The twilight lane carries us like a secret.
Stone to starboard hums with a faint mirror rail—a silver bruise along the wall, brightening by degrees. To port, the river opens shoulder by shoulder, polite with wind, unbothered by laws.
On the bank, Ash-Fletch and Stone-Reed appear at a trot, each with a pole in one fist and a strip of dark cloth between them. They lift it high and pace us—moving shade. Sun's edge worries at my skin; the cloth makes it forget.
Kirella's thumb finds my pulse. One—two—three—four. The lantern answers in the bones of my hands—good-heavy that means we.
I drop two quick ring coins—bow and stern—to keep the deck honest. Third Moon hunkers at the fore with the shade cloth ready to dip when glare tries to sneak under our awning.
"Rail's waking," Kirella warns.
The silver bruise along the outflow wall swells; inside the shimmer, the tall mask's launch ghosts our pace. He is half a breath behind and twice as cheerful. A thin mirror bar reaches toward my face like a rude finger.
Third Moon drops the shade. I shift my weight on a ring coin and Kirella slides the helm a thumb's worth. The bar catches nothing; splinters of false light blink out and pretend they didn't mean it.
A horn yips from the bank—Stone-Reed. Answer comes from up ahead—our route's next shape.
"Skiffs," Ash-Fletch calls, not slowing.
Two levy skiffs hopscotch across the current from port—uniforms scuffed, clubs ready, lariats tidy, paper tags tucked in belts like knives pretending to be flowers.
"Inspection," one sings.
"We're inspected," I answer.
He reaches for our rail with a tag and a bored smile. I meet him with the shaft of my tırpan—bind his wrist, hip turn, knee tap—and his arm remembers it has joints that like obedience. His club clatters. I spin the half-fall into a staple, pinning his lariate to our cleat with a clean thock—cloth to wood, not flesh. He swears like a man who dropped a plate in front of guests.
The second skiff bumps our stern; its warden winds up a baton swing at Third Moon's head. Kirella's cloak drinks the blow and gives him his own stick back with a neat figure-four on the wrist. "Drop," he says softly. The warden obeys because the human wrist is a truth even paperwork knows.
Third Moon, eyes too big, grabs a loose peg at our rail and yanks it just enough. The other skiff's man shifts his weight at the wrong moment; the skiff tilts, drinks a mouth of river, and rolls two uniforms into the water. They come up sputtering, dignities loud, bones unbroken.
"Go home," Ash-Fletch calls, not unkind, and the men paddle away with faces that promise letters.
We cut a narrow where the lane pinches. Wolves have strung a shade ladder across the gap—dark rungs of cloth from post to post. Our awning kisses under. The mirror rail's sightline stutters; the shimmer dulls to a sulk.
Stone-Reed's horn pops two notes that mean turnout ahead. Ash-Fletch raises a hand and shown far downriver a low profile—reeds leaning, water blacker where depth minds its own business.
Before we reach it, a rope gate stretches across the lane. On the center plank, a placard painted in neat, lying script:
SCENT TITHE — SPEAK FOR PASS.
Two bronze sniffers hang like bells at nose height. Perfume has been dragged over the wood until it shines. Someone spent money and pride here.
"Don't make me talk to a plank," I tell the air.
Kirella's mouth twitches. He taps the hinge with the WORD plate—WAIT warms the joint. I touch the sniffers with a wet fingertip of brine; salt learns metal how to mind its own throat. Then I say it plain, voice low and even:
"Bowl-name chorus."
Red Ladle. Steady Hand. Third Moon. Brown Apron. Spindle Hand. The gate tries to taste true and gets ours; it hesitates like a dog who can't find his master's coat in a room full of laundry and then opens anyway, embarrassed to have feelings.
In the rail, the mask brightens. A thread of perfume hisses along his slot; a paper scent floats like smug. The sniffers lock with a click you can feel in your teeth. His rail lags five lengths; I take the gift and don't call it a miracle.
"Shade up," Kirella says. "Edge is back."
Sun slides its knife along our awning. Third Moon lifts the cloth with the concentration of a priest moving a candle. The river's wind does the easy part.
The mask throws a new trick—snaps a mirror plank from the rail to our gunwale. It lands pretty—polished, arrogant, slick with light.
"Boarder," Third Moon pants.
I step close because distance is where paper does its lying. Shaft bind the plank edge to our rail, boat-hook pry to pop his grab off our board, then one tight extension—just a handspan—to pin the plank in a piling band as we slide past. My palm lights with bright sting. The plank holds where I want and nowhere else. The tall mask considers stepping anyway, laughs with every tooth the same, and steps back, pleased not to die of his own joke.
We push for the reeds.
Ash-Fletch throws her head back in a grey-moon howl that splits distance like cloth. The reeds ahead part in a narrow black slit—water dark as tar, breath cool and polite. A stone half-hidden in duckweed reads nothing at all to eyes. Wolves don't write invitations.
"Gloam Reach," Stone-Reed calls. "Door's short."
Kirella angles the helm; the barge sighs into shadow. I leave a quick chalk on the entrance stone where someone might find it who knows how to look:
WE KEEP EACH OTHER →
Wolves behind us haul a tripline taut at knee height just above the water. It vanishes to sight. It does not vanish to ankles.
The mirror rail hisses at the mouth of the inlet. The mask's reflection stands bright as a candle in a clean jar. He tosses a paper net outward to mark the slit for patrols—pleats eager for a name to hang on.
Third Moon slaps the net with a wet board—river-slimed, heavy. The paper drinks and regrets learning thirst. I drive the boat hook through a fat pleat and staple it to a reed frame. The net sags and slides down itself like a curtain having second thoughts. The mark fails.
Inside Gloam Reach the air drinks heat from skin. Low posts lean from the dark like tired men at a bar. Under the walk, wolf caches sleep—sealed boxes, tarred tight; a coil of rope; a jar of something green that smells like the woods after rain—moon balm.
We kiss a post. Kirella ties two kept-knots—one honest tight, one that will slip for the right hands. The lantern settles on the deck between us and finds the plank like a chair it trusts. My hands shake now that they're allowed. He cups my wrist and writes the road in my blood again. One—two—three—four. I settle into it like a woman in a borrowed coat that fits out of luck and kindness.
Ash-Fletch rolls in under the boardwalk and comes up slick and amused. She slaps the jar of moon balm into my palm. "Chew a breath of it if the mirrors shout," she says. "Spit after." Every instruction from her is a dare to be wise.
"Thank you," I say, and tuck the jar into a bracket where it will not break.
Outside the reeds, the mirror rail brightens until the shimmer is a thin white pain. The tall mask lifts his two fingers toward the inlet with the affection of a man about to put a lock on someone else's door. He whistles, high and thin. The river answers with chain and wood.
A boom sled lurches into view—flat, wide, pushed by three sweating men and one engine that wants to be loved. Big logs and smaller mirror spikes stud its face, a smile meant to push, not chew. It crawls toward the inlet mouth like a wall learning to walk.
"Hold," Stone-Reed says through his teeth, bracing the reed door with a pole and a prayer.
Ash-Fletch plants her feet and leans into the line. Wolves behind them melt into black and become ropes.
"Lines first," Kirella tells me, all calm. He is already moving. He passes a short rope around a post and across the bow. The kept-knot he ties on the far side is tidy, but his eyes are on the mouth, measuring.
I lay a thin ring seam along the threshold—not bright, just enough to teach the water and wood to say keep. My palm tremor fades to a tick I can ignore.
Third Moon crouches by the post with both hands on the knot's tail, waiting for a word and pretending he already earned it. He has, but he still pretends.
Outside, the sled grinds. Men shout. The river laughs low and doesn't pick a side. The mirror rail throws knives of light that die on the moon balm's smell as Ash-Fletch cracks the jar and breathes it like sense.
Kirella's thumb finds my pulse again. One—two—three—four. Not louder. Truer.
"Options?" I ask, even though I see them marching up out of the water in a line.
"Jam the sled without blood," he says. "Teach it WAIT. Buy time. We don't let them name the door."
"Close work," I say.
"Close," he agrees, and hands me the boat hook because he is steering and I am the knife that refuses to be more knife than woman.
The sled's shadow darkens the slit. The tripline hums taut. The reeds lean back like watchers on tiptoe. Ash-Fletch bares teeth that aren't a smile.
The lantern between our hands stays good-heavy, the kind that makes rooms want to be honest.
And the chapter ends there, with wolves braced on the reed door, the boom sled pushing a wall of dark toward our narrow mouth, our lines half-tied, my ring seam warm at the threshold, Kirella's count steady at my pulse, and the inlet beginning to go dim under the sled's shadow.