The tag warms like a small coin in a closed fist. It pulls us seaward, away from streets that pretend to have edges and into water that never promised any.
Wind lowers its voice. The far siren note lives under the chop, not threat, not welcome—just a truth the sea hums because it can.
"Left of loud," Stone-Reed had said. He stays behind to fold the last warmth out of the corridor, oar tapping the count into wood. The Warden is a statue shaped like permission.
We follow the coin.
Eel Step shows itself by refusing to be seen. A roof where sky should be. A forest of iron ribs hung with gantry line—the city's teleferik, an overhead road for cargo and secrets. Water slips into a big rectangular mouth shaved clean and proper, then vanishes under a ceiling that holds its breath.
"Port with a lid," Lupa says, teeth just showing. "People who like doors love lids."
The paper-sail skiff glides out from a shadow like a compliment you didn't ask for. A mirror nailed to its prow pretends to be a badge. Two men in clean coats wear their shoulders like laws. A little horn sits ready to bark.
"Inspection," one calls, but the word sounds like theatre.
He tosses us a hook line, sloppy. Lupa shifts our weight so the line kisses the water instead of our cleat, then guides it back with a lazy wrist turn that makes the man think he threw badly and stops him being proud of it.
The other man thumbs the horn. Kirella lifts the WORD plate and lets iron speak to iron.
"WAIT," he says, barely a breath.
The horn gives a polite cough and reconsiders existence. We slide past on a thin KEEP seam I drag with a finger along the stone lip. Warmth sits there like a barely-there yes. The skiff drifts, trying to remember the line it was supposed to shout. It settles for pretending it had no line at all.
Inside the mouth, the world goes No-Sky—white-cold and trimmed to silence. Lanterns are little sun-imitations bolted to beams, too bright to be kind. We bring our own shadow: Kirella's cloak lifts like a sail and makes a room where my cheek learns to breathe again.
A gate house waits on a shelf of stone, opposite a pair of Hook Men coiling lines. Above the door hangs a mirror ledger with the words NAME TO ENTER etched neat as a sermon. A bell on a bronze arm trembles, eager as a small dog.
"Not today," I tell it.
We gather our voices small and low, the way kitchens hum when the first pot goes warm.
"Red Ladle," I say.
"Steady Hand," Kirella answers, tapping the count onto the thwart—one—two—three—four—so my lungs remember the rhythm. He touches the bell striker with the plate as it starts a proud ring. WAIT climbs into the metal. The bell clears its throat, then remembers manners.
"First Fang," Lupa says, mouth crooked. The wolf's chest gives one breath like a drum.
I draw a fingertip seam under the ledger's post, a thin hush that knows which way a door should swing. SIGN on the board fogs, turns WAIT, then settles to KEEP the way a pan settles on a trivet.
The Hook Men look at each other, shrug like men whose wages live too far from their pride, and wave us through.
The port beyond is ribs and rails. Gantry wheels click across knife-straight tracks. Above black water, maintenance gondolas squat along service piers—little iron bathtubs with shiverless legs, meant to be ignored. Between them, slab carriers hum past, each carrying a sheet of mirror wrapped in paper like a shy blade.
"Second from the end," Lupa says without pointing. "Clerk's eyes are bored in that direction."
We nose into the slot. The wolf bounds, tears a strip of shade cloth loose from a coil, and flicks it across a scope lens pointed our way. The lens blinks shadow and decides to look somewhere else instead.
"Painter," Kirella says. He ties our painter to a cleat with a kept-loop that will slip free on the third honest pull, not the first lie. He speaks to the knot with his fingers. It listens.
I step into the maintenance gondola. It rocks once, then makes up its mind to be a floor. The clamp that holds it to the line is a simple, pretty thing—split-ring neat, catch pin smug, pawl waiting to behave.
"Count," I breathe.
"One—two—three—four."
On two, the short scythe is under the clamp's split-ring—metal only—like a promise you mean this time. Palm sting nips and eases into count. On four, I lift one handspan. Ting. The clamp's tongue frees, enough. Kirella slides a tiny wedge into the track pawl; the car enrolls in slow, the only speed with good manners.
"Seat," Lupa says. We seat. She sets the wolf between her boots; it folds into shadow with offended professionalism.
A clerk at the gate house tugs his bell to punctuate his boredom. Kirella flicks the plate in the bell's direction with impolite precision. WAIT, polite cough. The clerk's mouth makes a different shape and pretends that's what he meant to do.
A scent duct above us leans, curious. I mist brine into its mouth and thumb the cap a quarter-turn to inward. It inhales its own perfume and looks embarrassed in a way only metal can.
We roll.
Below, the water loses itself in the roof's black. The gondola's wheels hum on the overhead rail, a sound like sewing done properly. I press a ring coin under the footplate; warmth winks up through my boots—a pocket-sized KEEP that calms the car when the rail shivers at a knife junction.
The teleferik yard falls behind in a map of straight lines. The clerks shrink to punctuation. The paper-sail skiff circles once under us and realizes it cannot shout up a ceiling. Somewhere deeper in the port a slab carrier sings a glassy shing and the sound runs along the ribs.
"Route charm," Kirella says softly, fingers fast on the gondola's frame. He plucks a tiny tag from a bolt—a stamped tin with an arrow and a word no one bothered to hide: FEEDER – MAZE 3. He slips it into his coat beside the EEL STEP plate I stole. His coat is becoming a small library.
My fingers tremble once. Not fear—catch pin memory. All those small tings pile up somewhere in my palms; sometimes they try to be thunder.
His forehead finds my temple for one unlit breath.
"Four," he says.
"Four," I answer.
The world agrees. The gondola breathes steady again.
We ride above a channel of service piers, each with a little door that's learned to look like a wall when watched. Men move below like the stories they tell themselves about themselves. The No-Sky light stays same as always, which is one of the ways lies teach you to forgive them.
A flag waves from a cage on the next beam—yellow stripe for slab run. The knife gate ahead of us—an iris of blades with a bell perched like a conscience—starts to close. Bars slide from the sides of the slit and kiss in the middle with a shing that wants to be music. A clerk on a platform lifts a baton and makes a stop-theatre gesture. He expects us to be the kind of people who obey batons.
"We don't have that hobby," Lupa says under her breath.
Stopping here means paperwork finds us. Paperwork thinks names are just true if you say them often. We do not stop. We are not loud. We are two breaths and a room made of shade.
"Bell arm," Kirella says. "Pin there," Lupa adds, chin at the elbow of the gate's mechanism. The catch pin sits fat and sure of itself. It has no idea my hand has learned its language.
A pair of Mirror Patrol oars creak under us, useless—skiff unable to reach a ceiling that refuses to be floor. One of the patrol raises his horn; it remembers WAIT and coughs polite at the rafters. He scowls at manners as if they were a rival.
"Count," I say.
"One—two—three—four."
The gondola noses into the gate's throat. The blades edge in, confident they can make a story of us. They make a lot of stories here. The bell's striker twitches—obedient muscle waiting for a thought.
I rise, feet wide, one hand on the car frame, one on short scythe. Metal only. The split-ring on the catch pin is at my shoulder, a small round promise I have kept too many times to mis-keep now.
On two, the scythe's curve slides under. Palm sting bites and sleeps. On four, I lift one handspan. Ting.
Kirella touches the plate to the bell mid-air as if finishing a sentence no one else heard.
"WAIT."
The bell swallows its brilliance and produces a courteous cough a clerk will later remember as his idea to be safe.
The blades hesitate.
"Pawl," Lupa says, the word a thread she sews into my ear. My free heel knocks the pawl tooth we wedged earlier into its own better manners. The gondola's wheels take one fair bite of the rail at a seam; the ring coin underfoot glows that small, sensible warmth that turns shiver into keep.
A scent duct puffs from above—a reflex of machines learning to sigh. I flip it inward with two fingers so it can be comforted by its own breath.
We are halfway through the throat. The clerk raises the baton higher, discovering inside himself a man who likes to be obeyed. The patrol below scrapes their oars against the pier in frustration, which is how men say please in uniforms.
The blade on the right decides it has waited long enough. It moves a finger and then another. The arm on the mechanism squeezes a little, ashamed of being told WAIT by someone not wearing the right jacket.
"Two hands," Lupa says. My left palm is already up, flat against the car's post; my right holds the scythe short under the pin. The count sits in my throat like a steady roof.
"One—" Kirella says.
We slide the width of a promise.
"Two—"
The split-ring argues with me in a tiny, arrogant voice and loses.
"Three—"
The bell thinks about ringing and remembers it has manners. I love manners in the right mouths.
"Four—"
We breathe with the blades, not against them.
The gondola clears the first pair, kisses the second, and enters a box of dark that smells like iron resigned to doing what it's told. Ahead, a sliver of white opens, as small as choice.
The wolf bares teeth so quietly only the air notices. Lupa's knees flex. Kirella's hand is a memory just off my shoulder, never touching, always ready to exist if asked. The scythe settles back to my side, still short, still a good tool for metal and not for men.
We are almost through.
Behind us, the knife gate decides to be brave after all. The blade we denied earlier hisses and swings with extra ambition, the kind of overtime effort that gets medals from people who weren't there. It will take the line if we give it a reason.
"Left of loud," Lupa says, body already the answer.
There's a second catch tucked under the rim of the last plate, a little safety some clever fool added when a cleverer fool proved why they needed one. It is a single split-pin—so small the mechanic probably laughed when he slid it in, believing small means unimportant.
I see it because my hands were taught to see what thinks it can hide by being tidy.
"Count," I whisper.
"One—two—three—four."
On two, the hook is under. On four, lift, ting—no louder than a ring put down on a table by someone who was taught to respect wood.
The plate shivers just enough to lose its nerve. The blade misses by a courtesy. Somewhere on the platform, a clerk swallows a lecture he was rehearsing for later and pretends his baton is pointing at weather.
We are in the throat's last four feet now, and the white slit ahead decides to be a door.
"Don't rush the last step," Kirella says, nothing but air and count.
I don't rush. I just breathe its speed.
The gondola noses out. Cold air that pretends not to be the same air as before brushes my face, and it feels foolish for pretending. The rail ahead curves into a run of feeder beams toward a sign that doesn't know yet I stole a copy of it: MAZE 3. Somewhere out there, the ambulance we tagged is a warm coin in a different hand.
I look back once. Not at the men. At the hinge. It tells me a story about how it has worked for years and has learned how to forgive nudges it respects. I nod to it because I was taught to thank tools that work.
We slide into the next dim, and the roof above us opens like a mouth that hasn't decided if it wants to sing or yawn. A clerk lantern swings on a chain ahead, throwing a thin ribbon of glare across the rail—the kind of glare you can shade with a cloth and a breath.
The knife gate behind us finally shuts with the shing it wanted us to hear on us. It sings for itself instead.
Ahead, the feeder line hums. The tag in my pocket warms once, shy and sure—this way.
Then a new sound—drier, faster, like paper taught to sprint—flares down the beam: a mirror net shuttle sliding out of a service slot to cross our track, its bell arm flexing for a proud ring.
"Bell," Kirella says.
"Pin," Lupa says.
The shuttle's catch pin glints at elbow height as it angles to cleave the line. The bell's striker wakes. The white slit of road between us and Maze 3 narrows into a dare.
We are the length of a held breath away.
And the chapter ends there—with the overhead knife gate biting shut behind us, the shuttle sliding to cut the track ahead, its bell pricking for song, the feeder curving toward a sign that doesn't know it's already in our pocket, the tag warm against my ribs, the wolf coiled, Lupa braced, Kirella's count steady—and my short scythe already under the catch pin, one breath before either we thread that slit clean or let the net teach us a lesson we didn't ask to learn.