…left truth standing for the next to examine.
Truth did not have to wait long. Dawn pressed its thumb against the high windows, pale as ledger wash. The jury door in the east wall took a thin breath and admitted to having slept less than it had promised.
"Morning calendar opens," it said in pewter. "Petitions of appeal and ordinance."
Blyth adjusted nothing—coat, stance, pulse. "We walk with the Book," he said. "Public custody moves to the Chamber of Dials."
Voss had already set his men a half-step from the cradle—close enough to call it escort, far enough to deny seizure. "Appeal is on the morning docket," he said. "On sleep."
"It hasn't slept," Rowan answered, palm still on the inner hinge, breath married to the pendulum's idea of measure. "It has watched."
"Then we'll argue about verbs in a room that likes nouns," Rell said, drifting nearer, bell ungoaded. "The Chamber has more chairs; chairs believe whoever sits in them on purpose."
Edda's glance skimmed Rowan's hands the way a smith checks heat without touching. "Lift the corners with Bind again—small," she said. "Witness moves; names hold; read only. We don't spill in hallways."
Rowan nodded. The old small-fee drawer inside him felt nearly empty of tidies. He pressed his palm and gave the cradle four short sentences, one to each corner. "Witness moves. Names hold. Read only. Later waits."
Invoices arrived, modest but sharp. He lost the habit of setting spoons bowl-up in cups to drain; he lost his bias against odd-numbered stacks; the last was personal, foolish: the quiet pleasure of straightening quills when nobody watched slid free. He let them go. The cradle warmed, consent notarized in iron.
"I can keep my hand," Iori said, eyes on the faint list that wasn't a list: Iori Fen, Caro Fen, Orel Fen, Sera Low, Tess Garrow. His chain made that domestic sound. "I would rather not disappoint paper."
"You'll disappoint people instead," Rell said, kind as arsenic. "It's easier to forgive paper. It doesn't cry."
"Not where you can hear," Lysa murmured.
Mae checked the door with a grin that offended hinges into good behavior. "Hallway's cooled," she reported. "Bay Two has agreed not to flirt until luncheon."
"Then we move," Blyth said.
They did not depart; they carried, and the corridor measured their manners. Doors opened like letters taught to say the alphabet. Floors that had practiced being slippery decided today was a day for honesty. The city had opinions and, for once, rehearsed them in whispers.
Rowan took the first threshold slow. Bind sat under his skin like a ledger stone—weight that makes a table mean it. The pendulum still counted his chest; the rhythm inside him had lost the neat four-beat he used to like. He breathed anyway. The Book hummed a low tone only iron appreciates.
"Left," Mae said. "The right stair taxes ankles."
"We paid that tax," Edda said. "Spend balance, not blood."
Steam tried to collect near a grate like a jury that liked adjectives. Rowan slid two fingers over the pedestal seam and pressed Kintthin, a gentle brace that told heat its manners. "Down," he instructed. Balance staggered—half a thumbnail left. He lifted Steps behind his teeth—the door on Market Steps sticks unless you lift—and the tilt corrected like a chair learning it had been sat upon by a friend.
"Invoice?" Edda asked without looking.
"Tea," Rowan said. "I will stop resenting weak tea."
"Mercy," she said. "You're becoming tolerable."
The Public Book rode the cradle like a boat convinced of harbor. Citizens had formed along the walls out of that civic instinct that produces queues, choirs, and riots: seamstresses with needles in their cuffs, porters with shirts that didn't belong to them, a boy with minutes pressed flat in his pocket. Mouths opened when Calder tipped his chin; breath made a low, lawful tide. Tess kept a palm on the cradle, as if she could remind stone to be gentle with paper.
Voss walked to Rowan's right, hands shown, the posture of a man who had rehearsed being blameless. "When the Chamber hears sleep," he said, tone friendly as rope, "I will ask it if breath counts as awake. It will prefer the word it knows how to measure."
"Then teach it people," Rowan said.
"Words do not learn," Voss said. "They are taught."
They reached the Stairs of Tariffs, the stone worn to honesty by a century of men who had mistaken arithmetic for absolution. A tide of warm air pushed up from below, bored of being a rumor. Rowan felt the urge—clean, reckless—to use Lumen and be done with modesty. He did not. He put his palm to the bannister and spoke Bind small. "Witness keeps its feet; later keeps its temper."
The cost fetched something not quite trivial. He lost the tiny satisfaction of balancing salt with a pinch between finger and thumb—his grandmother's habit, taught at a stove that had stolen winters. The lack arrived with a picture: a woman with rough hands and a laugh he would not forget, because he owed her more than salt. He breathed. The Bind took the price and made the stair behave.
Rell leaned close enough to share scent instead of secrets. "You're nearly out of tidies," she said. "Soon you'll spend chairs."
"I'll stand," Rowan said.
"You'll need rooms," she said. "Let me build you one."
Mae snorted. "He already has a room. It's called 'No.'"
The Chamber of Dials accepted them with the slow displeasure of rooms used mostly for ceremony and seldom for use. Brass faces lined the walls—pressure, coin, grain, breath—each with a needle that pretended not to tremble. A raised well in the center held the Assay Dial: a broad circle of quivering mercury beneath glass. The dais for Public Books stood to the north beneath a window that did not admit weather unless it had dressed properly.
Blyth set his palm on the cradle's rim; Rowan kept his on the hinge; Iori kept his on the margin. Together they lowered the Book into the dais as if the room had earned it.
The mercury shivered once, then set its surface like an eye deciding not to blink. The dials around the walls ticked into listening.
"Calendar calls Appeal of Warden Voss against Public Custody of Witness," the chamber's clerk intoned, a victoriously neutral man. "Petitioner asserts sleep; Respondent asserts watch."
"Public breath counted through the night," Calder said. "Awake."
"Show me your breath," Voss answered. "Not your sentiment."
Calder tipped his chin. Mouths opened: rows of them, untidy, honest. The Breath Dial twitched, not vain—relieved to be told what its job was again. The Assay Dial held steady: mercury cool as proof that refuses to hire adjectives.
Rell toyed with her bell and did not pay it music. "While our nouns quarrel," she said, "permit medical custody to act on danger, not doctrine. We can shackle the quickglass flow that made your Wicks possible without asking the Book to lecture us."
"Proceed," Blyth said, because he understood the cost of refusing competence when it arrived on time.
Lysa stepped to the rim with the vial between thumb and forefinger, cork teased up a breath, not more. The little bead inside tried to climb; the glass wrote cold. "This lot was cut with living charge," she said. "Listen."
She touched the vial to the dais, just long enough for the sound to translate. The Assay Dial sang a thin, insistent syllable—mother—and stopped, ashamed of having confessed. The Breath Dial flicked in sympathy; the Coin Dial tried to lie and failed; the Heat Dial pretended to be uninterested, then leaned in.
"Source?" Voss asked.
"Parish Foundry," Lysa said. "Curate Pell Ren." She didn't look at the boy Fel. She didn't need to.
"Show proof," the clerk said, because clerks are paid to make rooms behave themselves by asking for things in order.
"Echo," Lysa said, and there was no piety in it. She thumbed a kiss of black to her tongue and leaned a memory into the dais—not hers this time, but one she had bargained for in the hours when men sleep. A door with a sunburst leaned left. A table with plates that sang when told optimization. A hand stamping loss as if it were mercy. The chamber smelled, briefly, like the inside of a glove.
The price came late and exacting. Lysa blinked and steadied herself on the rim. Edda's hand moved and then didn't touch her.
"Invoice?" Edda asked.
"My uncle's whistle," Lysa said. "At a wedding." Her mouth tightened, but she didn't topple. "I remember the joke he told when he sat down. Not the sound of his joy."
"Paid," Rell murmured, not unkind.
The clerk made a mark. "Exhibit received."
Voss's jaw moved a fraction, taste-testing defeat. "Your Echo is a trick that writes feelings into records."
"That's what a record is," Mae said, cheerful. "A feeling that won the vote."
The jury seam in the north wall breathed. "Sleep or speak," it said. "The page cannot be both."
Blyth didn't look at Rowan because that would turn the decision into a private conversation. He looked at the city instead. "Not yet," he said. "We speak."
The Public Book brightened—no flame, a temperature of intention. On the new page the faint field that craved nouns gathered its courage. Letters began like seeds that had heard rain. Witnessed Person tried itself, then Person Under Witness, then, startlingly elegant, Keeper's Person—each tasting worse than the last. The words did not like their own clothes.
Rowan held the hinge and felt the want moving under his palm like a heart that hadn't been taught shame. He could push—Bind it to a term and pay with a chair he might need later—or he could do the smallest thing in rooms that prefer speeches: he could ask a question.
He leaned his mouth to the margin. "What noun do you want?" he asked the page.
Edda's head turned an inch. Rell's bell forgot itself. Voss allowed a blink.
The Assay Dial sighed; the Breath Dial waited; the Heat Dial decided to be brave. The page wrote, faint and rude: People on the Page.
It was not clever. It was not holy. It was accurate.
Rell exhaled a laugh that liked him for once. "Cheap and terribly expensive," she said. "Perfect."
"Ordinance proposed: People-on-the-Page shall be counted as persons for the duration of witness and thereafter under audit," the clerk said, eyelid quivering as if he'd caught his reflection using poetry.
"Second," Blyth said.
Voss did not say third. He said, "Appeal. And sleep. Or you will legislate in a fever."
The jury seam tasted the air. "Sleep is measured by lamp and swing," it repeated, faithful to its own past. The glass over the Assay Dial paled, a promise that noon would wear less milk.
The chamber held its nerve. The lamps held theirs.
"Rowan," Edda said, almost gentle. "Anchor pace. Let the room want this noun without making a hole of yourself."
He nodded. "One clause each time the pendulum kisses north," he told the hinge. "Read only. Later waits."
The invoice came not in cutlery or socks or straightened quills. It came in sentence. A private cadence he had used since childhood—how he spoke apologies: short, then shorter, then a yes—evaporated. He felt it go and wondered who he would be when he couldn't hide behind that old rhythm. He didn't love the man that left. He didn't grieve him, either.
The pendulum kissed north. The page risked a first clause in faint ink: Names written under witness shall not be rendered while breath witnesses.
In the benches, someone sobbed once. It sounded like gratitude that had been taught not to perform.
Voss's voice arrived like rain that insists no is a form of affection. "Write your comfort," he said. "When the page sleeps, I will burn it awake."
"Promises," Mae said. "Men wrap themselves in them when they can't get warm."
The pendulum rose; it came down. North kiss. The page's faint ink gained weight enough to frighten copyists. Custody began to define care instead of cage. The Breath Dial flirted with decency. The Heat Dial practiced not making a mess of pride.
The lamps, sensing noon, considered dim. The jury seam swelled a breath, pleased with its chance to be useful. "Drowsy," it suggested, rehearsing a verdict it liked the music of.
Rowan felt the hinge ask. He did not answer with Lumen—clean, hot, ruinous—though a part of him longed to spend heat as if it were charity. He gave the smallest Kint instead, a palm-width of evenness under the room's feet. Balance slid left; Steps corrected it like a trusted lie. The invoice took something he hadn't named aloud because he had hoped not to pay it: the little habit of starting sentences with later when he meant no. The word still belonged to him; the trick did not. Good.
"Invoice?" Edda asked.
"Cowardice," Rowan said, and found he could say it without apology.
The jury seam sulked and did not say sleep. Noon would come; it would have its due; but not as a trick.
Blyth lifted his chin to the clerk. "Record the clause."
"Recorded," the clerk said, throat dry. "People-on-the-Page: clause the first."
Rell, who had not smiled properly in some years, allowed herself a piece of it. "There," she said. "The city has invented a noun and decided to feed it. I suppose we'll have to tax it."
Voss turned his head the width of a blade. "We will tax the men who think nouns save them," he said.
"Same men," Mae observed.
The pendulum kissed north again, patient as bread. The page drew a breath to begin clause the second—custody venues; lamp standards; audit intervals—when the lamps finally chose honesty over valor and dimmed one degree.
The jury seam opened like a satisfied wound. "Sleep," it said, loving the sound of its own fairness. "Appeal allowed."
The chamber did not erupt. The chamber tightened. Lysa covered the vial with her palm. Iori kept his hand where it had always been. Tess's ribbon decided to continue being green.
Rowan did not lift his palm. He could feel the question move through the hinge like a slow knife: give the page to sleep or keep it awake and pay. He did not answer yet. He looked at Voss, whose mouth had learned patience beside iron. He looked at Rell, whose bell knew this music better than it admitted. He looked at Blyth, who refused to be anything but bridge.
"Keeper," the jury seam said, because metal had learned his name. "Choose."