We choose the throat that wants to be difficult.
The Service Vein arch crouches low, letters stenciled across its lintel like a dare:
ONE STEERS • ONE ANCHORS • HANDS NEVER LEAVE THE KEPT.
Kirella threads a kept-knot through the lantern handle and loops it around his wrist. He tests the knot with the same patience he uses for bad rope and men who like orders too much. I mirror his loop on my wrist. We turn our hands and set our skin to the wood—left palm on the handle, right hands free. The knot bites comfortable.
Third Moon slides to a crouch by the foredeck with the shade cloth draped across his shoulders like he's pretending to be older than he is. He understands faster now: he is cargo that can speak, not crew who can wander. His mouth tries hard not to shake.
"Count me," I say, voice low.
Kirella's thumb settles on the pulse inside my wrist and writes the only sentence that matters: one—two—three—four. The lantern warms to the number like soup taking a boil.
We go in.
The light here has the color of a promise believed by practical people. Iron ribs lean close. The walls carry our breath and give it back quieter.
Handspan Turns
Glyphs are chalked along the first stretch of the passage—little hands stamped on stone: one, two, three. The bends ahead look like someone named them after regrets.
"Handspan clearance," Kirella says, tilting his hip into the tiller. He steers with hips and elbow, not fingers. He can't—we can't—let our grip on the lantern break.
I lay two tiny step-seams with my soles—thin, warm runs of keep, one forward by the prow beam, one aft near the tiller post—to trim our weight. The barge shifts its manners. Third Moon dips the shade cloth as we pass each rib, killing stray glare before it thinks to bite.
The first bend kisses our starboard in a way that isn't affection. Kirella breathes the count steady and I feel the number in the plank through the bones of my feet. He calls the angle with a word that isn't a word. I move my weight before he asks because he already asked, in that little squeeze between two and three.
We clear one.
The side-lock slit rides our right like a rude companion lane. The tall mask's launch overlaps at a narrow view hatch, mirror light lapping over the slit edges. He flicks a neat paper lariat through his window to taste our rail.
"Cord," Third Moon says, small and correct.
I catch the rope with the shaft of my scythe, bind it against our cleat, turn my hip to take the pull into my stance, slap a quick knee tap to break his rhythm, then jam the rope under the cleat with the boat hook. When he yanks, his own force yaws him into the slit's glass and his launch grates with the sound of arrogance learning politeness. He laughs and lets the rope go rather than argue with angles.
We clear two, then three, the last bend so tight I feel my heartbeat under my tongue. Kirella's elbow rolls; my shoulder answers; the lantern sits between us like a full bowl balanced on four fingers. We don't spill.
"Good," he says, like a prayer he didn't mean to say out loud.
No-Coin Gate
A brass mouth yawns from the wall—an inset toll plate with a dainty slot begging to be paid. Relief script frames it:
NO BLOOD. NO COIN. ONLY KEPT.
The itch to make problems simple crawls up the spine of the world. Third Moon's hand goes to the little dock token he pinched somewhere because all boys steal the wrong thing at least once.
"Don't," I say.
He freezes, token between two guilty fingers.
Kirella leans his wrist loop toward the gate pin, threads the line of his kept-knot onto the pin's ear, and speaks the two vows against metal like it's a living thing that needs reminding.
"We won't pay."
"We won't sell."
I draw a thin ring on the plate with the lantern's warmth, not bright—just enough for the brass to remember doors aren't holes for thieves, they're decisions.
The mouth drops with the dignity of a clerk who was about to ask for a bribe and thought better of it. We slide past. Third Moon stares at his token like it almost bit him and tucks it away as if it were shame.
In the side-lock, the tall mask slides a stamped coin-seal through his own gate with the flourish of men who think signatures are food. The gate does nothing polite; it locks. The sluice rumbles a rewind, and his launch trundles back a bend with a groan, then grinds forward again, slower.
"Kitchen two," Kirella says under his breath, then stops himself. "Not keeping score."
"We are absolutely keeping score," I say, and he almost smiles.
Return-for-Three Rack
The passage opens into a short bay with a rack of three oar-flat paddles set across the water at thigh height. A slate sign dangles crooked above them:
RETURN FOR THREE OR BRING THEIR BREATH. DIP IN ORDER.
"Ghost oar," Kirella says, already reading the trick. "We don't have three bodies."
"We have breaths," I answer.
I lift the lantern so the glass catches the twilight every way it wants to be caught. Two faint swirls already live there—my vow, his vow—small as stitching, stubborn as stitches. I press my forehead to Kirella's for one breath, and our thumbs hook over the handle together.
"Keep me on four," I whisper.
"Always," he says. He doesn't make a sound of the count, but I feel it anyway: one—two—three—four written under my skin.
I set the lantern down by the first flat and say Nim's bowl-name into the glass like a secret you only tell to warm things.
"Little Breath."
For a heartbeat nothing. Then the tiniest third curl paints itself near the others, shy as a child peeking around a chair.
We dip the flats one, two, and then both of us lean together for the ghost three, the lantern between us so the glass's evidence shines down on the wood. The rack recognizes the order and drops, pleased with its own rules.
In the side-lock, a white scrap flutters—a forged breath drawn with mirror ink. The rack senses imitation like a nose knows perfume from fruit. It snaps up and spits the launch back a panel. The tall mask's laugh echoes thinly in the slit, not unhappy, just busy.
Merge Spout
The vein narrows to a spout, water tightening, a hiss like a kettle not quite at song. If we're ahead here, we keep it.
An iron tongue starts to drop between our channel and the side-lock's window. I taste the price of what we need in the back of my mouth. Not blood. Not names. Palm.
"Buy us a finger," Kirella says, and I'm already moving.
I give the scythe one handspan of extension—no more—jam the hooked back of the blade under the tongue's lip and lever upward. The metal answers because leverage is a kind of truth, not because it likes me. Sting detonates across my palm and up my forearm like heat lightning. Third Moon slams the brine needle into the hinge plate and Kirella caps the whole ugly arrangement with a fast kept-knot. The tongue hesitates, not confused—convinced. We slide a hand-width and the knot slips free on its own, polite enough not to catch us.
The tall mask's launch clacks the window frame as he hits the same drop a beat late. He lifts his two fingers in a salute that is not an apology and not an insult, simply a bill he believes he will collect later.
Exit Sluice
The roar ahead isn't loud; it's ready. Cool air peels toward us, carrying the smell of wet wood that has been honest with work for a hundred years.
A low arch opens—the Exit Sluice. Script curls over the mouth like ivy:
LEAVE DOORS OPEN. RETURN FOR THREE.
We nose the barge to the jamb. I pull the chalk stub Lelia pressed into my palm before we left the Commons and write on the stone where hands can feel it when eyes are busy:
WE KEEP EACH OTHER →
The arrow points back the way we came because maps are kinder when they admit someone else will need them after you pass.
I press the WORD plate softly to the sill. KEEP hums into the stone, not a spell, just a habit the building agrees to try on. Kirella ties a tidy release-knot between the sill ring and a guide peg—twist, tuck, promise—and murmurs, "Three boats." The knot will slip after the third hull kisses through. The door will remember we meant it.
Third Moon watches the lines and the words with wide, greedy eyes, the good greed of learning.
Behind us, the side-lock window pops parallel at the last pane. The tall mask hurls a final paper net with a little flourish, pleats falling toward our deck like a tidy storm.
I meet it close. No glamour, no speech. I drive the boat hook through two pleats and staple them to the frame—wood into wood, cloth into wood, nothing that bleeds. The net sags into a pretty sulk. The tall mask's launch slews. He laughs, of course he laughs. He is the kind of man who can only ever be delighted by resistance.
The sluice mouth breathes out. Water quiets. The light stays soft. We push through.
The world outside the Needle feels like an argument we don't have to answer. The twilight outflow runs dark and even, a ribbon of shade sewn into the river proper. Distant horns knit and unknot a polite quarrel on the banks. The door behind us holds a faint shine of KEEP. It looks like a hand held casually on a latch that could shut but won't—for three.
We don't stop. The day will remember itself soon. The world is large enough to hide a dozen tricks at once.
"Count?" I ask without shame because the count is the floor and floors are kind.
Kirella's thumb on my wrist again, quiet as forgiveness. One—two—three—four.
The sting in my palm smooths itself into a fine tremor; I let it be the price paid instead of a thing to show off. Third Moon arranges the shade cloth along my shoulder like a blanket on a patient and pretends he doesn't need praise. I give it anyway with my eyes.
The outflow wall to starboard quivers—the faintest mirror shimmer running along the stone just at the waterline. The tall mask has found himself a chase rail outside the Needle, a way to ride our lane without our rules. Reflections gather like storm lines.
"Friends on the bank?" Kirella asks without looking.
"Likely," I answer. "But the wall has mirrors and the river has patience."
He laughs once, the short kind. "We have more of the second than the first."
Ahead, the twilight lane reaches for wider water where the port's horns give up and the pines don't care about paperwork. The lantern rests good-heavy between our hands. The faint Mid-Light swirl the Warden gave us seems to steady the warmth, not brighter, just truer.
I glance back. The jamb glows with the arrow I drew. It looks small on all that stone, a chalk thing trying to matter in a world that loves ink. It matters anyway.
The wall's quiver brightens a hair.
"On four," Kirella says.
"On four," I answer.
And the chapter ends there, our barge sliding out of the Needle's cool throat into the wider dark—door left open behind us, mirror rail brightening to our right like a thin storm, my palm still singing the price of a lever, and the count steady under my skin while the river decides which of us it likes today.