Root turns the chalk to its square edge and draws the sluice road like a scar along the canal. A pinch point sits midway—stone narrowing to a man and a cart and not much else.
"Here," they say, tapping the drawpoint. "You stop breath here."
"I prefer start breath," I say.
"Do both," Root answers.
Kirella tests the coil of rope on his shoulder, fingers moving like he's remembering a song he learned with his hands. He checks my waist tether—one tug for slack, one for promise.
"Two breaths," he says.
"Walk with me," I answer.
Syth lays tools out like a surgeon who likes mischief: brine needles in a felt roll, pepper-mint cones wrapped in oiled paper, a thumb-sized WORD plate, two flints, one crooked pin. She pockets the pin first. Of course she does.
"Collar check," I say to the room. I hold the lantern low and draw a narrow ring on the table edge, barely warm. "Paper over ring—if it heats even a whisper, it's live." I touch the ring with the cut strip of a mock collar. Heat blooms just enough to tell the truth. I pull it away and the warmth fades. "Brine at the pleat seams," I add, "not at the throat. We're not drowning anyone's name today."
Nim stands on a stool because they refuse to be shorter than a plan. Spoon up. "One—two—three—four."
The lantern's swirl answers with a polite flicker. The good heavy pools in my palm. I like that it weighs what we say it weighs.
We leave the Blue Pantry by the back, under the hook where the lantern usually rests when it wants to pretend it doesn't care about our errands. Lelia presses a bowl-name slip into my fingers for each freed person we hope to meet.
"Only bowls," she says. "No gifts to paper. Come back warm."
Bora lifts the bar at the door with the same ease he lifts people who think they can outrun kindness. Ira nods once and pockets a folded drop-loop of rope. Root draws a small O on the threshold so the house will know which direction our route wants to close.
We go.
---
Alleys accept our feet like they've been waiting all evening for these particular steps. I keep the ring thin, stingy, just enough to leave warmth where we'll need to remember the way back. The lantern breathes under my hand. The good heavy says hurry, carefully.
Mint grit crunches under Syth's boots at each corner where a hound might decide to be a mathematician. She tosses it as if paying a toll she knows we can't afford but refuses to skip.
The sluice road opens ahead—a long, low line of stone that hugs the canal like a friend who doesn't know when to let go. On our side: shadow, slime, a wall that once wanted to be elegant and forgot. On the other: black water, patient and wrong.
Nim lifts the spoon. One—two—three—four. The sound goes out and comes back as if the wall learned echo from a teacher it did not like.
"Positions," Kirella says—quiet, not an order, more like a reminder we already gave ourselves.
Ira slides off into the road's seam, fingers quick, looping the drop-loop around the stone lip in a way that makes gravity think about being useful. Bora drapes a rotten tarp in a hunch that says trash to eyes that don't like to do work. Syth melts into a slit along the wall, flint in one hand, WORD plate in the other.
I pull a ring corridor across the pinch point, a line thin as a string you can pluck with your feet. It sits on the stone and waits to be true.
The caravan arrives like a sentence that pretends to be casual: two low carts under canvas, four guards, a fifth who doesn't walk like a guard—loose wrist, patient eyes, a small mirror held flat in one hand. Mirror-thrower. He walks wide, tasting angles.
There are also two dogs, or things that learned to wear the idea of dogs: narrow, attentive, with paper muzzles—pleated bands tied under the jaw, little ink threads stretched to a stamp burned into each collar's leather. Their ears twitch when people breathe. When a passerby coughs and mutters an apology to no one, the muzzles tighten a hair and then loosen when the apology forgets itself.
"They're waiting for a name spike," Syth whispers near my knee, all consonants. "One real name loud or clean, and the collars cinch."
The cart wheels whisper iron on grit. The guards are bored with their own boots. The mirror-thrower doesn't get bored. He angles his little square and sweeps a faint bar of reflected glass across the road like a fisherman testing for depth.
"Floor," I say, and I mean it to myself.
We let them come.
Nim's spoon stays down. I feel their count anyway in the way my ribs decide not to panic. The rope at my waist pulls once, just enough to make sure that in my head I'm walking with someone even though my feet are still.
The first cart reaches the drop-loop.
Nim lifts the spoon. One—two—three—four—
Ira yanks.
Rope bites stone. The loop tightens. The cart's front axle jerks sideways with a squeal like a lie becoming obvious. The driver curses and hauls the reins; the cart lurches and settles with one wheel in the loop's grip and the other thinking about remembering friction.
"Now," Kirella says, already stepping.
The mirror-thrower flips his square. A bar of daylight that isn't daylight slaps my cheek. I drop my eyes to the ring and say floor again like it's a prayer I only just learned. Kirella's shoulder cuts the light with something like accident, like he just happened to be between the line and the thing that hates me. His count does not wobble. One—two—three—four.
Syth's palm kisses the lead cart's paper seal with the WORD plate. The ink takes. WE KEEP EACH OTHER pushes through the pleats like a sign deciding it would rather be a door. SIGN → WAIT.
Bora arrives as a wall of polite gravity at the nearest guard. He doesn't hit him. He invites him forward into the ring line with a stepped pivot that makes the man trip himself into calm. The ring doesn't throw; it reminds. His knuckles loosen. His jaw forgets what it thought was important.
I go for the canvas tie, slip, slice with the bread knife through two stitched loops, and duck inside.
Paper collars.
Six—no, eight people, shoulders hunched as if the canvas weighs morality. The collars sit under the jaw like extra thoughts no one asked for, neat pleats stitched to skin with ink threads that lead to a ledger stamp pressed into a wooden block bolted by the driver's bench. The stamp hums like a smug insect.
"Bowl-names only," I tell the people who blink at me like their eyes forgot their jobs. "No true names; no apologies. Breathe with me."
"Who—" one starts, voice sandpaper, because none of this is normal.
"We won't pay," I say softly. "We won't sell."
Kirella's count rides above the beat of wheels no longer rolling. One—two—three—four. Nim's spoon taps the wood near the back flap, small and holy in a way the market priests would hate. Syth feeds a cone of pepper-mint into the canvas at the rear slat and sparks it; cool smoke snakes under the roof, deliberate and honest.
The first collar warms under the ring the way a bad idea warms under a good one and decides to sit down. I slide the brine needle to the pleat seam—not the throat, never the throat—and press. Salt water learns the paper a story about mothers and rivers and what it feels like to stop pretending to be a knife. The glue drinks and gives up. The pleat sags. The collar unravels like lace that never trusted itself.
"Bowl-name," I say, eyes on the next seam.
The man with the first collar rubs his neck like he mislaid a decision. "I'm—" His mouth reaches for an old habit. He looks at my face and finds it inconveniently present. "Copper Mug," he says instead, quiet and good.
"Good," I say. "Keep it. Breathe."
The next captive is a woman with hair hacked blunt to offend someone. Her collar is new; the glue still brags. "Blue Stitch," she says before I ask, smiling with half her mouth like something in the smoke made a choice for her. The brine needle does its work. The paper goes soft without cutting flesh. The ring warmth makes the pleat forget violence and remember nap.
Behind me the mirror-thrower snaps his wrist. Light licks Kirella's shoulder and skates off. He moves as if the light is a clumsy child he doesn't want to embarrass.
Two guards pull blades and immediately lose interest in them. The ring sees to it; the warmth in the stone says you don't need to perform to be a person. They start looking for reasons to stand somewhere else.
The dogs decide we are interesting.
They lunge, not at me—at the freed people who just remembered they have throats. If one of them yelps a true name, the whole game collapses: collars cinch, ledger stamp sings, the cart learns a new word: OWN.
"Rope," Kirella says.
Ira is already there. The drop-loop that took a wheel slips like a second plan under the dogs' slender legs. He yanks. The animals tumble into the ring line I laid across the road—warmth hits their clever noses and scrambles the scent math they were promised would always work. They paw the air, confused and suddenly tired.
"Bowl-names—now," I say to the cart. I don't raise my voice. I make it a room people want to stay in. "Say them once and hold your breath until the count lands."
Four voices answer, overlapping and true enough for my purposes: Tin Ladle, Pale Thread, Ink Nail, Ash Poppy. The ring takes the words and makes them KEEP. The dogs huff, look personally betrayed, and stop being a problem.
"Second cart," Syth snaps, because of course there's a second cart and of course it's reversed and ready to run.
Bora moves like a doorframe that learned ambition. He steps into the rear cart's path and becomes the part of architecture you suddenly remember when your shin meets it. The driver tries to go around him and discovers the canal at his right is unhelpful and the wall at his left is a wall.
Syth vaults the wheel hub, lands with both feet on the wood over the seal, and slaps the WORD plate down like she means to staple a vow to a lie. The wood hums. The paper sighs. SIGN → WAIT again. She grins without being kind.
We tear open the canvas.
Four more, these ones smaller, younger, one with a braid cut to a brutal angle like someone wanted the hair more than the child wanted the braid. Their collars are stitched with a heavier hand—ink threads in a crosshatch that says learn from mistakes, be awful better.
"Bowl-names," I say, brine needle ready. The first kid whispers Stone Beetle, voice shaped like a giggle that got lost and is trying to come back. The second says Small Thread, not quite proud, not quite ashamed. The third opens her mouth and says something that starts as Mi—
My skull fills with bells.
It's not me saying it. It's the collar pulling a true thing through someone else's throat. The air scratches the letter on my skin like chalk on bad slate. MI— floats in front of my face for a heartbeat like frost drawn by an arrogant finger.
Kirella's hand finds mine on the lantern. Not a squeeze. A cover. His palm over my knuckles and the brass, the borrowed heat of a person who is not bothered by glass and will not let me be burned by pretending.
"Floor," he says, quiet and absolute.
"Two breaths," I answer, and then I do it—inhale with his count, exhale with Nim's spoon.
The MI— wobbles and thins like it was written with water. The brine needle touches the pleat seam. The glue remembers rivers again. The collar loosens, then falls as if embarrassed to be seen in daylight.
"Bowl-name," I say to the girl.
She blinks slow, then fast. "Lace Pin," she says, cheeks hot, eyes something like furious at herself for giving anyone a moment of worry.
"Good," I say. "Keep it."
Syth is already at the driver's bench, prying. "Ledger," she says, because she's polite and that's a request to an inanimate object to hand itself over.
The bench resists. She steals it anyway. A flat book wrapped in wax cloth comes away with a sound like a lie deciding to move neighborhoods. She flips it open and whistles low.
"Orders," she says, and tosses it to me.
The pages are close writing and stamps and a map that looks suspiciously like the one Root sketched, only smugger. Between the lines is a neat sigil we haven't met—an ear sewn in thread, the loops tight and tidy. The Mad Doctor likes his branding literal, it seems.
Route stamp: EAST SLUICE → RAINHOUSE DEPOT (D-0 DAWN)
"Before the Auction," Root says, arriving with two runners and a breath that says they sprinted without letting their feet know. "They're offloading names ahead of time."
"We won't pay," Bora tells the ledger, as if the book cares. The book doesn't, but the ring under my feet does.
"Back up," Kirella says, eyes on the far bend of the sluice road.
Lockwright voices rise like someone dropped dice down a stair: small clicks, then louder clacks, then swearing. The mirror-thrower wearies of politeness and whistles a note that hurts the parts of the ear that didn't deserve it. Somewhere metal complains. A sluice valve grinds. The canal thinks about being taller.
"Water," Ira says, because he makes nouns into weather reports.
The ring corridor I laid across the pinch point warms hard, ready to be either bridge or memory depending on whether we deserve to keep it.
"Move the freed," Kirella says. Not loud. Everyone hears. Bora forms a line. The newly uncollared take bowl-name slips with fingers that forgot they could be gentle with their own hands. Brown Apron shoulders Stone Beetle in a way that says a man remembers both how to lift and how not to drop.
Nim leads the way, spoon bright. One—two—three—four. The lantern swirl flickers back like a flag that knows the wind wants friends.
Water pushes at the stones. It doesn't like being told not here. It likes here.
I drag a broad ring across the sluice stones, wider than comfort, wider than pride. The lantern goes heavier than my wrist would prefer. Kirella's palm is still on mine. The weight is doable because it is shared.
"Hold," I tell the stones. "Hold for us."
They do, for a breath. For another. For almost enough.
The mirror-thrower steps into view, wide of the road where the reflection can insult everyone evenly. He angles the square. Light bar, sharp and smug. My knees suggest the ground would be a great new hobby. I decline by remembering the word floor before I fall to it.
Syth slams the ledger closed and throws it. It is heavier than it should be, not with weight but with the attention of men who believe ink is a god. I catch it against my chest like a child you didn't expect to hold yet and want to anyway.
"Run," she says—at me, at the ledger, at the route, at the night.
The last freed captive stumbles. Bora reaches back with one arm, hauls, shoves him into the ring corridor forward where Blue Stitch and Lace Pin can get their hands under his elbows and give him the idea of balance back.
Water rises a palm's width. The broad ring shivers. The heat spreads thin like butter on bread you weren't patient enough to let cool.
The mirror-thrower smiles. It is not a nice smile. He tips the glass to write something in the light.
The ledger twitches in my hands. The last page bleeds through with fresh ink as if someone wrote from three streets away and the book decided to share: D-0: RAINHOUSE DEPOT — NAMES PRE-PAID. DO NOT DELAY.
Under the stamp, a place where a name should be begins to draw itself, a half-loop, a vertical scratch—MI—
"Two breaths," Kirella says.
"Two," I say with him. The ring holds one heartbeat longer than it has any right to.
The valve wails open another inch. The canal laughs in its chest. The mirror's bar licks my cheek again and says it would love to see me be less.
Root's runners shove a plank into the broad ring as if adding wood to warmth were science. It is not. It still helps.
We pour forward into our own heat. The ledger sticks to my shirt with ink and warning.
The MI— on the page trembles, then steadies, then tries to grow a curve.
"Not yours," I tell the book, like it's a person who needs boundaries.
The water bucks against the ring like a bull at the moment it remembers rodeos.
And the chapter ends there—freed bodies threading the warm corridor, the canal pawing at our ankles, the mirror-thrower painting bars on air, the valve groaning wider, the ledger's last page wet and stubborn in my hands, and a half-written MI— daring me to blink.
--------------------------------------------
If this chapter kept you reading, please Add to Library and drop a Comment — your support keeps the updates daily!