The horn clears its throat like a clerk about to love a rule.
"Donation and papers," it says, cheerful as a debt. "A light fee for safe water. Names for the ledger. You can keep the rest of your skin."
Our little boat breathes under the Smokehood. The rope-ring prow hums keep like a stubborn prayer. The lantern sits good-heavy between our hands. One—two—three—four, Kirella counts, and the oars match his ribs instead of the horn.
I set a voice stone into a thumb-wide ring on the thwart. It spills our bowls soft as steam.
We won't pay.
We won't sell.
"Noncompliant," the horn decides, pleased to have a word.
The Ledger Ark slides broadside, stitched hulls flexing like a crooked smile. On the deck: two mirror poles craned high, their lacquered eyes trying to make a sky; a horn man with a pull-cord and a hat that believes in itself; a ledger trunk with brass corners and smug hinges; three crew who wanted other jobs and found none. Two tither boats flit like flies at either flank, hooks ready to turn mistakes into invoices.
"Lee," Stone-Reed murmurs, pointing his chin at the quiet water tucked against the Ark's shadow. "Upwind side. Close and clean."
We nose under the Ark's lee. Water hushes. The raft's lashings creak to remind wood there's more than one way to say obey.
"Board tidy," Lupa says, and goes.
She is over our bow and up their rail before the horn remembers inertia. The horn man turns—hat, smile, habit—and finds knee on triceps, wrist off pull-cord, the deck arriving under his spine with a courtesy that will hurt if he resists and won't if he doesn't.
"Breathe," Lupa instructs. He obeys. Air is persuasive.
The wolves leap after her, silent, carrying a folded shade cloth in their teeth. They drape it over the nearest mirror pole head, dulling the eye. It blinks the way a proud thing blinks when it realizes no one clapped.
Kirella steps up next—one hand to rail, one to strake, a soft landing that makes a case for gravity's goodwill. He presses the WORD plate to the horn's striker. WAIT warms into iron. He ties a kept-loop on the pull chain so a panic tug says nothing at all. A brine finger to the name-wick and the horn coughs itself polite.
"Next," he says, as if reading a kitchen ticket.
I go to the mirror pole at the rail. The collar at its base holds a pin fat with confidence. I let the tırpan take one handspan of extension—no more—and slip the hooked spine under the pin cap. Lift. Only metal. The pin rises with a scandalized little click. Palm sting snaps my wrist; one—two—three—four holds it like a handled pot. Stone-Reed is there with a wedge, knocking it home so the pole sits crooked and honest.
"Cloth," Lupa calls. The wolves shift the shade to the second pole; its glare muddies.
"Ledger!" a deckhand yelps, trying to convert panic into a job. He shoves the trunk at Kirella like a shield.
Kirella stamps WAIT into the latch. The trunk sulks shut. He adds a three-try release knot to the handle—too simple to impress a thief, too stubborn to flatter a bully. I swipe a whisper ring seam along the hinges—audit-quiet, so it won't brag when opened with grace later by the person who needs what's inside.
The second pole whines as its minder jerks the hand-crank. I leave my scythe short and use the boat hook: a brine dab into the seam that hides its little name-wick, a smooth turn of the fork to unseat the locking pawl. The pole's eye goes out of tune, glare turning to pout.
A tither boat edges in on our starboard, hook high. Lupa slides, taps his wrist, and redirects him into a coil of net with a neat tug at hip and elbow. He lands seated and unhurt, a man who has learned something and will not admit it until later. "Breathe," she reminds him. He does because there is nothing else to do with that instruction.
The horn man tries to be brave for an audience and remembers there isn't one he respects. I take his free hand and set it gently on the rail—palm down, fingers open, as if he were feeling for the weather the way a sailor should. He looks at me as if I spoke a language his father meant to teach him and didn't.
"Pivot," Stone-Reed says softly, eyes on the raft's spine. "There."
His finger chooses the king-pin lashing mid-raft, where two hulls marry. The tide pulls from our stern quarter; if we lift quietly, the Ark will yaw a boat-width and open a gate.
"Clean," Kirella says.
We move like a recipe where every hand knows its measure. I slide the short scythe under the stirrup pin and lift—only metal, careful as a promise. Stone-Reed taps a peg into the gap; Lupa feathers a slack lanyard so the lashings hum like content rope. The raft grumbles and then turns, yawing a lane wide enough for a boat that means no harm.
The Ark crew sway, ready to perform order. Kirella tilts his head. "No names to paper," he says conversationally, as if discussing soup. "Not today."
Their shoulders forget to be enemies.
I chalk under the nearest rail where grease hands will see it later: WE KEEP EACH OTHER →. A voice stone hums bowls faint as breath by the horn man's knee.
"Three," Kirella adds, tying a three-visit release on the king-pin peg so they can set their wall again after three honest tries if they insist on learning the slow way.
The wolves nosing the horn man's pocket make him jump. They push the folded keep slip in and sit back, satisfied. He touches his pocket like a man surprised to own a handkerchief.
"Gate," Stone-Reed says, nodding at the lane.
"Through," Lupa answers.
We lower back to our hull, the boat welcoming our weight like a bench that missed us. I trace a fresh ring seam along the gunwale—hush for the one moment the water wants to clink. Kirella's count tightens, oars feathering. The rope-ring prow hums keep and kisses the seam between two raft hulls—polite, small, ours.
One of the tithers, still smarting from the net, lunges the hook for our stern. Lupa taps the hook's throat with two knuckles. It chooses the coil again. "Breathe," she says. It's almost affectionate.
We slide into the gate. The Ark's horn tries to find its voice and discovers WAIT in its throat. The mirror poles watch us leave through their own shade. The ledger trunk considers sulking at us and remembers it has manners. Behind, the raft ends up angled—not broken, not humiliated, simply inconvenient to cruelty. Between the hulls, a visible KEEP lane glimmers for anyone who dares to follow our wake.
"Left of loud," Stone-Reed says, because water likes to be reminded how to be kind.
We give the oars a little joy. For one full breath the world is only the sound of feathered blades, rope grip, wolf breath, and the ring under my feet warming pain into work.
Then the water changes its mind.
Pressure drops under our keel as if the sea hiccups. The lane ahead bulges. The air smells like paper glue and wet hide.
The surface wrinkles. Something long moves under it, mirroring our boat's shape until the mirror forgets what it stole. A back like lacquered pages—scale on scale, stitched with thread that gleams when the gray tries to be sun. An eye opens below, dull and reflective, catching our boat's undershadow and showing it back to us smaller and scared.
"Not a story I like," Lupa says, stance dropping.
"Leviath—" Stone-Reed begins, then swallows the last syllable like a superstition he respects. "Paper in the hide. Someone's been binding fish."
The sea makes a sound like a book closing.
"Close," Kirella says calmly, which means don't stand tall, don't make silhouettes, let the work be small. The count steadies. One—two—three—four.
The rope-ring prow hums louder, as if it wants the water to remember we keep each other even when teeth arrive.
The bulge swells into a rising maw—not bone ridges, not just flesh—paper-scaled lips that try to fold and crease around the world like hands around a ledger. Thin metal barbs line the edge where glue met salt.
"Eyes," I say, because eyes are where manners live.
"Only metal," Kirella reminds, though I am already keeping that promise.
The creature surges. The surface goes from slate to broken mirror. A barbed edge knifes up our bow's port side.
Lupa braces to pin the first thing like a hand. Stone-Reed plants a peg, ready to make the boat forgive gravity. The wolves lower, backs rigid with the right kind of fear. Kirella's cloak lifts, shade ready for my face if day sours into sermon.
I rise just enough for the coins under my feet to count as floor. The scythe stays short. My palm sings with pain that has learned to be a tool. I slide the hook under a barb collar—lift. Metal only. The barb twists free with a sound like a staple regretting its career, the maw's edge shuddering into polite recoil where our little ring seam meets it.
"Second," Stone-Reed says, pointing with his breath.
The maw widens. The eye rolls up, dull mirror hunting a name. The world is a book pressed to my face.
"Count," I whisper.
"One—two—three—four," Kirella says into my skin.
I set my palm to the prow ring to feel keep with bones. The mouth keeps rising, paper-scales snapping water, barbs angling for a story where we become punctuation in its meal.
And the chapter ends there—with our bow tipped over a paper-scaled maw, the water's breath stealing heat from the air, barbs reaching like pens to write our names, the rope-ring prow humming keep against a throat that thinks it owns lanes, Lupa low to pin whatever the monster mistakes for a hand, Stone-Reed braced with a peg to teach gravity respect, wolves rigid and ready, Kirella's count beating against the noise, and my short scythe tucked under the second metal collar as the sea decides whether to bind us like a page or let us turn it.