Stairs wheel up like a spine that learned to count.
We climb in fours—one, two, three, four—lantern low, ring drawn thin along the inner riser where soles can find it. The egress door behind us gives one last complaint at the ambulance's kiss and then decides to be proud about holding. Ira jams a bar two flights down—kept-knot brace—buys us minutes the Maze would rather invoice.
Syth checks the shard as we move—held between fingertips like a match, hum still on key, not leash. Good. Kirella's cloak shades my cheek when a stairwell grill breathes a square of holy-glass through dust. His thumb taps my knuckles on the lantern: one, two, three, four. I answer with breath, not mouth.
Two more turns and the stair spits us into a long chamber that thinks it is a courtroom and an abacus both.
Ledger Spine.
Counters run the length like pews. From the ceiling hang minute-chains—bead after bead of clear drops that tick into wall plinths with a sound like smug rain. A placard high on the arch informs us: MINUTES OWED. SPEAK TO SETTLE.
"Not today," I tell the floor, and run a thin sash ring along both baseboards, soft KEEP seam that quiets the itch under my skin. Kirella drifts with me, cloak up, a traveling patch of shade. The lantern's warmth sits under the seam like a low stove.
Two clerks sniff their way toward us—jackets tidy, noses lifting as if our names have a smell they've been trained to admire. They carry scent-ledgers—books with velvet clasps and little bottles tucked under the hinge; crack the book, the wick learns your breath, the page pretends consent.
Lelia's trick fits in a hand. I palm mint-pepper and a slip that reads BOWL-NAME ONLY. As the first clerk opens his ledger, Syth leans in with a smile sharp enough to hang a hat on. I dust a pinch under the book's clasp and slide the slip on top.
"Admit yourself," the clerk hums, as if generosity were his invention.
"Red Ladle," I say—only breath, no voice. The ledger gropes for true and finds the mint. It writes KEEP across its own line in a prim hand and looks momentarily betrayed by penmanship.
The second clerk meets Kirella's steady gaze and decides to love procedures instead. He opens his ledger toward Steady Hand. Mint-pepper tickles a ledger's pride. It writes KEEP too, politely useless.
"Accounting anomaly," the first says, taking a step back. Syth pats the book's cover like a dog that tried. "You're fine," she mouths.
We thread between counters. The minute-chains tick and tug, siphoning time into the wall plinths where programs sit with folded hands and sharpened teeth. I drop minute-trap coins beneath three main chains and chalk-link them to a pillar sigil. Thumb title, firm:
KEEP LEDGER.
The chain above us twitches. Its drip goes sideways into stone instead of forward into system. Not a theft—a rerouting. Do that three times and a corridor learns new habits.
"Subtle," Syth mouths.
"Hungry later," I mouth back. That's fine. We'll feed the right mouths.
We reach the Spine's far end. The only up is a glass throat in a cage, brass plaque polished enough to see your careful face: CONFESSION LIFT — ADMIT. ASCEND.
"Trap," Ira says, cheerful as soup.
The rules are simple: speak to move, pay with the sound, bank your breath to jars you'll meet later. We set different rules.
We board in threes—because return-for-three isn't just a promise; it's a rhythm that keeps people from being forgotten.
Trip One: Wool Thread, Stencil Vein, Post Hook.Trip Two: Syth, Ira, me.Trip Three: Kirella and whatever problem insists on being last.
The car smells like glass washed too clean. I lay a ring circle on the floor—thin, stubborn—so the lift mistakes warmth for load. Ira eases the brake with his thumb and a little pity. Syth stamps WORD = WAIT on the control seam where the button wants our names. The car shudders at the insult—then rises, not on confessions, on kept breath.
Halfway up, the walls thin to light. I feel the car try to charge our silence anyway; minute-chains hum behind the panels like teeth grinding in a dream. The cascade we seeded in the Spine drinks the charge instead. A clerk somewhere rings a tiny bell in panic. I pretend not to hear it.
At Floor 3, the doors think about irising and change their mind. At Floor 4, the car slows of its own piety. I press my palm to the ring and remind it we mean this. It remembers, and we pass.
Mid-shaft, metal sings the wrong note. Parallel rail. A mirror ambulance glides into view, door yawning like a too-polite bite.
Syth breathes on three, tilts the shard. The ambulance wobbles. Ira pops the grid fuse we stole into a junction box and twists. The lights hiccup. The ambulance loses a length and calls us rude without words.
Floor 6 irises open to an Audit Bay—blueprints pinned like skins, rails and grids drawn in clerkly hands, smug stamps. Two marshals stand guard—staves tipped with holy-glass, faces set to profound boredom. Kirella's cloak moves before their arms do; boredom is slow to learn danger. Syth peels a schematic scroll off the wall with a practiced, casual theft that looks like tidying. I stamp → WE on two service doors; floor signs forget who paid for them.
We reboard. The chains on the Spine below tug harder to compensate; the cascade tugs harder back. A clerk lifts a speaking tube, furious; the Doctor's voice answers, amused: "Accounting irregularities."
"Close the account," I mutter in breath and ink one more sigil on the car wall as we rise: LEDGER CLOSED BY COVENANT. The nearest chain somewhere slacks, offended. Good.
The lift opens on a stairwell marked LAUNDRY • EXHAUST. Heat breathes up, wet and honest. Soap lives in the air like a working song. Wool Thread lifts her chin, half-smile, remembering hands instead of collars. "I folded here once," she mouths. So she leads. I don't argue.
We climb three tight turns into a door with a bar scarred by too many bad mornings. I lay a coin of ring on the threshold; Kirella puts his palm to the handle; we push through into the Laundry Yard catwalk—open air, blinding bright, lines and lines of sheets snapping like flags above vats that steam like tired animals.
The light hits me with teeth. Kirella's cloak is there faster than thought. Eyes floor. I keep them there. The ring I draw on the catwalk grating is not pretty—warm footholds like coins, one after another, so fear has something to step on that isn't itself.
Below, stitched patrols fan across the yard—linen skin, neat sutures, buckets swinging like they've been asked to pretend at chores. On the roofline opposite, two marshals shade their eyes, staves glinting. At the lower gate, the ambulance noses through steam, patient as a hawk.
The shard in Syth's hand vibrates—still key, fragile.
"Anchor," Ira says. He ties a rope drop to a chimney stack with a knot that knows what it's for. Kirella checks the set, wraps the tail around his hip, then around mine, looped together in a habit that remembers the Arena without letting it run our lives.
We move along the catwalk. Steam vents cough, sheets crack, the grating sings under our boots. I lay a ring-step ladder ahead—little warm coins where a foot will want to land when a heart wants to miscount. Stencil Vein keeps pace like the body learned something on the table besides fear.
The Doctor thinks white. He reroutes steam.
It hits in a gust—blind, hot, white—turning the catwalk into a cloud with edges. Holy-glass glints from a roof mast across the yard, slitting brightness into the fog. Pain crawls over my skin the way nettles teach manners.
Kirella's thumb on my knuckles—one, two, three, four—and his shoulder is simply where my ribs would otherwise argue with light. I breathe in the count until the sting becomes a map.
Movement in the white: a stitched orderly under us, quick with a knife at the rope tail. The blade grates once—fibers part. Ira lunges, too far to catch the cut, close enough to shoulder the orderly into a sheet line that wraps him like a joke he deserves.
The rope tail flicks free, shorter than we planned.
"Time," Syth says, not a question. The ambulance at the gate whines in, glass wheels riding light, door already yawning for a tidy meal.
We go now or we don't go.
Bora is not here to shout threes. So I do.
"Wool Thread, Stencil, Post Hook—go!" I point at the rope and then at the ring coins down the catwalk, the warm steps that mean trust this.
Ira swings Wool Thread onto the line; she wraps, breathes, vanishes into steam like a line agrees with her. Stencil goes after with a face that almost smiles before it decides later is safer. Post Hook mutters something that might be a prayer and might be a joke and slides, boots finding warm when panic wants stakes.
The catwalk lurches as steam hammers the vent below. Metal croons. The marshals across the yard finally believe we are worth their morning. A bar of holy-glass knifes through white, groping for my cheek. Kirella leans into it and moves the world by a hand's breadth.
"Lift," he says, and means me.
I hook a knee in the rope, fingers tight on burn, ring-step ladder underfoot bright in my head. Syth drops beside me, shard in her fist, humming off-count three until the ambulance hesitates at the gate, confused by a tone that tells it to practice stopping.
Ira stays until last because of course he does—wedge already in hand, eyes counting patrols, hands loving rope like a promise.
Steam whiteouts again. The catwalk disappears except for my ring coins shining warm under the fog, one here, one there, a breadcrumb trail too stubborn to drift.
"Go," I tell Kirella.
"Together," he says, already moving.
We step off the catwalk as the stitched orderly's second knife finally finds the frayed tail. The rope jerks—less length than a heart expects, more swing than comfort allows.
For one blank, white beat we are hanging over heat and snapping sheets, mid-yard and mid-air, the ambulance clearing the gate below with a polite whine, the holy-glass mast across the way throwing bars through steam like someone slicing noon thin.
The rope swings. My ring coins burn like a line on water where we mean to land if the world remembers to become floor again.
The shard in Syth's hand stutters—key / leash / key—uncertain under the howl of vents. Kirella's palm is on mine over the lantern handle, both of us on the same small anchor.
"If we fall," he murmurs, so close it could be a thought, "we fall together."
"We land where we choose," I breathe.
And the scene freezes there: rope cut short, steam roaring, sheets cracking flags all around, the ambulance nosing into the yard, the holy-glass mast hunting for cheek and eye, our line swinging out over the vents toward a gap that may or may not be a walkway when the fog tears—and no safe floor in sight yet.
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