Noon took the chill out of the rain and left the street smelling like wet brick and bread someone might actually finish baking today. The Bloom's ribs had been trimmed; sightlines were honest. The Blue Lamp's ring on the mailbox went from halo to habit.
UNSEEN WORK dried on the Council board in big letters. Below it, Mae had added a smaller line in neat hand: Wardens Training — Dominance Without Injuries.
"Live in two," Nyx said, satin over wire. "Ambient only. Hands, not faces. The War King is yawning. The Saint wants a clean demonstration."
Leon set the Civic Ledger on the sedan hood, tapped the cover once to steady himself, twice to tell the part of him that chased applause to sit down.
Brutus stood in front of the laundromat with his hands visible and his presence doing the talking. A dozen people faced him in a half-moon—janitor's shoulders, vendor's wrists, a courier's calves. The teen with the busted lip from last night stood between two older men and tried on his posture like a jacket he hoped would fit.
"Hands," Brutus said. He lifted both the way he had been lifting them for a day, a week, a life he hadn't finished inventing. "We keep them where the world can see them. Fingers loose. Palms open. We take balance, not faces."
He stepped to the first volunteer, a big man whose aggression had always lived in his shoulders. "You attack?" Brutus asked.
The man lifted his chin like a bridge that had decided to be a wall. He reached out in the way men do when they want an instruction to become an excuse. Brutus took his wrist like a faucet—one hand high, one hand low—and turned. The big man's elbow softened; his knee reconsidered; his weight found the ground without discovering pain. Brutus stepped back, palms open, and let the man stand without losing parts.
"You turn here," Brutus said, voice like a level. "Not here." He shifted his grip a finger-width. "Here hurts. Here teaches."
[Training: Dominance Without Injuries — Session Active]
[Passive: Public Presence (Wardens) +]
[Trust: +2 (Enforcement)]
[War House: −150 Favor ("Paper dojo.")]
[Glass Saint tipped +200 Favor: "Clean mechanics."]
chat_Arbit3r: He turned a wrist into grammar.
Saint'sChalice: Restraint with form. Approved.
A man in a gray jacket watched from the edge with arms folded and a spine that remembered drills. He had the jaw set of someone who had applied rules when rules weren't photogenic. He wore no badge, but he wore the posture.
"Leon Vale," he said when Leon approached at an angle that let nobody be a subject. "Tarek Han. Former precinct." He didn't offer his hand. He nodded at Brutus. "Your 'dominance' needs a ladder."
"Use-of-force," Leon said. "Clause it."
Tarek's mouth twitched. He lifted a small notebook with tabs made from medical tape. "Tiered response," he said. He read in a clipped cadence that didn't need a camera. "Presence. Voice. Contact (non-compressive). Joint control (non-rotational beyond normal range). Restraint (temporary). No chokeholds, no holds that block blood or air. Duty to retreat to the bowl when a Blue Lamp enters a corridor. Duty to intervene if a Warden escalates off-script. Duty to write."
"Put it on the board," Leon said. "Hands only."
Mae set the marker under USE OF FORCE LADDER and wrote exactly as Tarek spoke. Sister Irena's Blue Lamp threw a ring that made the list look inevitable.
[Policy Draft: Use-of-Force Ladder — Proposed]
[Effect Preview: +Trust (Enforcement), −Favor (War House)]
[Citizen Press: +Coverage ("Hands-only rulebook")]
[Craft House tipped +100 Favor: "Codifying technique."]
Tarek watched Brutus adjust a grip. "Your man's good," he said. "We'll need ten more. And I want a complaints log that isn't a box with a chain on it."
"Citizen press council will host it," Murmur said, appearing without sound, small microphones like fingertips and rumor cards in a pocket. "We'll log and publish statistics. Ambient only. Hands."
"We accept discipline," Brutus said before Leon could. He kept his palms up, then closed them around another wrist with care.
A drone drifted at knee height—polite, white, with an expressionless lens. Dawnshield's style. It probed the edge of the lamplight, confused by the fact that mops and hands weren't making a show.
"Editor's Cut," Nyx purred. "If they try to stick a brand to your breath, I trim it."
Leon nodded once. "Hands only," he said. "No faces."
The drone wobbled away toward a cleaner smile under a folded banner. Kade's halo-cam waited a block off like a houseguest timing when to make his entrance.
"Rotate," Brutus said. The teen stepped in. Brutus guided him through the faucet turn, the elbow reconsideration, the knee finding ground without resentment. The kid did it once like a demonstration, once like a joke, and once like it was real.
"Good," Brutus said. He didn't smile. He let the kid have the dignity of not needing approval to behave.
Oren rolled up with a handcart stacked with a boxy transformer, a bundle of cable, and a toolbox that looked like it had opinions. He thumped the cart with his knuckles. "Grid Balancer," he said. "She's Etta. Be nice."
"Etta," Leon said. He meant it. "Breathing?"
"She will if we tell her she's pretty," Oren said. He opened the casing. Inside: a cluster of caps and three fat coils. He bolted it to the lamppost with the tenderness of a man gluing a ship in a bottle. "Blink," he told the lamp. It blinked—honest, on beat. "Good girl."
[Project: Grid Balancer — Online]
[Effect: Lamp uptime +; Hiccup stability +; −Entropy 1]
[Trust: +1]
[Craft House tipped +150 Favor: "Infrastructure romance."]
Juno arrived at the alley with her case, leaf-printed gloves tucked under a strap, and a mouth that wasn't sorry for being obsessive. She hummed something older than the city and popped the lids off two enzyme domes to check for breath.
"Still alive," she said. "Drain's listening."
Down the grate, the word scritch had learned scrape. The alley they'd taught to be a throat held its silence like a filled cup. A bottle on the bakery roof dripped with patient malice.
"Evening," Leon said.
"Evening," Juno agreed. "Bring warm water. Fifteen degrees. Keep it breathing." She looked at Oren. "Etta?"
"She's pretty," Oren said. "She'll sing on your cue."
"You have a future together," Juno said, and pushed her gloves on, leaf prints green against rain-damp wrists.
Matron Feroce wove through the training ring with a ledger that had fed three lifetimes. She touched the board with two fingers like a blessing. "Complaints log," she said to Tarek. "We'll keep it in the press council's hands. Ombuds read aloud on market days. Stare for those who need the stare."
"Your stare is law," Leon said, writing it down because he liked laws that had a face as long as the feed didn't.
[Ombuds Process — Expanded]
[Effect: +Trust (Accountability), −Favor (Trickster)]
[Citizen Press: Scheduled Readings]
A murmured commotion rippled down Canal. Dawnshield decided their moment had arrived. The white van turned the corner soft as a stage direction; Kade stepped out with his jacket arranged like an honest heart, halo-cam lifted at a polite height.
"Architect," he said, smile trued by practice. "We brought trainers. De-escalation workshops play well."
Leon kept his head angled so the mask wouldn't fog and so he wouldn't have to look like he enjoyed not looking at him. "Hands only," he said. "No faces. If you teach, teach. If you perform, the Market sells bread."
Kade laughed like a bell that had been tuned to sound expensive. "We're here to help." He flicked a glance toward the lamplight, found it a bowl, and nodded. "We respect local policy."
Nyx's overlay kissed Leon's sightline.
[Editor's Cut: Applied — Outside brand overlays trimmed]
[Public Notice: Dignity Zone — No Faces; Hands Only]
[Trickster: −100 Favor ("Spoilsport.")]
[Glass Saint tipped +150 Favor: "Boundary held with grace."]
Mae stepped around the ring and caught Leon's sleeve. "Complaints box," she said. "Vendor—'Warden gripped my wrist too hard at dawn.' Name given. Not anonymous."
Leon glanced at Tarek. "Clause it."
Tarek tapped his notebook. "Tier 3 misuse," he said. "Noncompressive joint control applied past reason. Remedy: apology with receipt; retraining; one shift off corridor duty. Publish stats without names."
"Brutus?" Leon said.
Brutus lifted his hands. "We accept discipline," he said. "Derek—" he pointed without pointing— "off corridor. Train with me. We'll find your faucet."
Derek flushed and didn't argue. He put his hands up and learned to be honest with them. The training ring breathed, and the Blue Lamp's ring made everyone better than they thought they were going to be.
[Use-of-Force Ladder — Adopted (Provisional)]
[Effect: +Trust (Enforcement), −Favor (War House)]
[Citizen Press: +Trust ("They publish their sins.")]
The alley throat whispered. Juno's head tilted. "Now?" she asked.
"Not yet," Leon said. "We close our holes with law before we open them with meat."
"Poet," Juno muttered, affectionate and skeptical.
Nyx's voice slid back in with numbers. "Favor stable. Saint sipping. Craft watching. War snoring. Policy Office is drafting a memo titled 'Best Practices for Emotional Content.' I want to staple it to the Thanks box and see if it reproduces."
"Let it," Leon said.
A rattle at the alley mouth—small. Two roaches the size of matchboxes tested the lace and learned regret. Juno pinned one with a ventilated lid without fuss. The other hit the ribbon of enzyme, shivered, and decided to be punctuation.
"Picky eater," Juno said. "We're nearing capture threshold. I need the big one's chitin for the Foundry." She lowered her voice. "I am not sorry about how much I want that."
"Ethics on the table at four," Mae said. "Bring coffee."
"Milk and sugar," Juno said, eyes on the drain.
Brutus swapped partners in the ring. The teen stepped up again. Tarek watched angles. Sister Irena adjusted a lamplighter's armband so it wouldn't cut circulation.
Matron Feroce stamped receipts with her small loop and glared—softly, lethal—at a trader who had tried to slide a charge into the corridor as "service." The stare worked. The charge reversed. The ledger stayed honest.
[Market Holiday Calendar — Posted]
[Compliance: + (Lamp-honoring stalls prioritized)]
[Prosperity: +1 (Stability)]
Murmur arrived with two sheets fished from the boxes. "Thanks: 'Brutus taught me how to say no without making my hands stupid,'" they read with a smile that barely made their cheeks change shape. "Complaint: 'Your vines ate my sign again.'"
"Trim," Leon said. "We pay in shears."
Oren thumped Etta's casing with his knuckles like a man calling a dog home. "Evening," he told the lamppost. "You blink on command when the lady in green says."
"She's pretty," Juno said, distracted.
"As long as you know it," Oren said.
Leon checked the Ledger's margin where he'd kept track of Heat. The Bloom sat at 2/5. Entropy at 1. He wrote names in the margin—people who had turned noon into a tool: Tarek, Derek, the janitor with the sanded mop, the teen with the busted lip who had learned to be strong without being cruel.
"Ad in one," Nyx said. "If you have a sentence, make it something the Saint can pour on."
Leon lifted his voice enough for the ring, not for the camera. "Doorways, not punches," he said. "We don't humiliate. We don't perform. We teach our hands to be the law."
[Editor's Cut: Ritual Montage — Hands learning; bowls up; wrists turned without pain]
[Glass Saint tipped +300 Favor: "A vow made of muscles."]
[Audience: 37,010 → 37,442]
[War House: −100 Favor ("Give me a break.")]
The ad rinsed the edges off the scene and put teal lanterns and rain on copper where grappling had been.
When it spat the street back into view, a figure stood at the laundromat's edge: the Quiet Choir runner from last night in a jacket too big, hands full of batteries like guilt. He lifted them with both hands toward the bowl, not the lens.
"We keep the clinic corridor dark," he said. "We keep it safe. You keep the bowl up."
"We do," Leon said. "We count your help in our ledger." He took the batteries like delicate fruit and handed them to Oren. "For Etta."
"Etta says thank you," Oren said gravely. The kid grin-fled into water.
Kade drifted closer as if pulled by a tide his smile controlled. He kept at the ring's edge and made his voice gentle for an audience large enough to feel sincere. "A question," he said to the Board, not to Leon. "Your No Ransom draft—what about when a family brings you their own ransom for a son?"
"Public discussion next session," Mae said, not looking at him, not looking away. "Tonight's docket: ethics and drains. Tomorrow: No Ransom vote. Bring a receipt, not a speech."
Kade's eyelid twitched in a way only a camera loves. He bowed slightly, because that's what his brand did. He left with his halo-cam trailing him like a polite reflection.
Nyx purred. "He hates that you won't be his foil."
"Let him hate it," Leon said.
A tremor wrote a line under everyone's boots like a bass note that hadn't been introduced to the composer. The drain near the alley cleared its throat in rebar.
Juno's fingers brushed the enzyme dome as if checking a patient's breath. "Tonight," she said.
"Tonight," Leon agreed. He looked at Brutus. "Doorways."
Brutus lifted his hands. "Blue Hands," he said, and everyone in earshot answered, some with their mouths, some with their palms.
Tarek's pencil tapped his notebook. "We'll need a night rotation," he said. "Lamplighters, Wardens, oversight. And I want a clause for when a Warden refuses a hero moment because the bowl says so."
"Put it on the board," Leon said. "We'll vote it tomorrow."
Nyx's numbers slid by his eye with a kind of pride. [Trust: +6] [Merit: +20] [Craft House: +200 Favor] [Saint: Sipping.] [War: Sulking.]
"Boon?" Nyx suggested, sly. "The Saint offers Clean Cut. Elegance multiplier. Policy fines halved for one episode. It would make tonight's hunt…pretty."
Leon tapped the Ledger once. The inside of the mask fogged and cleared with the breath that had saved him more than the favors had.
"Not yet," he said. "We earn our pretty with shears and bowls."
"You're intolerable," Nyx said, fond.
Kite climbed on his crate and tapped the Council board X with his pencil, practicing for speaking that would come later. The pencil clicked, an honest sound. The Blue Lamp's ring bowed over it like blessing or simply good lighting.
Leon looked at the alley—mattresses, bottles, enzyme domes breathing like two small bellies—and felt the city's bones mutter in the old pipes. He put his hand on the Ledger, felt the weight of names, and then set the book down because he needed his palms.
"We mop," he said. "Then we hunt."
The coin on Oren's nail leaped, went flat, and then rolled softly toward the alley without being pushed, like metal remembering where gravity lives.
[Afternoon complete: Wardens trained (Tier 1); Use-of-Force Ladder adopted (Provisional); Grid Balancer online; Quiet corridor honored]
[Evening: Alley-as-throat engages apex test; Juno's enzyme warmed; Etta ready; Clean Cut boon available (declined)]
[Cliff: The drain took a breath like a throat preparing a note]