The white from the towers eats shadow like hot milk poured over night.
It doesn't burn the way temple glass burns; it insists. My skin prickles; the coins under my boots go thin as if someone watered them down. The mirror bay in front of us yawns wider, a mouth practicing a swallow. Filaments lick the air for rent.
"Shade!" Lupa barks.
One wolf keeps teeth and paws on the cloth at Tower Five's base, holding the fake day by the ankle. Lupa is already sprinting toward Tower Two, a blur with claws sheathed. Her shoulders mean no-kill the way a door can mean welcome without moving.
Kirella drops his cloak over my head and shoulders. The weight calms the white the way a lid hushes boil. He squeezes my wrist. One—two—three—four.
"Lamp base," he says. "Left. Now."
We slide low. The tower's plinth is a shin-high block of painted iron, warm as a temper tantrum. It has an inspection window, a scent wick like a little chimney, and a bell striker—every machine in this city wants to be a church when it grows up.
I draw a thin ring seam around the base with the lantern's warmth. The iron relaxes, a fraction. I dab brine on the scent wick; it gags and stops pulling the world toward itself. With the hook's tip I sweep moon balm across the inspection glass. The light behind it learns fog.
"WAIT," Kirella tells the striker, pressing the WORD plate until brass remembers to be polite. He ties a kept-loop on the pull chain—no pinging unless asked. Stone-Reed taps a peg under a spring foot with the heel of his palm. The reflector tilts a hair, turning cathedral into kitchen.
The white dims half a step—polite dusk pretending it meant to be here all along.
We run the same trick at Tower Two. Lupa slaps a cloth over its shins; I seam and brine and balm; Kirella gives the bell manners. Polite dusk spreads like the right kind of rumor, first under our hands, then down the catwalk.
"Bay," Kirella says.
The stretcher in the mirror mouth rises another handspan. A yarder charges, hook high, a man who thinks noise is proof.
I meet him close—shaft bind, hip turn, a neat knee tap that sets him down fast without introducing his face to the floor. His rope skates; I staple it to the guard rail—wood to wood, no skin.
The foreman does the smart thing and goes for the lever. Kirella's cloak drinks his arm; figure-four convinces the lever it is lonely. "Drop," he says, not unkind. The foreman drops the idea first, then his hand.
"Latch," Lupa says, planting herself between the bay's shadow and the workers with a weight that is a boundary, not a dare.
The bay latch is iron and proud, meant to be moved by men who boast. I give the tırpan one handspan of extension—no more—and pry the latch out and up. Metal only. The shock stings through my palm and up my forearm; it stops where Kirella's thumb holds my wrist. He doesn't look at me because he knows I hate being watched when it hurts. I love him for that more than any vow I could speak.
I run a ring seam around the bay's rim; press WAIT on the hinge; tie a neat three-visit release knot on the control bar. The mouth holds half-sleep, teeth showing, shame practicing being wisdom.
"Choir," I say, because mirrors go hungry when kitchens sing.
I set the cleaned voice stone in a little ring on the catwalk. It loops our two-lines like a stove hums when soup decides to be right:
We won't pay.We won't sell.
At the fence, Ash-Fletch walks the whisper to and fro. A fisherman outside the yard answers without knowing he's brave.
The plates still listening get bored. You can't invoice bowl-names.
We turn to the Voice Bank.
The shed is squat and sure of itself, crown latch rubbed bronze-bright by hands that believe locks are their friends. A mirror peephole stares from the door like an eye that never learned to blink. A scent wick tickles the jamb. The chain keeper plate sighs in relief when it sees us coming, because chains are always tired of being told they're important.
"Crown wants truth," Kirella says.
We give it the only two we carry everywhere.
"We keep doors open; we return for three," I say.
"No names to paper or stone," he adds.
The crown lifts a hair. I smear balm across the peephole; its gaze muddies. A brine dab into the wick makes it gag instead of gossip. Palms on the lantern, vows under breath, WAIT to the keeper, tidy sleep-loop on the chain. The latch opens like a mouth deciding it is better to eat soup than people.
Inside: shelves. On the shelves: bottles. Not pretty ones. Plain medicine glass with corks waxed a cheap red. Each bottle hums a timbre, fragments of voices bottled like summer fruit: the way someone sighs yes, a laugh stub you could trip on, a bite of a name like MI—. My mouth tastes iron I didn't drink. My neck tightens where my name almost lives in stone.
"Three," Kirella says. "Four at most. We don't have a cart."
I nod. We pick the corners that prove a point: one bottle that hums like a rope seller, one like a baker, one like nothing I can name because it belongs to a stranger who shouldn't be a recipe.
I draw three small ring circles on the floor between the shelves. I cross each ring with a thumb of balm, touch each cork with brine, and speak the two lines in bowl-names only, because the math I am feeding these mouths insists that a human is not a receipt.
"Red Ladle," I whisper. "Steady Hand.""We won't pay. We won't sell."
The bottles shiver. Their hivesong unwinds the way a tight knot sighs when you find the one loop that always meant to be a handle. The timbres unstitch from mirror math and slouch into Promise Choir—harmless as steam.
Kirella pockets one bottle carefully, proof to put under noses that only believe what they can hold. He writes a three-visit release into the latch with a knot so modest a lock will say thank you in its sleep.
Stone-Reed finds the idler and echo filament feeding the ledger under the Bank's belly. The idler gets a peg half-seated—honest enough to fail when asked to boast. The filament snips into the SORRY pouch like a thread someone meant to cut all along.
We tag the yard as if it were a stew that will improve if you teach it patience.
On two low exits, my chalk draws WE KEEP EACH OTHER → with arrows aimed where wolves can flow. I lay thin audit-quiet seams on a switch lever and a smaller lamp mast, a whisper the iron will keep repeating when we're gone. Lupa assigns a wolf to each chalk mark for a minute, tails down, ears soft, teaching the ground to keep by standing the way we mean to stand.
The yard tries to get clever.
A shard at a tower top winks with wet—Tall Mask peering through a shave of mirror, voice arriving without a mouth: "You're making this yard sentimental," he says, amused.
I flick a balm mist up with the boat hook; Stone-Reed throws a second cloth like a fisherman. The shard starves. If a smirk could cough, his would.
The grid tries to flicker-on. Our seams, our kept-loops, our cloth-hands on lamp bases hold it to polite dusk. It sulks into obedience, offended the way rich people are when soup is better than speeches.
"Move," Lupa says. The word wears fangs only for urgency.
Our tagged ambulance clatters onto the inner track. Ash-Fletch signals the haul-line angle with two fingers and a chin—a language we speak now. The winch whines. The cradle kisses the frame with iron lips. The kept-thread we wove sings off-key like a single hair in a polished brush.
"We ride the frame," Kirella says. His eyes make a path across chain, pulley, cradle notch. He points to the shadow side where a person could be a secret without making it a lie. He tightens the wrap on my palm. I tap my forehead to his temple for one breath behind the cloak.
"Keep me on four."
"Always."
We crouch, ready to slide onto the moving rail.
The yard shows us a new trick.
A man steps out of a side bay like an afterthought that learned to dress. White coat without dust. Belt without pride. On his hands: prism gauntlets—facets the size of teeth, each face drinking light and promising to spit it back in close bursts.
He sees me under the cloak and smiles the way men do when they think they've discovered the recipe to a secret. He sights along the gauntlet at my ribs as if checking a pan for level.
"Warden," Lupa says quietly, the kind of quiet that readies knees and unwinds fingers.
The gauntlet whirrs, facets brightening, a polite storm waking. The ambulance's cradle starts with a clack and a purr; our window to ride is opening and then closing in the same breath. The mirror bay we put to half-sleep sighs and tries to remember it is a mouth. The Voice Bank behind us hums like a hive waiting for rain. The holy-glass grid leans in, curious, held to dusk by rope, balm, brine, ring, and will.
Kirella's count is under my skin where fear tries to be a god.One—two—three—four.
The prism's first pulse gathers like a cup of white in a shaking hand.
And the chapter ends there—with a Mirror Warden leveling his gauntlets at my heart, the ambulance lifting on the cradle like a secret elevator to sharper teeth, wolves braced at two lamp bases with cloth and patience, the bay sleeping with one eye open, the Voice Bank tagged and wanting, and our palms bound to the lantern handle, good-heavy, while the next choice hovers between keep and break like a breath we dare not waste.