We lower the lantern like it's a sleeping child.
One—two—three—four. On four our hands let go together. The brass foot kisses the threshold stone and settles. The weight leaves my palm and climbs into the rock. The air changes the way a room changes when the last chair is put back where it belongs.
The Warden of Measure lifts two fingers. "Three silent breaths. No spells. No sales."
We swallow the street out of our throats. I keep my eyes on the seam of shade Kirella's cloak makes over my cheek. The Prism Fog around the Needle holds still, like paper listening to scissors.
First breath: cool stone, mint from the hood hem, tar and rope and the faint hot-penny scent of pins that have learned too many lessons.Second: the ring warmth in my soles thins to a question.Third: the lantern gives a soft counter-beat—not flash, not flare—just a quiet measure that my bones approve.
"State two truths," the Warden says, voice clean as a page without lines. "Not oaths. Measure does not eat promises; it weighs them."
Kirella's hand, now empty, remains near mine because that is what hands that learned we do when they don't know where else to be.
I set my palm on the rail, fingers on a groove I made yesterday without knowing why. "We leave doors open and return for three," I say. The words feel like a ladle put back on a hook.
Kirella doesn't look at me. He looks at the stone. "I won't go where she can't," he says. "Not for fear, not for coin, not for shame dressed as light."
The threshold clicks—a tiny balance arm rises from the stone, a sliver with two cups of clear glass. In one, a seed of dark. In the other, a seed of dawn. The arm trembles, then steadies. The lantern answers with a pulse I feel in my teeth: measured, not owned.
"Names," the Warden says, face unreadable. "Your answer to kitchens."
We speak in the register below a prayer.
"Red Ladle.""Steady Hand.""First Fang."The wolves huff once—four—like approval has a paw-print."Stone-Reed."
Name-salt—salt and mint and pepper—touches wrists and rail. The balance arm ticks once into level.
The Warden nods. "Measure holds."
The fog twitches like a crowd hearing about free sugar. A thin whisper of bells comes across the water—too polite to be an alarm, too eager to be weather.
I see them a breath later: three mirror moths, palm-sized, tinsel wings trembling, each with a tiny tine-bell tied under its throat. They come like helpful paperwork. Their path points to our lantern.
Kirella is already moving. He lays the heel of the WORD plate against the first moth's bell; WAIT soaks the clapper. The bell tries a ring and finds its manners. Lupa catches the second in a fold of cloak, rotates her wrist, and sets it gently against the stone; the bell coughs and gives up. The third comes in sly under the hood lip.
"Count," I say.
"One—two—three—four."
On two the scythe is in my hand. Short. Only the curve. On three I slide the hook under the moth's clamp pin—metal only—feel the small heat of glue learned wrong. On four I lift a finger-width. Palm sting bites hard; count turns it into obedience.
The pin pops. Stone-Reed spritzes brine; the glue forgets its religion. The moth drops into the SORRY pouch, bell polite, wings embarrassed. We keep the audit's silence in our mouths like a sweet too expensive to waste.
A shadow noses the fog edge—tender boat, low and grey, its prow dressed with a neat harpoon frame pointed precisely at our lantern's base. The line is silk, the barb a tidy paper spear licked with mirror dust.
"Name harpoon," Lupa says. The words are drought-dry.
The tender oarsman licks his thumb, rubs the nick on the release. His face is the face of men who collect yes with clean hands.
"Count," I whisper.
"One—two—three—four."
On one the boat hook is already under the harpoon's safety latch. On two I dab the latch with brine; the pawl sighs as if remembering childhood. On three I give the scythe one handspan, no more, tuck the hook under the split pin—metal—and on four I pry.
Pop. The split pin slides free. The line slithers off the prong and falls into water like a snake reconsidering its plan. The oarsman reaches to grab it; Kirella ties a fast kept-loop near the bitter end, small, educational—if he pulls, it will give him his rope back in a knot that calls him later. Lupa touches the man's forearm with two fingers and steers him, alive and whole, into the behavior called sitting.
The Warden never raises the spear. They never clear their throat. They watch the balance arm until it steadies again, and when it does they nod once, as if the sky just landed on time.
"Measure holds," they repeat. "The lantern is not yours—so it can keep you."
My mouth is dry. Every part of me wants to touch the handle again because my body learned to love the weight that loved us back. I don't. The lantern hums stay. It is not voice and not light—it is a room that refuses to be bought.
The fog breathes out. A narrow seam of KEEP opens from the threshold stone into gray water, faint as chalk under rain. It's not a road. It's a corridor with rules.
The Warden sets a small thing on the stone beside the lantern: a gray knot-pin the size of my thumb joint, matte, unproud. "Token," they say. "Tie where work is honest. Within fifty paces, horns and bells wait. Not silence—manners. It holds thrice."
Stone-Reed, who does not like gifts, checks the token as if reading grain in dry wood. "Three uses," he confirms. His voice is even. His eyes aren't, quite.
On the lantern glass, the faint compass threadbrightens and forks—one line back toward Gloam (the way we came), one into darker water—Mid-Light. The fork is not a command. It is a kindness that refuses to choose for us.
Behind us, the Prism Fog goes restless, listening to itself breathe. Somewhere, very far and very near, the glass-song clears its throat in a new key.
The Warden steps aside. "A measured lane opens," they say. "No contract talk inside. No names to paper or stone. No horn orders. Keep it, and it keeps you. Break it, and it becomes your mirror."
"Escort?" Lupa asks.
"Until it sets," the Warden agrees. "Wind will erase it by midnight."
Stone-Reed's chin lifts, not at the fog, not at us—beyond. "Movement," he says. "Starboard haze."
A barge drifts into sight—broad-backed, low-masted, walls dressed with mirror scales stitched in neat rows. On its deck, a familiar throat of painted paper sits like a saddle: an auction stage without shame. The prow drags a net frame with tidy bells and a scent chimney tucked under a banner. The barge rides outside the measured seam, exact as math. Its pilot knows our rules or knows how to pretend.
Lupa's mouth thins. "Mirror Barge."
The horn aboard does not bellow. It coughs-polite the way polite thieves do when they want to be invited inside. The banner on the net snaps once and shows the old words SPEAK TO PASS in a new font that thinks fonts change laws.
"Let them come," the Warden says, bored as weather. "If they enter the lane, the lane will teach them manners. If they set their net outside, the lane will mind its own edge and pity those caught beyond it."
I look at the seam—faint as a bruise on water—and imagine boats behind us with kitchens in their hulls and kids under their tarps, noses red with cold. I imagine that net dropping across their faces and taking little pieces of them for a discount.
"Token?" I ask.
"Spend it where honest work will be harmed," the Warden says. "Not to win, only to wait."
The barge begins to unfurl. The net rises, glittering with mirrors the size of plates, bell wicks tucked like fish eggs, a narrow perfume flue hidden under a fresh strip of paint. The mast car rattles down; the catch pin on the wing glows with the heat of men who hit it with hope and thought it faith.
We have done this math before.
Kirella's hand slides near mine—near, not on—the lantern. He knows the rule better than I do: we don't touch it now. It touches us. He shades my cheek with his body, instinct and practice.
"Escort the corridor," Stone-Reed says, "and eat every bell the token can starve."
"Cut the net," Lupa counters, "before they learn to trim it round our lane."
"Us first—then the rest," I say, because my mouth has learned that sentence better than it learned fear.
"Then ten quiet years," the wolves breathe, because they listened more than anyone guessed.
The Warden does not blink. "Measure does not advise," they say. "It will keep what you keep."
The auction throat on the barge's deck creaks open like a mouth that thinks it is a crown. Men in tidy coats spread pleats with thumbs too clean. A boy on the foredeck holds a mirror scope close to his eye and peers at the world like it ought to be logged. A woman on the stern windlass worries a ring that belongs to the backline of the net, ready to draw it fast.
I can taste the trick already: set the net skirt just outside our lane and sweep along it, catching every boat that edges wrong from fear.
Kirella's count begins because he knows I make best choices on four.
"One—two—three—" he says.
I look at the lantern on the stone, good-heavy, content to be not ours. I look at the KEEP corridor ghosting over gray water like a seam we could teach the city to wear. I look at the Mirror Barge admiring its own trap. I feel the short scythe against my palm, restrained and listening. I feel the measure token weight the pocket like a favor with a receipt.
"Four," he finishes, gentle.
And the chapter ends there—with the lantern steady on the threshold, the measured lane opening like a soft road, the Mirror Barge unfurling a glittering net just outside our law, the Warden of Measure narrow as a rule that won't be bribed, Lupa already reading angles, Stone-Reed counting pegs, wolves bristling without growl, my scythe tucked under the idea of a catch pin I intend to teach the word stop—and our boat balanced between two honest hungers: escort the corridor… or cut that net.