The latch makes one more eager click.
"Let it," Syth breathes.
I pull a hair-thin ring across the sill with my toe—just a whisper of warmth to teach hinge and jamb a new preference. When the Red Glove tech outside gives his tool that final proud twist, the door obeys the wrong love and swings inward—into us.
He pitches forward with a surprised grunt. I meet his wrist with the shaft of my tırpan, not the edge, slide, turn, and set his elbow—gentle enough not to break pride or bone, firm enough to end argument. Kirella is already on the second tech: cloak over face, heel sweep, rope loop, knot that will hold until it decides to forgive. Ira eases the first down and tucks him under the bench. Syth gags both with tidy cloth and steals a glove badge plus a tool pouch no one will miss until they've written a report about not missing it.
"Badge left, pouch right," she says, clipping them to my belt and Kirella's. "Smile like you don't know how."
"I don't," I say.
"That's the smile," she says, and slips the shard into her sleeve.
We step out onto the catwalk. The cab rocks once and settles, relieved to be rid of us. Black water glides below in long, patient sheets. The Needlehouse's rim waits ahead—red awnings, iron ribs, lanterns like eyes that learned manners. Far below, the amphitheater hums with masked breath.
Syth palms a WAIT coin onto the catwalk sensor. Its little red eye goes thoughtful. "Log frozen," she murmurs. We move.
The rim corridor smells like phenol and new money. A marshal at a small gate looks up with the weary suspicion of a man who has caught a dozen lies and hopes for one more to keep his skills sharp.
"Credentials," he says.
Syth offers a folded strip. "Kitchen route," she says. "Brown Apron. Two crates ahead, two behind."
His gaze snags on the bottom pleat, one fold too proud. I let the tırpan's kiss shave a thread, barely a breath. Paper settles into the shape it should have been all along.
The marshal grunts, satisfied the world remains a system. He waves us through. "No dawdling. Choir's on time."
We don't dawdle.
The corridor opens to the rim above the amphitheater. The mirror lattice on the ceiling makes a silver web that wants to pull all light toward the stage's slate like a tide into a mouth. Syth points at two junction boxes; I nod and take the left. The brine needle bites into the seam with a soft complaint. A line of damp runs where glue remembers its mother. Syth stamps WAIT with the plate on a brass brace. The lattice hum lowers half a note—less holy, more machine.
An orderly with a baton rounds the curve and frowns at the smell of brine. He is young enough to still believe tools prove he is right.
"Inspection," he says.
"Yours?" I ask, and step into his reach.
He raises the baton. I catch under his wrist with the curve, circle, hip turn, and put him on the floor with a dignity-saving quiet. Kirella lifts his cloak to block sightlines from the stands. Syth rolls the unconscious man behind a maintenance crate without malice. We leave him gummed to the tile with a thumbprint-sized WAIT under his heel. He will stand up later and not know why his night felt honest for a change.
We slide along the rim to a low scent chimney painted to look like part of the wall. Syth pops the cover and peers into a throat lined with gauze and ambition. "Agreement perfume," she says. "People breathe, and their yes forgets how to say no."
"Fixable?" Kirella asks.
She flips the duct collar so the draft reverses. I light a pepper-mint cone; Syth seats it and sets the cap with a twist that says obey. The chimney inhales itself and coughs like a liar caught in a small room.
A shadow unhooks from the ceiling—stitch-chimp, the kind of thing that makes you angry at whoever had the idea. It drops for my face with a clever little sound like it learned delight from a hinge. I step in and let the tırpan's edge nick the soft inside of its forearm as it grabs. It doesn't know it's hurt. It bares too many teeth and reaches again.
Kirella's thumb presses against my knuckles where the lantern sits in my hand. One—two—three—four.
On four I pull. The nick becomes a decision. The creature unstrings in the neat, humble way of a toy that realizes the game is over. It drops into the service pit with a soft thud. No mess. No thrill. Just no.
Syth wipes her hands. "Good."
We cut into a side ward—white sheets, steel beds, a trolley with a person on it who is trying to be brave by not being anything at all. A half-collar pulses at their throat, paper pleats tucked under iron like a ribbon that doesn't belong to the neck it adorns.
"Hey," I say, the voice I use for soup. "We're taking this off."
I run a brine seam along the pleats. Paper remembers it is not law. The collar wilts and loosens. I lift it away like a bad necklace. The person exhales as if giving up a debt.
"Name," Syth whispers, eyes soft on their face but sharp on the corridor.
The captive swallows once. "Spindle Hand," they say, and a faint smile touches their mouth at the sound of a bowl that could be theirs.
Syth tucks a BOWL-NAME ONLY slip into their palm as if it were a coin that buys a road. Kirella presses a small KEEP stamp against the ward threshold where bare feet will touch later. Ira lifts Spindle Hand as if they were a bundle of thread he means to deliver with pride.
"Go home when it's quiet," he tells them. "Doors marked KEEP will know you."
We slide back to the rim. The page stands near the priest-surgeon with a slate that does more than a slate should; a wire snakes from its back to a console set under the rim arch, the kind of device that looks like it would argue if it could find a tongue.
"There," Syth says.
I kneel by the console and pull a ring seam along the floor, narrow as a breath. The lantern's glow settles into the seam and makes the tile feel like it belongs to us. Syth lets the shard breathe on three and lays it against a spring. The lock inside the box thinks about childhood and gives. She unplugs the relay lead and flips a switch that doesn't love being flipped. Down on the stage, the priest sings "MI—" and for the first time the sound stutters, not much, just enough to prove the universe can be told to wait.
A soft chime khh-khh-khh wakes along the rim like a cricket with ideas. Alarm. Not the loud one. The polite one that tries to let you shame yourself into compliance.
"Neighbors," Kirella says, and steps into the mouth of the corridor just as two orderlies and the rim marshal arrive together, a tidy bundle of authority.
"Stop," the marshal says, because of course he does.
I step to meet the first orderly. He jabs high. I set the tırpan's shaft against his wrist, lift, tap the knee, and his baton becomes someone else's problem. The someone else is me for a second. I slide it back under his arm and seat him against the wall, breathing on the count so I don't get greedy.
The second swings for Syth. Kirella moves like a door that never squeaks: figure-four on the wrist, a turn into the wall, the baton knocking itself silly on stone. "Drop," he says, and the word is a gift the man accepts with relief.
The marshal tries to step past Ira. It does not go well for the marshal. Ira lifts him by the belt and one sleeve and sets him down facing a different future. Syth stamps WAIT under their boots with the plate and their shoes learn a love of stubborn letters.
"Under-stage," Syth says.
We find the hatch beneath a row of seats—a trapdoor hiding behind polite carpet. It opens on a ladder of riveted iron that drops into a belly thick with winches and rope drums and the breath of machines that think they are above people. I set three small ring-stones on the rungs—one, three, five—like a poem for feet to remember. Ira clips a rope to a beam; Kirella threads it through a pulley and makes a tie that would make a captain nod.
From below, the drums swell. Above, the lattice glints. The polite chime sharpens.
Then the PA purrs and every hair on my arms decides to stand up and be counted.
"Live," the voice says, smooth and near. "We are live."
Myor.
He speaks like a man teaching a glass to sing. "Honored witnesses," he croons, as if the word honored had not learned to be afraid. "Tonight we present a composite patient of exceptional promise. MI— will remain intact. Red gloves, breathe on the count."
Down on the stage, a second trolley rolls into the ring—another person, another set of wrong pleats waiting to wear the word like a crown. The priest lifts a hand like a knife being polite. The page looks up at the lattice as if asking for permission. The slate already shows MI— painted clean across the top in a neat hand, hungry for its next curl.
The lantern grows heavier in my palm, a weight I know and welcome. The mirror grid, wounded, still throws light like it wants to pour us into a shape that does not belong to us.
Myor's voice shifts, less performance, more delight. "And," he says, warm as a lie told over soup, "a note for my colleagues: the red girl's signature is in the room. Be extra careful with the slate."
Kirella's hand finds my elbow without looking like it did. His thumb starts the count at my pulse. One—two—three—four.
"I can take the wheelhouse and flood the stage a finger," Syth whispers, already kneeling by a brake. "Enough to dunk a slate, not enough to drown a witness."
"Or," Ira says, eyes on the ladder, "we leave with one good rescue and all these nodes hobbled. Come back with a better plan than luck and anger."
On the stage, the priest's hand dips. The page's brush poises. The next stroke will turn MI— into MIsomething, and once it's written, stone and paper will start to agree and then people will, because people are polite to what's been written.
I step to the rim rail.
From here the amphitheater is a bowl full of careful cruelty. Masks gleam. Gloves flutter. The page's small finger curls, ready to help the brush make the next curve. The priest smiles at the slate like a man smiling at his god.
Kirella breathes at my temple. "Count me."
"We share the number," I say.
The tırpan wants. I give it a finger's length, no more. The cost sits down where it should, obedient for now. The ring under my feet warms as if to say if we are doing this, do it on proper ground.
Syth's hand hovers over the brake. Ira braces the rope for a descent we might need to make fast or never.
Below, the page draws breath. The brush lowers.
"Now," Kirella says, meaning choose, not hurry.
I coil, knees soft, shoulders quiet, blade low.
The priest begins the stroke.
And the chapter holds there—me ready to jump into the heat of the light or drop into the dark belly to break the drum; the slate about to accept a curve that isn't allowed yet; Myor's voice warm as a hand you shouldn't take; Syth's finger over iron; Ira's rope steady; Kirella's count in my blood; the ring under my boots saying keep—while the bristles kiss the slate and the audience makes a small, ugly sound that means they think they are witnessing something holy.