"One—"
Kirella's voice is a roof over my breath.
"Two—"
The scythe's curve is already under the second split-pin. Metal only. The sting in my palm nags, then agrees to be part of the count.
"Three—"
The bell above the ledger twitches for a proud ring. Kirella's WORD plate kisses its striker without touching twice. "WAIT." The bell remembers manners.
"Four."
I lift a handspan's worth of faith.
Ting.
The tiny sound is a buttoned cough, not a shout. The pin rises the width of a fingernail, then another. The name-crown slackens against the beam.
"Now," Lupa says, and becomes a quiet net.
She throws shade cloth around the halo in one fluid loop, palms up, elbows soft, taking its weight before pride can turn into noise. The cloth drinks the crown's little shiver. She lowers it like hot bread to the mezzanine tiles. No chime. No clatter. The beam breathes once as if relieved to be a beam again.
The room shaves five degrees of wrong from the air. The hum that sat behind my teeth goes out like a candle that wanted to be a habit.
On the wall above the ledger, the scratch MI— brightens one last time and then sits, sulking, a half-name with no courage for consonants. It doesn't fade. It freezes—mean, unfinished, and contained.
The confession lens tries for a reset—brass lips opening, eye turning to sigh me into signing. I touch the cap with two fingers, quarter-turn the throat inward, mist a breath of brine. The lens drinks its own perfume and blushes into its casing.
"Two breaths," Kirella murmurs. His hand settles on the desk edge beside my boot, a weight that means down when ready. I step off the wood. The ring seam beneath the ledger warms my soles like a small yes.
Footsteps. The cadence of someone who was told he's important and never forgave the world for forgetting to agree.
The clerk rounds the corner with a baton and a ledger mouth. He lifts the baton as if rehearsing himself into a better story. The wolf lifts its head; Lupa tilts her weight a breath left and a breath forward.
"Sir," he says in the tone men use to make the world stand straighter. "Identify—"
Lupa takes his wrist on the syllable and his hip on the next. The floor does the rest. He sits where he didn't plan to, blinking at the chair that has opinions. His baton's bell tries to learn my name. Kirella lays the plate three hairs' width from the striker as it moves.
"WAIT," he tells it.
The bell obeys the only praise it understands: civility.
"Three honest pulls," Kirella adds, knotting the clerk's wrists with a kept-loop that will reward sincerity and not panic. The clerk tests it once—pride. Once more—habit. The knot thinks about letting him go and decides to wait for the third attempt, the one that admits please.
I rub a trace of name-salt—mint, pepper, sea—across the chair rails, the baton's handle, the crown's resting cloth. We leave breath where it belongs.
"Routes," Lupa says, voice the shape of work.
I go under the desk with the boat hook, tip the panel, and tease a slot card out by its ribbon. INTAKE B → THREADING NORTH (HOLDING). The ink looks eager to run. I touch the edge with brine and it sits where it's told. The card goes into SORRY, wrapped in a damp scrap to keep its mouth shut.
Above us, a thin route strip blinks once on a cross-beam: Maze 3 – Threading North → Holding → Stitchery Intake. Kirella reads it like a man drinks water. His coat is already a library. He makes space for one more sentence.
Against the far wall a narrow ledger drum turns with stupid self-confidence. D-1 ticks toward D-0 one fussy notch at a time, a child straightening a rug that never needs it. I would like to kick the drum into the canal and let eels learn math. We have other errands.
"Seeds," I say. My hands are already moving.
I slide a ring-coin under the first corner post where the Threading North corridor will turn. Let soles find it and remember to step careful. The second I palm to the pedestal opposite the brine trough tap so the pipe learns the keep it will need when men forget how not to be wolves. Each coin earns a thumb of name-salt. Kirella taps the service bell's striker once on the off-beat.
"WAIT."
The bell coughs polite and decides it was never the sort of bell that shouted.
Below the grate the ambulance noses out of Intake B with the same blank cheer all obedient machines master. The tag in my pocket warms a small, sure this way toward the sign we already stole: THREADING NORTH.
"Look," Lupa says, chin to the side.
A hatch in the ceiling slides open on a rail two bays ahead. A mirror-net shuttle idles there—square body, little wings of pleated paper folded hard, a bell arm flexed to be important. It wants to cut across the feeder and make a frame where the world fits better for men like the clerk.
"Knife gate's cousin," I say.
"Same manners," Kirella answers.
We set one more seam at the mezanin exit. The mirror ledger there wakes late to its own indignity, letters stitching themselves into NAME TO PASS with a prim little glow.
"Red Ladle," I say, low.
"Steady Hand," Kirella says, his fingers drum a soft one—two—three—four on the stone.
"First Fang," Lupa says. The wolf rumbles the four and then decides to be furniture again.
SIGN fogs, slides to WAIT, then settles to KEEP like a pan remembering a proper flame.
Under us, the ambulance turns under a lintel stamped THREADING / HOLDING. The warm pull against my ribs bows north. Above us, a maintenance gondola on the gantry feeder cocks in its cradle—empty, bored, willing. We can drop to the ambulance roof and be a rumor inside its shadow, or step into the gondola and trail parallel where hands like mine have rights.
"Two roads," Lupa says, already measuring distances with tendons and chance.
"Not both," Kirella says, which is how he is kind.
The orderly to my right makes his second honest tug at the knot. It considers and stays. The clerk clears his throat to see if the room will bow. The room forgets how.
I tilt my head. The crown on the cloth lies quiet, a mean idea removed from a church. The MI— on the wall stays frozen, ugly, and unfinished. Good.
"Go quiet," I say, and my body is already doing it.
We step to the rail. The ambulance casket rolls under, glass straps humming. I can see the webbing through the slat—a crosshatch uglier than it needs to be. The jump is a clean drop and a good way to be inside the story before it remembers we exist.
The feeder gondola is a reach two boots long to my left. It will carry us level with the Threading signs, where routes announce themselves and the bolts have names. Safer. Slower. Honest enough to get us seen by men who think honest means owned.
"Shuttle," Lupa says.
The mirror-net shuttle comes off its rest like a good dog off a bad leash. It noses toward our line, bell arm lifting, catch pin bright at its elbow. If it crosses before we choose, it will write us into a box where choices come with prices we can't pay without names.
I set one boot on the gondola lip, one on the mezzanine rail. Short scythe in my palm. Metal only.
"Count," I say.
"One—two—three—four," Kirella answers, the words steady as wet rope.
On two, the scythe's hook is under the shuttle's pin—just steel beneath my hand. Palm sting bites and falls into line behind the count.
"Bell," Kirella says. His plate is already near the shuttle's little pride. "WAIT."
The bell swallows a ring and coughs like a gentleman in a library.
The shuttle still slides. It believes in its job. It believes it will separate before from after and write the receipt.
"Weight," Lupa says, stance angled so she can redirect me if gravity edits the plan.
The ambulance drifts under my knees, a moving roof with no patience for indecision. The gondola kisses the cradle stop, eager to be a floor. The tag on my ribs warms again, not louder, just sure: north.
We could drop to the glass and become the shadow of a machine that has never once wondered why it goes where it goes. We could step into the gondola and ride the line that will tell us every name a bolt has ever been given.
"Four," Kirella says, roof over breath.
I breathe it, too.
The scythe's curve settles. One breath to lift the pin clean and thread the shuttle behind our car, one breath to choose roof or rail, one breath before the ceiling decides it prefers people with batons and bells.
And the chapter ends there—with the crown sleeping in cloth, the wall's MI— stuck in its own bad manners, the confession lens drinking itself quiet, the clerks knotted to dignity by three honest pulls, the ambulance sliding under the Threading North lintel, the gondola open like a patient hand, the shuttle's catch pin under my hook, the bell behaving out of pride more than fear, Lupa braced, the wolf coiled, Kirella's count steady—and my weight balanced between roof and rail, blade under metal, a single breath deciding which road we'll teach to say we.