—Anchor XIV: Make the counting public.
—Requirement: Publish the knock. Show the city how to hear it.
—Constraint: If he speaks first, the Spear will call it sabotage.
Dusk gathered around the water clock like careful witnesses. Its wide basin took the last light and gave back a red coin. A canopy of old wood kept the rain out and memories in. Posters for the Addressing Harmony Demonstration hung neat at the corners, sponsor thread bright enough to be honest from a distance.
White Crown formed a courteous ring—staves low, faces clean. Choir wardens in white set their lamps along the lip of the basin, hoods cracked to let a thin line of light pretend to be mercy. The crowd came anyway: stallholders with flour on their cuffs, men who had promised themselves they would only watch, women who had carried cities longer than any banner, a girl with blue string in her hair and a scab to match on the other knee.
Asher Drake stood where the sponsor light made patience look like virtue. The Bloodreign Spear leaned against the canopy post as if it had always belonged to wood. He lifted a hand half an inch and the square remembered how to hush.
"City," he said, tone tuned to the amphitheater of brick. "Tonight we harmonize. Numbers, routes, safety—sung, not shouted. A small demonstration, then public comments." His eyes flicked once to Damien as if to acknowledge an equal habit of not raising one's voice.
Mira touched Damien's sleeve—now. Selene nodded toward the canopy beam where they had taught wood to blush at lies. Riven took one step along the basin's rim and put his palm to a post like a doorkeeper greeting a guest who could become a problem.
Damien tightened the clapper strap and dipped his forearm to the wrist. The basin water was cold with honest work. He set the clapper's tongue under the lip and breathed the measure the tower liked—four, hold, six. The Bellmark Veil curved the wardens' low line away from his breath without making a show of it.
He struck once. The note did not splash. It went under. The basin learned the shape of a question and wore it like a new mouth.
A warden drew a stencil to the canopy beam. The Spear licked a little light across the brush. The warden began a 1 slow enough to look kind.
The water spoke.
Not loud; right. A clean, public knock—tok—ran around the basin and up into the canopy, down the posts, under the flagstones, and out across the square like a ripple that had decided to learn law.
"Name your harm," the water asked.
Heads turned without being told to.
The warden's hand stuttered. You could see his throat choose between salary and Sunday school. "Clarity," he tried.
The knock came again, polite, unimpressed. Tok.
Riven's voice traveled the way a rule travels when it finds work to do. "Name it."
The warden swallowed. "Sabotage," he admitted, small.
The 1 sat—pale, provisional—the way a notice sits when it knows it can be appealed in the morning.
Asher didn't move. He nodded to the conductor in white, and the hymnal breath rose: three notes, measured, an invitation for streets to put their heads down and be agreeable. The Eclipse Chord woke in Damien's ribs and slid under the line like a second path through a crowd.
The choir's phrase reached for the square. Damien matched its length, not its purpose, and folded a syllable of meaning into the water's new mouth. The basin answered the hymn with a response the city could use.
Tok.Name your harm.
The wardens' mouths tightened—not anger; effort. The second digit begun under the beam dried on the brush. A patrolman with better instincts than orders lowered his staff because the water had just asked him to be decent.
"Sabotage," Asher repeated for them—smooth, precise—so the square would hear a gentleman's confession instead of a warden's. He lifted the Spear two fingers and traced a neat grid line that wouldn't frighten a child.
The water knocked. The line paused; the crowd didn't.
Someone at the edge of the ring—an onion-seller with a laugh like a pan hitting a stove—said, "If it's harm, say it out loud," and three people near him nodded because now the phrase had a place to sit.
Mira slid a folded paper from her sleeve and lifted it just high enough: SHELTER CHARTER: DOORS HEAR. She didn't wave it. The basin did that job for her. Tok.
Asher shifted tactics. "Harmony," he said mildly, and lowered the Spear until it became a conductor's wand. The choir found a new phrase made of numbers—one-two-three—pleasant as a counting game. Children straighten for counting. Markets like it.
Damien placed the clapper flat against the underside of the lip and let his breath carry the Echo Right he'd taken from the Stone. Call and response. No chant, no show—just a habit the city had decided to keep. The water's mouth learned a litany in four beats:
Tok.Name your harm.
Say it.
Tok.Name your harm.
Say it.
The choir's counting began to sound like the apology it hadn't planned to be. The canopy beam—Wall-Ear alive in its grain—repeated the question softly to the stencil hand, and the stencil hand stalled again, honest as a man pausing over a lie at his own table.
A woman near the front—bracelets stacked to her elbow, voice that had survived a siege—lifted her chin. "If you're going to write on my wall," she called, "you can tell me what it costs."
Asher's patience didn't crack; it deepened. He turned the wand half a degree and the choir dropped into harmony so clean a poster could stand on it. When optics failed, he made the sound almost true.
The basin answered with something older than posters: a second, lower knock that felt like a carpenter's bench refusing a bad nail.
Tok.Name it.
The laugh in the square wasn't cruel. It just didn't belong to him.
—Progress: public knock taught.
—Effect (local): surfaces within hearing repeat the question aloud. Crowd may carry it.
The White Crown lieutenant with the nice coat raised his palm, polite. "Public demonstration acknowledged," he said for the record. "Addressing will detour where harm is named."
Asher let him have the sentence. He had another.
The gridlines on the stones beyond the ring shivered and knit themselves tighter. A new filament of light crept from the Spear into the basin like a vein added to a map. It didn't touch water. It touched names.
—Countermeasure: Quiet Count.
—Mode: Tally by mouths. Borrow the word Bellmarked. Bind it to ledger.
He meant to turn the name into a gear.
A murmur began at the back, almost a chant—bellmarked, bellmarked—the way street words go wrong when too many mouths own them. If the name became a chorus, the ledger would eat it and count.
Damien didn't raise a hand. He didn't need to. He set two fingers on the lip. The Echo Right remembers single voices; crowd chant loses purchase. He breathed on four and spoke, quiet, to the water, the beam, the square:
"Hold your breath," he said. "Let the word stand alone."
The murmur failed twice and realized the Stone would be embarrassed for it. A boy who had been about to shout tried the word in his mouth and liked it quieter. A girl with blue string tapped the step with her heel and grinned into the silence. The baker set his palm on his own bell under the lintel and didn't ring it.
The ledger reached for the chant that wasn't there and came up with a handful of stillness.
Mira's eyes cut to Asher. "He can't count a held breath," she said, so only the beam could hear.
Asher adjusted without blinking. "Then let's sing harm properly," he said, and for the first time put weight on the word. He turned the wand. The choir sang sabotage in a chord so gentle it sounded like a nurse smoothing a sheet. If the city learned to enjoy the feel of confession without meaning it, the habit would obey his hand next time.
Damien slid the Eclipse Chord under the syllables and curved them. The basin made the question part of the chord instead of the interruption: sabotage only balanced when name your harm completed the bar. Anything else sounded wrong. Even the wardens' faces admitted it, a quarter-inch at the mouth because a singer knows when a note lies.
The lieutenant, who had been raised by someone decent, lowered his head a fraction in reluctant respect.
Selene's voice—never loud, always placed—arrived at Damien's shoulder. "Finish it," she said. "Give the square a rule it can keep without you."
He set the clapper back under the lip. He breathed the tower's measure. He spoke five words into the water and the wood and the ring that lived under Nocturne's lintel:
"Ask first. Answer out loud."
The basin carried the line. The canopy remembered it. The posts repeated it to the stones. The phrase found doors that were tired of being considered scenery and taught them a sentence.
—Anchor XIV accepted.
—Skill unlocked: Public Knock.
—Effect: In public rites, murals, processions, and posted notices within bell hearing, attempts to mark or count must answer audibly when asked by any person or linked surface. Unanswered marks fade by dawn. Crowd chant cannot bind.
Applause happened because there wasn't anything else clean to do. Not a roar—hands. The kind you give at the end of a dangerous piece that landed where it meant to. A child laughed and put her mouth behind her fist so the Stone wouldn't be cross with her later.
Asher inclined his head the width a patient man allows an outcome he can spin. "Harmony," he said, and let the word sit where it would do him the least damage. The Spear's light withdrew from the basin like a guest who has decided to leave before the bread is cut.
The crier lifted a paper with a new edge to it. "Public note," he read, voice behaving. "Addressing to detour where harm is named aloud. Shelter charters recognized under eclipse. Demonstrations concluded."
The ring around the water clock loosened. The square remembered it had errands. The wardens closed their lamps the way a man closes a drawer after deciding not to steal. The basin kept its mouth.
Asher did not step away immediately. He let the crowd thin. Then, almost as an afterthought, he turned to Damien, not quite smiling.
"Tomorrow at noon," he said mildly. "Registration for sanctuaries begins. Civic peace requires doors to state owners. Come early. Bring your leaf."
He left it there for optics and walked away with the Spear in his shadow.
—Scaffold directive updated.
—Anchor XV: Keep a door without giving it away.
—Requirement: Stand a sanctuary for naming without names. Let the city speak ownership in your place.
—Timer: Noon.
Selene watched the last of the wardens move off. "He'll number us by asking you to say you," she said.
"Then I won't," Damien answered.
Riven's glance went to the fig leaf above Nocturne's lintel even though they were two districts away. "The door can answer for itself."
Mira folded the charter so the crease would remember. "So can a city," she said.
Damien dipped his fingers once more and let the basin cool them. The water knocked, soft, as if asking a private question only a door should answer.
"Ask first," he told it. "Answer out loud."
He turned from the water clock into streets that had learned a sentence, and the city went with him, counting only what it had heard and believed.