The feeder line bows us along the ceiling like a thread pulled through cloth. Below, the ambulance we tagged slides obedient on its rail—the warm tug of the ring coin in my pocket matches its pace, a pulse I can feel in the bones of my wrist.
"Breathe to the count," Kirella says, though my lungs already remember.
"One—two—three—four," I answer, and the world agrees to be walkable.
We drift beside a grated mezzanine stamped INTAKE B. Light here is polite and impersonal—No-Sky with better manners. The air has the antiseptic tang of rooms that want to be forgiven in advance. Far below, the harbor hides like a kept secret.
"Parallel," Lupa murmurs. She nudges the gondola with a heel so our iron tub kisses the mezzanine's rail. The wolf stands—one breath of fur and intent—and plants its paws ready to be shadow or door-stopper as needed.
I lay a thin ring seam along the gondola floor where our boots will push. The warmth is small and stubborn. Better than courage. Better than luck.
We step across.
The mezzanine vibrates with the ambulance's passing— a low hum that never quickens, the rhythm of machinery that has paced out a prayer and refuses to admit it. On the wall: a tidy board with routes printed in a clerk's hand that believes in ink. The nearest door has a little brass plaque that reads THREADING / HOLDING. To our right a frog-mouthed service stair, to our left a squat brine trough, straight ahead a desk with a mirror ledger and the phrase NAME TO PASS stitched across its glass.
Two orderlies share a joke that didn't earn laughter. One's hand drifts for the inside of his sleeve where the bell hides.
Kirella touches the WORD plate to the air as if finishing the joke for them. "WAIT," he tells the striker. The bell has the decency to cough-polite instead of ring.
Lupa is already moving. Wrist, hip—she folds the first man into a chair without turning him into a story. He blinks once, twice, as if surprised to learn his body can sit without permission. The second man stiffens, staff coming up, glass tip searching for importance. The wolf lifts a strip of shade cloth in its teeth and flicks it over the glass. Lupa pins his centerline with an elbow and the chair with a knee; gravity remembers its job.
"Three honest pulls," Kirella says, tying each with a neat kept-knot that will concede dignity to effort and not to panic. He tucks their hands in their laps like sleep.
We leave their breathing alone. We leave their pride with as few dents as possible.
The console whispers under its breath. A metal cassette—echo filament spool—sits in a cradle, hair-thin wire wound tighter than stinginess. A scent wick threads through a guide, oily and eager.
I slide the short scythe under the spool's split-ring—metal only. Palm sting bites and settles into count.
"One—two—three—four."
On four, I lift a finger-width. Ting. The cassette's latch sighs; the spool kisses free by half a tick. I feed a drop from the brine needle into the wick's throat. The perfume learns itself. The intake flips inward and starts sipping its own lies—an ouroboros too polite to mention its tail.
Above, a confession lens—brass lips and a shy eye—leans toward the desk, set to blow a breeze and take a name with it. Two fingers on its cap, a quarter-turn, a light mist of brine—inward now. Let it blush into its casing like a scolded flirt.
"Seeds," Lupa says.
"Seeds," I echo.
I leave the first ring-coin under the service stair landing where soles will find it and consider stepping carefully. The second I press to the cool stone beside the brine trough's spigot, a warmth the pipe can remember when men forget how to be human. The third I set under the service bell's plinth, the coin's breath nestling into bronze. Kirella taps the bell's striker once with the plate on the off-beat.
"WAIT."
The bell thinks of ringing and chooses manners instead.
"Salt," Lupa reminds me. I rub name-salt—mint and pepper and sea—on my wrists and the edges of each coin. We will not leave our noses behind us today.
The ambulance hums into the bay beneath the mezzanine. We keep it in the corner of our eyes like a superstition that pays. The casket strap's webbing rides the turn with the confidence of a man who made a terrible habit into a job. I taste iron and paper. My teeth want to grind. I set them where they belong instead.
"Routes," Kirella says softly.
I slide the boat hook under the desk's panel and tease a slot card out by its ribbon. INTAKE B → THREADING / HOLDING. The ink wants to run; I kiss the edge with brine and it sits. The card goes into SORRY wrapped tight. Up on a beam, a narrow route strip blinks once, pointing MAZE 3 — THREADING NORTH. He reads it in a breath. His coat is a library I trust.
A third orderly wanders out of a side door with a bored face he hasn't earned. He sees Lupa's shoulder and decides to be offended. The wolf lifts the shade cloth into his sightline like a curtain pulled at a bad show. He rears, loses the habit of choosing, and Lupa steers his weight to the floor. Breathe to the count, her knee in his shoulder says, and he learns.
"Sleeping knot," Kirella says. A kept-loop, patient and kind. Three pulls. Not now.
The mirror ledger over the desk hums. Letters on its glass brighten with a practiced smile: NAME TO PASS. The little bell above it trembles, remembering it wanted to be brave.
"Not today," I tell it again.
We take our places as if we've been doing this our whole lives. That may be true. Kitchens are made of ritual.
"Red Ladle," I say low, where breath is warm and ring is warmer.
"Steady Hand," Kirella says, tapping one—two—three—four on the desk's edge like a recipe too simple to forget.
"First Fang," Lupa says, the wolf's throat filling the four with a single rumble that keeps pride from learning to shout.
I draw a seam under the ledger's base, thin and stubborn. The glass words fog from SIGN to WAIT and then settle to KEEP—like a pot remembered and returned to the right heat.
The wall behind the ledger answers with a small bite.
MI— scratches in the stone, faint and hungry. The dash gropes for a new curve. It has practiced this. It expects to finish.
"No names to paper, no names to stone," I say, and my palm goes warm as if the lantern were still in it. The seam presses deeper. The scratch hesitates. The wall thinks about behaving.
"Crown," Lupa says quietly, chin pointing to the beam above the ledger where a metal halo—name-crown—circles the kiriş like a smug idea. Thin wires touch it on three sides. The whole assembly hangs on one split-pin, tucked just inside the rim where a lazy hand would not bother looking. When the crown hums, the wall bites faster. When the crown rests, the wall forgets to be clever.
"I can get under it," I say. My palm aches yes before the scythe moves.
"Bell," Kirella says.
The little bell above the ledger lifts its chin. The WORD plate kisses its throat. "WAIT," he murmurs.
The bell blushes polite.
"Angles," Lupa says. She sets her stance—hips squared, one hand on the desk's far edge, the other ready to redirect the weight of a man or a door or a regret. The wolf plants against her shin, cloth ready between teeth.
We move as if the world asked us to choreograph it.
I climb onto the desk as if it were a stable shelf and not a laborer paid by people with nice ink. My boots scuff once; the seam under the ledger flows a little warmth up into my ankles like promise. The crown's rim is at eye level now, its split-pin the size of a lie you can tell with a straight face. The No-Sky hum turns softer here, made of levers that wanted to mind their own business and learned ambition from men.
"Count," I say.
"One—two—three—four."
On two, the short scythe slips under the split-ring. Metal only.Palm sting flashes. Breath agrees to behave. On four, I test a lift no bigger than a breath.
The pin argues in a whisper—polite, practiced—and gives a fingernail. Not enough.
Something clicks in the wall—far, near, everywhere at once.
MI— brightens, as if a clerk leaned closer to see how my letters end. A small scent duct inside the crown opens its mouth to sigh me into signing.
I mist brine into the cap with two fingers, twist inward, and the duct drinks its own perfume and forgets us.
"Again," Lupa says, which is both an order and a blessing.
The scythe is already where it needs to be. I don't grip harder. I listen to the pin the way I listened to the axe-head that hit my cheek once and taught me about time. Pins are just doors with worse childhoods.
"Count," I whisper.
"One—two—three—four."
On two, I settle the hook. On four, I liftone handspan worth of belief. Ting.
The ring breathes. The pin rises half a bead. The crown hum falters, the way a singer's voice breaks when the memory behind the note surprises her.
The ledger words blur; KEEP holds for now. The wall's scratch stays at MI—, a mean little half-name with no courage for consonants.
"Good," Kirella says, which is the kindest word in our language.
Somewhere to our right, a footfall. The kind a man makes when he was told he's important and never grew out of the first time that felt nice. Lupa's head turns that way by a hair. The wolf's ear twitches and learns the weight.
"Clerk," she says.
"Plate," says Kirella.
"Work," I say, because my hand is doing it already.
The orderlies in their chairs gabble a little—soft, ashamed, relieved. One tries the kept-knot at his wrist, two pulls in, honest effort. The knot considers letting go and decides to wait until his third attempt is honest twice in a row.
The ambulance hums out of the bay beneath us, guided by rails that believe everything will always be as tidy as this. The warm tug in my pocket bows, points north.
We have a breath. Maybe two. We will spend them well.
"River roof," Lupa whispers—our joke for ceilings that move like water and moods: steady until they aren't.
I balance on my knees on the desk's lip, my ribs against the cold of the mezzanine rail. The crown stands juuuust proud of the beam on two tiny spacers and the single split-pin that believed in itself too much.
"Count," I say, because the body is a house that does not like to work without a song.
"One—two—three—four."
Two: The hook finds the round of the split-ring and tucks under with a sound too small to be a sound.Three: The bell above my head twitches; the plate answers WAIT without touching twice.Four: My hand lifts—no more than a prayer nobody hears but the thing you're asking.
Ting.
The crown's hum slips. The scent duct whimpers. The MI— on the wall flattens like a mouth deciding not to finish the insult. The beam shivers the width of a thought.
And then—because clever men always design one more—a pencil-thin safety reveals itself where crown meets bracket: a second split-pin, hidden in the shadow of the first, tiny enough to be ignored, proud enough to cancel our good day.
I see it because my hands love hinges more than they love sleep.
"Another," I say.
"Right seven, up one," Lupa murmurs, already shifting her weight so my balance has somewhere to live if gravity forgets to be a friend. The wolf braces, cloth ready, eyes on whatever will try to be loud.
The bell trembles again, greedy for a voice. Kirella's plate breathes WAIT onto iron like a kiss so polite the bell is flattered into obedience.
The second pin gleams at me like a dare.
"Count," I whisper, palm already hot, scythe already under, breath already long.
"One—…" Kirella begins, and the room leans with us into the number.
And the chapter ends there—with the crown humming toward silence, the wall's MI— frozen mean and unfinished, the orderlies tied to dignity by knots that trust their third pull, the ambulance's warm trail drawing Threading North, the clerk's footfall nearly here, the bell behaving out of pride more than fear, Lupa set to redirect weight that forgets its manners, the wolf coiled with shadow in its mouth—and my short scythe tucked under that second split-pin, palm sting rising into count, one breath before we lift clean or learn why clever men add one more safety to crowns that bite names.