The wedge pin hides where iron keeps its shame—under the hinge seat, slick with grease and borrowed confidence.
"Count," I say, elbow deep in the gap.
"One—two—three—four," Kirella answers, rope-steady.
On two, the short scythe settles under the tiny split-ring—metal only. The sting in my palm learns its corner of the number. On four, I lift a handspan of manners.
Ting.
The gate forgets to pulse. The pocket exhales. Our little eddy fattens into something a boat could trust. Far away in stone I cannot see, the half-carved MI— stays ugly and still.
"Now," Lupa says.
We slide.
I kiss the scow's nose along our ring seam with the boat hook. The hull obeys, shoulders through the mouth of the Half-Tide Locker—a wall's secret pocket. Wheels sit square on warmth; MYOR doesn't stir under the clean sheet. Kirella's hands bind head and tail wheels with kept-loops—three honest pulls to free later, slack enough that panic does nothing.
"Wedge," I murmur.
Lupa braces. I set two pegs into the sill grooves where stone remembers being shipwright. Tok—tok. Quiet blows. The pegs bite; the scow leans into the niş like a person into a wall they trust.
Behind us the mirror scull tries to remember pride. The net we freed bites its own deck. One rower makes a decision he will not like. He rises, elbow sharp for the horn.
"WAIT," Kirella says, plate low as a lullaby.
The horn swallows its tongue. The man blinks at his hands as if they betrayed him. The other rower yanks at the net drum and finds the catch-strap pin missing its faith.
"Sit," Lupa tells him, and shows him how. Wrist → hip → seat. The thwart accepts him like a bench in a courthouse: polite, inevitable.
I flick another ting at the drum's remaining strap for manners. The net tightens on ankles instead of plans. Oarlocks get kept-knots. Obedience learns to be a habit.
The locker wants a climate, not a fight.
I slide a third ring-coin under the inner threshold stone—Ring-coin C. Name-salt dusts its rim; the coin warms, whispering keep into the sill. I touch the ceiling vent and turn its lips ¼ inward; brine mists the throat until it remembers to breathe itself. A chalk KEEP goes up, high and small, where proud men don't look.
"Bring him easy," Lupa says.
We lift not with arms but with seam and count—one—two—three—four—letting warmth carry MYOR the last handbreadth into shade. Brine sighs on axle pins; wheels forget to squeal. The band at his wrist shows MYOR in the same clerk-hand as the frame; next to it a bruised stamp like a word that never asked permission.
"WAIT," I tell the ink—not hard, not much—just enough to soften its edges. The band warms under my two fingers as if a memory decided to be bread instead of a knife.
Water coughs a dark syllable.
The tunnel skin ripples.
Two ink-leeches rise on the scow's rail—strips of wet black with a dusting shimmer of mirror in their backs, mouths ringed with little teeth that forgot to be shy.
"Salt," Lupa says.
I draw a thin name-salt line across the plank and push a brine breath ahead of it. The first leech hits the line, curls into an idea of itself, and chits to the deck, offended. The second makes it farther—finds the seam under my palm—hisses like a letter on fire and drops back into the pocket. I scoop the first with the tip of the scythe, tip it into the SORRY pouch where it goes embarrassed and quiet among pins and small bad thoughts.
"River braid," Kirella reminds me, because tomorrow owes us a road.
I set three thumb-sized seam stones along the inner wall—bread crumbs for feet that will need warmth—then chalk a discreet arrow → Pantry at shin height where gossip can read it and pride cannot.
We lay a mini-choir under our breath in the niş—the promises that keep doors more than iron does.
"We won't pay."
"We won't sell."
"No names to paper or stone."
The locker learns the taste of those lines. The echo tastes like a kitchen when rain is loud and the pot is louder.
Above, a narrow view slit clicks awake, ready to be an eye. Lupa lifts one shoulder and becomes a shadow; the wolf raises cloth; the slit sees nothing it can spend.
The river takes its next idea.
Backwash.
The pocket sucks air first, pull, then slaps inward with a rude hand. Pegs groan. Ring-coins run hot. Our eddy thins, thread-brave.
Kirella lays the plate across the locker bell. "WAIT." Sound minds its manners.
Another lunge. The cloth in the wolf's teeth snaps once like a flag unwilling to serve. MYOR shifts the weight of a wrist. The scow lists a degree and decides against a second.
"Options," Lupa says, voice level, feet wide.
They stand in my mouth again:
DIVE—drop to the sill, go under the mouth, feel for the governor pin that lives in the wet grate—a cousin of the wedge—one breath, ting, and the gate will forget how to make a river angry.
STAY—trust the pegs and coins, ride the backwash in a box we taught to be a room; let the surge spend itself overhead while we count and keep MYOR a secret to any eye that cannot look through stone.
The tunnel growls as if a polite argument escalated without warning. Somewhere behind the wall, key-man smiles and flips a second lever because men who love locks prefer rooms that answer to them.
"Pins," Lupa reminds me softly—not throats.
I drop to my knees. The slot under the hinge lip is black water and cold metal and a rumor of teeth. I slide my left hand along the sill until iron kisses knuckles. The short scythe rides my right hand like a thought I trust.
"Count," I say.
"One—two—three—four," Kirella answers, just loud enough to make numbers stick to stone.
On two, I fold at the waist and feed shoulders into black—cold tight as a band around ribs, water in ears like coins. My fingers find the grate. My thumb finds a ring with ideas. On four, I could lift and give this room back its house breath.
The surge shoves. Lupa's palm finds my spine and turns force into balance. The wolf braces cloth like a sail in reverse. MYOR breathes under sheets we renamed work.
Or I could pull back into the locker and trust wood and stone and words to do what we told them.
Above us, the scull scrapes the pocket mouth like a child trying not to say a word he will be punished for. Its paper lantern wheezes; one mirror fly escapes, tests our shadow, and dies on the name-salt with an offended glitter.
"Two breaths," Kirella says. I hear the ache in the number and love him for not hiding it.
The ring-coins burn under my hand and my heel, yes and yes. The pegs complain in the language of furniture that knows it is being asked to be architecture. The chalk KEEP on the inner face sits there like a stubborn saint. The backwash drums its hands on the sill and demands applause.
I squeeze the scythe until the sting in my palm agrees to belong to the count.
"Count," I say again—not because I didn't hear; because choosing is easier when someone you love makes time a place.
"One—two—three—four…"
I fill my lungs until they are a room. Water waits like a locked door that pins understand.
And the chapter ends there—with the scow wedged in the Half-Tide Locker, MYOR quiet under clean cloth, the mirror scull netted in its own ideas, ink-leeches salted and gone, coins hot, pegs brave, backwash mean, Lupa a wall, the wolf holding night in its teeth, Kirella's count steady—and my shoulders tipped toward black water, the short scythe set on a little governor pin that thinks it can tell a river how to breathe.