The white sweep walks the water like a careful hand searching a fever.
I crouch lower under Kirella's cloak; the cloth smells like rope and cedar and him. Two ring coins glow under my feet—warm, stubborn, small. The lantern sits good-heavy between our hands, its weight saying we more convincingly than any speech.
"Chain," Stone-Reed murmurs, chin toward the dark belly of the Lamphouse. A maintenance chain droops from the tower's underguts, slick with barnacle and story.
"On your count," Lupa says, already uncoiling.
"Two," Kirella answers. "Three. Four."
The rope-ring prow hums keep and the hull slides for the chain's shadow. The white fan of holy-glass combs toward our bow, patient and wrong. The wolves flatten their ears and refuse to whine.
I lay a finger along the gunwale and draw a ring seam so thin it feels like remembering. The boat quiets the last of its opinions.
"Go," Kirella says.
Lupa goes.
She is quick without hurry, up the wet ladder in three breaths, hands finding rungs the way truth finds a mouth. The tender on the balcony—boyish face, anxious wrists—turns too slow. Lupa is already there, weight neat and kind: knee on triceps, wrist off lever, shoulder a gentle wall.
"Breathe," she tells him, which is how we say you are not the enemy without wasting time.
At the ladder's foot I set a small ring seam for our boots; wood chooses quiet. The wolves nose two shade cloths into place at the panel bases where the light bleeds strongest. The sweep dulls at the edges, less knife, more habit.
Kirella steps from our hull to the balcony with a surety I would call grace if he'd let me. The bell there—a tidy brass gossip—shivers in hope. Kirella presses the WORD plate to its striker: WAIT warms into metal. He ties a kept-loop on the pull chain so it will only speak when asked nicely. A brine prickle to the wick and the bell forgets it is special.
"Panels," he says.
I reach with the boat hook, the tip dipped in moon balm. A swipe along two glass seams and the white behind them muddies like breath on winter. The sweep hesitates. The wolves lift the shade cloths higher, their paws braced like punctuation.
One latch at the panel's hinge sticks—a proud little liar. I let the tırpan take one handspan of extension—no more—and pry the metal tongue up and out. Palm sting leaps wrist to elbow; I hold it still in the place Kirella keeps clear for me. The panel settles half-closed, as if remembering dignity.
I sway. His hand closes over my wrapped palm, firm and warm.
"Keep me on four," I whisper.
"Always," he says.
Forehead to temple, one breath, and the floor returns to the foot that needed it.
"Throat," Stone-Reed says softly from the chain's shadow below. "We take it off song."
Under the platform, the anchor housing is a box of iron and patience. I draw a thin seam along its lip—audit quiet—so the next thing won't clang to betray us. The anchor pin sits inside, proud as a certificate.
The tırpan stays short. I slide the hooked spine under the pin cap, lift with the careful insistence you use to open a child's fist. Kirella has the peg ready. Lupa, above, feathers the lever to give us slack, the tender's wrist guided kindly away.
The pin rises with a sigh it didn't know it owed us. Kirella wedges the peg, notched just enough to take the weight like a gentleman, not enough to show off. The chain settles two links lower, no crash, just a chain sigh that could be wind.
The sweep drops with it—polite dusk blooming across the channel as if the tower learned shame. The buzz under the glass falls to a note you could sleep in.
The tender's breath finally joins the air. His eyes are the eyes of a person who was told a story about monsters and has to decide if he prefers data.
"It isn't a trick," I tell him, palm open, fingers away from the blade. I set a small voice stone in a thumb-width ring on the deck at his knee. It loops the two lines, bare as bread:
We won't pay.We won't sell.
His jaw loosens. His shoulders take off their armor without touching his hands.
"Don't raise the bell," Lupa says. It comes out as advice, not threat.
He licks his lips. "I'm not… I'm not supposed to—"
"Good," Kirella says, tying the last talkative piece of rope into a three-visit release around the lever guard. "Then don't. Not for three."
I chalk under the ladder where only knees read: WE KEEP EACH OTHER →. Stone-Reed skims his palm along the control box and I follow with a whisper seam—the kind that makes levers listen and think before they shout.
"Teach others," I tell the tender. He nods because it is either nod or tremble.
"Through," Kirella calls, and the boat obeys.
We pass under the stilts in the shadow we made. The rope-ring prow hums yes in a voice I remember from kitchens. Wolves low, steady, soft-footed even on wood; Lupa hand-over-hands down the ladder's underside and drops silent into the bow. Stone-Reed lands in the stern like a man sitting down to finish a letter.
Behind us the Lamphouse wears dusk like a habit it always meant to cultivate.
"Three," I tell the tender as we slip past his knees. "We return for three. Keep the bell mannered. Teach keep."
He swallows, then nods—the kind of nod that practices being courage.
We are almost clear when the water under us bulges.
A deep winch wakes beneath the Lamphouse floor, grinding a hymn that learned greed. Echoes rattle the stilts. Mirror rails tremble like insects flexing. From a dark slot—a wound in the channel's skin—a barge nose pushes out, metal wet with sanctimony.
"Temple," Lupa says. Her mouth is calm. Her fingers find the boat's gunwale and forgive it for being wood.
The Temple Barge rises from its hidden bay like a saint late to a riot: a low iron deck, a holy-glass hood arched over its back, a lattice of bells under the crown, each with a tiny wick like a throat that has too much to say. Along the sides: mirror ambulance fittings—hooks and rails—and men below with coats the color of rules.
The hood begins to open, petals of glass lifting for air. The bell lattice takes a breath measured in money and authority.
"Down-channel is… through that," Stone-Reed says, squinting at the rails that run between lamphouse and barge like a marriage.
The boat rocks under us, not afraid, but attentive. Dawn gnaws the east. My coins glow hotter under my soles. The cloak pulls more of me inside it.
"Keep or break?" Kirella asks, even though he knows which word I am.
"Keep," I say, tasting iron and mint, love and argument. "Always keep first."
The wind brings the smell of hot glass and human worry. The bells make that pre-sound—like a mouth forming a vowel before voice. The barge's crew are shadows behind panels, hands on chains, eyes on names they haven't earned.
I set my palm to the prow ring. It hums into bone.
"Options?" Lupa says.
"Striker and wick," Kirella answers, already seeing angles—that lattice will listen once. "Rails at the coupler if we must."
"Panel latches," Stone-Reed adds. "And a chain in the throat, again, if we find it."
The white from the Lamphouse stays dusk because we asked nicely and taught it how, but the day beyond that is a mouth trying to remember its right to be loud.
The Temple Barge raises its hood higher. The first bell breath draws.
And the chapter ends there—with our hull just clear of the stilts, the shadow we built long enough for three breaths, the Temple Barge heaving into our lane, its lattice preparing to ask for names I will never give, the wolves braced in the bow, Lupa coiled to pin the first hand that confuses duty with violence, Stone-Reed ready with peg and hook, and Kirella's count steady in my blood while the lantern sits good-heavy between us, asking to be the kitchen we carry through a city that keeps mistaking paperwork for light.