The wall ahead is not weather. It is a ledger pretending to be a cloud.
It rises from the sea like a straight black curtain pinned to a sky that still hasn't decided if it's day. The closer we row, the colder the water tastes. Ink. Birthday smoke. Paper that thinks it's a priest.
"Don't touch it with skin," Kirella says, even though I already wasn't going to.
I dip the brine needle and let one bead fall into the fog. The bead hisses and vanishes like a lie caught in the mouth. I smear a line of moon balm across the edge with the boat hook. Where balm touches, the black smears to gray, its straightness suddenly a little embarrassed.
Deep inside, a thin horn asks a question in three voices layered—one shy, one oily, one with a smile that likes knives.
"Name for passage?"
"Bowl-names," I say to our boat and to the part of me that hopes the world will be gentle if I am.
"Smokehood first," Stone-Reed answers.
He rigs without asking for help. Shade cloth over a low bent frame; oarlock pins become little posts; a length of rope, two pegs, a strip of pepper-mint chimney we learned at Quiet Wharf. He fixes the chimney to draw up, not out. Smoke knows how to mind itself when it's given somewhere to go.
We pull the hood down over our heads until the boat is a room. The wolves shuffle and settle with that resigned sound animals make when they agree to behave but expect it won't last.
I lay a thin ring seam along both gunwales—hush, not glamour. The lantern sits good-heavy low by my feet, wrapped in cloak. Two ring coins glow under my soles, steady as bread. One—two—three—four, Kirella counts, and the oars learn to breathe without bragging.
"Ready," Lupa says from the bow. It isn't a question. It is the shape of her spine.
We slide into the wall.
The fog closes around us with the manners of a library that forgot its purpose. It hushes the oars, the water, my mouth. It puts a hand on my throat—not hard, just proprietary.
The horn asks again, closer. "Name for passage?"
I set a voice stone into a palm ring on the thwart. It loops our two lines, soft as steam off soup:
We won't pay.
We won't sell.
The layered voices hesitate, then thin to a curious wind. The fog still wants its tithe. It is annoyed to find itself bored.
Our boat travels as a smell at first: pepper-mint drawing up and out of the chimney, the fog tasting it and failing to make a story from it. Then we are a sound: one—two—three—four under breath, oars feathering.
"Bowl-names," I whisper. We speak them once, not loud, not pretty, each word a little candle behind teeth.
"Red Ladle."
"Steady Hand."
"First Fang." Lupa's mouth almost smiles.
"Little Breath, Little Breath." The wolves do not correct the joke.
"Stone-Reed."
The fog tugs at the syllables and finds them stubborn. It wants true; it gets ours.
"Left," Stone-Reed murmurs, reading currents the way some men read the faces of liars. "Something pulling there."
We give the oars a small agreement. The prow hums keep, the hood breathes right. My skin hates daylight less in this dim. I let my shoulders relax enough to admit I have shoulders.
Something bumps us starboard.
A rowboat emerges from nowhere, tar-cloth draped across a low frame of its own, two figures inside masked with dark smeared rags. One holds a nail-bell wand; the other cradles a ledger box. A third hand—perhaps the first man's other, perhaps a friend the fog kept for itself—slides a tithe hook toward our rail.
"Name for passage," says a not-his voice from inside his mask. The wand's little bell shivers, hungry.
"Close," Lupa says, and stands into the fog like a door.
The first tither brings the wand up. Lupa takes his wrist, turns his elbow, and sets him on his knees against his own seat, one knee on triceps, his spine informed of its limits. "Breathe," she says. He obeys because air has arguments knives don't.
The second tither swings the tithe hook for our rail. I let the tırpan take one handspan of extension—no more—and flick the hook up and out, metal only. I lay the curve of my blade against it, twist, and drop it into the floor ring by my feet. The hook lands in warmth and goes polite. Palm sting spikes, bright and persuasive. One—two—three—four, Kirella counts, and the sting learns to sit the way the hook did.
Kirella steps into their boat with the grace of a man setting a pot on its trivet. He presses the WORD plate to the ledger box latch. WAIT enters wood and hinge. He ties a kept-loop around the wand's striker, finger-quick, making it a bell that only speaks when invited by someone who means it. The wand sulks. The ledger remembers that closed is not an insult.
"Take the other oarlock," Stone-Reed says from our stern, and taps a peg into their rowlock—pinning it just crooked enough that their stroke will argue with itself later. He looks into the fog, reading the part of the water a man cannot see with eyes.
Another bump. Our hull shivers—not from the boat, but from under. A wet sound, sticky and patient.
"Leeches," Lupa says, disgust like a spoon.
The wolves rise, fur up, noses down. A ripple of tiny hisses answers: flat slugs of mirror clinging to our waterline, thin as skins, tasting for a reflection they can pull.
I kneel so the coins under my feet can do their job. Short scythe only. I slide the blade under the first ink-leech and scrape it off into the SORRY bucket. It slaps the tin and tries to climb back into nonsense. I dust it with brine. It curls like a burned word and goes still.
One more, two more, four. My palm sting rattles my fingers; the world tilts. Kirella's hand finds my elbow. One—two—three—four. The floor stays where it belongs.
"You're good," he says, which means stop if you need.
"I'll be better when they're gone," I answer, and finish the job that was mine to do. The fog tastes less sure when it can't pinch our reflection and call it payment.
The first tither tries to be loyal to a bad idea. Lupa leans a little more kindly into his shoulder and his decision changes. He holds still. His breath is loud.
"Name for passage," the fog repeats, offended by our patience.
"We won't pay." My voice isn't louder. It's heavier. "We won't sell."
Between the dark voices inside the horn, a new one slips in, smooth as oil on black water. It knows the shape of my name without knowing it.
Little red, the horn purrs. One true syllable. Calm seas, and you can keep your boy.
"I'm not a boy," Kirella says, perfectly cheerful. "I'm the count."
"Then one true number," the voice smiles. We will accept four.
The wolves snarl. The sound makes a dent in the fog. Lupa's mouth does something less polite.
I set my palm on the prow ring. "We don't trade our breath for weather," I say. "We teach weather manners."
The voice considers liking me. Then it remembers its job. You'll drown of principle, it predicts, fond.
"Maybe," I say. "But not today."
We push off the tithers' boat and let it spin on its pegged oarlock and sulking wand, ledger WAIT-quiet in its lap. Their masked faces follow us through the cloth and fog the way men watch a cat decide whether it is a story.
The wall's black becomes a system. I can feel pulls now—thin fingers drawing fog inward: intake throats hidden a knee's depth under the skin. We pass above one and the hood tugs at my cloak. A buoy lurks there, disguised as a lump of night.
"Throat," Stone-Reed says, pointing with his chin. "If we teach one to be polite, others will have to practice."
We angle under the hood, slow as a secret. The intake buoy is a squat metal lung with a little bell, a drunk vane, and a throat flap that opens and closes like a mouth that wants to own laughter.
I lay an audit-quiet ring seam along the buoy's lip so what we do next will not brag. Kirella presses the WORD plate to the tiny bell. WAIT warms it into a dull little saint. He dribbles brine into the wick; it gags on certainty. Stone-Reed slides a wedge under the throat flap so it sits half-closed, and Lupa rubs moon balm along the vane until its straightness gets shy.
The intake's draw thins. Fog passes by like a disappointed aunt. Beyond it, the wall shows a faint lane where black is gray and gray is a possibility.
"For anyone after us," Kirella says.
"Three," I answer, because promising is a way to stay human.
We row. The hood breathes. The fog tries one more time to be a church and we let it be an alley instead.
The horn follows us for a while, liking its own shape, then drifts back into the wall. I do not give it MI—. That is for stone. That is for later, when we break it and feed the crumbs to wolves.
Inside the hood is a small life: wolf breath, cloak wool, the mint in my mouth. Lupa checks the knots on the chimney because she trusts craft more than luck. Stone-Reed hums three notes that mean keep in the rope language. Kirella's thumb strokes the lantern handle once, and the weight answers: we.
Time slows into sunless noon—light enough for detail, generous enough to be kind. I can feel day on my skin like cold salt, but my skull doesn't ring from it. I roll my shoulders and admit I am not drowning. That feels like luxury.
"Hand," Kirella says, and cups my wrapped palm in both of his. He presses his forehead to my temple. One breath. The oars don't miss. The hood doesn't complain. My heart, ridiculous, behaves and then forgives itself for behaving.
"Keep me on four," I say.
"Always," he answers.
We edge out of the black.
The world beyond is a flat slate noon, the sun somewhere else, the air an honest gray. The Mid-Light Needle pricks the horizon a little nearer than before—as if we moved and it agreed to reward us with a small kindness. Behind us, the fog wall holds its line; where we taught the throat manners, a thin KEEP lane glimmers like a thread in a heavy curtain.
"Left," Stone-Reed says automatically, because left of loud worked last time and luck shies away from men who worship it.
We are not alone.
Across our path slides a long, low raft-barge stitched from too many hulls, lashed with iron smiles. On its deck sit crates with stamps I don't respect and mirror poles that want to make a sky where there isn't one. Two small tither boats flit guard at either side like flies that think they are science.
On the raft's prow someone painted a sigil: MYOR, crossed by a key.
A speaking horn turns toward us. It draws a breath that misses my throat on purpose only because it means to take it when I'm grateful.
"Block," Lupa says, which is how she pronounces trap when she's not impressed.
"Running broadside," Stone-Reed mutters, reading wake and leverage. "They'll slide and box the clean water."
The raft-barge is a Ledger Ark, and it likes its name more than it likes its crew.
We hold our little lane. The rope-ring prow hums keep louder, as if it wants the Ark to be embarrassed by how ugly a word own sounds next to we.
"A donation and your papers," the horn declares, cheerful. The voice is a man's, but the shape of the sentence is Myor. A tithe for safety. Names for the ledger. You can keep the rest of your skin.
"Wait," Kirella tells me, because he knows where my scythe is about to go without seeing my hands.
"I'm not cutting people," I say.
"Good," Lupa says without looking back. "Because I'm throwing them gently."
"We'll teach their tools," Stone-Reed adds. "And leave them embarrassed, not bleeding."
The wolves stand, ears forward, bodies low and eager for the work that is not killing.
The Ark slides to block every honest inch of water. The two tither boats fan out to pinch any mistake. The speaking horn smiles with habits.
I pull the cloak lower over my head and rest my palm on the lantern handle. Good-heavy. Count in my ribs. The coins under my feet heat one notch.
The horn opens its mouth.
And the chapter ends there—with our hull under the Smokehood, prow ring humming keep, the fog's KEEP lane behind us like a thread stitched for strangers, the Ledger Ark drawing a clean line across our water with a painted MYOR and a key, tithers sharp on either flank, the horn ready to write us into a story we didn't choose, and Kirella's one—two—three—four steady as Lupa's balance, Stone-Reed's peg in his hand, and my short scythe remembering that close is where we win.