The Bastion's gate was older than the tides that licked its stones, a slab of iron and glass set into quarried rock and rimed with sigils that had been hammered and rehammered until their edges were smooth. Lanterns burned in iron cages along the parapet, throwing the gate's shadow long and thin across the courtyard. Men moved like ghosts in the Bastion's lee—patrons' hands, paid muscle, couriers who had learned to make themselves invisible. The place smelled of salt and coin and the faint, impossible sweetness of things kept too long in the dark.
Aria watched from the lee of a low wall, the manifest folded into the small of her back like a promise that might burn. Halv crouched beside her, rope coiled over one shoulder, eyes on the gate's hinges. Rell checked the tracer's readout again, the device's lattice throwing pale lines across his fingers. Luna stood a little back, hands tucked into her sleeves, the jasmine at her throat a private weather. The apprentices clustered in the shadows, faces pale and determined; they had been given small tasks—routes to watch, false manifests to plant, exits to hold.
They had rehearsed this approach until the motions were muscle. Tonight they would not storm the Bastion; they would not try to take a vault by force. They would test the gate, find the seam, and—if the ledger's thread held—pull a name into the light. The manifest in Aria's pack had given them a launch number and a broker's name; the tracer had given them a registry imprint. Now they needed to see the gate's face and count the muscle that kept it clean.
"Two guards on the north parapet," Halv murmured. "One with a glass blade. The gate's timing's tight—platform swap at dawn. We get in, we get the manifest, we get out."
Aria's fingers closed on the hilt at her hip. The Tidebind aftershock from the Bastion reconnaissance still sat in her muscles like a bruise; her hands were steadier than they felt. She had learned to carry costs like tools—count them, account for them, make sure they did not fall on one person alone. Tonight she would ask her body for another ledger entry.
They moved at the hour when the Bastion's lanterns were low and the tide made the harbor a slow, glassy thing. Halv's skiff slipped into a shadow between launches and the rope ladder caught on the Bastion's lip with a soft thunk. Aria climbed with the practiced economy of someone who had learned to make the city's bones do the work for her: a foot finding a notch, a hand reading the rope's give. At the top she paused and listened. The courtyard lay beyond a low wall: crates stacked like sleeping beasts, curtained stalls, and at the center a private launch with a crate wrapped in oilcloth and a donor token glinting at its corner. The spiral of silver was unmistakable.
"Virelle," Rell breathed, and the word landed like a stone.
They were not invisible. A sentry lounged by a brazier, a silhouette with a glass blade folded at his hip. He had the look of someone who had been paid to be invisible and had learned to enjoy the practice. Aria's hand found the apprentice's shoulder and squeezed—a small, private anchor. The boy's face was pale in the brazier's light.
Halv's signal was a soft tug on the rope. The apprentices moved like a practiced shadow, a crate of false wares pushed into the courtyard as a distraction. The sentry's eyes slid to the crate and then to the apprentices; curiosity is a currency as old as hunger. He rose, and for a heartbeat the courtyard's attention shifted.
That was when Aria made the choice she had rehearsed only in the Loom's dim rooms. The Tidebind Lunge was not a trick; it was a rule-bending motion that folded the tide's geometry into a human strike. It required timing and a willingness to let the body be a conduit. It also had a cost—severe fatigue and a motor impairment that could last days. She had used it before in smaller measures; tonight she would use it full, to slip the skiff into a narrow channel and to anchor a ritual focus at the gate's seam.
She breathed, felt the tide's tug at her ankles, and launched.
The lunge was a blur of motion: a step that took the skiff's slight drift and folded it into a momentum that nudged the prow into the channel's shadow. Halv's pole answered, the rope sang, and the skiff slipped like a fish into a crevice. The brazier's light missed them by a hair. The sentry's head turned and then turned away, the distraction holding.
For a moment everything was perfect. The private launch sat like a sleeping thing, its oilcloth edges glinting. The donor token winked in the lantern light. Aria felt the ledger's thread tighten into a rope she could follow.
Then the aftershock hit.
It was not immediate in the way a wound is immediate. It came as a slow, searing fatigue that began in her shoulders and spread like cold through her limbs. Her muscles answered late, a fraction of a breath behind her intention. Her fingers fumbled the rope's knot; a coil slipped. For a heartbeat she felt the world tilt—her hands moved as if through water, her foot missed a notch, and the ladder's rung bit into her palm.
"Aria!" Halv's voice was a rope thrown. Rell's hand closed on her elbow and steadied her. Luna's hum braided around her like a net, a teacher's cadence that steadied the edges of perception. The apprentices froze, eyes wide.
The Tidebind's cost was a ledger line written in muscle: severe fatigue, motor impairment that made precise motions clumsy. They had counted it in the Loom's margins and accepted it as part of the arithmetic. But counting a cost and feeling it were different things. Aria's jaw tightened as she forced her fingers to obey. The knot would not tie itself.
Halv moved without hesitation. She took the rope from Aria's slack fingers and finished the knot with a single, sure motion. Rell shifted his weight to cover the ladder's base. Luna's hum deepened, a low chord that steadied the apprentices' breathing. The team compensated for the cost as if it were a wound: immediate, practical, and tended.
They slipped into the courtyard under the pretense of bargaining apprentices. Halv's false crate clattered and a vendor cursed; the sentry's attention shifted again. Rell's tracer hummed as he scanned the private launch's crate. The donor token—Virelle's spiral—was stamped at the corner, faint but unmistakable. The manifest's wax had been half-pressed; someone had been in a hurry.
"You see anything?" Aria whispered.
Halv's jaw worked. "Two guards on the north parapet. One with a glass blade. The private launch moves at dawn. The crate's sealed with a patron's knot."
Aria's fingers closed on the manifest in her pack like a small, hot thing. The ledger's thread had been pulled taut; the path forward was a rope they could follow. But the Bastion's muscle was not idle. A shadow moved at the parapet's edge and a figure stepped down into the courtyard like a man who had been paid to make himself a statement.
He was broad-shouldered and moved with the casual arrogance of someone who believed the sea belonged to him. A donor token hung at his throat—a spiral of silver that matched the Virelle mark. He carried a blade that caught the lantern light like a promise. He was not merely a guard; he was a champion, a patron's hand made visible.
"You shouldn't be here," he said, voice low and flat. It was not a question.
Aria did not answer. She felt the brazier's heat at her knees and the ledger's thread in her pack. The champion's presence was an attempt to pry the hinge loose: if he could make the Loom's action look like a provocation, the Bastion's patrons could call the Council and make the packet a liability. He wanted the ritual focus to fail, to make the public reading a scandal.
He moved first, a step that was more a test than an attack. The courtyard's geometry favored him; the low wall and the crates gave him angles to use. He circled, blade low, watching for the moment Aria's weight shifted. Aria met him with a different kind of motion: a Tidebind Lunge, a technique she had practiced until the cost was a ledger entry she could feel in her bones.
The duel began like a tide: a push, a redirection, a fold. The champion's blade flashed and the courtyard's lanterns threw their light into shards. Aria's muscles remembered the lunge's geometry and answered with a motion that used the water's pull and the rock's slickness. For a breath she had the advantage; the champion's balance faltered and his blade flashed wide. The brazier's flame flared as if in approval. The ritual focus—Halv's small brazier set into a carved stone—throbbed with a faint, steady light.
Then the cost deepened.
The Tidebind's aftershock was not only fatigue; it was a motor impairment that made her limbs betray her in small, precise ways. Her hands fumbled the grip on her blade; her foot answered late. The champion pressed his advantage with the economy of someone who had been paid to make a spectacle: a feint, a step, a blade that sought to disarm rather than to kill. He wanted the brazier, the public focus, the ability to make the ledger's truth a private thing again.
Aria met him with desperate, clumsy parries. Each motion cost her more: a taste dulled, a name that sat like a coin she could not find. Her hands shook so badly that she could not tie a knot without Luna's help. The courtyard's air tasted of oil and salt and the metallic tang of sigils. The champion's blade nicked her forearm; blood mixed with salt and the taste of iron filled her mouth.
Luna's voice rose then, a thin, bright thread braided into the teachers' chorus. She did not stand at the brazier; she stood at Aria's shoulder, a hand on her arm, a cadence that steadied the ritual's edges. The teachers' chorus tightened into a net and the brazier's flame steadied. The ritual focus wanted witness; it wanted someone to be the hinge between public truth and private power. Aria had to be that hinge.
The champion lunged again, and this time Aria met him with a motion that was less graceful than it was necessary. She used the last of her practiced redirections—small wrist twists, a shove that used his momentum against him. The champion cursed and twisted free, but the brazier's flame pulsed like a heartbeat and the teacher's knot at its center held.
Then the champion did something Aria had not expected: he reached into his coat and pulled out a glass shard—an echo-scraper, a broker's tool that could unbind a teacher's ward if it found purchase. He slashed at the brazier's flame, aiming not to kill but to sever the ritual's thread.
Luna's hum braided with the teachers' chorus and struck the shard's scrape like a bell. The shard's edge hit the brazier and the flame sputtered. For a moment the ritual's thread thinned like a rope under strain. Aria felt the focus want to slip.
She moved because she had to. The Tidebind had left her body a ledger of its own—muscles that remembered a motion and a mind that had paid for it. She lunged again, not with the grace of a practiced strike but with the raw, animal force of someone who would not let a public truth be stolen. Her shoulder slammed into the champion's chest and the two of them went down onto the stone in a tangle of limbs and blade and salt.
The fall was a small, private catastrophe. The rock's edge bit into Aria's hip and the cold water licked at her boots. The champion's blade flashed and nicked her cheek; blood mixed with salt and the taste of iron filled her mouth. For a moment she could not tell whether the world was spinning from the blow or from the fatigue that had hollowed her. Her hands fumbled for the brazier's rim and found it slick with oil.
Luna's hands were everywhere—on the brazier, on Aria's shoulder, on the champion's wrist. The teachers' chorus tightened into a net and the ritual knot answered with a bright, stubborn pulse. The brazier's flame steadied. The focus held.
But the cost had been paid in full.
Aria tried to stand and her legs betrayed her. The motor impairment was not a thing that could be ignored; it was a physical law. Her knees buckled and she fell back onto the stone, breath coming in shallow, ragged pulls. Her hands would not obey with the same precision; her fingers fumbled the whistle at her throat. Panic rose, quick and hot, and she tamped it down with the practiced calm of someone who had learned to hold a line.
"You did it," Luna said, voice close and fierce. "You held the focus."
Aria wanted to believe the words. She wanted to feel the victory in her bones. Instead she felt the hollowness: a name she could not call, a taste that had thinned, a memory that sat like a coin she could not find. The Tidebind had anchored the focus and the public packet would be read; the city would see House Virelle's donor mark. But the ledger's arithmetic had been paid in a currency that could not be counted on a ledger: Aria's body, Luna's lullaby, the teachers' phrases.
Around them the Bastion's launches had pulled back, their men nursing wounds and pride. The champion lay bound by a rope and a teacher's knot, donor token clinking against the stone. He spat and cursed and then fell silent as the public's shouts rose from the Bonebridge: the packet had been read; the market had seen; the Council's envoys were on their way.
Aria let the noise wash over her like a tide. She had wanted the ledger's truth to be public; she had wanted witnesses to be heard. She had not wanted the cost to be this personal, this raw. She had not wanted to feel her hands betray her.
Luna crouched beside her and took her face in both hands, fingers gentle and sure. "You held the focus," she said again. "You gave them a chance to see. That matters."
Aria's laugh was a small, broken thing. "At what cost?" she asked. The words were a blade and a question.
Luna's eyes were wet but steady. "At a cost," she said. "We will count it. We will anchor what we can. We will not let the ledger's arithmetic be paid by one person alone."
They moved as a team then, careful and deliberate. Halv and Rell hauled the brazier's case and the teacher's knot into a lead-lined crate; apprentices formed a human chain to lift Aria from the stone. Her legs trembled and her hands shook; the motor impairment made every motion a negotiation. Someone pressed a cloth to her cheek and the salt and blood tasted like a ledger's ink.
On the Bonebridge the crowd had swelled. The packet's reading had been a spectacle and a reckoning: House Virelle's donor mark had been spoken aloud, the shard's marginalia displayed, witnesses recorded. The public would decide whether to hold the patron house to account or to let coin and influence smooth the ledger's margins. The Council's envoys moved through the crowd with the practiced indifference of those who had seen too many spectacles to be surprised by any of them.
Aria was carried up the rope ladder and into the Loom's waiting hands. In the safehouse's dim light Luna unwrapped a cloth and pressed it to Aria's forehead. The motor impairment made her fingers clumsy; she could not tie the knot without Luna's help. She felt small and furious and grateful all at once.
"You did what you had to," Luna said, voice soft. "You held the focus. The city saw."
Aria closed her eyes and let the exhaustion take her. The Tidebind's fatigue was a heavy, honest thing in her bones. She had paid a price and the ledger's thread had been pulled taut. The Gate Duel had been a hinge in the ledger's story; the public had seen the seam. The path forward would be dangerous and costly, but for the first time in a long while the ledger's margins were not only a map for brokers and patrons. They were a public wound, and the city would have to decide whether to stitch it or let it fester.
When she slept, it was a shallow, dreamless thing. In the dark she felt the tide's pull like a memory and the brazier's flame like a small, stubborn heart. She dreamed of a kitchen table with a chipped bowl and a child's small hand reaching for bread. She woke with the taste of salt and the hollow where a name should have been.
Outside, the Bastion's launches limped back to their moorings and the Bonebridge hummed with the residue of the mass cadence. The Gate Duel had held the ritual focus long enough for the public to see, but the victory was not clean. Names would be spoken in council chambers; patrons would mobilize counsel and muscle; the Loom would have to follow the donor line into places that did not answer to public packets.
Aria opened her eyes and found Luna watching her, fingers laced with her own. "We'll count the cost," Luna said. "We'll anchor what we can. We'll make sure no one pays alone."
Aria wanted to believe it with the fierce, childish faith that had kept her alive. She wanted to believe it because the alternative—counting the cost and finding it too high—was a thing she could not bear. She squeezed Luna's hand and let the safehouse's dim light hold her like a small, private promise.
Outside, the tide settled and the Bonebridge's nets hummed. The Gate Duel had been a hinge in the ledger's story; the city had seen the seam. The path forward would be dangerous and costly, and Aria would follow it—one costly step at a time.