The bypass pin is a lie with manners.
My wrist threads through the temper holes until steel kisses skin and dust learns not to scratch. The short scythe settles under the tiny split-ring like a letter opener under a seal. The Breath Weir inhales as if it intends to drink the shape of my mouth.
"Count," I whisper, cheek to the grille.
"One—two—three—four," Kirella says, right where a person would keep steady if they owned one sound.
On two, the sting in my palm wakes, sharp and eager, then remembers its place inside the number. On four, I lift a handspan of faith.
Ting.
The Weir's pull breaks—not with drama, with relief. The deck grille exhales. The tiny Sunline films in its base dim to kitchen-light; the air stops reaching for my name. On the far wall, the chalk-blur MI— doesn't twitch. It sits there like a half-swallowed insult and forgets how to be brave.
"Home breath," Lupa says, approving. She eases her weight off the brace. The wolf lowers the shade cloth from its teeth and lets shadow slide back to corners.
"Eşik," I say.
The Stitchery Intake frame preens as we approach—NAME TO PASS stitched in neat white, little bells nested in its lip like teeth.
We don't argue. We say what we are.
"Red Ladle," I tell the frame, low.
"Steady Hand," says Kirella, tapping one—two—three—four on his own palm.
"First Fang," Lupa answers, and the wolf hums the four in a thread only stone can hear.
SIGN → WAIT → KEEP. The letters cool. The bells forget ambition. I run an inch seam across the threshold with the heel of my hand; warmth sits there like a placemat a table forgot to deserve. Two confession vents on either jamb purse like scolds; I turn both caps ¼ inward and breathe brine into their throats. They discover the pleasure of their own perfume and behave.
Three figures come with the next breath, brisk and tidy: two stitch techs and a mirror orderly in a jacket that thinks starch equals authority. The nearer tech lifts a yoke—collar on a stick, latch with opinions. The orderly's hand drifts toward a horn slung at his neck, as if sound were something he invented.
"Not today," Lupa says, already inside the space where decisions become furniture. Wrist, hip, seat—the first tech sits on a stool he didn't notice five seconds ago. The stool doesn't exist; Lupa's balance does.
The orderly touches his horn. Plate meets striker.
"WAIT," Kirella tells it.
The horn remembers libraries and chooses to be polite.
The second tech steps forward with the yoke. His eyes flick from my mouth to my hands because nobody ever taught him which part of a person is their center. The latch hides a split-pin, tucked smug into the fold like a bad idea in good clothes.
"Count," I say.
"One—two—three—four."
On two, my scythe nestles under metal. On four, I lift.
Ting.
The yoke stops pretending to be a lock and decides to be a loop. I thread a small kept-knot through its hinge and tie it so three honest pulls make it open and anything less makes it bored. The tech blinks like a man who watched a trick he can't retell because he does not yet own the verbs.
"Hands," Lupa says to him, not unkind. She turns his wrists together and sets a loose loop that will reward sense and punish panic by doing nothing at all.
We step through Intake.
Inside, the Voice-Graft Theater (the polite foyer version) unrolls like a recipe written by someone who never cooked: echo filaments stretched between iron posts, confession chairs with belts where hands should rest, a trolley of glass tips that shimmer meanly, and overhead a fretwork of mini Sunline squares waiting to pretend they are day. The floor is clean in the way floors get when blood is somebody else's problem.
"Manifest," Kirella says.
I shepherd the boat hook under a side panel and coax a slip out by its ribbon. Ledger hand again: Myor — Stitchery Intake / third watch. The ink threatens to run. I kiss the edge with brine and it thinks better of making a mess. SORRY swallows the paper.
Overhead, a route strip states its case without enthusiasm: Intake → Theater → Stitchery Core. Kirella reads it like a man counts doors on the way out of a burning building. It moves behind his eyes. It will be there when we need it.
We seed the room.
Ring-coin A tucks under the wash-basin plinth, where whoever's hands get cleaned will feel a warmth and think gentle without knowing why. Ring-coin B finds the turn post toward the inner Theater, where feet will step careful and carry it along. I rub name-salt across both coin rims and along my own wrists and throat; the air lets go of the reflex to own what it can name.
The overhead mini Sunline decides to be dramatic. The nearest square brightens to a clean white I can taste on the back of my teeth. I squint, not because it's bright—because it is cruel. In its elbow a small bypass pin glints—the same petty cleverness that makes a trap proud.
"Angles," Lupa says. She moves beneath the panel where a ladder would help if we believed in ladders.
I lift the cap on the nearest confession lens ¼ inward and mist brine into its vanity. It drinks itself and sighs. At the echo filaments, I lay two fingertips on the post base and stroke a whisper of WAIT with the plate, fine as a hair. The wires give a faint t'ng of disappointment and forget the pitch of accusation. I dot seams small as coins across the floor, and the stone stands up straight and refuses to be a witness.
The mirror orderly tests his horn again because people repeat the last thing that didn't work when they are nervous. The plate meets the striker without touching.
"WAIT," Kirella says, lower, like a door held open by a palm.
The horn obeys. The orderly looks at his hands and looks away before we can see him look.
A tech at the back reaches to tighten the echo filament. Lupa crosses the room like she is walking through a memory that has learned to open for her. Shoulder, thigh—she folds him into a chair and the chair appears under him because balance is a conjurer when you know where to put weight. He blinks as if someone has kindly taught him to sit.
I slide the short scythe under the trolley's catch-pin and ting it once. Instruments that wanted to clatter suddenly remember modesty and decide to rest. Brine on each latch. Name-salt on the handles. The room's hands forget the names they wanted to take.
A sound rolls down the outer corridor like shoes on a polished lie.
The mirror ambulance noses through the inner door. Not ours—the twin. Its glass straps hum with the special self-importance of machines that do awful things neatly. The stretcher slides to the lip, obedience choreographed. On the corner of the frame someone has stamped MYOR with a confident hand that didn't get permission.
The stretcher belts are properly smug. Each strap hides a split-pin beneath a tidy fold. Each pin wants to be lifted one breath at a time and then to forget how to be a leash. The auto-arms over the bay wake with a soft chirr, glass tips cropping forward like the heads of shy birds trained to pick meat.
"Third watch," Kirella says, too calm. We are early enough to lay a table. We are late enough for the knives to be out.
The ring-coin I left by the casket seal earlier, two halls back, warms in my pocket as if to remind me return for three isn't poetry; it's a road.
"Upper grid," Lupa says, eyes flicking to the ceiling's breath of white. In the inner bay another Sunline lattice glows, not bright yet, cruel already.
I follow her gaze. Bypass gleam, small and deep, sits in the lattice joint where only someone who loves hinges more than sleep would hide it. I could reach it from the overhead grille if I were unwise. I could reach the strap pins from the floor right now if I were certain.
The auto-arms test their positions. The nearer glass beak lowers, sniffs the air in a way that makes air seem to have a smell.
"Two breaths," Kirella says, and his hand finds the bell's throat before it remembers being proud.
"WAIT."
The bell behaves.
The stretcher bumps the stop. The frame lip aligns with a line of shadow where men with coats think a poem would live, if poems liked to wear chains.
We choose rooms with our mouths before our feet can ruin everything.
"Red Ladle."
"Steady Hand."
"First Fang."
SIGN → WAIT → KEEP. The inner lip backs off its own authority a finger-width. The auto-arms hesitate.
"Your call," Lupa says to me, and she doesn't mean she won't follow; she means she will and wants me to like that about us.
The choices braid themselves in the breath between my teeth:
Now, fast: slide to the rail, ting-ting the strap pins in one breath, lift the MYOR stretcher under the waking arms and let the trolley's empty shadow pretend we left things as we found them.
Or slip up the service ladder cut into the wall trim, through the overhead grille to the upper grid, ting the bypass that will make the Sunline forget to be cruel and map the Stitchery Core's rhythm from above—one watch early—so when we cut someone free we cut everyone free.
The mini Sunline over the bay brightens a sliver, proud as a child with a new word. My skin tightens. The seam under my boots thins to brave thread and stays.
The auto-arms murmur. Glass noses lean. The belt buckles breathe.
Kirella's count waits at the edge of my ear like a friend who knows which street we will take even if I don't yet.
Lupa rolls her shoulders to become a wall if I need one. The wolf lifts the cloth and eats the glare a mouthful at a time.
I set my feet where a floor means it, and I put the short scythe to the first strap pin the way a person might put a finger to a lover's lip to say hush.
My palm stings, ready to belong to a number.
And the chapter ends there—with the Weir resting on house-breath behind us, the wall's MI— stuck ugly and unfinished, the foyer's echo filaments sulking politely under WAIT, the Sunline above the bay learning to be a little less proud, the mirror ambulance presenting MYOR like a menu item, the auto-arms waking to their part, Lupa braced, the wolf holding shadow in its teeth, Kirella's count a soft doorway—and my short scythe poised under the first strap pin, one breath away from ting-ting and theft, or from climbing into the grid to make the whole room forget it ever knew our names.