cupped her hands and squinted at the rail line, as if tracing the map in the sky. "Two days downriver, past the reed beds that smell like lost coins. Don't trust the river's face; it smiles and shows teeth." She looked at Kade and then, for a moment, into him. "If you're really after it, you bring back a jar of the well's water. Promise."
Kade promised. He did not know how to imagine the consequences of that small oath. Promises have a way of turning into obligations in this life: small things that expand until they fill rooms. He heated himself with the belief that if they made Miriam's Well real—if they cupped their hands in that hidden stone-hole water—the map's voice would grow louder and clearer. It was a dangerous hope.
That night, under a sky sewn thin with stars, they slept with the well's hush in their ears. Jun leaned close to him and whispered a question he could not answer without sounding foolish: "If we find it—if Vault Zero is real—what then? You think it'll fix anything?"
Kade touched the map through the leather as if to make it part of the answer. "I don't know," he said. "But some things are worth knowing even if they don't fix us. Some things are worth knowing so we can decide how to break them properly."
She laughed briefly, the sound like a stone knocking against another in a dry stream. "You always say the poetic stuff when you mean it like a boy with a blade."
He didn't contradict her. He thought of his thumb on the spine and of the book's ink that had been pressed by hands that shook and steadied. He thought of Miriam and her ledger and of Tomas and his oars and of Mara's ledger and the boy's cart. Everyone had a list. Everyone kept accounts. The map had added itself to those ledgers like an unpaid bill.
When he slept that night, he dreamt of water that remembered his name. He woke with dirt under his nails and a resolve that did not yet know its cost. The book lay on his chest, warm and patient. The river remembered its currents; people remember grudges and songs. Kade had begun to understand that memory was not always kind—but it was honest. And in a world built of half-truths, honesty sometimes felt like a currency more valuable than coin.
They left the next morning with two small jars of Miriam's water wrapped in oilcloth and a blessing that sounded like both warning and prayer. The rail line hummed underfoot like a tired thing; the reed beds pressed their edges to the sky like hands waiting to be granted an answer. They would cross the reed beds today, and the map's next note—about a stone with a hole—felt like a lamp lit in some distant, dim corridor.
Kade tightened the straps of his pack and felt the book's steady presence against his ribs. The world ahead smelled of reeds and old rope. The river gave them its face and asked little in return. But people would ask plenty. He thought of all the small conversations he'd had—the baker, Mara, Tomas, Miriam—and he realized, with a clarity that was almost cruel, that each had been a test. The map was not only a line on parchment; it was a pulse of rumor, and rumor ran through the town like salt through a wound.
He had to be smarter than the rumor. He had to be quicker than the ledger. He had to be willing to make promises he could not yet see how to keep. The book hummed again, as if pleased. Kade did not like feeling seen. He liked even less the knowledge that other eyes would notice what he carried.
Still, he stepped forward into the tall reeds and let the river's breath wrap around his calves. He had promised Miriam a jar. He had promised the map his feet. Promises stack up in the dark until the pile collapses and someone steps into the ruin. Kade was tired of stepping into ruins he hadn't invited.
But the map wanted movement. The world, for once, obliged