The mirror scull slides into our pocket like a knife that learned to smile. Its prow carries a paper lantern—no heat in it, only a clean, wrong light that wants to thin my rings for sport. Two rowers keep time with small, proud strokes. Between them a net arm crouches, the catch pin on its hinge bright as a coin bragging in sun it didn't earn.
"Cloth," I say.
The wolf lifts the shade cloth and stands on the scow's bow, jaw set, fabric spilling like a night we brought from home. The cloth swallows the lantern's chill spill. I draw an inch seam along our gunwale with the edge of my palm; warmth sits there, a handrail for feet that want to know their purpose. Name-salt kisses my wrists and throat. The river mouth forgets to be a census.
The scull noses closer. The first rower—thin, careful, proud of the angle of his elbows—licks his lips at our cloth the way boys lick sugar off knives. The second watches MYOR's outline under our clean linens and convinces himself he is looking at laundry.
"Count," I whisper, low enough that only wood hears.
"One—two—three—four," Kirella answers, soft, rope-steady.
On two, I slide my short scythe along the scow's rail until steel finds the scull's catch pin and learns where it lives. On four, I lift a handspan of manners.
Ting.
The net arm droops; the hinge lets go of its pride. The arm swings wide—fwump—and the net kisses the scull's own deck, wrapping oar handles and ankles with a lover's competence. The first rower yelps; the second laughs once in disbelief and then doesn't. I flick a dash of brine at the paper lantern's seam; the glue remembers being a tree that liked rain. The lantern sighs; light goes to a polite murmur. The shade cloth eats what's left.
"Hands," Lupa says.
She leans, catches wrist → hip → seat, and sits the near rower on his own thwart without bruise or favor. He blinks at the idea of obedience happening to him. The other tries his horn, because men who are wrong love making the world louder.
"WAIT," Kirella tells the air, WORD plate lazy as a hanging ladle.
The horn remembers libraries and chokes on dignity.
We are next to them now, easy as soup thickening. Kirella flips a kept-knot onto the scull's oarlocks—three honest pulls to loose; anything else is theater. I reach and ting the catch-strap pin on the net drum once more for luck; it lets go of the notion of being helpful to the wrong team.
"Quiet," the near rower says, but he means it to himself.
We don't answer. We change the room.
I touch the sluice lip with my palm and draw a ring seam along its iron. Warmth so soft it might be a remembered kitchen finds hinge and stone. I slide a ring-coin under the outer hinge and rub name-salt on its rim; the coin warms, stubborn and polite, promising eddy. The river in our pocket loosens its jaw and makes a small curl of calm where a scow can breathe.
"Bring us to the door," Lupa says, chin to the maintenance plank near the NAME TO PASS ledger. I take the boat hook and kiss the scow's nose along the seam until we line up with the dark rectangle. The wolf keeps the cloth raised, a dog holding night in its teeth.
The ledger sniffs. NAME TO PASS is stitched there in letters that wear their shoes indoors.
We answer with our kitchen.
"Red Ladle," I say.
"Steady Hand," says Kirella.
"First Fang," says Lupa, the words sitting on her tongue like bones she decided to keep.
SIGN → WAIT → KEEP. The panel forgets it is judge and becomes wood again. Wood remembers tree. The door gives.
Inside is a narrow bay no larger than a stubborn closet: tool hooks without tools, a shelf that remembers a coil of rope, a bare wall with stains where papers once pretended to be laws. I draw a quick seam across the sill and mist the two tiny confession vents in the jamb ¼ inward with brine. They discover the pleasure of their own breath and stop trying to own ours.
We can't pull the scow fully inside. We don't try. Lupa rides the bow like a keel and lets weight be a tide. MYOR's stretcher glides across the seam—not pushed, carried on warmth and patience. Kirella keeps count under his breath and under the wheels both, a little drum men mistake for wheels in good repair. The wolf raises cloth against slices of stray glare that wriggle in from the lantern's sulk and the scull's pride.
"Hold," Lupa says.
We hold. It is a work word.
I slide Ring-coin B into the shadow under the lock seat opposite the hinge—across from where a man will put his hand if he believes in levers more than promises. A little WAIT with the plate, small as a beauty mark, sits there now, ready to trip a hurry.
On the scull, one rower wriggles a knee free of net. Pride tries to stand. Lupa turns, not quick, redirects his arm into his balance, his balance into the thwart, and sits him again. He meets the deck a second time with enough gentleness to reconsider the word loyalty.
"Don't," she says. It is not unkind.
The lantern over there sifts a last ribbon of clean white. The cloth eats it. The river tastes like iron under rain, which is a kind of blessing.
"Ready," Kirella says to me, and I know he doesn't mean for now; he means for when the room tries to change itself again.
I breathe and do the small chores that make escapes look like routines: name-salt across my wrists and Lupa's and Kirella's again; a brine kiss to the scow's rail bearings so they sigh instead of squeal; a chalk KEEP at shoulder height on the door's inner face where a proud man won't think to look. I set my palm to the hinge iron and count the four, and it counts back.
"Bowl-names," Lupa says softly, and I grin because she liked throwing coupons at a net a minute ago.
We lift our kitchen voices small and ordinary, the way people tell each other what to buy when hands are full. Red Ladle. Steady Hand. First Fang. The pocket listens like a pot. The scull's net tries to collect truth and falls in love with our bowls instead. In the glare-dim light, the paper lantern looks like a dumpling that spoiled its own sauce.
"Bring him in," I say.
We don't bring MYOR—we bring linen that happens to hold him. Words matter. MYOR has enough already written on him by men with pens.
Half the stretcher crosses the sill; half remains in river air. The scow creaks skepticism and then accepts it because the ring seam under our toes says yes and the hinges say yes and the warm eddy says yes and the door has been told to keep better company.
That is when the sluice changes its mind.
The pull arrives as a cough that never learned to stop. Water bites the pocket—yank—as if someone far away put a key through a lock and told the river to behave like a market.
"Key-man," Lupa says flatly.
The eddy we made shivers thin. The seam under my feet goes brave thread. Somewhere up-pipe a plate slaps metal—clap—and the pocket's lip becomes a throat.
The scull yelps and skews. One rower grabs the horn again, faith in loudness as religion. Kirella's plate is already there.
"WAIT," he says. The horn obeys, as do bells that weren't invited to speak.
The water lunges, hits our seam, skids, tries again. The ring-coin at the hinge warms to hot—a little sun doing an old job in a small room. It holds the line and asks for help.
"We have two breaths," Kirella says, still correct when he is afraid.
"Two," I answer, and taste dust that wants to be light. The old chalk scar MI— on a far wall we can't even see tries to remember what letters are. No, I think, and my hand remembers stone without needing eyes.
"Options," Lupa says, always at the fork where I hate deciding.
There they are in my mouth:
A—Reach the gate's wedge pin under the hinge seat, get the short scythe under the split-ring, ting in one breath, and make the gate forget its pulse—drop the pull to house breath. We owe the river that.
B—Haul the scow forward another two arm-lengths and slip into the Half-Tide Locker—a little side niche where walls like to hold their tongues. Drive wedges/pegs into the sill to keep us from playing with the current; let the surge wash over the mouth and pretend we are not here.
The pocket tugs again, meaner. The scull bumps our flank like a dog that wants to be forgiven. The rower Lupa sat twice remembers sitting and chooses—wisely—not to stand a third time. His partner is still considering whether pride counts as exercise.
"Pins," Lupa says, and she nudges my wrist with the back of her fingers, a reminder and a kindness. Pins, not throats.
"Scow or gate?" Kirella asks, eyes on the hinge seat where the wedge knows it is important.
If I go for the wedge pin now and miss the first lift, I will need two breaths. We don't have two. If I call Half-Tide Locker and the surge doubles, we'll be pinned safe—and blind. We can breathe, but we can't steer. MYOR will be in a pocket no man can see from above. That is a blessing and also a promise.
The river bites; the ring-coin under my palm burns like a yes that costs something.
"Count," I say, because numbers make rooms remember who we are.
"One—two—three—four," Kirella says, and the wolf shifts its grip on the cloth and makes a low, useful sound, and Lupa opens her stance so she is floor and wall and boat all at once if I need her.
I slide my arm down the hinge gap until iron kisses skin, and the short scythe finds the tiny split-ring on the wedge pin hiding under grease and good manners. My palm stings. The pocket screams softly.
The river takes a breath.
I take mine.
And the chapter ends there—with the mirror scull bound in its own net, the paper lantern ashamed of its light, our eddy thin but stubborn, the maintenance door keeping out of pride, Ring-coin A hot under my hand and Ring-coin B warming a future footfall, MYOR half in, half river, Lupa braced, the wolf eating glare in quiet mouthfuls, Kirella's count a rope—and my short scythe tucked under the wedge pin beneath the hinge seat, one breath before ting to calm the gate or a push to slide us into the Half-Tide Locker to let the surge pass without our names in it.