The brush dripped like a clock.
Red fell from its bristles in patient ticks, the drops finding shallow hollows in the rain-polished stone and turning them into small, mean mouths. The man holding the brush smiled toward a camera that wasn't his.
"Ad-break in 01:30," Nyx murmured, velvet frayed at the edge. "If you're going to teach, Architect, make it a choice. The Saint prefers decisions framed."
Leon stepped over the paint the way you step over a crack you don't want to give a legend to. The Bloom's ribs gave him a line to his left and a roofline to his right—a corridor without being a cage. Behind him, teal lanterns wavered at the Night Market's mouth; in his ear, the market's breath ticked the way tea cools.
He lifted a construction pencil from his coat and drew on wet stone. Not a circle. A fork.
Two narrow bands in grease-pencil: one arrow pointed toward the vines where they had left a clean seam. COURT, he wrote beneath it. The other arrow, parallel to the painted TAX line, pointed down the center of Canal. TOLL.
He drew them neat and straight so even a camera could understand.
"Frame this," he said. "Overhead. Minor filter on."
"Locked," Nyx said.
The man with the brush flicked it for show, painting a crescent of red that would look pretty in an edit. He was wiry, the kind of lean that gets called quick until it meets structure, with a square of brown cloth tied at his throat and a chipped tooth he had decided was an asset.
"Street runs on rules," the man announced, broadcasting to a lapel cam he'd stolen or bought. "Rule is, you pass this line, you pay. For safety. For order."
Brutus stepped into the open with his hands visible. He filled space like a decision. "Hands where the cameras can see them," he said, voice at ground level. "Even yours."
"Name's Latch," the man said, pleased to be asked by no one. He tapped the brush against the word TAX and left a blooming period. "And the Crew's upgrading. We're professionals now."
Mae came up on Leon's left, hood beaded with rain, laminated badge tucked, pen in hand. "Professionals publish prices," she said. Her tone made numbers sit up and straighten their ties. "What's your posted toll?"
Latch flipped the brush in his grip like a baton. "A can per person. Two for kids. Three for Blue Lamps; extra service charge."
Sister Irena's breath made a sound that religion reserves for when someone drags the temple steps with their shoes. The Blue Lamp on her satchel cast a coal of steady light on the underlip of a mailbox.
"Published market median for shelf-stable milk is one cap per liter," Mae said, crisp. She lifted her pad, where she had written down Night Market prices not twenty minutes ago in her small, neat hand. "A can per head at a barricade is a gouge. Two for a child is a sin."
"Gouging voids your contract," Leon said, flat and almost gentle, and tapped his Civic Ledger with the pencil. "Emergency Requisition Escrow is posted. Anyone collecting tolls at more than twenty-five percent over median is advertising a seizure. With receipts."
He held up the Ledger so the overhead cam could see the clause and so Latch would know this wasn't a line someone would forget when they got bored.
[Public Notice: Emergency Requisition Escrow — Gouge Clause active]
[Trigger: Toll > 25% median]
[Action: Seizure of station assets; Restitution Labor; Public Receipts]
[Craft House tipped +150 Favor: "Clause-as-weapon."]
[War House: −200 Favor: "Paper cuts."]
Nyx's laugh was small and genuine. "A choice and a clause. The Saint is stirring her tea."
Leon drew a rectangle around the fork with the toe of his boot—the size of a door. The Bloom flexed minutely, as if the vines had ears, and eased a panel aside at the COURT arrow. The other panel, near the TOLL arrow, stayed shut. Not hostile. Waiting.
He raised his voice one notch. "Any man with a brush who wants amnesty puts it down and walks through COURT," he said. "We take names. You bring receipts at sundown. Restitution labor instead of theater. Or you hold that brush and step into TOLL and we will seize your stage and make you sweep a clinic you didn't want to clean."
Latch did that thing men do when they want their faces to perform a thought—chin tuck, lip purse, eyes up to an imaginary corner. The two men flanking him shifted their feet and looked at their own hands.
"Poll?" Nyx offered, wicked. "Paint or pen?"
"Run it," Leon said, because he wanted to know what his Audience would root for and resist it on purpose.
[Poll: Paint or Pen? (30s)]
[Live chat (curated):]
chat_Arbit3r: Pen. I want him to lawyer them to death.
RabbleKing: Paint their faces. Blood sells.
Saint'sChalice: Pen. Let the brush paint shame.
Brutus didn't look at the poll. He watched the edges. Beyond Latch, two cousins—leather jackets that didn't fit right, haircuts that had opinions—herded a skinny woman with a child toward the painted line as if pressure itself were a form of consent.
"Blue Lamps," Brutus said, stepping a half-step into their angle so they had to either look at him or risk being filmed touching a lamp. "Blue Lamps go first. No camera on faces."
The woman clutched her child and her bag and stared at the Blue Lamp ring like it was a small, portable Earth.
"Ad-break in 00:30," Nyx said. "The poll will close with a tie if you don't do something rude."
Leon tapped the pencil once against his ledger. Then he stopped it.
"Latch," he said, and made the man's name sound like a nail settling. "You have ten seconds to put that brush down and walk through COURT. Or you paint your own humbling."
Latch lifted his brush like a man who only knew one trick. He made a show of turning his wrist, of choosing his angle. The brush spattered a red comma on Leon's boot.
Leon looked down at the drop, then up, then took a small step back—precisely one pace. He didn't wipe his boot. He didn't add theater. He simply gave the vines room.
The Bloom answered with elegance: two panels slid apart at the COURT arrow with a sound like silk being drawn across a table, leaving a clean passage. At TOLL, a fine, insistent rattling began along the rain gutters overhead. Leon had tied plastic bottles with pinholes along the eaves earlier when he'd marked corridors for Blue Lamps; now, at a signal, the bottles tipped in sequence, pouring thin ropes of water down exactly where a man would try to plant his swaggering foot.
A gentle, public farce. No pain. All angle.
Latch put his foot down and found the world slightly slipperier than he had imagined. His brush arm pinwheeled. He grabbed at the post with his off hand and left a long, arterial smear of his own red across the dry plank. He didn't fall. He performed not falling. The disguise of grace pulled at the thread of his dignity until a little seam opened.
The camera loved him less for it.
[Poll closed: Pen 54% — Paint 46%]
[Glass Saint tipped +600 Favor: "An elegant refusal."]
[War King tipped −300 Favor: "Slip 'n' no blood."]
[Trust: +1 (Public defiance sans harm)]
Mae's voice found the space between insult and instruction. "You can put the brush down and walk through COURT and keep your face," she said. "Or you can hold it another six seconds and be on our receipts as a gouger."
Latch's eyes flicked, quick, toward the vans parked three blocks down—white rectangles with halo-cams that by the rules shouldn't be here yet. Dawnshield, hungry, testing if his theater could merge with theirs.
Sister Irena set the Blue Lamp down on the curb between the woman and the line and made a boundary that even a camera could see without a caption. The child looked at the lamp and made the face children make when they discover that a thing adults talk about is real and smaller than they expected.
Brutus's hands stayed up. The cousins' shoulders fell a centimeter.
"Five," Leon said, not loud. "Four."
Latch bared his chipped tooth.
"Three."
The brush dropped.
It hit the stone with the blunt slap of wet bristles and lay there like a mistake someone had decided not to keep making. Latch kicked it—not far, just away from himself, which revealed the only person he'd been performing for, which was a camera.
"Step through," Leon said.
Latch hesitated. The COURT corridor was not a trap; it looked like a trap, which is sometimes enough to stop a man whose leash is pride.
He stepped. One of his crew followed; the other looked at the brush, looked at the COURT seam, cursed softly under his breath, and stepped too. The cousins backed the woman away from TAX and found themselves doing the thing Leon wanted them to do without him ever telling them to do it. They didn't like it. They did it anyway.
[Amnesty Window (ad hoc): 3 accepted]
[Public Receipts — Vipers: Names logged for tribunal]
[Merit: +20 (Orderly defusion)]
[Heat: Bloom 2/5 — Corridor Suggestion]
Nyx's voice had a smile wrapped in a grimace. "We lost the War King. We gained your Glass Saint. Trickster is sulking. Can you live with a sulk?"
"I can live with silence," Leon said. He nudged the brush gently with the pencil toward the gutter. It went with the stream like it had wanted to end up there all along.
"Hold," Brutus said suddenly.
Leon stopped. The cousins had a third man behind them—a blockier shape with a bomber jacket zipped to the throat and a face like he used it to disappoint people on purpose. He wasn't smiling. He wasn't performing. He didn't carry a brush. His hand was deep in his pocket.
Brutus took one half-step forward and one half-step to the side and became the kind of geometry that changes outcomes.
"Hands where the cameras can see them," Brutus said, and added, quietly enough for the man to have the cold comfort of privacy, "You don't want to touch that."
The blocky man's mouth made a flat line. His hand came out empty. He lifted both palms at shoulder height, fingers spread. Rain ran off his sleeves in thin lines.
"Smart," Mae said, not unkind. "Come sign your name like a citizen."
He shook his head, not to refuse, but to clear water from his eyes. "Hew," he said. "I sweep better than I talk."
"Good," Leon said. "Clinics always need floors."
A murmur went through the crowd. Not a cheer. Something quieter, older. The sound people make when the world doesn't escalate on them for once.
Then the ground hiccuped.
Not the siren—this time the street itself mispronounced a syllable and tried again. A tremor rippled under Leon's boots, a quick little roll like a dog re-settling under a porch.
"Subway?" Mae asked, trained to inventory causes.
"Or not wearing the subway like a coat," Leon said. He scanned the trench grates slick with rain, the Bloom roots that had laced themselves under the street, the way the fine rivulets of red paint following the gutterline faltered and then went on.
"Ad-break in 00:15," Nyx whispered. "If you want to sell dread, you have the room."
"We're selling receipts," Leon said.
He bent, picked up the brush with two fingers, and dropped it into a plastic bucket he had trailed from the Night Market. It hit with a wet thud. He held the bucket out to Latch.
"Take it," he said. "Bring it to the clinic. Sweep. Then come to the tribunal at sundown. Bring your receipts. Bring the woman you 'taxed' last night. Bring your boss if you have one. If you run—"
"—the list will spell you," Mae finished. "And taxes will be collected from your cousins instead."
Latch took the bucket, because the camera was watching and because he knew what it would look like if he didn't. He dripped paint on the wet stone making commas behind his heels and the commas looked like someone had tried to make a sentence and changed his mind.
"Public comment," Leon said, letting his voice carry. "Tolling in Canal. Speak tonight. We'll write a law or we won't."
Sister Irena lifted the Blue Lamp. "And if we do, we will forgive ourselves for not having done it earlier."
[Notice: Council Agenda — Tolls; Market Holidays; Blue Lamps; Due Rations]
[Audience: 36,002 → 37,118]
[Trust: +2]
[Notoriety: +1 (Villain brand refines: "Clause-cutter")]
Dawnshield's van idled two blocks down. Kade stood framed in his own light, smile sharpened for a peak that wasn't coming. He clapped once, polite. His crew packed their hero circle and folded it into the van.
"Leon," Nyx said, amused now, "you just taught a rival to film rain running off a bucket handle. Trickster is going to pitch pies, I can feel it in my teeth."
"Let them," Leon said. "We'll charge them for cleanup."
Brutus glanced at the grates. "Still think subway?"
Leon shook his head once. "Think we need eyes below. But not now." He turned to the crowd. "If anyone has maps of the old service runnels, bring them to the council. I'll trade a battery for a copy."
A hand went up in the back—a stooped man with a rolled blueprint tube under his coat like contraband. "I have the conduits," he called. "Signage's wrong now, but the bones are true."
"Bring them," Leon said. "We'll correct the bones."
"Architect?" Matron Feroce's voice carried from the arch, clipped and amused. "I prefer my tea unsalted. Sweep before the tide turns."
Latch flushed. He held the bucket properly now. As he walked toward the clinic, the paint sloshed once, then settled. His two men walked with him; Hew fell in behind, a blocky gravity that didn't so much escort as lean.
"Receipt," Mae murmured, and wrote: Latch + 2 + Hew — Clinic Sweep, 2 hours. She underlined it once, then once again more lightly, a habit that balanced sternness with mercy in ink.
The Bloom eased the COURT seam shut with the sigh of a door that understands why doors exist. At TOLL, the bottles finished their sequence and hung like clear fruits now empty, their pinholes leaking the last of their water in stubborn little threads that would keep dripping long after the camera stopped caring.
[Merit: +15 (Amnesty + Order)]
[Favor: +300 (Glass Saint), −200 (War House), +100 (Craft House)]
[Heat: Bloom 3/5 — Suggestion Patterns flagged]
[Entropy: +1 (Queue guides still engaged)]
Nyx's tone returned to numbers. "You're accruing Entropy," she warned, almost maternal despite herself. "Maintenance will have to be an episode, Architect."
"It will," Leon said. "We'll make a mop look like a covenant."
Sister Irena made a quiet sound that might have been laughter or grief. "You make me want to use words I don't like," she said.
"We'll write them down," Leon said.
Mae tapped the laminated badge inside her coat. "He already did."
A second tremor—longer—ran underfoot. This time the rain in the gutter shivered like a wire pulled too tight. A rat shot out from under a bench and vanished into a crack like an apology.
Brutus angled his chin. "Soon," he said.
"Not yet," Leon said, because the story wasn't ready to be a monster story on camera and because the clinic had floors that needed sweeping and because the council had chairs to set.
He turned to the Night Market arch and touched two fingers to the cord that had tied his pen. The boy who had looped it there earlier grinned around a missing tooth, solemn and thrilled. He held up a jar of buttons again, this time without the funeral joke.
"Black later," Leon said. "Bring me blue for lamps."
The jar shook. The buttons clacked like rain on tin.
Kade's van rolled away. Teal lanterns breathed. The word TAX washed to a paler pink at the edge of the paint where Matron Feroce's tassel had brushed it, like a bruise deciding what color to be.
"Ad-break in 00:10," Nyx said. "If you have a line, make it art."
Leon looked at the fork he'd drawn, at COURT and TOLL ghosting under wet boots, at the bucket in Latch's hand, at the lamp on Irena's satchel.
"We pass laws here," he said, like a rehearsal and a vow. "And we sweep our own mess."
The ad took the edge of his voice and carried it away. When the feed came back, the bucket had left a trail that led to the clinic door, and the clinic door stayed off-camera, and the lamp shone steady, and the fork he'd drawn had softened in the rain but could still be read if you knew what it had once said.
The ground, three blocks down near the subway vent, lifted by a hair and set itself back, very careful, as if something big had rolled over in a narrow bed.
Leon didn't look. He had a council to run.
He picked up the brush where it had fallen a second time, cleaned the bristles on a curb with the patience of a man taking back a toolkit one stray at a time, and dropped it into the bucket set aside for the ombuds' lockbox—the one Feroce had fetched out and set on a crate at the arch with a chain and a label that said COMPLAINTS and another that said THANKS.
"Put it in 'Thanks,'" he told the boy with the cord, who had earned a better word than complaint, and the boy did, and the Market smiled without showing teeth.
[Cliff: Council at sundown; tremors increase under Ward 4; Dawnshield schedules a "clean tribunal" opposite Leon's]