The conduit wants to be a throat that swallows.
Surge rumor trembles in the iron ribs. The mirror sills gleam along both walls, ankle-high, thin as opinions. Up-tunnel, a wagon lantern grows the way a moth grows—by wanting more of its own fire. A stitched ear rides the crate behind it, smug and neat.
"Left ledge," Ira says, already moving.
"Hands on rope," Kirella adds, palm still over mine on the lantern. The touch steadies my ribs like a thumb over a teacup that wants to rattle.
We slide onto the ledge—brick only two feet wide—bodies tilted toward the rope line Ira slung. The freed six cling with the careful stubbornness of people who remember falling. I throw a fat ring across the floor, heel to heel, a warm belt ready to take the first slap of water so ankles won't.
Syth stamps WORD on the closest sill—WAIT—and the reflection blurs like a mirror offended by fog. She hits a second sill before the pole of light arrives.
The surge comes. Not a wall—first a tongue, testing. It spills shallow over the ring. Warmth spreads thin and holds. Ankles spare themselves; knees consider gratitude.
The wagon bumps through the buffer, driver squinting into his own luck. Ira flicks rope; the snub bites the axle like a patient dog. The wheel stutters; the wagon skews. Kirella steps from the ledge and takes the driver down without malice—one forearm across the chest, a twist, a floor that forgets to be a friend.
Syth is already at the Doctor crate, knife under latch. The ear sigil hums when she pries—soft at first, then lower, the pitch of a cellar door trying to say a name. She lifts the lid a hand-span.
Inside: vials in padded nests, glass throats like pleated cones, rolled papers printed with lips and formulas. The hum leans toward me, alive as mold, and goes mi—
My skull fills with bells.
"Floor," Kirella says, a breath from my cheek, blocking the mirror bar that tries to write my knees into apology. I lower the lantern until brass kisses brick and pull a diagonal ring through the crate's mouth. Warmth fogs the vials. The hum stumbles, then slurs into something that sounds like a coughing kettle instead of my beginning.
"What is it?" Ira asks, already bracing against the next tremor.
"Voice grafts," Syth says, face flat. "They sample, then replay to write on stone from far away. Names by courier."
The mirror-thrower has learned the tunnel. He mounts his mirrors on a pole, angles one at cheek height, one at ankle. The two bars search for geometry I forgot to hate.
I drop a second ring—slanted, crossing the first like a sash. The cheek bar smears. The ankle bar finds Kirella's boot and loses interest there because his patience is heavier than reflected light.
"Pepper," Syth mutters. She jams a cone at the pole's base, sparks it. Pepper-mint smoke climbs like a cat onto a lap it has decided is its own. The thrower coughs and strips a hand back from the pole; the triangles wobble.
"Break the sills," Kirella says.
Ira hunches to the nearest plate, drives brine into the seam with a steel wedge. Paper backing remembers it was paper. Syth slaps WAIT at the sill's lip; the mirror skin wrinkles. I keep a broad warm belt across the floor while they work. Two plates delaminate with a wet-tin sound and lie there as polite junk.
Behind the wagon—of course—there's a link cart with three bodies tied to the rail by paper straps, collars pleated under the jaw and ink-threaded into a stamp block. Their eyes are careful: hope with its hand on the doorknob, ready to pretend it never visited.
"Choir," I say, and we make the sound that isn't a sound—two breaths together. The brine needle kisses pleat seams, one, two, three. Paper relaxes. Collars fall like bad habits.
Syth passes slips through: Crooked Pin, Moss Thread, Blue Soot. The new names sit in palms like warm stones. The ring seam under our feet swells a finger in approval.
A pipe cadet—not more than sixteen, cap crooked, badge pin fake-bright—skids into view from a side hatch, panic making his elbows loud. He raises a baton and forgets what to do with it.
Kirella meets him halfway, pins him with more gravity than force, and peels the baton from his hand like a splinter. The boy's eyes go wild, then ashamed, then sixteen again.
"Don't," I tell Kirella softly. He's not doing anything wrong. It still matters to say it.
I offer the cadet a bowl-name slip. He reads the words twice before his mouth tries them. "Ledger Nail," he says, hating how much it suits him.
"Show us Switch Yard 3," Syth says. "You know where the panic levers live."
He nods, swallowed by necessity. "This way," he whispers, and the siphon in the ceiling tastes the word. He winces at the chalk.
We drag the Doctor crate into the ring seam and lift. It is heavy with wrong. The pleated throats inside rustle like a dress that never meant anything good.
The conduit widens where Switch Yard 3 sits—a node with diverter rails scribed into the floor and a mirror mast bolted to a platform. Levers stand in handsome pairs as if they enjoy being chosen.
"Then this," the cadet says, finger trembling toward a pair of handles. "Left lever sends wagons to the holding loop; right posts All Clear upstream." He swallows. "They never pull both."
"They do now," Syth says, and throws both like a woman recommending a soup you didn't know you craved. Rails thunk. Far up-tunnel, a bell answers wrong. On the mast, mirrors try to swivel; Kirella whips rope around it and leans back, anchor and man in one.
I draw a keep-arch across the node—low, tight, stubborn. The warm curve sits over us like a borrowed roof. The Doctor crate twitches and hums mi— again as if annoyed that my beginning is not available to rent. I paint brine dots on the lips of each pleated throat and they wilt, modest at last.
Syth digs for paper. She pulls a dispatch slip from the crate: voice graft samples → Rainhouse. She chalk-rubs cylinder serials up her sleeve, quick and neat, and tucks two vials deeper under the warm sash of my ring where they can't hear.
The floors ping—a metallic note with no patience.
Ledger Nail's breath goes short. "Purge cycle," he says, and the siphon taxes the word again. "Scalding flush—safety protocol."
Red lamps blink down-tunnel like eyes trying not to cry.
"There," the cadet adds, pointing to a low purge culvert hatch set into the wall. "It dumps to overflow—safe if you get inside. It wants a fee."
Syth slaps WORD = WAIT at the hatch seam. The letters print warm; the hatch hesitates, polite, and still refuses. On the jamb: SPEAK TO PASS. FEE: ONE NAME.
"Again," she says.
I pull our last echo-stone from Syth's pocket—flat, dark, humming a syllable it stole from nobody important. I set it inside a tight ring on the culvert floor. The lantern warms it; the humming turns to a we-tone like a choir learning a note they didn't know they could reach.
"Bowl-name chorus," I say, low, because the room taxes everything and we'll make it pay us back in patience.
Kirella's count threads the steam. One—two—three—four. We inhale together. We speak together, soft and wrong for stone and correct for us: Red Ladle. Steady Hand. Quick Spoon. Rope Gate. Tin Ladle. Pale Thread. Ink Nail. Ash Poppy. Crooked Pin. Moss Thread. Blue Soot. Ledger Nail.
The toll niche prints a chalk line that wants to say NAME and settles for KEEP. Under it, DEFERRED curls like a tail.
The hatch unlatches a hand-span.
Behind us, the flush roar grows from rumor to sermon. The whole tunnel vibrates. The mirror mast groans and tears rope splinters from Kirella's palm. He doesn't let go. He doesn't swear. He plants his feet in my ring and becomes patience with bones.
"Through," Ira says, voice at the edge of nothing.
We funnel people: the freed, the new, the cadet, the crate—no, not the crate; we strip the vials and leave the wood, because some things deserve to rot in their own pride. Syth scoops the pleated throats into the SORRY bucket and slaps a lid on their hunger.
Heat shivers the air; the first spray kisses the ring and turns from slap to mist. The culvert space is small and wrong and will be right enough if we earn it with breath.
I set one palm to the lantern and one to the hatch stone and say a truth I think doors respect: "We return for three."
The chalk above the niche ghosts a circle: KEEP, three dots under it like seeds.
The hatch opens another inch. Steam sighs past my shoulder. Mirror bars scrape along the floor behind us, thin as regret, bright as intent.
"Eyes floor," Kirella says, thumb brushing my knuckles. For a heartbeat my whole day fits between bone and brass and a voice that isn't bossy, just true.
We squeeze the first bodies through—Tin Ladle, Pale Thread, Ink Nail—shoulders sideways, breath held on four. The culvert swallows their silhouettes. Ash Poppy ducks. Ledger Nail glances at me like a boy about to cheat on a test and then chooses courage instead.
The warning bell pings one last time before the roar becomes the only word the pipe knows.
I draw the ring deeper. It drags back, hungry for two hands. Kirella gives it his without letting go of mine.
Heat washes our shins. The mirror mast snaps a bolt. The triangle bars lunge.
The hatch gives us one more inch like a miser deciding generosity will not kill him, probably.
"Go," Kirella says, and I do not argue, which is my version of trusting him.
And the chapter ends there—with the purge bloom burning white down the conduit, the mirror bars cutting for ankles we refuse to lend, the culvert mouth open just enough for faith, and a chalk KEEP mark on the wall promising the tunnel a debt paid in we, not I.
--------------------------------------------
If this chapter kept you reading, please Add to Library and drop a Comment — your support keeps the updates daily!