"Bowl-name only," I tell the line, and chalk dust makes small stars on people's palms.
Kirella moves beside me, steady as a stovetop that never lies. He passes slips into shaking fingers—BOWL-NAME ONLY—and his thumb writes the road at my wrist. One—two—three—four. The lantern settles good-heavy between us, the weight rooms respect.
"Stand," Lupa says to the travelers without raising her voice.
They stand. Even fear can be polite when someone shows it how.
Inside the cart, a bell ttings with each breath like a clerk demeaning a prayer. The mirror plates of the palanquin open in tiers, catching faces the way nets catch fish. A curl of echo filaments wakes, pale and eager, each thread hungry for a mouth.
A woman near me lifts her chin. "Blue Apron," she tries, brave and embarrassed at once.
"Spindle Hand," a roper grins, leaning into the joke so it can be real.
The plates hesitate—bowl-names don't fit their math. The cart wants True. It gets Ours.
The courier gestures with a token punch, confident as a man with a handbook. The guard plants a boot on the step and swings a hook toward the shrine rail.
I meet him close. Shaft bind the wrist, hip turn to feed his balance to the ground, a neat knee tap that persuades him to sit without making a scene. The hook rope hisses past my knee. I catch it with the boat hook and staple it to the shrine rail—wood to wood, not skin to anything. The guard blinks up at the sky, impressed by the idea of it.
The token puncher lunges for Kirella, worse at this than he thinks since he leads with pride. Kirella's cloak drinks the arm and returns it with a calm figure-four that convinces the man to talk to his own wrist about how to drop. "Drop," Kirella says anyway, because good habits should be fed.
The bell boy with the bell rope makes to flee past Lupa. She doesn't catch him; she catches the ground he intended to use. Knee to triceps, weight neatly placed. "Breathe," she tells him. He does, surprised to have permission.
"Chorus," I say to the line, because cart tricks fail in crowds that remember the song.
My hum finds the chalk dust. Kirella's count holds the rhythm. We won't pay, a baker says, then bites his lip to keep from smiling at his own courage. We won't sell, answers the rope seller, as if the words were a knot his hands already knew.
The palanquin's mirror bloom tries to flare. I flick moon balm with the hook so it lands across the plates as a mint-cold mist. Stone-Reed snaps a shade cloth between two stakes, dulling the angles that turn faces into data. I set two thin ring coins beneath my heels; their warm weight keeps me level while the light tries its best to tilt me.
The bell pings again out of habit. I thumb the WORD plate and press WAIT onto the bell's little striker. Kirella sets a kept-loop on the pull chain, a polite choke that teaches it to ping only if asked. The ttings fade to polite. The cart looks mildly offended. That's all right. A lot of good work starts there.
"Open," Kirella says.
The cart's latch wants a toll in more than metal; it wants two truths. These boxes were built by people who understand that meaning can be a key if you cut it right.
"We keep doors open; we return for three," I say into the hinge.
"No names to paper or stone," Kirella tells the catch.
The shutters fold. Inside: tiered plates at clever angles, a small idler tucked under a brace, a nest of filaments, and at the center a voice stone glowing with a tone I know without wanting to: Kirella's timbre, smoothed to law, cut wrong.
The stolen voice turns on. We won't pay, it says in my love's shape, then snags, then starts over. We won't sell. It is stitched to please machines and wrong to any ear that has met the man.
The forest stone at the ditch's edge tugs toward MIR, eager for permission. I set my jaw where fear would rather it not be.
"Stone first," I say.
I draw a small ring on the bench with the lantern's warmth. The voice stone sits inside the circle like a child set on a chair it didn't choose. I cross its face with a tiny balm mark, dab a breath of brine, and lower my mouth so it hears only kitchen.
"We won't pay. We won't sell," I whisper, but in bowl-names—Red Ladle for me, Steady Hand for Kirella—because the law we've chosen doesn't need the names the city thinks it owns.
The stone shivers. Its light loosens. The stolen timbre unwinds, a tight thread easing from a spool, and the stone loops what we gave it: the choir instead of the theft. The filaments reach for it, taste bowl-names, and find nothing to bill.
"Count," I say, low, because the next part hurts.
"Always," Kirella answers, and the road writes itself inside me. One—two—three—four.
The array still hums on the side line. Aux feed. Kirella tips his chin at the idler like a doctor offering a spoon. I wrap the cloth tighter around my palm; he tightens it again with care a machine could never be trusted with. I touch my forehead to his temple for one breath because rooms are better when you add that breath to them.
I give the tırpan one handspan of extension—no more—and slip the hooked spine under the idler lip. Lever, not slice. The wheel pops half-off its pin with a squeal that tastes like shame. Sting jumps my palm and climbs my forearm; it stops where his thumb holds my wrist.
"Peg," Lupa says, and drives a wedge home with the heel of her hand. Stone-Reed threads the chain through a notch we burned WAIT into. The hum slides down into a purr the cart didn't know it could make. His head tilts, listening for the Gate through the pines.
The cart hates losing at its own game. The ledger feeder spits two paper moths, wings dusted with mirror, trying to fall into mouths. I draw a ring circle on the bench; the moths hit the warmth and forget their job. Kirella shakes them into the SORRY pouch; Lupa sets a reed tile on top, palm flat. The moths become exactly as flat as they deserve.
"Loop," Kirella says, and cross-laces two filaments so the array echoes bowl-names back to itself. The plates, starved of True, sip Ours until they're bored.
I chalk the wheel arch: WE KEEP EACH OTHER →—arrow toward the forest path where help toddles in small boots, not uniforms. Kirella slides a release-knot under the dash: it will slip after three friendly checks, then hold impolite hands until someone says sorry out loud.
A glint twitches from the cart's wheel hub—mirror shard. The tall mask uses it like a peephole, voice smooth as a shoe salesman. "Restart on my count," he purrs. "Three—"
Stone-Reed smears moon balm across the shard and it goes blind and honest. The mask's words linger without a mouth and go stale. I mark the axle with a faint ring seam anyway—audit quiet—so if someone gets clever with tools after we leave, the wheel will bite their fingers instead of our people.
"Proof," Kirella says. I lift the cleaned voice stone from its ring. It glows the color of Not Yours anymore. I slide it into the pouch at my breast with the caution you give to hot glass or new recipes.
"Tell your quarter," Lupa says to the courier we've pinned without hurting. Her voice is not unkind. "The box sings wrong math. Go home dry."
He blinks. He is young enough to say yes and mean it. He nods, shaky with the relief of men whose job just turned into something they can imagine their mothers approving of.
A horn through the pines—Ash-Fletch—two short, then a curlicue that means holding. The Gate lives. The prism bite rubs its teeth down.
We could take our bow and go.
The road says no.
Iron clatter on the grade behind us. White lacquer crests the cut, gleaming like polite teeth under a smiling lip. A mirror ambulance—boxier, faster—rolls on stiff springs, the lockwright medics' red thread sigil painted on its side. The back doors bang and fold, not outward but inward, meeting until the space between is a standing mirror. A breath of cold runs down my forearms. The mirror's surface buckles like pond ice about to remember it's a door.
"Hook," Stone-Reed says, already sliding down-slope to see how and where.
Light spools from the mirror as a rope—a hook of light with barbs made from smaller plates. It lashes toward the palanquin with an obedient excitement only cruel tools have. The ambulance intends to snatch the crew and the array in one clean tug, fold the mirror shut, and run for the Auction hub where paper grows teeth.
"Stand," Lupa says. Her wolves melt into the brush on both sides, patient and precise. The crowd squeezes small without being told; bowl-name slips crinkle like soft flags.
I step to the cart's axle seam, lantern lifted so the ring warmth can sit between mirror and mouth like a table set for a conversation the mirror doesn't know how to have. My bandaged palm thinks about shaking and stays still under the count. One—two—three—four.
"No coin. No mirror. No blood to boast," Kirella says under his breath, which is to say: what we do next must remember who we say we are.
The light-hook arcs, bright and hungry. It passes the shrine's lintel. It stretches for the palanquin's brace where we tied WAIT like a stubborn ribbon.
"Left plate," Stone-Reed calls. "Angle—see it?"
I see it: the join where the ambulance mirror's inner seam meets itself—one weak hinge pretending it hasn't been used too fast too often. I see the chain on its trolley bed and the notch where the medics anchor it in a hurry. I see the bell cord inside, taut as vanity.
The travelers' faces turn toward me—not because I am a hero but because I am the one holding a kitchen where a storm is about to try to eat.
I take one breath that belongs to me, one that belongs to we. The lantern is good-heavy in my hands. The ring at my feet is small and true.
We have seconds.
And the chapter ends there—light-hook arcing toward the cart, wolves fanning in shade, civilians clutching BOWL-NAME slips like little shields, the ambulance mirror yawning wider to make the world into a door it owns, Kirella's count steady as a floor under my skin, and my blade short in my grip with one handspan of sin left in it if the job asks politely.