The boom looks like teeth. Not the kind meant to chew—meant to show.
Log poles chain the channel left to right, each studded with mirror spikes that sip light and spit it back cruel. On our port bow a joker launch slides crosswise like a rude thought. The tall mask stands at the nose and raises two fingers in a cheerful insult.
"Too early," he calls. "Or too late?"
"Read me the teeth," Kirella says, voice steady as rope under load.
I crawl to the bow under shade cloth held taut by Third Moon. The ring under my knee is a shy warmth—the day taxes everything. I count the hardware: hinge chain on the near shore, spike spacing a breath wider every third pole, a shore latch half-buried where the chain beds into mud.
"Starboard kiss, port pry," I say. "Two-and-one rhythm on the spikes."
"Good," Kirella answers. "Hold on four."
One—two—three—four, he breathes.
Third Moon tucks two ring-stones into the rub rail of the prow with hands that stop shaking when they're busy. The stones swallow a little of the deck's weight and give it back as a low warmth—not bright, not seen, a sleeve for wood. Ash-Fletch paces us on the bank, cloak lifted like a moving wall; Stone-Reed's horn sends short, mechanic yelps that make the dock patrols hear their own ghosts.
Two boat lengths.
I give the scythe one handspan more edge—the sin I can afford today—and staple an outer boom pole to a piling with rope and cloth, not flesh: a quick drive of blade through netting and line, pull, stick. My palm stings like I put it on a winter stove. The pole jerks; the chain sighs; the teeth show a smaller smile.
"Yaw," Kirella says, and the barge obeys the way a horse obeys a rider who doesn't lie. The bow slides along my stapled pole; the ring-prow glides over the first run of mirror spikes like a warm cloth over a bad idea. Third Moon keeps the shade cloth high, jaw set, eyes bright.
The boom fights back.
From the launch, the tall mask flicks his wrist and a mirror rope hisses across the gap to snag our tiller. Kirella drops his shoulder and the barge wobbles a small, unkind truth.
"Mine," I say.
I catch the rope with the shaft of the scythe, brace on the gunwale, post my hip like a doorstop, and reap the rope's deck peg from the joker's own launch with a clean pop. The rope goes slack; the mask laughs as if I'd done him a favor.
A paper net arcs for Third Moon's head. Kirella snaps the cloak up, the cloth drinks the pleats' sting, and he flings it wide to a piling. He taps the knot as it lands with the WORD plate—WAIT hums soft in the fiber. The net hangs there, sulking.
We're in the throat now.
The boom's chain is a rusted grin at my elbow, links fat with salt. I slide the brine needle under an outer plate and feed it a thin line. The glue that once convinced iron to be obedient drinks and loses pride.
Stone-Reed's horn barks a pattern I don't know yet, and Ash-Fletch leaves the bank like a thrown blade. She finds the half-hidden shore latch and kicks it with a noise that does not belong to a body—metal farts, wood sighs, the chain drops a finger. Sometimes a kingdom is a finger.
"Hold," Kirella says.
The ring-prow kisses a tooth and doesn't bleed. We scrape through. The boom snarls behind us and tries to remember it was never generous.
Then we're free.
The Needle rises from the water like someone planted a cage and asked it to become a church. Iron ribs. Dull glass. A door rune carved into the dock face, asleep and pretending not to be watching.
The tide board hammers what we already feel: EVEN-TIDE — FIRST BELL.
The lantern warms between our palms so hard it nearly hums.
Kirella lines our bow dead on the rune. "Two truths. Now."
I stand on the lintel sill and put my palm to stone. It is hot with sunlight on the outside, cool underneath, like bread crust pretending the oven didn't happen.
"I'll leave this door open behind us," I say. "I'll come back for three."
Kirella covers my hand with his, larger, warmer, the callus of rope and honest work.
"I won't go where she can't," he says. "Not for coin, not for fear, not for orders."
The rune wakes—a soft mid-light glow, not gold, not night. A voice old as good rope and just as particular speaks out of stone.
"Drop the light."
I pull my hand back and the warmth frightens me by how much I don't want to let it go. "No," I say. "It's kept."
I lay the third ring-stone on the sill with a thumb I make behave. Its weight answers the door like a nod.
The voice considers, gears behind it thinking in their pleasant, grinding way.
"Two truths and one kept," it amends, and I hear Kirella's breath hitch just once in gratitude you could mistake for readiness if you didn't know him. "No names to paper or stone inside. No blood on bargains."
The door slides, not up, not aside—in, like a drawer that leads to weather. Air tilts. A cool twilight canal breathes out: even light that doesn't bite; a hush like night in a kitchen after the dishes are done.
We start forward.
The tall mask doesn't like that.
He leaps from his launch for our stern with a short black key in his hand that looks like it was broken off a mirror at a slant—side-lock. I meet him at the rail close because that is the only way we survive. Shaft bind, hip turn, knee tap—he stumbles and grins around it as if stumbles are a kind of dance he charges extra for.
He flicks the key.
On the Needle's outer wall, a long narrow sluice of glass stirs—a second track, an ugly, clever line just wide enough for a launch to slide and a reflection to chase.
"Come along," he says cheerfully, coat hem flapping as he hops back to his boat.
"Stay awhile," I say, and pin his hem under the dock cleat with the boat hook, twist the wood once, hard, and jam a scrap of oath-rope through the hook's eye. It's not elegant. It holds for two heartbeats. He laughs and sheds cloth like a snake leaving a skin and kicks his launch into the mirror slit, happy to have a ruder road.
"Inside," Kirella says, almost gentle, because we are or we aren't and the door doesn't care about his careful voice but I do.
We nose the barge across the sill into the Needle's shadow. The heat on my skin peels away the way a word does when you realize you've been saying it wrong your whole life. The lantern's weight goes deep—heavy and gentle, as if it recognizes the writing on these walls.
Script glows along the ribs in soft, stubborn letters:
WALK IN PAIRS. LEAVE DOORS OPEN. RETURN FOR THREE.
I touch the line without touching it and feel my chest go warm in gratitude complicated enough to make me want to sit down. The river beyond is loud. In here water hushes like a secret kept well.
"Names?" a smaller voice in the wall asks, as if checking entirely for form.
"Bowls," I answer out of habit. It doesn't argue. It never knew how.
Behind us the boom re-drops with the smugness of men who like machines. Horns on the bank decide to be a fight instead of a debate. The Needle door begins to close on its own cycle: slow, polite, utterly unconcerned with whether we feel ready. On the outer wall the side-lock whirs; the tall mask's launch slides along the glass slot like a rude fish in a clear pipe, reflection in front of him as if he were chasing himself and catching.
"Count me," I whisper, though I don't know which part of me needs counting—the part that wants to lie down in the cool or the part that wants to make sure no one ever steals this door from anyone ever again.
Kirella's thumb finds my pulse and runs the road under it. One—two—three—four.
I exhale and let the last of the sun's tug go with it. My palm stings where I bought our staple; I ignore it with gratitude instead of pride.
"Channel bends left," Kirella says, eyes on the water that looks like night taught to be generous. "Sill narrows in twenty. Third Moon, shade cloth low. If he reaches the side-lock gate before the door finishes, he'll have a finger in."
"Which finger?" Third Moon asks, fiercely practical.
"His favorite," I say. "We'll break it with grace."
We pass under a rib where dust has gathered since someone last loved it. The twilight here levels edges, teaches shine to behave. No names to paper. No blood on bargains. My body listens and softens in the joints, which is not the same as rest but is better than pretending.
At our backs, the tall mask's reflection fills the side channel like stormlight poured into a gutter. His launch keeps pace because bad roads are often fast until they aren't. He raises his hand in that two-finger salute, grin unchanging because it cannot. On the bank, Ash-Fletch paces the wall and bares teeth at glass; Stone-Reed's horn calls a code I think I almost understand—something like not yet.
The door keeps closing. The gap is a mouth that hasn't decided whether we're a joke or a story it wants to keep.
"Truths hold," the wall murmurs, pleased with itself and with anyone who bothers to answer its questions. "Kept holds."
The lantern leans heavier into our joined hands, the good-heavy that forgives mistakes if you keep the count. I hook my thumb over Kirella's knuckle on the handle and he squeezes back once—I'm here—and then lets go because two hands are still better than one on a tiller, and the river is a person you respect even if you don't like what it says.
The side-lock latches into the Needle's belly with a sound like called-in credit.
The tall mask's reflection swells. The door's seam shines. The cool air over the water lifts the hair at the back of my neck and licks it flat again.
We line our bow on the channel's bend.
And the chapter ends there—with our barge gliding into the twilight canal, the gate closing polite as a house trained to say please, the side-lock mirroring a pursuit we can't ignore, the lantern steady between our hands, and my palm still singing the small price of a single extension while everything ahead looks like a question we might finally have the right ways to answer.