Night took the city back a street at a time. Posters curled where paste forgot to be arrogant. Survey-lamps bobbed in pairs, rods tucked like polite spears. They painted numbers that learned to glow, and the glow learned to behave like law.
—Anchor XII: Teach a wall to listen.
—Hint: If numbers won't hear doors, make numbers knock.
—Method: Give mortar a throat. Bind it to bell and breath.
They started where the Addressing crews were proudest: the long run of stone along Three-Steeple Lane. Fresh chalk marched in tidy ranks—1, 3, 5—so clean the digits looked like they believed in themselves.
"Easiest lies are straight," Selene murmured.
Mira scanned the crews with that quick way she had of counting men and chances at the same time. "Captain on the end," she said. "Bead in his sleeve, promises in his mouth."
Riven leaned his shoulder into the wall like an old friend who meant to talk without being seen. "Mortar's soft," he said. "It remembers a flood."
Damien slipped the clapper strap firm against his forearm and set his palm to the stone. The Bellmark Veil cooled his skin; Echo Right lay quiet in his ribs, waiting. He breathed in on four, out on six, and tapped once—not the bell's ring, but a smaller sound, the kind a throat makes when it's deciding to speak.
The wall swallowed the tap and shivered. Between stones, the mortar shifted like sleep. The number 5 nearest his hand dimmed, recovered, then dimmed again as if it had been asked a question it wasn't ready to answer in public.
—Murmur seeded.
—Requirement: teach it a rule.
Damien put his mouth close to the stone and spoke small. "If a mark means harm, ask it to say so."
The mortar sighed like a tired clerk who had been waiting years for someone to say please. A faint, private peal ran along the length of wall, stone to stone.
The surveyor captain at the end of the lane lifted his stencil, spear-light cupped neat in his palm. He reached for a blank patch.
The wall asked, in a voice only men with bad intentions could hear: Name your harm.
The captain's brush paused. He tried to paint anyway. The digit began itself, bright as a sponsor bow…and wavered. He swallowed a word that had served him well all day.
"Clarity," he said.
The 5 beside Damien made a small impolite sound—like a cat disagreeing with a sermon—and went dull. The fresh stroke refused to stick.
The crew looked at their captain, then at the wall, then back at the neat numbers that suddenly had doubts.
"Courtesy check," the captain amended, perspiration turning his clean collar honest.
The wall waited.
"Name it," Riven said, almost kind.
The captain's jaw worked. Children tried to climb out and found the mortar didn't believe men who said children when they meant photographs. He finally managed: "Sabotage," soft and resentful, because glass had broken and salary must be defended.
The half-written digit blinked like a man relieved not to be asked to wear the wrong hat and settled—faint, apologetic—as if it promised to revisit the question in the morning.
Mira laughed under her breath. "You taught a wall shame."
"Walls learn faster than committees," Selene said.
The crews moved on with their neat rods and their smaller voices. Where they named their harm, the numbers held—pale, decent, awaiting appeal. Where they tried the old lies, the digits went gray as if the street had mislaid its chalk.
—Skill unlocked: Murmur Sigil.
—Effect: Surfaces taught to listen repeat Threshold rule; sponsor marks must answer, or fade by dawn. Linked to bell.
Word ran ahead of them down the lane the way names do when they fit a road. At the second corner, a White Crown lieutenant with a nicer coat and a steadier bead stepped out, hands empty, smile laundered.
"You're interfering with process," he announced.
"We're asking it to tell the truth," Mira said.
"Truth," the lieutenant repeated, tasting it like a spice he didn't use at home. "The Act is lawful. The Spear signs."
"The wall signs too," Riven said. "Today it learned to read."
The lieutenant turned his head a fraction. You could hear the bead whispering patience into his ear. He lifted a hand. "Proceed," he told his men, voice smooth. "Name your harm."
The men obeyed. Some of the numbers stayed. Some didn't. The wall hummed with a private dignity.
The Spear answered anyway.
Light crawled along the cobbles at the end of the lane and pulled itself into a clean grid. Lines learned to climb stairs and turn corners. Where they met the wall, they thinned to hair, then fattened again with stubborn grace. The grid paused at the mouth of Nocturne's alley, tasting shadow like a trained dog.
"Asher's net," Selene said. "He means to number the air."
The grid crept toward the alley seam where maps lied. The fig leaf above the door drank its light and made no promises. A surveyor with ambition in his eyebrows stepped forward to cut a line clean across the alley mouth.
Damien lifted the clapper. The Threshold Peal ran from Nocturne's lintel into his bones and back into the stone at his palm. He tapped the wall once, then again, then spoke small to the mortar: "If a line means to hurt a door, ask it to knock."
The grid touched the seam.
It knocked.
Not loud; right. A neat tap-tap sounded on the alley—the sound a polite person makes at a door he doesn't intend to respect once it opens.
"Threshold law," Riven called, eyes bright. "Name your harm."
The grid hesitated. Then the line itself—Asher's handwriting made of light—answered through a distant throat: "Containment."
The alley tasted the word and did not like it. The ring under Nocturne's lintel deepened. The gridline recoiled as if it had burned its finger on a stove and drew back to the cobbles to consider its life choices.
A cheer tried to start and had the decency to settle for a ripple. The lieutenant with the nice coat let his eyebrows admit surprise and did not write it down.
"Enough," a voice said from the grid—not loud, so the square would call it restraint. Asher's patience traveled better than he did. "We will write around your house."
"Learn to," Selene suggested.
The grid spread its neat net elsewhere, offended but obedient to optics. The lane relaxed the way a jaw does when a fist decides not to be needed.
Damien let his hand fall from the wall. Murmur answered with a low cat-purr. Numbers that had named harm sat like reasonable guests; numbers that had lied went pale and old. In the next street over, a woman who had been waiting all morning to like something she wasn't supposed to smiled at a patch of stone.
"Next," Mira said, eyes moving.
They taught two more walls. At the water clock, the canopy's beams learned to ask for meaning before they let paint stick. At the guildhall backstairs, the ledger shelf woke to peal when a man wrote emergency without believing it. The city came up under their hands, less loud, more sure.
When they turned back toward Nocturne, the lieutenant with the good coat was waiting with a courtesy notice that didn't quite know what it was for. He looked like a man who had found religion and was trying not to be seen taking it too seriously.
"Under Spear instruction," he said carefully, "Addressing crews are…to detour walls that ask questions."
"Good order," Riven said.
The lieutenant cleared his throat. "A choir warden team is inbound to evaluate your…door. They'll come singing low, so the optics look kind. I'm meant to be here when they arrive."
"Then stand where the song won't hurt you," Selene said.
The wardens came in white with lamps hooded red. Their mouths didn't open. Their chests did. A low line spilled into the alley, made of three notes and the intention to make four men feel smaller than law. It was the kind of song that sounds like patience but wants your breath.
The Eclipse Chord woke in Damien's ribs like a second note leaning its shoulder under a load. He matched the wardens' line and slid a half-tone under it, then curved it with the Veil—not to deflect, this time, but to wrap.
The song bent. The alley kept its own air. The wardens frowned as if their shoes had become less well made.
"Door hears you," Riven said, perfectly civil. "Name your harm."
The lead warden tried inspection and found it weak. He tried safety and the lintel's ring did not believe him. In the end he managed, grudging: "Compulsion," because that was what choirs did when they had run out of hymns.
"Withdrawn," Selene said pleasantly. "Try a lullaby at the riverside. The fish love policy."
A few people laughed by accident. Laughter is terrible for optics. The wardens traded looks with the lieutenant that meant we'll be back with the right paperwork and left under decency so they could say they had.
—Anchor XII accepted.
—City-lore seeded: Listening walls.
—Skill upgrade: Murmur Sigil → Wall-Ear.
—Effect: Surfaces within peal carry Name your harm without door present; lies fade; Spear-lines must knock or route.
Damien stood under the fig leaf and listened to the wall purr. It was a small, indecent satisfaction seeing sponsor lines forced to rap their knuckles like schoolboys.
The thin handwriting cut in with a line that demanded more:
—Scaffold directive updated.
—Anchor XIII: Break the ledger that teaches the Spear to count.
—Where: Address House, sub-basement; the serverworks you knew in beta.
—Condition: Only silence and breath pass. Doors must be lowered, not raised.
Mira's mouth tugged into a shape that wasn't a smile. "He kept the old core," she said. "Buried it under ceremony."
"The ledger is patient," Riven said.
"Then we will be something else," Selene added. "Hungry."
Damien touched the clapper. The metal had learned the shape of his hand and had no fight left over the fact. "We go quiet," he said. "No banners. No arch. Only the sound a room makes when it notices a lie."
Selene's eyes lit the way a hunter's do when the woods finally give up the path.
"Good," she said. "Let's teach numbers to be ashamed."