Ash sticks to my knees where the kiln floor remembers fire. The joker grin on the doorframe is still wet; charcoal glistens like an idea that wants trouble.
"Smell the hinge," I tell the scouts, blade short, soles on my ring. "Brine ate it. Lockwright make. We cut traps, not throats."
Third Moon, ankle wrapped in my sleeve, can't help himself. "They—"
Ash-Fletch's ear flicks and the boy swallows his thanks like a seed he's not allowed to plant yet. Stone-Reed's gaze slides past my hands to the chain marks in the dirt, back to my strip of cloth on the kid's leg. Pride and truth wrestle behind his eyes with no audience but us.
The kiln's mouth darkens—not with cloud, with paper.
A net drops from the arch—pleats slick with mirror dust, a lace of fine cords meant to take a shape and make it someone else's. It spreads to catch all three of us—wolves and red girl and count-man the net didn't bother to learn the name of.
It should hit me first.
I step sideways and up, scythe shaft lifting like a bar under a falling curtain—and choose. Not my head. Ash-Fletch's.
"Down," I say, and she listens because instinct knows when a voice has floor in it. I give the tırpan one handspan more—an inch of sin—and slice across two load cords where they pretend to be air. The cut bites clean. My palm stings at the cost; a small tremor taps the heel of my hand like a memory of cold. The net slumps short and veers, skating my shoulder instead of her face. Dust hisses across stone. Names push and find mine busy standing on a ring that says we; the pressure thins to nose-tickle and goes sulk.
Stone-Reed lunges for Third Moon. Kirella throws the cloak over both and shoves them clear, the cloth drinking dust the way a towel drinks steam. His breath finds my ear—one—two—three—four—and the tremor in my palm remembers who's in charge.
Two stringers in dull coats rush the kiln mouth, masks painted with the same cheap grin as the door. Sap gloves on their hands, cudgels at their hips, a coil of oath-rope borrowed badly from wolves.
First one swings the cudgel low for my knee like he learned fighting from books that lied. I hook the tırpan behind the wood, turn my hip, tap his knee with mine and lay him on the chalk with enough respect to keep his pride alive for later. His breath leaves in a soft oof that thinks it's a protest. He reaches for his rope; I step on it with a boot that learned about ropes from better teachers.
Second tries to use the kiln wall to trap Kirella. It is a mistake he will get to explain to his future self. Kirella's hands figure-four a wrist, cheek-to-wall, neat; the sap glove squeaks against old stone in surrender. Kirella steals the rope and ties the man with his own coil, keeper's knot almost right, almost wrong—enough to hold while it insults its thief by being better.
The wolves watch us take hits meant for them. Suspicion thins; pride reroutes itself into something that looks like consideration.
Ash-Fletch bares her teeth—less threat than ritual. "You walk under our watch," she says, voice rough with decision. "Not free. Not prey. Watched."
Stone-Reed ties no-blood knots at our wrists. In front, loose, enough to say guest without saying guest. Kirella offers his hands without complaint. Cloth bites my skin with the kind of welcome you give a stranger you might one day miss.
Third Moon stands straighter and then winces when his ankle remembers. I pass him a strip of salve Lelia would scold me for rationing. He pretends not to be grateful in the way boys pretend when there are older eyes.
We leave the kiln. Pre-dawn threads the pines. Resin bells tick like slow moths. The ring warmth under my heels dims with every step the light remembers to take. The blade knows daylight is coming and tugs, wanting more than I'll give it. I keep it short. I keep myself.
We follow a deer track under the canopy, Stone-Reed in front, Ash-Fletch behind, Third Moon limping between like a question. The lantern hums low enough to be mistaken for forest. Holy glass from the city begins to find the resin bells and turn them into rude mirrors. My window narrows: at full day I'll have ten minutes total of edge before the light taxes every choice.
"Blade budget," I murmur.
Kirella answers with the number we both know and hate. "Ten."
"Footwork then," I say. He tips a shoulder: always.
We crest a ridge where the trees thin and the ground forgets to be generous. The trail narrows to a spine with bracken on either side that wants to be a good hiding place when it grows up. Stone-Reed lifts a hand—halt. He squints at a set of scuffed leaves that tell a story to noses before they tell a story to eyes.
Too late.
The brush mat ahead of us grins and drops. Not deep—a smile pit—but lined with oath-rope set on pegs like a bad harp. The joke is older than trees. The punchline is new. We don't fall far. We fall enough.
Ash-Fletch lands cat-keen and swears with a word that means rope in a language that likes teeth. Kirella goes down with me and twists to take wall, not edge. The ropes grab our ankles with borrowed manners and try to teach us how to be parcels.
The stringers who thought this was clever pop up along the ridge—two, maybe three, paint-smiles on their faces, sap gloves, a small pot of something that fizzles like laughter trying to be smoke.
"Cut pegs, not ropes," I say, and the tırpan is all obedience for once. I hook a rope peg, post my knee behind a second, reap with a short jab that snaps the wood without slicing wolf-made cord. The net slackens and Ash-Fletch rolls free, already reaching for Stone-Reed's shoulder to yank him through. Kirella hauls her by the back of her harness with the cloak as drag; she snarls on principle and accepts the help because principle won't pull you out of a pit.
The laugh pot fizzes and coughs a cloud of resin smoke salted with mirror dust. It tastes like someone else's giggle in my mouth. Wolves cough and snarl; Stone-Reed blinks hard, fury dampened by an idiot joy he didn't order. The dust presses soft on my name like a friend with bad advice.
I plant a ring coin under my heel and stand on the word we. The pressure thins. My blade hand trembles anyway—spend plus daylight telling nerves to remember they are meat. Kirella's palm finds my wrist, count at the pulse—one—two—three—four—and the tremor becomes something I can put on a shelf for later.
A stringer tries to mask Kirella, cloth laced with mirror threads. I lift the shaft and bar his forearms, twist, tap his knee and seat him like a child who asked a table to be a chair and the table decided to be indulgent. No cut. No sermon. He gets to keep his future.
A heavier shadow lands from a pine—tall, balanced, the kind of man who learned how to move other people before he learned how to move himself. His mask is not paint; it is a glaze, hard and cold, joker grin baked into glass. The coil in his hand is oath-rope, and his fingers know it too well.
He snaps the rope across our wrists with a keeper's knot you only learn by tying one when you're allowed to, or by stealing from someone who was. It bites and then relaxes into a hold that says not prey, not pack—kept in a way that mocks the word we taught the city.
Stone-Reed lunges and gets sapped—a clean, cruel pop to the side of the neck that folds men who don't deserve it. Ash-Fletch staggers, smoke cutting high into the soft place behind her eyes. Third Moon shouts a pup's curse that doesn't know yet how to be anything but brave.
Kirella turns into the rope with his shoulders set to break, not bones, but pride. The taller joker moves with him, a puppeteer who grew up to like the job. "Easy," he purrs through porcelain. "Delivery pays either way."
From the brush, two small mules in leaf-cloth rigging creak into view, a forest sled at their hips. The rig is quiet, clever, rude. The stringers haul us together onto the slats, lantern between our hands because even thieves sometimes give you the thing you need to keep from burning.
Ash-Fletch lunges again; two more stringers interpose, not brave, but paid. Wolves arrive at the ridge mouth by mouth—horns answering low—then don't close, because Third Moon limps and they choose him first.
"Good," the tall mask says, amused. "Loyalty helps the billable hours."
He gives a whistle between teeth not his, and the mules lean into their straps. The sled hisses over needles and climbs the far side of the smile pit with the ugly grace of something that wins just by existing.
Ash-Fletch makes a promise with her eyes that has teeth. Stone-Reed shakes his head at her, once, small, a language that means wait and also means not like this.
Kirella breathes the count in my ear because the rope is a conversation and he hates rude ones. One—two—three—four. The lantern warms between our palms, the good-heavy of we stretched thin and not yet breaking.
The forest opens as the slope drops; the sled crests a cut in the pines and the ground below spreads into a moon-marked clearing—totems in rings, oath stones stacked in spirals, a dark den gate yawning like an old mouth with secrets. The air inside the circle is warmer, as if bodies chose to believe heat into it.
The tall mask tilts his head, amused, like a man showing a parlor trick to people who hate parlors.
"You wanted an audience," he says. The grin never changes; the voice smiles anyway.
Ash-Fletch's howl rips the morning thin from the ridge behind us, answered by a dozen voices you should not meet at noon. Third Moon's note sits inside it like a bright thread that refuses to be cut. Stone-Reed's horn calls something I don't yet know how to translate.
Daylight licks the resin bells until they flash like bad altar lights. My ten minutes shrink toward nine, toward eight.
I look down at the rope on our wrists. It is wolf-made and wrong on me. I look at the ring-stone in my pocket and the ticket with needle over waves folded in Kirella's cloak. Land has us. Sea waits. Choices are patient and cruel.
The sled noses into the clearing. Wolves pour down the far slope, a gray river with rules. The den gate breathes a draft that tastes like old smoke and decisions you do not get to make twice.
We stop on smooth earth packed hard by years of paws. The tall mask gestures at the gate like a host with a door and a joke. "Step lively," he says. "The Alpha doesn't nap for nobodies."
Kirella flexes his hands against the rope, not to break it—yet—but to tell his wrists he hasn't forgotten their names. His shoulder touches mine. The count is there, quiet, stubborn. One—two—three—four.
"Together," I say, small, so I don't waste air.
"Together," he answers.
The mask turns to me, head cocked. "Smile," he suggests, tone cheerful as a bill.
I don't.
And the chapter ends there—on the sled at the edge of the Alpha's ground, wolves gathering with law in their throats, a joker grinning through fired clay, day sharpening every mirror, my tırpan held short with the ring warm under our joined hands, and the rope between our wrists making a promise I plan to teach how to keep properly.