The pine road finds its old stone and pretends it's still a road. Wind combs the ditch grass. A moth taps my cheek and changes its mind.
Stone-Reed lifts a hand—there. The milestone shrine squats in a roadcut like a village elder: waist-high, bronze crown bolted on top, a small mirror eye set into a brow ridge, scent wick chimney snuffing and unsnuffing, a ledger burrow in the leg, and a neat little chain keeper plate that doesn't try to hide its pride. Someone carved a rule into the lintel years ago and rubbed lamp oil into the letters:
SPEAK TO PASS • NAME FOR SAFETY
A few travelers queue with their hats in their hands and the wrong words on their lips. Two road wardens mind the line with hooks and a wooden tray of name tokens. They look like men who want the shift to end.
Lupa flows in ahead of us and sets her shoulders like a gate that knows which way is out. "Polite," she says. The crowd goes polite the way bread goes quiet while it rises.
I press chalk slips into hands as we move. BOWL-NAME ONLY. "If it wants a name," I tell a woman with a bruised basket, "give it a bowl."
She studies the slip like a new recipe. "Blue Apron," she tries, half-defiant, half-laughing at herself.
"Good," I say.
Kirella's thumb writes calm at my wrist. One—two—three—four. The lantern grows good-heavy between us, the weight rooms recognize.
"Promise Choir," he breathes.
I hum where chalk dust lives in my throat; Lupa nods. A baker with flour on his cuffs finds the second line without looking up: We won't sell. A rope seller follows—We won't pay. The queue, the ditch grass, the old stone—everything that can hold a tune learns two sentences and likes the flavor.
The shrine reaches for True and gets Ours. Its glow hesitates like a liar trying to remember a detail.
A warden steps in front of me with the token tray, and because men taught me to be kind up close, I am. Shaft bind his wrist, hip turn to give his elbow a new job, quick knee tap that persuades him to sit without insult. When the tray tips, I plant the boat hook through the tray's rope and staple it to the rail of the little offering basin—wood to wood, not skin to anything. Tokens rattle and stay put.
The second warden reaches for Kirella with a hook that thinks it is an argument. Kirella's cloak drinks it like soup and returns a neat figure-four on the wrist. "Drop," he says, quiet as yes. The hook falls. The man blinks and discovers his fingers are grateful.
"No kill," Lupa reminds the air, which was considering being foolish. She takes the third man's forearm and pins him to his own feet with her knee on his triceps. "Breathe." He remembers how.
We go to work.
Mirror eye: I swipe moon balm on the hook tip and smear across the lens. The image inside muddies like a window kissed by winter breath.
Scent wick: a dab of brine; the wick gags instead of swallowing vows. The shrine hiccups, offended.
Chain keeper: Kirella lays his palm on the lantern with mine. "We won't pay," he whispers into iron. "We won't sell," I finish, and press the WORD plate—WAIT warms the bracket until it remembers patience. Kirella ties a tidy kept-loop from keeper to crown post—sleep, not break.
The hum drops a key. But something still feeds from inside the bronze.
"Crown," Kirella says.
It won't lift. The latch has manners: it wants two truths.
I set my throat to the simple key kitchens love. "We keep doors open; we return for three."
Kirella adds the second because stones like a braid. "No names to paper or stone."
The crown clicks and comes up an inch, surprised to be obedient. Inside: a little idler wheel and a coil of fine echo filament tucked like a worm behind a board.
The wardens watch with the faces of men seeing their house taken apart by people who know how to put it back together better. One tries to speak; Lupa's eyes make a small suggestion. He swallows the sentence whole and later will be glad.
Kirella nod-cues at the idler. I wrap the cloth tighter on my palm; he does it for me, thumb firm over the bruised place. I tip my forehead to his temple for one breath because rooms are better when you add that breath to them.
"Keep me on four," I whisper.
"Always," he says, and the world comes back to the floor. One—two—three—four.
I give the tırpan one handspan of extension—no more—and set the hooked spine under the idler lip. Lever, not hurt. The wheel pops half-off its pin with a squeal that begs nobody to tell on it. Sting snaps through my hand and climbs into my elbow. Lupa shoves a peg against the skew and seats it with a grunt that makes the idler remember shame.
Stone-Reed's stick slips in fast and snips the echo filament into the SORRY pouch like a woman clipping a thread nobody will miss. The hum settles to a compliant purr.
The ledger burrow spits two paper moths—grey, greasy, wings dusted in mirror. They dart toward the nearest mouth and find mine.
"Circle," I say.
I draw a small ring on the shrine top with the lantern's warmth. The moths hit the edge, forget what they were born for, and sit like scolded spoons. Kirella shakes them into the pouch; Lupa sets a reed tile over it and presses a calm palm. The moths go flat as bad ideas.
Travelers murmur. A girl with a cracked shoe whispers, "Little Breath," and smiles into her hands like a secret shared.
We re-thread the chain so the shrine echoes bowl-names back into itself—harmless loop. Kirella knots a release under the crown lip that will slip after three friendly touches and give liars splinters. I chalk the base:
WE KEEP EACH OTHER →
Arrow points toward the wolf path through the pines.
Behind us, the trees catch a piece of light that isn't the moon. A small mirror shard glints from a cart hub. The tall mask's reflection stands up inside it like a man in an expensive window.
"Restart on my count," he purrs, amused, as if ordering tea.
"Forest law: NO MIRROR," Lupa says, low. Stone-Reed rubs moon balm over the shard with his thumb until the reflection starves and becomes what it always was: nothing pretending.
"Your bylaws are adorable," the mask offers from nothing's edge. He keeps watching because some people hate the idea that a story can continue without them.
A horn whispers through the pines—Ash-Fletch—two short, then a bend that means holding. The Gate lives. The prism's bite fades its teeth. Relief stalks my ribs and I tell it to walk, not run.
Stone-Reed tilts his chin at a standing stone beyond the ditch. We all hear it scratch. The pale groove that was MI— pauses like a child with a stolen cookie deciding whether to bolt. It waits. My skin loosens a finger's width.
"Done," Kirella says, which does not mean finished forever. It means finished for now, which is all any honest thing dares promise.
I turn to send people home with their bowl-names intact.
Iron wheels sing on the road.
A lantern's yellow climbs the cut. A box taller than a man rolls into view on spring stilts—a palanquin with mirror panelling behind shutters of painted wood. Two levy skiffs on wheels trot beside it. A horn trills a smug note I want to unscrew.
"Accelerated audit," the front warden announces, eyes tired, mouth proud for pay's sake. "Make way. Names to record; voices to verify."
The shutters fold like fans taught manners by money. Inside: a portable mirror array—tiered plates angled to sip sound—and a nest of pale echo filaments coiled like patient snakes. A little wheel turns a little bell every time the filaments taste breath. A placard over it says SPEAK TO PASS in letters that charge rent.
A voice wakes in the box. It is Kirella's and not. I feel my body go cold before my brain catches the words.
"We won't pay," the voice says, calm as rope. "We won't sell. No names to paper—"
It stops and starts again. Cut, stitched, looped wrong. Stolen. The standing stone beyond the ditch tugs. The MI— pulls toward MIR— like a fish on a line.
Kirella's face is a door that remembers how to be a wall. He doesn't look at me because he is not cruel. He looks at the palanquin like a man who has decided how long wood can live when asked to be iron.
Lupa rolls her shoulders until the claws ease but don't hide. The pack fans into the trees without running; shade learns their shapes and pretends it had them all along.
I step to the shrine's ring edge so I can borrow a little we without turning my back to the road. The lantern rises in my palm and sits there good-heavy like truth that won't apologize for weighing what it weighs. The tremor in my bandaged hand thinks about speaking and chooses quiet under the count. One—two—three—four.
The courier inside the palanquin smiles with the relief of men in uniforms who brought tools to a job they know will be easy. He holds up a token punch.
"Names to pass," he calls, as if telling the moon where to stand. "We have voice on file for your guard there. Convenient, isn't it? Speak after him and the road is yours."
The travelers' hands shake. The woman with the bruised basket squeezes her Blue Apron slip until chalk prints her palm like a blessing that can smear.
I breathe slow. Brine in my sleeve. Balm in my pocket. Rings like coins ready at my feet. Kirella's thumb at my pulse. Lupa's weight settled like a promise at my right shoulder. Stone-Reed already looking at wheel angles and chain bite on the palanquin's undercarriage like a man picking the best place to lay a wedge without breaking the cart.
"Bowl-names," I tell the crowd without turning my head. "Chorus if you can. Whisper if you can't."
The filaments twitch, hungry. The mirror plates find my face like gossip.
Inside the box, the Kirella-voice winds up again, all our vows bent wrong and fed to machines that never learned to be ashamed.
And the chapter ends there—with bowl-name slips trembling in honest hands, wolves sliding into the pines like a shade learning how to protect what it loves, the palanquin's mirror array opening like a flower that eats bees, the stolen voice counting where it shouldn't, and my lantern good-heavy at the edge of the ring while the audit primes itself to write us into stone unless we teach it WAIT faster than it can remember our names.