The square unstitched itself into streets. Banners forgot their hems. Shoes remembered dust. Above the Guildhall, noon light feathered the edges of stone as if the day had decided to be kind to faces if not to laws.
The name moved faster than any man. It went ahead of them down the steps, a small word with new shoulders.
Bellmarked.
Vendors tried it for attention, watchmen for duty, boys for bravado, women at windows for the way a sound fits into a day. It picked up jokes and lost a little fear. It learned the corners.
—Anchor X: Take back a name that is not yours.
—Hint: A traded name returns in other mouths. Hear what the city calls you—and bind it before he does.
—Method: Catch the word in three places where it does not need you: Trade. Duty. Play. Fix it to breath and bell.
They walked without looking like they were following anything. Nameless Wake made space where elbows would have been. Processional Right found a thin thread even at noon that would hold if he breathed as if the day belonged to him.
"Trade," Selene said, reading the hint in the air.
"The river market," Mira answered. "Buyers don't whisper there."
They crossed the second bridge. River light turned faces to coins and then back again. At the first row of stalls, spice sellers had opened their tins to show the day they were made from. A woman with bracelets stacked to her elbow stood on a crate and hawked in a voice that had survived three marriages and a siege.
"Bellmarked passes," she called, because a name brings eyes and eyes buy. "Hot bread for brave mornings, pepper for men who think they can taste."
The word shook a little laughter out of the shade. The laughter was honest; the word had earned it.
Damien laid two coins down and didn't ask the price. The woman's eyes flicked to the strap on his forearm and then to the fig leaf seal in the plain folder. "You'll need the sweet," she said. She dropped a sugared rind into his palm as if she had kept it for a boy she liked.
The thin handwriting wrote:
—Trade witness taken.
—Hold the breath. Do not speak the word. Let the city say it.
They stepped out of the current. The river swallowed the stall's calls and left the name floating, small and buoyant. He did not say it. He matched his breath to its shape.
"Duty," Selene said.
"North watch post," Riven answered. "They use what the city uses or the city stops listening to them."
The watch post was a plank set into a wall where a beam remembered where to put a hand. The man from the southern foundry stood there as if he had been carved. He didn't wear a badge. He wore a morning's worth of being trusted.
Two boys with hard plans and soft ears came up to him with questions made of elbows. "Is he—" one began.
The watchman raised a palm. "If you want to walk Wool Street at night," he said, "you step on the hour and you mind the bellmarked turn." He let the word fall like a nail set true. He wasn't speaking to them. He was speaking to the road.
The name held steady in the air, not heavier, just more sure.
—Duty witness taken.
—Bind the second breath.
They left the watchman to his work. The afternoon leaned. Bread smells and glue smells and the faint hiss of a quarrel cooling made a map no bead could learn fast enough.
"Play," Mira said quietly. "Before he posts it."
They went where boys go when men don't pay attention: a square with a fountain that only pretended to run, a patch of shadow a cart never moved, a step that had learned to bang like a drum if you hit it with your heel. A game had already started. It had rules that changed when a good line arrived.
A girl with her hair tied up in blue string and a cut on her knee that would be a story by supper hopped the chalk grid and landed on one foot. "Bell—marked—step!" she shouted, and the others echoed it because names make corners into goals.
The chalk squeaked a correction to itself. The name turned once in the air and learned to grin.
—Play witness taken.
—Hold. Breath full. Bell quiet.
—Bind at a place that keeps voices: the Crier's Arch.
Selene tipped her head toward the lane where the old wooden arch stood over the street like a habit. The Crier's Arch had been where words went to become harder to ignore. Men had read wars there. Women had offered bread there when streets were mean. In the beams, nails had learned the shapes of names.
Under the arch, the printer with pepper strings at his door had hung a slate so the city could talk to itself without paying a herald. It held chalk lines that fought, jokes that had already gone stale, directions to a better barber. Today it held a neat blank kept with pride.
The first crier arrived at the same time they did, ribbons at his shoulder and a baton that made children stand straighter as if they'd been selected to be good. He lifted a paper with sponsor light sheened across its edges. His mouth shaped the word.
Mira moved first. She slid her palm across the slate, writing a line before he could say his. She wrote with a chalk he hadn't noticed he had handed her in the alley two days ago when he had been pretending not to be bribed.
—Notice: Bells kept on schedule under eclipse.
—Credit: Guild of Bellsmen.
—Shelter charter posted at water clock and tower.
The crowd murmured its approval. The crier's paper fluttered in a breeze someone would swear had not been there a moment ago.
Asher's crier cleared his throat. "City," he began, "White Crown addresses—"
The Threshold Peal bled under the arch like cat-steps. There was no door here. There was wood that remembered being part of one. Damien let the bellmark Veil breathe into it.
"Name your harm," Riven said, not loudly.
The crier blinked because it was rude to be asked for meaning in public rooms. "Civic—" he began. The arch's old beam didn't believe him. "Panic—" The word fell off his tongue and landed on its back. He went for the safest reach. "Children."
Selene's voice had no honey in it when she wanted it clean. "Name the harm you mean."
The crier looked at the paper. The paper looked like it had promised more courage than he could afford. He lowered it a finger's width.
Damien set his forearm against the inner face of the arch and raised the clapper, not to strike but to show a quiet metal that had rung where water lives. He breathed. Eclipse Chord woke like a second line and slid under the crier's throat, not choking—lending him the note for truth.
"If you don't mean it," he said softly, "let it go."
The crier's fingers loosened. He had a wife who sold onions. He had a nephew who had learned to read under this arch. He lowered the baton. "Community notice," he said instead, stumbling once and then finding it. "Bell routes will be honored. Addressing will detour. Shelter houses stand."
The word in the crowd went up bright and unowned.
Bellmarked.
It fit. It didn't need a permission to do so.
—Breath held. Word heard.
—Bind.
The arch's inner beam had a patch where rain had got in one winter and never learned to leave. Damien set the clapper against that soft spot and drew a small circle in the air with his free hand. The circle caught breath. The beam accepted it the way a cupboard accepts a cup that has always belonged to it.
He did not speak the name. He let the city say it over him. He held his breath at the top, the way you hold a laugh when a friend is almost there.
The circle closed.
—Name bound: common-use.
—Alias recognized: Bellmarked.
—Effect: References to "Bellmarked" in scry, writ, rumor route to your tone unless harm named aloud; hostile claims require door's hearing. You may answer or let it pass.
A cheer went up by accident because no one had planned to cheer at noon. The crier, obligated to get through his sheet, improvised three lines about bread distribution and a flood that never happened and stepped away fast, relieved to have been useful.
Mira blew chalk from her knuckles. "He'll hate that," she murmured.
"Asher?" Riven asked.
"The city," she said, and smiled. "Being asked to mean things out loud."
The printer leaned in his doorway, ink under his nails, eyes impartial because a man has to eat. "You'll want to post the charter proper," he told Damien. "Arch is for shouts, not paper."
"We will," Damien said. He slid the fig leaf seal under the slate's edge where fingers would find it and understand without reading. The leaf left a small oil print on wood that would be there tomorrow even if someone tried very hard to wash it.
A second crier came—a boy this time, too solemn for his ribbon, with a paper so new it still smelled of the press. He climbed the low step, lifted his baton, and began with a breath anyone could see was borrowed.
"Proclamation," he read, voice careful. "By courtesy of White Crown and with thanks to the bellsmen: at dusk, a name-binding shall be held at the Echo Stone, for clarity and peace. Parties: Asher Drake, holding the Spear; and—" his eyes flicked instinctively to Damien, as if names could find bodies "—the Bellmarked, if he accepts. Audience welcome. Terms: speak only. No weapons, no song."
The crowd made that sound a city makes when it wants to know whether a thing will be a show or a fight.
The thin handwriting cut across Damien's vision, a line as thin as a hair drawn with a knife:
—Herald's Claim filed.
—If you do not stand, the Spear may define the name.
—Constraint: speak only—unless a door hears you.
Selene's gaze found the stone with memory of bells and measured its echo with her eyes. "He wants you in the center of a room that believes him," she said.
"Rooms believe whoever speaks the way they like to be spoken to," Riven said. "Bring a way the stone likes."
Mira's smile had the fixed edges of a woman who planned to sleep when streets learned to be decent. "We'll need witnesses again," she said. "Trade. Duty. Play. And one more: silence. The Echo Stone eats shouting. If he tries to make a chant of you, starve it."
Damien touched the clapper with two fingers. The metal had warmed to his skin and forgotten cold. On the other side of the river, in the cathedral district, sponsor light rehearsed its evening angles. The name moved through the lanes faster now, gathering small truths. It would be at the Echo Stone before they were.
He didn't say it. He breathed the shape and let the bellhold of the arch keep it for him until dusk.
"Door?" Selene asked, casual as hunger.
"Door," he said.
He set his palm to the arch's inner face. Night Door woke to a frame where wood hid a hinge. Shade drew a neat rectangle on stone. When he turned the latch, fig-leaf cool slipped its hand into Guildhall air, and the house's ring lay down under the afternoon like a cat ready to leap when a child's hand descends.
Riven stepped through first because a doorkeeper does. Mira followed, because paper likes to go where she does. Selene swept the crowd once with her eyes, measuring men who would think they were brave at dusk, and went after. Damien took one more breath where the name walked, then closed the door and carried its hearing with him.
Behind them, the crier lowered his ribbon and practiced saying the word the way the city liked it said.
At the Echo Stone, when the light turned honest and banners forgot which way was up, Asher Drake would lift a hand and think he owned a syllable.
Damien meant to let the stone decide for itself.