The house took his hand's promise and answered with a low hum that might have been relief.
—Anchor VIII: Move the bell.
—Requirement: Carry a bell's ghost across a threshold.
—Method: ring where sound should not live—under water, in dust, in sleep.
Mira read the lines off his face and nodded once. "Water clock. Archive. Door."
Riven buckled the clapper to Damien's forearm, snug enough to leave a clean mark. "I'll hold the house," he said. "If the numbers come, they'll meet me first."
Selene tied her cloak, eyes on the sky where the Eclipse had thinned to bruise. "We don't outrun dawn. We make it hesitate."
They cut through the seam behind the spice market. Paste-stink lay over bricks where the Addressing Act notices had dried to civility. In the alleys, White Crown surveyors chalked clean digits on stones, rods under arms like spears that had learned manners. Each number learned to glow faintly, a rune spined with law, the spear's handwriting under it like a watermark.
"Under water first," Mira murmured. "Before they seal the clock."
At the water clock basin, two acolytes in sponsor blue were smoothing a stencil across the wood canopy, whitening names the way men repaint memory. Selene stepped into their line of sight with the calm of a woman who had never asked permission. "You're smudging your seven," she said, and when they both looked where she pointed, Damien was already at the basin's lip.
The clapper was cool on his skin. He dipped his forearm to the wrist. The water took the metal and tried to make it forget. He breathed in on four, held on four, let the Bellmark Veil curve over the surface until the water seemed to remember how to listen. He brought the clapper up under the rim and struck once.
The note lived under the water and nowhere else—no splash, no echo, only a pressure that ran through the basin like a thought.
—Water kept.
—Ghost loosened.
The acolytes blinked as if a cloud had moved. Selene's finger had never pointed at a seven.
"Dust," she said.
They slid into the printer's archive through the same basement door, past the bell with the cracked lip and the peppers that refused to be solemn. Downstairs, the air hung heavy with paper that had learned to sleep sitting up. Mira laid a palm on a stack of obsolete writs and closed her eyes. "Here," she said. "Where petitions go to wait for someone honest."
Damien lifted the clapper and struck the table's underside, once—no room for a second. The dust rose and settled as if relieved to have been asked a question in its own language.
—Dust kept.
—Ghost unseated.
—Warning: Spear-lines extend.
Back in the hall, a new number had been chalked on the top stair, tidy as a school prize. Riven's whisper rattled the private channel: Two survey crews outside the courtyard. The spear's script is learning curves.
"Sleep," Selene said.
They turned three corners and became shadow. Nameless Wake let the crowd's weave lift for them and set down behind them intact. At the mouth of the covered alley that opened into Nocturne's courtyard, the white of fresh paste shone like teeth. A surveyor in a smooth coat reached with a brush. The fig leaf on the lintel drank the light and gave nothing back.
Riven had the door open before they reached it. His eyes flicked to the numbers creeping along the courtyard's outer wall. "They're counting shadow," he said. "Badly. But learning."
Damien stepped to the threshold. Sleep lived here if it lived anywhere—the breath of a room that had only just found the right size for itself; the fig leaves practicing being still. The boy from the archive stood just inside, lamp cupped in both hands, wick trimmed within an inch of stubbornness.
"Ready?" Selene asked the room.
The room said yes in clay and oil and quiet.
Damien set his forearm to the jamb and struck once, soft as a hand on a sleeping shoulder. The note did not go far. It went deep. The door took it and kept it as if it had always owned a bell and had only been embarrassed to admit it.
—Sleep kept.
—Bell carried.
—Anchor VIII accepted.
The clapper warmed along the strap. The tower's ghost settled into the door's hearing with a sigh like pages aligning. A faint, proper ring—no louder than a cat deciding—ran along the frame and out into the courtyard.
On the outer wall, a White Crown surveyor with chalk poised hesitated. The spear-lines that had been teaching numbers to shadow met the ring and curved away, not erased—embarrassed. The man tried again. The chalk squeaked and made nothing the wall would keep.
Riven stepped out, Keeper by rule and by posture. "Threshold law," he said. "Name your harm aloud."
The surveyor's partner lifted a paper with a sponsor seal and a clean smile. "Addressing for clarity and care."
"Name your harm," Riven repeated.
The man's mouth worked. He could say eclipse risk, civic peace, children, the words that always made a city obedient in a hurry. The ring under the doorframe made each word taste like it would not be believed if he said it without meaning it. He swallowed them, hard.
"Notice withdrawn pending review," he said stiffly. "Courtesy only."
"Leave it," Mira said. "Courtesy's contagious."
They left the chalk and the paper and walked away pretending their shoes did not hate the dust.
—Skill unlocked: Threshold Peal.
—Effect: Doors linked by Night Door share the bell's hearing; sponsor numerals fail within peal; hostile chant loses count.
Selene let her head tip back and listened to the thin ring that lay under the courtyard like a cat under a chair. "Good," she said. "Now when he numbers the street, the house will teach it to forget."
Mira leaned the folio on the ledger shelf and pointed at a new red line that had drawn itself across the map without her pen. "He's not counting alone," she said. "He's bought a procession of survey-lamps. They'll quarter the district before sun-up and make a show of asking permission after."
Riven tied the clapper off Damien's arm and set it on the shelf beside the charter. "Then we don't wait for the show."
Damien pressed his palm to the door once more. The wood answered with that small, unembarrassed ring. Outside the courtyard, paste dried slower than it thought it would. Far across the district, the cathedral's sponsor light hiccuped and then smoothed as a man with very clean hands chose a fresh cable.
The thin handwriting wrote one last line before the red gave way to gray at the sky's edge:
—Warning: moving a bell writes a debt. The tower will ask for a morning. Pay it, or it will find a payer.
Selene looked at him. "We'll pay," she said. "On our terms."
Damien nodded. "Procession before dawn," he said. "We'll teach the streets their names, and the tower gets its hour."
He slid the Night Door open. Shadow made a frame. The house's ring went with them.
On the far side of the seam, survey-lamps bobbed with the stiff eagerness of actors who had memorized the wrong script. Asher's bead-work would be writing new routes already, numbers braided into law like a neat lie.
Selene's hand brushed his sleeve, light as the clapper's first note. "Write faster," she said.
He breathed, and the bell under the threshold matched him. Then he stepped into the street, where dawn had not decided whose story it belonged to.