"Four."
We go forward.
The mirror ambulance glides ahead on rubber feet, a glass casket strapped where a patient would lie. The No-Sky is white-cold, trimmed to silence. There are no shadows here unless you bring them.
Kirella makes one. His cloak lifts like a small sail and pours a moving room over my cheek. I pull a thin ring seam along the deck where our feet will fall—warmth the size of a thread, enough to tell the floor we meant to be here.
"Count," I say because breath behaves better when counted.
"One—two—three—four," Kirella answers, voice low, the sound a roof makes when it decides to hold.
The ambulance stays in the center slot, lights set to polite. On its flank a small route plate flashes under a bracket: metal screws the size of pride. At the rear axle a neat split-ring holds a brace where a mechanic once trusted a tool and never checked again.
Two orderlies appear like punctuation—gray coats, glass-tipped staffs, a bell hidden up each sleeve where habit lives.
The first touches his wrist to find the bell's mouth.
"WAIT," Kirella says and taps the sleeve with the WORD plate. The bell coughs polite and thinks about nothing for a while.
Lupa is already in the man's reach. Wrist, hip—she sets him seated on a coil by the rail without turning him into a story. His eyes widen at the idea that sitting can happen to a person without an order.
"Three honest pulls," Kirella murmurs, tying a kept-knot at the man's back. On the third attempt the knot will decide he tried like a human and let him go.
The second orderly steps from behind the casket, mouth already shaping a rule. The wolf moves first—shade cloth thrown up and over the glass tip of the staff like a napkin over pride. His hands fumble. Lupa guides the staff down and the man's spine into a seat, quick and kind, as if gravity asked nicely.
"Count."
"One—two—three—four."
I am at the axle brace now. The short scythe settles in my palm; only the curve. On two, I slip the hook under the split-ring—metal only—feel the small bite of palm sting argue with me and lose to the count. On four, I lift a finger-width.
Ting.
The ring eases. I press a ring coin against the braced face and slide it into the small sleep below the bracket. It seats with a warmth even the No-Sky can't bully. A thin brine wick—a narrow, salted rag—tucks into the seam beside it, a patient drip that will keep the coin's breath awake. I rub name-salt on my wrists and along the bracket. The air forgets to learn me.
"Tagged," I say.
Kirella's fingers brush the brace without touching the coin. He feels the warm yes anyway. "We'll read it outside."
The ambulance floats on. We keep pace—not in front, not quite alongside. Close enough to borrow the quiet.
A sliver window along the casket's side shows a packet pressed under webbing, stamp proud through the clear: Myor — requisition to Maze 3. The words lie still like snakes that haven't decided to move.
"Plate," Lupa says, chin to the side.
The route plate is a neat piece of steel cut with letters that want to be obeyed. Two tiny pins hide under its lip—split-pins you would never notice unless your hands grew up on other people's doors.
"Count," I whisper.
"One—two—three—four."
On two, the scythe's hook is already under the first split-pin. Lift, a breath. Ting. Palm sting settles like a scolded cat. On four, the second pin follows. The plate rolls into my palm black-side down so the letters don't show off. EEL STEP / No-Sky Port → MAZE 3 glints pale even in this light because facts like to be seen.
"Copy that," Kirella says, and I flick my boat hook into the slit where the slot card sleeps. The card slides out like a secret that chose to talk. The ink looks eager to run. I kiss the edge with brine and it sits where it is told. The card goes into SORRY wrapped in a damp scrap to keep its mouth shut.
The No-Sky tries a trick. A narrow waist in the corridor squeezes into a throat—confession turnstile, an old bully of a thing printed across its face with a neat command: NAME TO PASS. A tiny bell above it trembles, far too pleased with itself.
"Bowl-names," Lupa says.
We gather our voices where the ring seam warms our feet.
"Red Ladle," I say, not loud, low like a kitchen when the first pot wakes.
"Steady Hand," Kirella says, oar-tap without the oar.
"First Fang," Lupa says, the wolf's chest answering with a single breath.
The bell starts a proud little ring. Kirella taps it with the plate on the off-beat—WAIT—and the sound turns into manners. The turnstile hesitates. I draw a small seam under its pivot—a hush born of keep—and the printed command softens. WAIT bends into KEEP. The bar unlocks.
We slide through. No more sound than a page turned by someone who respects paper.
"Duct," I say. Above, a scent throat sniffs the air with greedy nostrils. Two fingers on the cap—quarter-turn, a kiss of brine—and it breathes inward now, ready to choke gently on its own perfume if someone feeds it a lie.
A catch pin hides in the next mechanism's elbow, part of an indoor grid that thinks the outside rules don't apply here. I touch the split-ring with the scythe's curve—one handspan—lift. The mast car under the deck stalls with dignity it didn't earn.
The ceiling whispers like a bag of cheap birds. Mirror moths leak from thin slots, tinsel-thin, clamps blinking. The wolf snaps the shade cloth up, a whip of shadow at the light. I lift the spritzer and lay a brine mist along their path. Metal clips wink at their throats. Under. Lift. Drop. Each moth lands in SORRY with bells that have learned polite. We don't earn a cheer for that. We earn a clean floor.
The ambulance noses into a wider chamber where two mirror slabs stand parted like cautious teeth. A service door squints on the left—SERVICE LADDER, paint ashamed under fresh white. I touch a ring coin to the threshold to warm it for later and thread line through the padlock.
"Three honest pulls," Kirella says, tying art that will pretend to be a shackle until someone truly needs out.
We are ghosts again, trailing the ambulance as if we belong to its bright hush.
"Read," I whisper.
Kirella's eyes flick the route plate I stole. "Eel Step," he says. "A No-Sky port—harbor with a ceiling. Then Maze 3." He tucks the plate into his coat with the respect you give a map you didn't pay for.
The corridor widens and the ambulance takes on a little pride, humming just loud enough to imagine it has a song. The orderlies glance at each other with the relief of men who think the worst was paperwork. Their knots sit at their waists like lessons planning to be useful later.
Outside, the world breathes. A low tremor, not here, not now—water speaking under a city. The lantern on the threshold stone is far away and somehow in my hand. It isn't, and it is. The KEEP corridor will be dimming soon. Stone-Reed will be counting a last boat through with an oar that knows the language of wood. The Warden will incline a chin by a degree that no one here deserves and everyone needs.
We need to be gone.
"Now," Lupa says.
We peel off on a slow curve like a boat leaving the main current. Past the service door, across the catwalk, under a runner. The ring coin we planted on the threshold warms the floor enough to remind the door it belongs to people. The line on the padlock hums the knot's math. We move.
The ambulance glides on, innocent as a lock. The stamp under its webbing glows like a small honest treason: Myor — requisition to Maze 3. The words will arrive where the Doctor's kindly knives live. The words will pretend to be the patient.
We slip back through the slit we came by, over the handprint we didn't leave and the ring we did, and the No-Sky turns behind us to glance at its own shoulders and decides it saw nothing.
The world outside is gray-wet, honest with wind. The KEEP corridor hums lower, a final warmth under a last chain of boats. The ledger raft we cut loose earlier spins slowly, bored and harmless. The ledger kite is a dull speck above, its bell still WAIT. The Warden stands where math looks like a body. Stone-Reed taps an oar-head to a thwart—one—two—three—four—and a flat ferry holds the seam like a hand that learned to carry.
"Read?" Lupa asks, already scanning the water's skin for lies.
Kirella tips the stolen plate once more. "Eel Step," he repeats. "The No-Sky Port."
The ring coin under the ambulance's axle answers from far inside the white-cold: a small warm tick against the bones of my wrist, not loud, not showy—audit-quiet. I close my eyes and feel it as a thin path tugging across water like a chalk line drawn in fog.
"There," I say, pointing seaward. Not to the bright temples. Not to the markets with clean hats. To the place where the city pretends it has no horizon and the horizon pretends it can be folded like paper.
The air answers with a low note you don't hear so much as wear. Not close. Not yet. The note is the shape of a choir without throats—sirens far out, humming like a rumor under salt. The wolves' ears flatten, not fear, not comfort—knowledge.
The KEEP corridor fades a shade. The lantern is steady on the stone, a promise I am not allowed to touch. The measure token sits heavy in Kirella's pocket, one use left, a favor saved on purpose. The wind turns a coin. The river licks its teeth and remembers it is also the sea's cousin.
"Now?" Lupa asks, weight on the balls of her feet, already the shape of go.
"Night will make the water honest," Stone-Reed says without looking at me, which is how he is kind. "But paths cool when left alone. Measure writes with now."
Kirella shades me for one breath—forehead to temple—and speaks into the part of my head where decisions shake hands with promises.
"Four," he says.
"Four," I answer, and the tag in my pocket thrums again—small, steady, pointing like a finger I didn't raise—Eel Step.
And the chapter ends there—with the KEEP corridor dimming into evening, the ring tag warming a quiet arrow across the water toward the No-Sky Port, the far sirens holding a low chord beneath the wind, the Warden still and sufficient, Stone-Reed's count stitched into the last boat, Lupa leaning forward, the wolf ready, the measure token a final clean favor unspent—and our bow turning toward a shoreline the city says doesn't exist.