The inlet has a throat. We teach it how to close without lying.
"Positions," Ash-Fletch says, voice low, shoulders set.
Stone-Reed plants a pole in the mud and leans against it with all the patience of a tree. Third Moon crouches by the post with both hands on the tripline tail. Kirella loops a short rope across the mouth—post to post—and ties a cross-bow kept-knot, tidy as a lesson, firm as a promise.
I smear moon balm under my nose—mint and pine and cold rain—then dab a fingertip across the boat hook tip. Mirrors like to shout; this tells them to use their inside voices.
"Count," I say.
Kirella's thumb finds my pulse and writes the road. One—two—three—four. The lantern answers in my hands—good-heavy that makes doors want to tell the truth.
I lay a thin ring seam along the threshold, not bright—just enough to teach the wood and water to say keep. The seam warms under my palm like bread ready to take shape.
Outside, the boom sled grinds toward us: big logs studded with mirror spikes, chain plates clanking, three levy men pushing and an engine coughing like a smoker who wants to be praised for quitting someday. Along the outflow wall, the mirror rail flares—a thin white pain. The tall mask's reflection rides inside it like a coin sliding under a cup. He lifts two fingers at the inlet with an affection that never cost him anything.
"Hold your line," Stone-Reed tells the river, which is either foolish or the only prayer that ever mattered.
Sled Nose
The sled kisses the mouth and tries to be permanence.
"Breathing room," Kirella says, calm as coil.
I lean out with the hook and swab the nearest mirror spikes—balm, then a quick brush of brine from the vial I keep tucked in my sleeve. The shine dies like a compliment said twice. Kirella taps the nose chain plate with the WORD plate—WAIT hums into iron, soft as a hand on a shoulder that was about to do something stupid. The sled's push stutters a breath.
Ash-Fletch shoves a soaked reed bundle into the gap. Stone-Reed adds another, then another. They're not solid; they're polite, and politeness has weight when it stands with friends.
"Stitch," Kirella says.
I pull the seam up from the ring and stitch the bundles to the posts—little warm bites of keep that turn loose reeds into a brake. He runs a low line across, pegs two wedges into mud with his heel. Friction, not force. The sled snarls and learns new manners.
It presses again, the way men press when they think no means try harder. The mirror rail brightens; the mask's reflection lifts a hand as if ordering dessert.
"Idler wheel," Kirella says quietly, chin flick to the sled's starboard.
There—a wheel half-hidden, a lazy gear keeping the chain honest.
"Buy us a finger," he adds, and I already hate that I love the part I get to play.
I give the tırpan one handspan of extension—no more—and jab the curved back under the wheel lip. Lever. The wheel hops half-off its pin with an injured-dog yelp. Sting detonates across my palm and up my arm. Third Moon slams a wedge into the skew with both hands and all his stubborn. The chain hiccups; the sled bogs. The brake holds like someone who meant it.
"Nice," Ash-Fletch says without looking at me, which is better than looking.
People, Not Enemies
The three levy men do their job. One plants a gaff on our rail and steps wide to climb aboard.
I meet him close—shaft bind his wrist, hip turn to make his shoulder remember what it's for, a neat knee tap that puts his feet where the river was going to put them anyway. He lands in the reeds with a surprised oof, dignity first. I kick his gaff back to him and then staple the gaff's rope to a post with the hook—wood to wood, not skin to anything.
The second man swings a baton at Third Moon's head because boys look like yes to lazy men. Kirella's cloak drinks it and gives him his own stick back with a gentle figure-four on the wrist. "Drop," he says, soft as good bread. The baton obeys. The man sits down in the water feet-first, soaked to the belt, unharmed.
The third tries to leap the tripline like a hero in a story who forgets how stories end. Stone-Reed twitches the tail. The man scrapes his shin and only pride bleeds. Ash-Fletch hauls him clear by the collar and says, "Breathe," like a nurse. He does, surprised to be grateful.
"Paid to push, not to die," I tell them, not unkind, and they hear it because fear finally makes room for listening.
Mirror Tricks
The tall mask throws a neat paper mark—a tight pleated square meant to paste our inlet to patrol ledgers with a tidy name. Third Moon is already moving. He slaps it with a wet board so heavy the paper forgets it isn't a sponge. I drive the hook through two pleats and staple them to a reed rib. The mark slumps, sighs, and slides itself out of the conversation.
A small mirror eye opens above the slit—glass waking in the reed crown, silver-lid blinking to watch.
"Blink elsewhere," I say, and swipe the eye with a little smear of moon balm on the hook. The image fogs like breath on winter tin. The eye keeps watching but forgets how to tell a story anyone would believe.
The mirror rail hums wrong. The mask's reflection tilts its head, amusement unbothered, and whistles a new order down its throat.
"Prism," Stone-Reed says. His voice hates the word.
A pale wedge begins to form along the rail—three plates of glass pinned into a saw that thinks light is a blade.
"Later problem," Kirella says. He is right and it makes me want to break something.
Teach the Sled WAIT
The sled's nose is pinned in our reed brake; the idler wheel hangs drunk; the men in the water have learned humility. Now we make the stoppage hold in a way laws can't unwind at dusk.
Kirella nods at the chain keeper on the sled's nose. "Together."
We step in, careful of the reach, lantern between us like a vow. Our palms meet on the handle. His voice is a quiet rope.
"We won't pay."
Mine is the heat under the seam. "We won't sell."
I press the WORD plate to the keeper bracket—WAIT warms metal until it remembers patience. Kirella runs a tidy kept-loop from the sled's chain ring to the post, a loop that knows how to hold, and how to let go for the right hands. Not a trap. A condition.
The sled tries to argue with physics. The ring seam answers with grammar. The kept-knot smiles the way laws smile when they're on your side. The brake holds by promise, not power.
The levy men watch us like children in a kitchen doorway watching a cake learn to be cake. One makes the sign of something on his chest and looks confused when it doesn't feel like treason.
"Tell your quartermaster," Kirella says without malice. "If you cut this knot, it will bite you in front of your captain, and not let go until you apologize."
They believe him because he believes the words when he says them.
Hide the Door
We aren't here just to hold. We're here to leave the door in the shape of we for the ones who come after.
I chalk the inside jamb where a hand will feel and an eye might not see:
WE KEEP EACH OTHER →
The arrow points inward. Kindness is a direction.
Kirella checks the release-knot on the threshold line—twist, tuck, promise. "After three friendly hulls," he murmurs, more to the knot than to me. "Not one, not two."
"Three," I echo, because sometimes saying a number makes it trust you.
I freshen the ring seam with one steady palm. The warmth sits there, not flashy, just true.
Third Moon slides the wet board into the reeds where it will be easy to grab again. He taps the post with two knuckles like he's thanking a thing that did a hard job.
"Good hands," Ash-Fletch tells him. He goes very still and then grins the way boys do when they remember it's allowed.
Summons
The wolves reset the reed curtain with the same care rope-makers use to dress a line—straight, no pride. The river tries to convince all of us it is old enough that we can stop paying attention.
A horn sounds from far left—grey-moon code—three low notes, one high, the last held just long enough to make the hair on my arms stand.
Ash-Fletch's head lifts. Her face changes shape without moving. "Alpha summons," she says. "Grey-Moon Ferry. Moonrise. Come as kept or be hunted as debt."
"Debt?" Third Moon whispers, for whom the word is still a story and not a ledger.
"Pack law," Stone-Reed says. "If you walk under our shade and won't stand when called, the shade walks away from you. And worse."
Kirella meets my eyes. He doesn't look at the door, the sled, the mirror rail, the men wringing their sleeves. He looks at me.
"We can't refuse," he says. It isn't a question.
"No," I say. It isn't either.
He nods once, the kind of nod that could be mistaken for obedience. It is agreement, which is braver.
Prism & Cloth
Outside, the prism wedge on the rail grows a thin edge. It is delicate and ugly—three plates finding the angle that will erode our brake without admitting to anyone they had help. It hums to itself like a very rich, very bored person reading a cruel poem out loud.
Ash-Fletch cracks the moon balm jar again and breathes it like common sense. She smears a stripe across her cheekbones, then sets the jar where my hand knows to find it without looking. "If the prism flashes," she says, "bite the air and spit. Don't swallow it."
"Spit," Third Moon repeats, dutiful, ready to be gross for survival.
The levy men sit on their sled's deck and pant, looking at their hands like they're new. One swears he'll resign to no one who cares. Another laughs because he doesn't know how to be quiet with a second chance.
The mirror eye in the reed crown tries to clear; the balm keeps it from telling a story straight. The tall mask's reflection stares, amused not to be winning for once. His head cocks, then tilts the other way, counting distances. He whistles a note the rail pretends not to love and it loves him anyway.
"Lines," Kirella says, back to work. He passes me a strip of cloth. I realize with an idiot's surprise that it is for my palm. The sting from the wheel lever has settled into a tremor that wants to pretend to be permanent.
He wraps the cloth around my hand with a gentleness that makes me want to sit down. I don't. I lean my temple to his cheek for one breath because rooms are better when you add that breath to them.
"Keep me on four," I say.
"Always," he answers, as if it is a joke and a wedding and a habit all at once.
One—two—three—four. My pulse hears him and behaves.
Choices Waiting
Dusk begins its work on color. Greens decide to be histories. The inlet's water goes from tar to velvet. The wolves' eyes take on that coin-glimmer that never asks permission.
Stone-Reed checks the tripline tension with his fingertips and nods to himself like an old man who knows which parts of the weather will fall down and which will keep standing out of spite. Ash-Fletch loosens her shoulders and lifts her chin toward the west with a low, private growl that is not a threat. It is the kind of sound a door makes in a house that has remembered how to breathe.
"Moonrise," she says. "Ferry."
"Ferry," Kirella echoes, because naming places gives them permission to prepare for you.
We leave the levy men their faces. We leave the sled its excuse. We leave the door kept.
The prism brightens, pale as a lie told with a smile. It points at our brake and begins a slow, patient saw, light not cutting the way knives do, but persuading anything wet to hurry where it wouldn't. The wedges hold. The seam holds. The kept-knot holds because it thinks it's funny to be stronger than science in front of men who paid coin for tools.
Inside the Reach, the lantern sits on the plank between our hands and makes the wood honest. I tuck the chalk into my vest and the balm into a pocket I pretend doesn't exist so strangers won't either.
"Ready path?" I ask.
"Through the reeds," Stone-Reed says. "Back channel to Grey-Moon Ferry. Shade all the way if the pines remember their jobs."
"The pines do," Ash-Fletch says. "They're better at jobs than people."
We grin because we can for a breath.
I check the ring seam one last time with my wrapped palm. It gives back the small, good heat of a kept promise and a door that wants to be the kind of door someone can use later.
Outside, the prism's pale edge shifts onto our brake like a cat deciding which chair it owns. The mirror rail hum grows teeth. Dusk thins the air in a way that makes sound carry too well.
The summons ticks through the trees. Grey-moon law is a timer that respects no clock but its own.
Kirella's thumb presses my pulse. One—two—three—four.
"On four," I say.
"On four," he answers.
And the chapter ends there—with wolves braced at the reed door, the boom sled stuck under a web of WAIT and kept, the prism wedge sharpening its pale hunger across the water, our lines snug and true, my palm tremor easing beneath Kirella's count, and the far-off call of Grey-Moon Ferry coming closer like a promise and a test we can't postpone.