The back channel is a little thread of dark where reeds whisper and forget. Wolves pace the banks—shapes inside shade, eyes like coins that learned restraint. Our barge noses through with the lantern good-heavy between our hands. Kirella's thumb writes the road at my wrist. One—two—three—four. My bones nod yes.
We come out into a bowl of stone and water where the river once decided to pause. Grey-Moon Ferry. The ring is carved into the rock itself: shallow grooves like old scars, moon-round, low enough to trip a prideful toe. Words cut into the outer lip:
NO COIN. NO MIRROR. NO BLOOD TO BOAST. PIN OR YIELD.
The air tastes like wet iron and pine.
The tall mask arrives on the edge of the world with the smug of a cat who brought home something that breathed. His launch ghosts along the mirror seam at the treeline—too far to touch, close enough to pretend he owns the view. He flicks a silver lariate out of his shimmer; it snaps to our rail with the crispness of paper deciding it's a law.
Ash-Fletch steps into the ring without looking at him. "Summons outranks finder," she says, simple as soup. "You may watch. You may not name this circle."
The mask spreads two fingers in a shape that wants to be graceful and sits where shadows accept him. The mirror seam dims around his seat, sulking.
Wolves gather. Some stand on two feet with easy patience. Some take the serious middle—jaw long, shoulders thick, claws out but not all the way. A few are all fur and teeth and discipline sitting over hunger. A low breath runs round the ring, not a cheer, not a threat. Expectation.
She steps into the circle and the circle gets smaller: Lupa, scars like maps, hair braided in a rope that says I've been this and I am this. Her eyes hold the moon even when the moon hasn't risen. She rolls her wrists and the fingers crack into claws halfway. Not full wolf. Choice. Law likes choices when they cost.
I tighten the kept-loop Kirella has thrown through the lantern handle and round my wrist. He does the same to his. We test the loop together; the bite is good. Hands never leave the kept. That rule belongs to us more than to any stone.
"Terms?" Lupa asks. Voice like rope dragged across stone: work-rough, honest.
"No kill," I say. "Pin or yield. Vows kept. Doors left open."
Her mouth barely smiles. "We keep our dead for the ground. We keep our living for teeth." A nod at Ash-Fletch and Stone-Reed, who stand as marshals with faces that refuse dust.
Kirella leans in so only my breath hears him. "On four," he says.
"On four," I answer, and the circle accepts that I meant it.
We step onto the old grooves. The ring greets the lantern with the politeness of a house that remembers its own rules. The carved lines drink a little of its warmth and give back something steady: we.
Old Rules, New Names
Ash-Fletch raises her hand. "By Grey-Moon rite: no coin in the circle; no mirror in the trees; no blood to boast in the telling. Pin or yield. Winner may kill, exile, or claim. Witnessed by river, stone, and the line of wolves. Begin."
Round One starts before my pulse catches the rhythm.
Lupa moves like weather: weight forward, then sideways, then not where I thought. She shoulder-rushes—hard—hips low, claws tight, the clean mechanics of a woman who learned to end problems before they learn her name. I slide, heel skids. I drop a ring coin under my foot—thin, warm, truthful—and the skid turns into a pivot. Shaft bind to meet her forearm, hip turn to let her power dodge around my ribs instead of through them. My breath punches out and back in. We separate by a hand.
The wolves are quiet. This is better than noise.
Lupa prowls left, then right, then throws a sweep for my ankle. I hop the first breath, catch the second with the butt of the tırpan, let it roll my calf rather than take the bone. Kirella's count holds my knees in place. One—two—three—four. He doesn't speak. He writes.
Mirror glints from the trees. A narrow flash that isn't sun and isn't polite tries to jab at my eye.
I drag two fingers through moon balm on my wrist and smear it across my cheekbone; Kirella taps the ferry post with WORD=WAIT. The shine dies with a tiny offended sound. Ash-Fletch turns on the treeline and bares her teeth. "No mirrors," she says to the dark, and the dark believes her.
Kitchen Beats Market
Round Two finds my feet.
I lay two tiny seams at the ring edge—barely there, thin as a sigh—one where I plan to need a stop, one where I plan to need a go. Lupa bluffs high; I answer low, elbow-hip-knee close-work, the grammar Kirella taught me in halls where doors learned manners. She brushes my shoulder with claws blunt enough to count as good behavior; I let the momentum carry me just far enough to clip the metal bracer ring on her wrist with the tırpan's spine.
For one heartbeat I extend the blade—a handspan only—and catch the bracer's ring like a hook catching a bucket. Palm sting lights my bones. I don't cut her; I don't cut anything living; I lever. It's a bad angle Lupa doesn't like to wear. She grunts, pivots out, respectful now.
"Borrowed trick," she says, which is either insult or compliments disguised as weather.
"Shared street," I answer. The lantern between us approves by doing nothing at all but being heavy.
We lock once—forearm to shaft, her breath at my jaw, mine at her ear—and separate because the rules ask for skill not greed.
I back into my stop-seam on purpose and feel it catch my heel like a friend's chest against my shoulders. Lupa commits to a strong step that should have moved me; the seam gives me a quiet no. I bounce back into the go-seam and slide left to ruin her angle. She laughs, honest and angry both. Wolves like problems that try back.
We circle. River says hush. Stone says listen.
One Breath
We lock again—frame, inside hand, outside hip. It stalls. That's fine. The ring is patient; I am learning to be.
I tip my head and touch my forehead to Kirella's cheek over the lantern handle, a kiss that didn't have the nerve to be a kiss. One breath.
"Keep me on four," I whisper where the wood can hear.
"Always," he says. The count hums at my wrist again, so quiet I might be inventing it. I'm not.
Round Three begins with Lupa deciding she is done playing with dishes. She moon-lunges—not full beast, just the stride of it, claws sure, weight perfect, the old song in her knuckles.
I post the shaft, inside step to ruin the clear path, cloak wrap the way Kirella taught me—borrow his cloth as a verb without a cloth—with my forearm tight over Lupa's lead arm, elbow at her elbow, shoulder at her shoulder. It stutters her. Her heel hunts ground behind her and finds the ring coin I laid earlier. The coin asks her to be somewhere else. She cannot.
I switch grip, roll my shoulder through the line her spine offers me, and turn the world down without tearing anything important. Lupa goes chest-ground with the clean thud of a body that understood it would land and chose to do it well. I seat the bar on her arm without cruelty. My blade is nowhere near meat. My breath is nowhere near brag.
"Yield on four," I say.
Wolves count with Kirella—it is barely sound, mostly a habit the mouth remembered from the heart. One—two—three—four.
On four, Lupa taps the stone with two fingers—a yes that keeps its pride.
I release on purpose and in order. I stand. She rolls to her knees on purpose and in order and pushes hair out of her face as if all she did was take a drink.
Silence holds one beat, then breaks—not into cheers, but into the river's sound getting suddenly louder around teeth held shut. Wolves don't clap. They decide.
Ash-Fletch lifts her palm. "Alpha Right won by pin, witnessed by Grey-Moon Ferry and the river that minds its own temper."
Lupa gets to her feet without help. She looks at me like a woman measuring a rope: length, strength, knots. She bares teeth in a shape that learned how to be a smile.
"Choice," Ash-Fletch says, because law is hungry for closure. "Winner may kill, exile, or claim."
I could. The thought passes through me like a shadow that thinks it's important. It is not the shape I am.
I lift the lantern so the light can touch Lupa's face the way kitchens touch faces—honest heat, no permission asked because permission was earned.
"I claim," I say. "I take the moon mantle. I leave Lupa First Fang. We keep each other."
Something like a rope around all our throats loosens a little. Stone-Reed lets out breath he never admitted he was holding. In the trees, a bird realizes it is night and remembers the song it meant to sing.
Lupa's mouth twists once, then steadies. She bows her head a finger-width. "Yes," she says, which is the bravest word in any language when your neck is proud. She turns to the pack and opens both hands. No yield. Welcome.
The wolves answer the correct way: by adjusting the way their feet touch the ground. That is all leadership is most days.
Oath of the Ferry
Ash-Fletch points at the carved groove nearest the river lip. Old circles like to be fed; the rite likes to be written where it can stain.
We bring the lantern to the cut. Together. Our hands on the handle, our wrists still looped kept. My voice goes first because the stone knows my salt now.
"Wolves keep the Kitchen Walk and the Reed Gate. We keep doors open and return for three."
Kirella finishes because vows like to be braided. "We won't pay. We won't sell. No names to paper or stone."
The ring drinks it. A faint mid-light swirl slides onto the lantern glass beside the ferry's earlier marks—no brighter than anything else, but true. The groove glows as if a cautious firefly needed proof we meant it.
We step back. The breath we've been pretending not to hold goes out of the circle. Lupa steps to my shoulder without crowding it.
"You'll make a problem of it," she says. It isn't a threat. It's a prophecy spoken by someone with a lot of practice being right.
"I will," I say. "Bring them anyway."
She snorts, an almost-laugh. "First Fang," she says to herself, trying the sound on. She doesn't hate it. That helps.
In the treeline the tall mask claps once, slow and private, then thinks better of it because manners might be contagious.
"Finder," Ash-Fletch says to him without turning. "Your face is boring."
He grins the way a wound would grin if it could. He spreads his two fingers again, polite as a crow at a funeral, and lets the mirror seam darken around him.
Alarm
Stone-Reed's horn splits the night—two quick notes, one long, held until it trembles the ribs. The pack goes still. The river listens because rivers are nosy.
"Reed Gate," Ash-Fletch says. "Prism saw. It's chewing now."
My wrapped palm remembers its sting and tightens on the lantern handle. The image arrives full and ugly: the pale wedge at the mirror rail leaning, patient, eroding the brake we made out of WAIT and reeds and kept, not because it's strong, but because it doesn't get tired and people do.
Lupa looks at me as if she expects to be told something she won't like that will be true anyway.
"Split," I say. The word tastes like decisions that are reasonable only if everyone is brave. "Half the pack to the Gate—wedge reed bundles deeper, keep the kept-knot honest, drown any mirror eye that tries to be clever. No blood. Pin or toss, if they board. Ash-Fletch, you lead the brace."
Ash-Fletch's mouth sharpens. "Glad work," she says.
"First Fang," I say to Lupa, because names change rooms. "With me. We cut the feed. The prism drinks its light from somewhere along the rail. Stone-Reed—"
"—knows that path," he says. Of course he does. He has walked it down to the grain of bark.
"Kirella," I say without moving my eyes from the map the trees are trying to draw for me, "keep me on four."
He doesn't smile. He never uses that where other people can see it. He just says, "Always," like a habit he keeps in his pocket.
The pack adjusts itself the way a body adjusts itself when it rises from a chair. Hips shift. Feet turn. Hands tug at laces. No one howls until they know where to point the sound.
"Rules," I say, because law is a door you should leave open for yourself before you try to walk through it. "No coin. No mirrors. No blood to boast. Keep the door at the Gate open for three. If the rail throws paper, make it wait or make it wet. If a man falls in, pull him out before you lecture him."
A few wolves snort in a way that means affection disguised as rudeness. Lupa grinds her knuckles and the claws ease just enough to not cut ropes later.
"Finder," Stone-Reed says to the trees, because even courtesy can be used as a knife, "if you try to name the Ferry on paper tonight, I will make you write your own apology with a stick in the mud."
From the seam, the tall mask hums a tune that knows it's pretty. "I adore a civic man," he says. He will try something anyway. That's his job in the story.
The moon lifts its coin over the pines and the ring light changes flavor—less iron, more bone. The lantern warms to it without changing its weight. The wolves' shoulders square to it, breath by breath.
Lupa steps close until our shoulders almost touch. She offers her forearm. I lay my hand across it—command shared, not stolen. We stand there one heartbeat longer than strangers would, because that is what a pact costs if you are doing it right.
"Go," I say.
Ash-Fletch and half the pack flood back through the reeds like a recipe poured onto a hot pan. Stone-Reed tilts his head at a gap in the trees where the mirror rail hums like a lie getting ready to be told. "This way," he says to us.
Kirella's thumb presses my pulse. One—two—three—four. There's the floor again.
We move, the ring at our backs, the oath warm on the stone, the river greedy for news, the prism's pale mouth leaning toward our Reed Gate brake like a cat deciding which chair belongs to it.
And the chapter ends there—Lupa at my side as First Fang, Kirella's count steady at my wrist, wolves breaking clean into brace and strike, the tall mask watching from a seam that thinks it's a throne, and the night opening a path through the pines toward the mirror's heart where we will either teach it WAIT or learn how far patience can be stretched before it snaps.