Kirella's breath is warm at my temple. One—two—three—four.
I jump.
Air pulls at my coat. I draw a razor-thin seam with my toe as I fall, a warm circle waiting for my feet. The ring catches. I land on keep.
The page's brush kisses slate.
I don't cut. I tap—back of the Scythe, a soft knock to the page's wrist. The stroke skews. Ink splashes off the curve and blooms like a dark flower on the priest's white sleeve. His mouth makes a small O, then flattens into the smile proud men wear when they want to pretend they planned an accident.
He reaches to "correct" the curve.
"Don't," I say, and step between his hand and the slate.
Two orderlies surge, batons high. Close is where I live.
First swing—inside line, shaft bind, hip turn, knee tap—his baton clatters, his shin finds the tile, his breath leaves. Second tries to catch my ear with glass. Kirella's cloak eats the arc; his shoulder bumps the man backward into the table leg, a polite seat.
The priest recovers fast. He flicks his fingers and a fan of glass filaments hisses toward my face like a spider hungry for a story. I keep the Scythe short. Low arc, under, then up—threads snap with a sound like frost breaking on reeds. One filament slithers close to my cheekbone; I pay a finger's length of blade for the clearance, the cost pricking along my wrist like too-cold water. The last thread breaks. His hand is abruptly empty of tricks.
"Blasphemy," he says, which is the name men give anything that ignores their script.
I kick the slate table toward the tiny ring I left under its leg. The table hesitates on the circle's lip, then chooses the only honest thing left and slides.
"Now," Syth says somewhere below, and yanks the brake.
From the pit, water rises a hand—not a flood, a dunk. The slate drops into the rim and takes the priest's neat curves with it. Ink blooms and then breaks apart in the churn, a thought unthinking itself. The mirror lattice overhead tries to focus on nothing and looks foolish about it. The loudspeakers stutter—MI— becomes M— becomes a cough the room refuses to share.
The second captive on the trolley spasms as the priest, suddenly out of poetry, makes a choking gesture. The collar pleats at their throat tighten.
"Here," I say, and set the Scythe in my palm like it's a very patient knife. Brine seam along the paper lip—thin, careful. The pleats remember water and wilt. "Lift," I tell Kirella, and he slides both hands under the captive's shoulders and neck with the respect of a man laying a table with his best plate. The collar comes free into my hand like a ribbon that learns shame too late.
The audience murmurs in careful outrage. Masks tilt. Gloves flutter. Up on the rim, I hear Ira's boots and the creak of a trolley being made to fly.
The priest plants his feet at the edge of the ring and calls to the ceiling as if the ceiling were a friend. The mirror grid, injured, attempts one last bite. Light draws tight, hard, hungry—
"Breathe," Kirella says, and I do.
A trapdoor flips behind me with a cheerful clack. A stitch-chimp drops through, mouth sewn into a grin it never earned. It lunges for the captive's ankles. I nick its forearm on the way in—the smallest kiss, more gift than pain.
One—two—three—four.
On four, I pull. The wrong animal unstrings and folds into the pit like a puppet allowed to stop. No mess. No victory. Just done.
The priest beckons for a new slate with an offended sigh. A page acolyte from the wings hustles in with a second board, eyes huge above his half-mask.
Syth stamps WORD=WAIT onto the fresh stand's hinge from the rim with a clean crack. The hinge locks. The page blinks at a table that has suddenly learned boundaries.
Alarms find their adult voice—no longer polite chimes but a bell with a temper. The rim marshal appears at the aisle with two more orderlies in tow, mouths full of the word stop. Kirella moves into them like a gentleman who prefers the dance done properly: wrist lock to wall, baton turned into a hat no one wants to wear, "Drop," said softly enough to sound like advice.
"Take them," Ira calls from the rim. He's heaved the first captive into the shadow by the hatch. Syth's fingers spider dance over a brake wheel I don't want to know she can charm. "Hatch now," she snaps. "Water stays at one hand."
The crowd has found a chant—low, trained. The priest lifts his hands to conduct them, a conductor in a theater that confuses lighting cues with miracles. "MI— intact," he intones, because rehearsal loves its lines.
Myor's voice rolls over the amphitheater like oil warmed in the pan. "Stay, little red," he says, not unkind. "You break beautifully when watched."
"Not tonight," I say, and my mouth tastes like iron and stubborn.
We drift toward the under-stage hatch, the four of us now five with the second captive, trolleys scraping, boots ringing on tile that can't decide which master to please. The rim marshal shakes loose of honesty and lunges again. I hook his baton with the Scythe's curve and step inside—a small step to turn his shoulders the wrong way and show his legs there are better hobbies than standing. He sits, expresses an opinion about the floor, and thinks about careers.
"Fire," someone shouts above the drums. It is the kind of word that moves money. Emergency shutters thud into motion—iron mouths descending from the ceiling to chew the aisles into neat lengths.
"Move," Kirella says.
We move.
The first shutter slams between us and the priest's little court. Good. The second starts to bite the space between our trolley and the hatch.
"Ira!" Syth's voice from the belly. "Now!"
He grabs the first captive like a bundle and drops through the hatch with the grace of a man tossing himself into a promise. The second shutter kisses the top of the trolley and pushes it toward the rim gap. The gap narrows. I see the problem and so does Kirella at the same time.
He shoves me and the trolley through. The rim takes my hip, the ring seam takes my feet, the captive's breath takes a new path. Syth's hand catches the trolley's handle from below with fingers that look small and are not.
Metal slams down where Kirella was standing.
"—Kirella!" I say, and the word hits iron and has to learn to be quiet.
A grate in the shutter lets air and voices through without dignity. Through it I see him turn his head, jaw tight, cloak brushing his knee. Syth is topside with him, back pressed to the iron, shard bright in her fist. Orderlies and the rim marshal regroup at the far end, very interested in two problems that think well.
Myor's voice changes register, loses the audience silk, keeps the smile. "Bring me the lantern's girl," he says, as if suggesting a dessert. "The rest may keep their names."
Ira's shoulder is under the second captive now, his breath like rope. Water snakes around my ankles in the under-stage corridor, cold and stubborn. The drums are louder down here, and the boat's bones speak in creaks.
The Scythe tugs at my palm—lengthen, it asks, sweet as a bad idea. I refuse. The blade stays short. Control stays mine. The ache in my wrist sits down like a dog too eager to be helpful.
Above, through the grate, Kirella looks down where he knows my eyes will be. He doesn't shape the words; he gives me only air: one—two—three—four—the count breathed as if it belonged to the world before language.
"We share the number," I say to iron and water and the woman I still am beneath all the work.
Two paths wait in the under-stage belly: left toward the supply quay—rope, crates, a short dock where a small boat might forget to be watched—or right back under the stage, wheelhouse and drum, the route Syth opened to dunk our trouble that can be made to misbehave louder.
"Go!" Syth shouts through the grate. "Go left!"
"Or," Ira says in a voice that knows how much things weigh, "break the drum and reunite."
The shutter groans as some lock remembers a glory it was promised. Topside boots scrape. The priest begins to sing again with fewer mirrors and more pride. The audience tries very hard to believe him.
Water kisses my ankles with cold priorities. The lantern hums we in my palm, heavier-good, as if to say choose is also a promise.
I look once through the grate. Kirella's hand is there for the length of one heartbeat, palm to iron, as if that counted for touching. I press my hand to the cold on my side. Warmth passes, thin and enough.
"Count me," I whisper.
His mouth doesn't move. The breath does. One—two—three—four.
I turn.
Left is light and exit and breath that isn't bought. Right is the drum and the stage and the line they want to finish on someone's throat while the city watches.
Myor's voice floats sweet as a bell above old blood. "She won't decide," he tells the room like a magician explaining a trick that failed. "But she will."
The corridor forks.
I pull the scythe close, red crescent no bigger than a kitchen hook, and draw a thin ring seam across the under-stage stones between left and right, a line that says we whichever way we go.
"Choose," Ira says, steady, not pushing.
I breathe once, twice, and count the third with my heel.
And the chapter holds there—water at our ankles, shutters settled, two captives breathing, Syth and Kirella above with iron and orderlies, Myor's voice sugar-slick through grates, the priest pretending ink can swim, the ring warm under my boots—while the fork waits and the count in my blood reaches four.