Light bites my eyes.
Three soldiers block the alley mouth like lazy teeth. Beyond them, on the shrine steps, the man with the key turns his ribbon in little circles—the way a cat toys with string before it pulls.
"Coin," he says, soft. "Or breath."
"Neither," I say.
He smiles like I told a joke he likes.
Behind us, the grate into the tunnel hangs an inch open. Far below, a lock answers his lifted key with another polite click. The water will rise again. The city is swallowing its own throat, the way cruel people swallow laughter they forced from others.
Kirella shifts a half step ahead of me—not blocking, not hiding—just there. "Left wall," he murmurs, as if we were still on the boat. "Boxes to barrel to door."
I nod, tiny. My hands are steady on the lantern's handle. The glow gathers under the cloak like a breath I haven't let go yet.
"Now," Kirella says, and moves.
Two quick strides. The closest soldier lifts his spear, slow with certainty. Kirella knocks the shaft aside with his forearm and steps into the man's space. Elbow, heel, breath—simple as a prayer done right. The soldier folds to his knees, choking on silence.
I step with Kirella into the dark between two crates. The second soldier lunges. I slide under the point and brush the lantern's glass to his chest as I pass. Warmth presses through his armor—kitchen light remembered. He stares, stunned by something he doesn't have words for, and forgets to thrust again.
The third soldier is not stunned. He charges.
Kirella meets him. Shoulder to shield, the spear tip skates along the stones with a bright scrape. The key-man doesn't come down the steps. He watches like a careful buyer seeing if cloth still looks good after rain.
I set the lantern on the ground and pull the cloak off it.
The alley fills with a soft light that doesn't reach the shrine windows and doesn't anger the glass. It curls around the crates and finds the floor. I draw the light along the stones with my palm like chalk. It follows, leaving a thin ring where I touch—a circle wide enough for two bodies and one breath.
"Promise," I say.
Kirella hears me even while he fights. He turns the third soldier with a twist and drags him into the circle with us—not because the man deserves grace, but because the circle doesn't ask for deserved. It asks for kept.
I press my palm to the ring. The light pulses once, then lifts like warm air. For one heartbeat the world smells like bread and cut lemons. The soldier blinks, lost. His spear point lowers an inch, then two. He looks at Kirella the way men look at a neighbor over a fence, not an enemy over a wall. The moment won't hold long—but a short bridge is still a bridge.
"Walk," Kirella tells him. "Away."
The man steps back, confused and suddenly tired. He doesn't run. He doesn't raise his spear. He just goes.
The key-man claps once, amused. "Lantern tricks," he says. "I knew you'd make the toy do something pretty."
He lifts the ribbon. "My turn."
A bell inside the shrine answers his hand. Not the fat bell for prayer—a small bell for orders. Doors on both sides of the alley open. Two more soldiers file out, helmets low, steps neat.
Kirella snatches the lantern and cloak in one motion and shrouds the glow again. We run.
Left wall. Boxes to barrel to door. The door isn't locked, which is a kind of trap, but it's a trap we can use. We slip into a storeroom that smells like flour and old apples. I yank a sack down; grain hisses across the floor. Soldiers skid when they don't look. Soldiers rarely look.
We cut through a back hall and out a side door into a narrow court where laundry hangs like flags of surrender. An old woman on a stool blinks at us, then at the lantern's breath under the cloak. She tucks her rosary into her sleeve and nods once—recognizing the shape of a promise.
"This way," she rasps, pointing with her chin at a slit between two walls.
We slide into the slit. It lets out into a lane where herbs hang from strings above a door marked in chalk: WE KEEP EACH OTHER. The chalk looks new. The we looks thick, written twice.
A boy waits under the strings—the same from the ferrymen's cavern. His eyes are bright with purpose.
"Left, then down," he whispers. "Bora said to run like you mean it."
"Where is he?" I ask.
"Making noise," he says, proud.
A crash answers from the next court—crate, clatter, a curse. Men shout. A woman laughs high and fierce. I don't know her, but I love her for a breath.
We go left, then down. The lane tightens and widens and tightens again—Jericho built out of habit. The lantern's glow under the cloak marks edges and holes my eyes would miss. We dodge a broken stair, step a gutter like a slit throat, duck a line of fish that haven't seen water in days.
At the end, a low arch opens to a crowded yard. Monsters fill it. Not the kind the city pretends to hate because it wants a show—the kind it doesn't see because they keep each other. Moss hair. Bark-brown eyes. A grey giant with careful hands. Lelia. Root. Bora.
Lelia sees us first. She lifts both arms. "Here," she calls, not loud and not afraid.
The yard opens like a throat. We slide inside. The arch bars behind us with wood that looks too thin to stop rain and somehow stops trouble.
"Welcome home," Root says.
"Home?" I echo, dizzy with the word.
"Until you leave," Lelia says, smiling with a tired mouth. "Then again, when you come back."
Bora's big hands close over our shoulders, warm and careful. "You did not die," he says, pleased and a little surprised.
"Not yet," Kirella says. He keeps the lantern close but polite, like a guest who knows to keep muddy boots off the blanket. "They're circling."
"They always circle," Root murmurs. "Wolves with keys and men with mirrors."
Lelia takes my wrist and checks the cloth. "You burn," she says. "You don't show it."
"It's not holy," I say of the light under the cloak. "That helps."
"Holy is a word men use when they want a lock," Root says.
Bora nods to the far wall where old bricks patch a newer hole. A tunnel mouth waits, dark and polite. Above it, someone scratched a circle and two hands. "Old Lantern Line," he says. "We cleaned it last night. Rats argued. We won."
"You'll draw him here," I say. "The key-man."
"We already did," Bora says, tilting his head. Outside, something booms—a cart tipping, or a door falling. A dozen voices argue in three languages. Small chaos; you can't track anything in a storm of small chaos.
"A gift," Lelia says. "Noise buys time."
"Not for free," Root adds. "Tonight you make a promise for us."
"Name it," I say.
"Two, small," Root says. "If you open a gate with that light, you come back and walk three people through before you vanish into your quiet ten years. And if you find a place where the glass doesn't hurt, send word on paper and tie it to a fishline under the bridge with the broken tooth."
"I promise," I say. The words feel like stitches that close a wound and draw two skins together. It hurts a little. It holds.
Kirella sets his palm over mine. "We promise."
The lantern warms, hearing us.
Bora lifts the bar and opens the tunnel door. "Go," he says. "We won't stop them forever."
Root touches my sleeve. "The Last Gate eats hope," they say. "But it hates kept things. Keep your kept close."
I look at Kirella. He meets my eyes, steady. "I know."
We drop into the tunnel. Lelia lowers the door and bars it. The sound is small. The safety is not.
The Old Lantern Line is narrower than the bathhouse throat and less proud. Chalked handprints on the walls. A ceiling that weeps a slow, clean drip. A floor that tilts now and then to remind you life is a hill. We move fast, saving open glow for corners that taste like knives.
"Stop," Kirella says.
I freeze. A string lies at shin height, tied to a bell the size of a plum.
"Not soldiers," he says. "Hunters."
"The quiet ones," I answer.
He snaps the string with two fingers and catches the bell before it rings. He tucks it in a wall crack like a tooth he doesn't want to swallow.
We go on.
The tunnel splits at a pile of stone shaped like a lion with no face. A hand-drawn arrow points left, another right. Above both, a child wrote THIS WAY, which isn't helpful and perfectly true.
We take left. The air slopes up. My shoulders tense for light. The lantern leaks a little under the cloak—enough to map edges, lay a thin safety on the ground. Eyes down. Floor, not glass.
A low rumble rolls under our feet. Somewhere, water opens a throat. The key-man turns another lock. He isn't with us, and he's always with us.
"We have to move," Kirella says.
"We are."
The tunnel staggers into a crooked stair cut in brick. We climb, counting steps—counting is a spell that keeps fear in a small cup. At the top, a wood door waits with a simple latch and a strip of daylight outlining it like a halo a drunk painter drew.
Kirella listens the way he listens to people. Breath on the other side—two slow, one fast. Not soldiers. Family.
He lifts the latch.
A room that used to be a shop and is now a life. Shelves of pickled jars with labels that lie. A woman with three small horns and a man with shovel hands sit at a table with a baby asleep in a basket. They aren't shocked. Their eyes flick to the lantern under the cloak, then to our faces, then to our hands.
"Bless your kept," the woman says.
"And yours," I answer, not sure if it's a saying, a prayer, or math.
"Street is loud," the man says. "They net the block."
"We know," Kirella says.
The woman stands and points to a back door. "Through the alley to the broken-tooth bridge. Under it, stone steps down. A door with a fish carved on it. Knock three times and say nothing."
"Thank you," I say.
She shrugs. "We keep each other," she says, as if explaining why water is wet.
We slip out. Noise soaks the air—pans, shouts, a pot falling, a laugh, a curse, a song. The noise is a blanket. Under it, soldiers move in short lines, their order drowned by the city's music. The key-man's ribbon glints once near the shrine and then is gone. He isn't a line. He's a circle.
We run bent and quiet. The bridge's tooth is a chunk of missing stone on the near side. Stairs drop under it to a damp walkway brushed by canal water. A fish is carved small on an iron door. I knock three times and say nothing.
A woman with salt in her hair and a knife in her belt opens. She looks past me to Kirella, back to me, then down at the faint ring on my palm where the lantern marked us.
"Lantern line?" she asks.
"Yes."
"In."
Nets and hooks and coils of rope. Air like iron and river. She drops the bar and slides a crate over the mark where it falls. "He hunts with ears," she says. "Not eyes."
"We won't waste words," Kirella answers.
"Good."
She tosses him a short oar with a wrapped grip and me a dull hook. "Tide pulls strange. Locks that never move are moving. If the Last Gate tastes fresh water, it wakes."
"It eats hope," I say.
"It chokes on kept," she says—like Root—and my chest aches new.
"Left branch to the Last Gate?" Kirella asks.
"Left, then straight when straight feels wrong. You'll know it. Your stomach will call you a fool. Don't listen. Then a climb. Then your door."
"Thank you," I say again, a coin that buys more than it should.
She opens a hatch to the water. A small skiff crouches like an animal that trusts hands. We lower the lantern into the prow stand. The light settles and looks forward.
"Go," she says. "Before the locks turn again."
We push into a narrow channel that pretends to be still until you touch it—then moves, fast and sly. The skiff skims the wall. The lantern's breath strokes corners and lays soft rings where the oar bites.
"Your hands?" Kirella asks.
"Fine," I lie.
"Floor, not glass," he reminds.
"Us, not alone," I say, and he smiles with mouth and eyes both.
The channel bends left, then straightens into a run that feels wrong in my gut, like falling without moving. The air tastes like metal. The walls are smooth in a way walls don't choose unless told.
"Straight," he says, trusting the woman with salt hair.
"Straight," I echo, trusting a city that remembers promises.
We ride the wrong-straight for thirty heartbeats. The water drops under us like a sigh. The skiff skims a seam where two stones meet, and everything opens—ceiling higher, sound deeper, air cooler. Ahead, carved in the far wall, a gate the size of a city door: old, patient, shut. Circles, hands, a little boat. In the center, a sun tile waits with three niches: coin, knife, hand.
"The Last Gate," I breathe.
We let the skiff kiss the stone and step onto a narrow ledge. The drop beside us is black and doesn't care.
"Offerings?" Kirella says.
"Choices."
One gold left. One knife. Two hands.
I set the gold in the coin niche. He sets the knife hilt-first in the knife niche. We press our palms to the hand.
"Speak," says the door—older than bathhouse, city, and the idea that light can be sold.
"I promise," I say, "if this door opens for us, we won't close it behind us. We'll mark the way—salt, chalk, rope, paper. We'll come back for three. We'll keep each other."
Stone warms.
Kirella lays his palm on mine. "I promise I don't go where she cannot. Not for orders. Not for fear. Not for shame sold as holy. Not for coin."
Warmth runs up my arm like a drink after thirst.
The sun tile brightens. Circles on the gate wake and turn. Somewhere above, a lock clicks like a throat saying yes.
From the channel behind us, a ripple of shadow slides along the surface and climbs the wall like a stain. A polite voice floats forward, patient as always.
"Little red," the key-man calls, gentle as a lullaby. "Draw me the line. I'll walk it."
His ribbon glints once in the lantern's low breath.
Water at our feet lifts—sudden, hungry. Another key turned. The ledge narrows as the channel reaches for our boots.
The gate grinds and opens an inch, two, three. Light—not temple, not cruel—seeps from the seam.
"Now," Kirella says.
We grab the lantern. We step for the opening.
Water lunges.
Something hooks my ankle hard—the edge, the flood, the hand of a man who has all year and hates to be late. My foot slips. The lantern tilts.
Kirella's arm snaps my waist. He hauls me and shoves us through the widening seam—not ahead of him, with him. The lantern bangs my hip and stays in my grip. The gate's lip scrapes my calf and leaves a hot line like a brand I chose.
We tumble onto the floor beyond. The light here is soft and rain-clean. The door keeps opening, steady as a promise.
Behind, in the wrong-straight, the polite voice loses its smile for the first time.
"Ah," it says, very quiet. "Rude."
Water smashes the gate and splinters into a white hiss that doesn't come through. The Last Gate keeps what it keeps.
We lie there, breathing like people who borrowed time and plan to pay it back with interest.
Kirella turns his head so our foreheads touch. "We're not done."
"I know."
"Next?"
"Mark the way," I say. "Then run."
The chamber is simple—stone, steps, a tunnel sloping up toward a light that isn't glass and isn't a lie. On the wall beside the gate, a smooth patch of stone waits like paper.
I press the one paper bird I saved from the lantern shelves. It leaves a print of a bird with a thin line to a sun. Then I chalk the simplest letters I own:
WE KEEP EACH OTHER →
Kirella ties rope to an iron ring and tosses the coil back through the seam to trail into the wrong-straight, ending in a loop a child's hand could find.
"Three first," he says. "Then the rest."
"Then our quiet ten years," I answer—and for the first time the number doesn't feel like running away. It feels like a place we'll build.
We lift the lantern together and climb toward a light that doesn't sell itself.
Behind us, a key turns again in a lock that has turned too many times. The sound follows like a promise we never asked to trust.
And the chapter ends there, with our hands under the lantern and WE KEEP EACH OTHER glowing faint on the stone behind us.
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