We leave the den with a road under our feet that didn't exist yesterday.
Ash-Fletch takes point with two grey coats and turns themselves into a moving shade screen—cloaks wide, shoulders angled to steal the sun. Stone-Reed runs the edge, horn at his mouth, sending short clean bursts that ripple off tree trunks and come back wrong on purpose, scrambling any city ears that might be counting us.
Kirella sets our pace. One—two—three—four. I keep the scythe short along my forearm and lay little step-coins with my soles—thin, warm circles that say keep without trying to be a sermon. Third Moon limps beside me with a shade cloth folded across both hands the way a boy carries a baby bird: careful even when he wants to be brave. The lantern hums quiet between Kirella's palm and mine, the good-heavy of we dulled by day but still there.
The pines thin to scrub. Resin bells wink rude. Ahead, the Sun Gate bites the forest edge: a holy-glass arch spitting reflections onto a timber checkpoint with a neat little turnstile and two clerks in sand coats who look like they were born with stamps in their fists.
"Names," one says, bored and hungry.
Ash-Fletch answers without baring a single tooth. "Kept guests."
The clerk wrings his pen at me. "The gate wants syllables."
"It can have bowls," I say, and press a BOWL-NAME ONLY slip into his hand so gently the paper forgives him in advance. Behind my heel, I drop a small ring coin at the turnstile—nothing showy, just a warmth that teaches the hinge to wait. Kirella lifts the cloak enough to shade my face from a cruel angle of glass. Third Moon stands proud as soup—"Third Moon"—and the second clerk blinks at a name that refuses to be stolen.
We go through on WAIT. The turnstile chooses not to learn us.
Beyond it the air goes tar and rope and salt. No-Sky Port wears awnings like scales—a maze of canvas and patched sailcloth strung between poles and masts so the light slaps down in sheets. Mirror awnings glint high to make sure it slaps the right mouths. Horns from the river keep tidy math with each other: short-long, short-long—convoys talking in polite war.
Crowds flow where shade lives. Dock hawkers chant prices like curses and blessings. A kid darts across our path with a basket of spools and nearly loses both ankles to a wire snare hidden as a stray loop.
"Peg," Third Moon says, sharp as a scout, pointing with his chin.
I kneel and brine-seam the peg head; the glue inside the street's pretty trick remembers it once was tree and rain and stops being proud. The wire slackens and slinks off like a lie caught speaking too clearly.
"Good eyes," Ash-Fletch tells him, and the boy tries not to burst.
We cut through an alley of hanging nets and arrive at the Needle dock's Name Booth, a neat little throat with a mirror in the back that wants to be called true. A clerk with a polite face flutters a hand. "Speak your names for tokens."
Kirella is already walking past, but I stop because sometimes you have to teach paperwork how to be a person.
"Red Ladle," I say, and the mirror hmms like a teacher trying not to laugh. Kirella, straight-faced: "Steady Hand." Ash-Fletch bares just enough respect to be rude: "Ash-Fletch." Stone-Reed: "Stone-Reed." Third Moon swells test-proud. Around us, a few dockworkers grin and join because choruses are puzzles people always know the answers to: Brown Apron, Spindle Hand, Salt Rope. The booth's mirror reaches for a single true toy and gets a basket of wooden ones; it goes bored.
Kirella leans in and taps the hinge with the WORD plate—WAIT bleeds soft into the metal like heat through a cup. Tokens cough out blank. The clerk stamps them anyway because his day does not pay enough to argue with answers that won't stand still.
We are three lengths from the thread-barge—the covered craft under a heavy awning we chose with our eyes before we pretended to choose—when the crowd tenses like a dog that knows a storm.
A paper net flares above us, slung from an awning strut, pleats dusted with that thin mirror grit that pushes at names like a drunk hand at a door latch. A joker stringer on the beam gives it a pretty shake; two dock wardens swing clubs to "protect the queue" and aim the big arcs where the crowd might break and we will be the blame inside it.
Close is where I live.
I step through the crush and take a warden's baton on the shaft of my scythe; bind, hip turn, knee tap—his knees remember gravity without feeling insulted. Kirella's cloak drinks a swing from the second warden and hands the man his own club in the next breath; figure-four wrist, cheek to piling, a soft "Drop" that sounds like please and works like a lever.
The net drops. I give the blade one handspan more than it wants, a clean staple of two pleats to a piling. The cloth catches, holds, and the net sags. My palm stings—honest cost. Mirror dust pisses itself down in a glitter of mean. Ash-Fletch rams a joker stringer into a coil of rope with her shoulder and ties him there with the coil he meant for us; Stone-Reed boots a laugh-smoke pot over the lip into the river where it dies without opinions. Third Moon dives under an elbow and yanks a child out from under a boot with both hands like hauling a fish and looks at me to see if he did right.
"You did," I tell him.
The dock tries to be a riot and fails because the riot gets tired of itself. We peel into the narrow angle between two cargo cages. Kirella slaps the ring coin down at the gangplank and the wood remembers how not to be slippery. He takes the tiller like a thing he was born with: shoulders square, feet set, eyes always where the water is about to be. The wolves do things boats remember. Stone-Reed throws lines; Ash-Fletch shoves with a pole that envies her arms; Third Moon finds the shade cloth's edge and holds it over my shoulder with a pride that refuses to apologize for existing.
"Hands," Kirella says, and I give him mine. He cups my wrist—pulse under thumb. One—two—three—four. The tremor the day has been writing into my bones crosses the page and sits.
I press our foreheads together for one second because the river is looking and the river has rules. "Keep me on four."
"Always," he answers.
We push off.
A patrol punt shakes itself loose behind. A skiff with a paper sail blooms ahead on our starboard, glass threads sewn into the cloth, a slim mirror bar lifting to find my face. Ash-Fletch throws the shade cloth higher, gallant as a flag; I light a pepper-mint cone against the barge's iron rib and let the little wind do my work—smog collapses, mirror grit clumping into unhappy tears. The barge shudders through a wake and I grab a mooring line with the hook of my scythe, snap a chasing punt's pole at the throat; the man sits down so fast he forgets to swear.
From the bank, Stone-Reed's horn yelps in short stutters that make the port patrols think they're hearing their own echoes. Ash-Fletch lopes the shoreline, cloak held out like a moving wall to keep the worst of the light away. Her gait says escort the way a road says go.
Canvas hammers above the awning. Water talks under the hull. No-Sky slips behind us: awning alleys, stamp booths, the neat little throat that wanted our names. Ahead the river widens its shoulders and pretends to be generous.
The Mid-Light Needle grows from the water like someone planted a cage and a prayer in the same pot. Iron ribs go high; dull panes sit between like old teeth; at the base a stone rune sleeps, faint and stubborn. A tide board on a piling reads in proud chalk: EVEN-TIDE — FIRST BELL. The lantern warms between our hands as if a mouth somewhere whispered soon.
"Two truths," Kirella says.
"I'll leave the door open; I'll come back for three," I say automatically, a rhythm I can spin even with the river tugging my attention like a child with a question. "You—"
"I won't go where you can't," he answers, simple as a tool, exact as rope.
Third Moon crouches by the foredeck and taps the wood with the seriousness of a priest. "Peg," he says again, low. Someone tried to hide an oath-rope snag under a coil. I slide the brine needle under the peg cap, feed it a line, and the road rude men wanted on our deck forgets how to stand.
"Good," Ash-Fletch calls from the bank without turning her head, which is the only kind of approval you can accept from her and live.
We angle toward the Needle's dock. The river horns are fighting now—wolves vs. docks, their tidy math gone petty. Sun drags its nails along the water and turns every ripple into a small mirror that doesn't know it has no right to be holy. My blade budget—what's left of it—sits like a small purse I'm trying not to count.
"Hold for cross current," Kirella says under breath, and shifts the tiller with a patience that would pass any test.
That's when the boom drops.
Lockwright poles slam down ahead of us—heavy logs chained together, studded with mirror spikes that drink light and spit it back wrong. The chain bites the water; the channel narrows to a mouth with teeth that think they're important. On our port bow a joker launch slides crosswise, neat as manners, the tall mask standing at the nose. He salutes with two fingers as if we're about to sit down to a meal he cooked.
"Too early," he calls, bright with mischief, "or too late?"
Stone-Reed's horn answers with a dirty laugh in notes. Ash-Fletch's howl floods the bank like a map of Yes. I feel the lantern pulse hot between our palms, a heartbeat admitting it exists. The barge draws a breath to try and live through the gap that might not be there.
"Count me," I say, eyes on the chain, on the little spaces between teeth.
Kirella's voice is the floor. One—two—three—four.
The awning thrashes. The boom lifts another inch because a man somewhere thinks it will look better coming down if it rises first. The needle door rune at the base of the cage wakes the tiniest bit and blinks as if someone knocked from far away.
We hold the line, prow pointed at nothing, everything, the place where door and water and time argue about fairness. The tall mask laughs like a coin hitting wood.
And the chapter ends there, barge gliding fast, boom rising across our throat, wolves and docks shouting in horns, the lantern hot between our hands, and the river asking if we are clever or just lucky enough to survive the next breath.