We come in damp and loud for people who try not to be either. The Blue Pantry swallows the noise like a mother with too many children and not enough hands.
Bora has already turned two tables into a triage lane. Lelia salts wrists and temples, mint on her breath and a scold in her eyes for anyone who apologizes for existing. Nim taps the ladle against the rim of the biggest pot—one—two—three—four—so the room breathes like a body instead of a panic.
"Bowls," Lelia says, and I pass slips down the line. Brown Apron tucks Stone Beetle under his arm like a promise. Blue Stitch holds Lace Pin's braid remnant in one hand and a second bowl in the other, refuses to decide which matters more, decides both do.
Root peels the ledger off my shirt with a patience that looks like cruelty and is actually respect. The wax cloth leaves ink on me. The last page wants to show off; it bleeds D-0: RAINHOUSE DEPOT—NAMES PRE-PAID in letters that don't wobble. The stitched-ear sigil sits in the corner, smug and neat.
"Doctor," Syth mutters, not because the ear told her but because of course it did.
Root lays the ledger flat on the warm stove edge until the wet words stop pretending to be sea. With the side of a chalk that has seen too much, they sketch the depot from memory and rumor: a long yard with steam stacks, a square name-vault with a slot, two mirror perches on poles, a Time-Tax Clock over the gate because someone thought accounting should also be a threat.
"Small team," Root says. "Scout, snip, proof, out. If you try to free the whole yard you will free no one. The convoy at dawn becomes a river instead of carts."
"Four," Kirella says. He looks at me and then at Syth and then at Ira, which is another way of saying we and also don't argue.
Bora bar-sets the door and posts two with wooden spoons who look too young to fight and know exactly how to break a nose with a handle. Lelia presses a cone of pepper-mint into my palm and then pockets another in Kirella's coat without asking permission. Nim climbs onto a bench and lifts the spoon. One—two—three—four. The lantern's little swirl answers, faint and proud.
Kirella checks my waist tether like he's tuning a string. "Two breaths," he says.
"If they pull my name," I say, "they take your hand first."
"Already promised," he answers, and it sounds like nothing and a cathedral.
We go by the roof because the street would like to talk to mirrors and we are not in a talking mood. Ira sets a grapple with a flick and climbs hand over hand like rope owes him money. I follow where his knots make the stone feel less certain it can be smug. Syth moves like a rumor that hopes to be true.
Between chimneys the city smells like old ash and hot iron and soup that has been left to comfort itself. We cross under a bell hung in a frame of iron rods. It looks like a bell. It isn't. The air below it tastes like chalk. When Kirella mouths two, I feel the number more than hear it; the wall takes any sound we try to make and writes it down and then charges interest.
"Silent zone," Syth signs with two fingers and a tap.
I nod and draw a small ring along the parapet with my knuckles, barely warm, a breadcrumb of heat. We move by finger count—two taps on a sleeve, then two breaths held and let go together. The lantern likes it. It weighs what we mean.
The Rainhouse Depot wakes below in steam and discipline. The yard is wider than I want it to be; the walls are lower than the pride on the faces of the men who stand with their hands behind their backs and pretend that makes them brave. Paper boilers breathe in the far corner, feeding a slot in a stone box the size of a barrow. The box hums. Name-vault, Root said. The hum spells OWN if you let it.
Poles rise at the corners with small shelves fixed near the tops. Mirror perches wait for wrists with time on them. Gutters run not for water but for breath; they drag the exhale down and send it past little fluted valves that look like lamps and smell like rules.
Over the gate, a clock big enough to shame a church ticks. Each click scribbles a tiny line on a slate hung below the face. A bored clerk marks marks beside those marks like he's being paid in minutes. Time-Tax Clock. Every word a person speaks on depot ground becomes a minute the depot can collect from them later as fatigue, confusion, clumsy fingers, a night where sleep becomes a rumor.
I hate it like a person.
We watch a patrol pass: two regulars, one with a whistle in a throat he hasn't earned, and a mirror-thrower with a second small square nested under the first. Paired mirrors. He will try triangles. He will try knee and eye at once. I pull the hood lower and remind my skull about floor.
Syth taps my sleeve, then points to a side office whose window learned to be bored. She mouths slate and map and then is gone. Ira kisses a rusted culvert grate with a tool that looks like a fork that grew up to be useful; he ties a neat rope gate just inside the mouth and leaves a slack loop like a secret saved for later.
Kirella nudges my elbow and points at the small gate set in the east fence where a chain sits inside a paper latch taught to talk. It reads SIGN in raised letters and whispers say please to pass in a voice that makes my teeth itch.
"Keep-arch," he mouths, and rests his palm on the lantern handle.
I draw a thin ring up and over the gate like a child drawing a rainbow with a piece of coal. The ring lies there, modest and stubborn. Kirella palms the WORD plate and breathes on it; Syth once told me ink likes warmth. WE KEEP EACH OTHER waits under his glove like a trick we are proud of but pretend not to be.
Steam flares by the boilers. A valve sings wrong. The smell of pepper-mint appears where no kitchen is. Syth. She flipped something. Guards hurry toward the hiss, their boots practicing authority and tripping over it. Two peel off to scold a drain. One stops under the clock because his mouth misses counting.
We slip through the side gate while it is looking away on purpose.
Inside, the air is wet paper and something like cooked glue. Everything sticks—not much, just enough that every gesture wastes a little of itself. We move by finger taps: one-two-three-four, lungs two-breath in duet, no words. The ring makes a quiet tunnel out of the path we choose.
Halfway across the yard, a small cage cart waits with dignity it did not earn. Four people inside sit very still because the collars under their jaws whisper don't be interesting. Their necks shine with ink threads drawn to a stamp block on the cart's side, a square of wood with a compulsion carved into it as if a thought could be a blade if you honed it enough with malice.
Kirella fills my peripheral vision like a wall you find is exactly where you wanted one. His hand grazes mine on the handle. Two breaths. I set the lantern low, pull a ring up the cart's metal slats, and let it hum wait in a voice that does not need ears to be heard. The four look up as one, then apart, then at the floor, then up again, trying to decide whether hope will cost extra.
Silent Choir. I touch two fingers to my throat—don't speak—and then to my chest—breathe with me. We inhale together on Nim's ghost count, exhale together into the ring. Syth slides a cone of pepper-mint under the floorboard so the scent gutters pause to consider their life choices. The air cools in the old way, the way you feel when someone who loves you sets a bowl in front of you and does not ask for anything back.
The brine needle slides under the first collar's pleat seam; the paper learns water again; the glue sighs; the pleat loosens without biting. The collar falls like a bad opinion in a room of people having a good day. I do the second, then the third. The fourth is stitched heavy and stubborn; I take my time because speed is a kind of violence if you choose it where patience would work.
Kirella passes the bowl-name slips over my shoulder, one by one. Say nothing, read something, keep it. The first takes Tin Ladle and holds it to his chest as if paper can be a blanket if the word is chosen well. The second traces Pale Thread with a finger and doesn't cry because she hasn't been allowed to in a long time and forgot the mechanics. The third points at his slip—Ink Nail—and nods to me like I did anything. The fourth tucks Ash Poppy into a sleeve already full of someone else's ashes. We move them sideways into the ring corridor; the stones underfoot warm and keep.
Whistles blow at the boilers. A guard at the clock calls a roll by habit. Numbers leave his mouth and march into the slate like little soldiers. The Time-Tax spikes +12 in one neat stroke. The air thickens; my attention drags as if someone hid a net in my thoughts.
The MI— scratch whispers in my ear, mean and familiar.
I set the lantern between Kirella's hand and mine and lean into the Silent Choir for real—no vows, no words, only rhythm and breath. Two in, two out. The ring answers without language and KEEP sits in my bones where worry wanted to sit.
Syth's shadow peels off a wall and reforms next to a rack of cylinders the size of forearms. She cracks one with a knife point and curses silently at the smell—hot iron and perfume and a human thing you should not bottle. She chalk-rubs the serials up her sleeve, takes two cylinders, and tucks them into a satchel that never admits to carrying anything interesting.
She finds a dispatch slate in a side office with a window that thought it would never be important. The writing on it moves while she watches. "D-0 DAWN: 3 wagons → Pipe Mile → Rainhouse → Auction bypass." Beneath, a note in a hand that likes its own loops too much: voice graft samples. The stitched ear winks in the margin.
We herd our four through the rope gate Ira left in the culvert mouth and into dark that smells like patient water and bad history. Syth leaves a WORD print on the side gate's paper latch—WAIT—so the next person who tries to hurry gets wiser before they get through.
Then the mirror-thrower remembers his job.
He steps into the yard like a man returning to a table he knows he is winning at. The little square in his hand finds my cheek, and the second mirror finds my knees. Paired bars make a triangle that suggests I will like the ground. I do not. Kirella is simply between me and the worst of it without theatrics. He stamps the WORD on a gate post—WAIT—and the wood listens like it was always willing to be reasonable but enjoyed being a problem.
I drop a broad ring across the yard stones, not elegant, not poetic, just stubborn. The mirrors fuzz at the edges where the ring's warmth turns reflections into rumors. The thrower tilts, adjusts, and finds me again like a habit with practice.
"Floor," Kirella says. He doesn't say don't look. He knows I already know.
We back into the culvert one step at a time, hand over hand along a rope Ira tied like faith. The depot breathes angry steam. The clock clicks faster because clocks get to be petty and never get scolded for it.
At the grate that opens to the under-passage, Ira waits with a knot in his hand and the look of a man who will be calm on your behalf until you can be calm by yourself. He swings the rope gate shut behind us and sets a slip-knot on the hinge. The mirror bars can't follow here; stone and water don't like being told what to reflect.
We run the tunnel bent and quiet. The canal above us makes a noise like a very large man deciding whether to stand. I lay ring dashes on the slime-slick sill, a breadcrumb for later feet. When the passage forks, Syth taps her sleeve where the chalk-rub sits and points right. Pipe Mile hums ahead with the steady ache of a thing too useful not to be cruel.
Hatch 7 waits at the end of a tight elbow. It is a stone half-door set crooked in a wall not built for beauty. Knife and hand are carved on the face, simple as if an honest mason had bad dreams and carved them anyway. Above, someone chiseled letters and filled them with dark: SPEAK TO PASS.
On the jamb, fresh ink curls like a smoking wick. The dispatch slate in Syth's bag answers its cousin in the office and updates on its own, the words coming up like steam from a kettle. "D-0 convoy rerouted through Pipe Mile. Door fee: ONE NAME."
"True name," Syth signs, two fingers tapping her jaw and then a flat palm, stone. She tries Quick Spoon at the seam, quiet as a wish. The hatch holds its breath and refuses.
I set the lantern on the floor and draw a tight ring around our boots, narrow and deep like a belt that fits because you made it for yourself. The ring warms. It waits for language but will work with breath if breath insists.
The freed four huddle in the corridor behind us: Tin Ladle, Pale Thread, Ink Nail, Ash Poppy, hands on the rope, eyes on the light like old dogs on a new hearth. Far back, the culvert mouth throws a slice of depot steam into the tunnel, and the mirror-thrower's bars brighten at the edge of the ring like eels that don't want to admit they are impressed by anything.
The Time-Tax Clock up in the yard ticks. I can't see it. I taste the minutes like chalk on the back of my teeth.
"Price," Ira mouths, pointing at the words ONE NAME.
No, I mouth back.
The hatch doesn't care what I think about money. It demands a true thing said out loud. It wants a name that stone can catch and keep and sell back to us as passage.
Kirella's palm covers mine on the lantern handle. Two breaths. He doesn't need to say it. He says it anyway. "Two."
I look at the carved knife and hand and the little chips where the chisel skipped because the mason's wrist remembered being human. I look at the ring at my feet and the four behind me and the man next to me and the way the steam pushes at the edge of the light like a mouth wanting to bite.
"We speak with bowls," I say, and my voice is soft and wrong for stone, and I say it anyway because it's what I have.
The hatch doesn't move.
"Bowl-name chorus," I tell the four. "Low as you can. Hold your breath on four."
Kirella's count is a thread through a needle. One—two—three—four. We inhale together. We speak together, not loud, not pretty. Red Ladle. Steady Hand. Quick Spoon. Rope Gate. Tin Ladle. Pale Thread. Ink Nail. Ash Poppy.
The ring swells a finger-width, warmth climbing my calves like water that learned manners. The hatch hears names and refuses their bowls the way a snob refuses soup and calls it a diet. The steam brightens at the tunnel mouth; the mirrors tease the edge of the ring; the clock ticks like a heart with opinions.
I touch the knife carving with my fingertips. Not pressing. Greeting.
"Two truths," I tell the stone, because somewhere, once, a door listened when honesty knocked. "We won't give names to paper or stone. We leave doors open; we return for three."
Stone is not a person. It still has preferences. The carved hand goes warm the way a rock does when sun finds it by accident.
The ink on the jamb shivers. The dispatch slate in Syth's bag hums. The steam nudges closer like a child who says it doesn't want a story and will be furious if you stop telling it.
"Speak to pass," the hatch says in a voice like grinding. "Fee: one name."
"Not mine," I say, and the stone doesn't laugh, which I appreciate.
The mirror-thrower's bars push at the ring. I feel my knees vote wrong. Kirella's palm is a vote that matters.
Nim's count is not here. I hear it anyway. One—two—three—four.
We draw breath as one.
We start a bowl-name chorus anyway—soft, stubborn, breath-led—because bowls are the names a city gives itself when it wants to eat and not be eaten.
"Red Ladle," I say into the ring.
"Steady Hand," Kirella says with me.
"Quick Spoon," Syth adds, knife resting, eyes hard.
"Rope Gate," Ira follows, the knot in his fist remembering why it is a knot.
"Tin Ladle," "Pale Thread," "Ink Nail," "Ash Poppy," the four behind us say in voices that learn strength as they spend it.
The hatch doesn't open.
It doesn't close.
It listens.
Behind us, the paired mirrors brighten, slice thin lines through the steam, draw bars on nothing and think that will matter. The Time-Tax ticks toward D-0 like a mouth counting coins it didn't earn. The ring at our feet goes a shade deeper than I knew it could, as if the lantern found a second bottom.
"Two breaths," Kirella says again, for me or the stone or himself. It doesn't matter.
We inhale.
We exhale.
And the chapter ends there, with a stone hatch waiting for a price we refuse to pay, a chorus of bowls raised against a door that wants blood, paired mirrors painting the dark, and a clock that believes in taxes more than people.
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