"Choose."
The word hung like a blade that had decided to be patient. Lamps had dimmed a single degree; the jury seam waited to feel clever. Rowan kept his palm on the hinge and his breath inside the pendulum's arc. He looked nowhere—because looking at anyone would turn the choice into a favor—and then, at last, he looked at Edda.
"Sleep and we lose the room," Voss said mildly. "Refuse and you admit you built a church out of a ledger."
Edda didn't step closer; she sharpened silence against his knuckles. "Bind small," she said to Rowan. "Let it sleep like a door: closed at the latch, not at the hinge."
Rell's bell turned on her palm, hungry to be helpful. "He means: permit appeal while you keep the Book's witness breathing. Sleep the page, not the person upon it. The city loves a loophole if it's well-tailored."
Blyth did not nod. His hand on the cradle weighed the choice without a scale. "Speak it, clerk."
Rowan tasted brass. Bind wants nouns and a vector. He gave it both, low and exact. "The page acknowledges sleep for appeal only. Witness remains bound to pendulum and breath. Names hold; read only; no write."
The hinge warmed—compliance with opinions. The invoice came like a knife wrapped in cloth. Not a tidy, not the little habits he'd been paying all night; this cut a rhythm out of him he hadn't admitted he used. The cadence he kept for comforting lies—short, shorter, yes—dissolved. He felt the loss like a staircase that had stopped half a step early. He swallowed the absence and did not fall.
The jury seam liked the sentence because it had order and a leash. "Sleep recognized for appeal. Witness remains."
Voss smiled the width of a receipt. "We may proceed."
"Proceed," Blyth said.
Iori kept his palm on the margin without moving a hair. "I will stand better now," he murmured to the faint names—Iori Fen, Caro Fen, Orel Fen, Sera Low, Tess Garrow—as if telling a table he would not lean too hard on it.
The Chamber of Dials adjusted its posture like a courtroom remembering it was built to be correct. The clerk's voice went neutral enough to be admired by paint. "Appeal of Warden Voss against Public Custody of Witness; grounds: page in sleep; remedy: transfer to Warden archive pending review."
"Transfer denied by Bind," Calder said lightly. "Page sleeps; witness stays."
"Remedy stands," Voss returned. "Sleep yields custody."
"Not of breath," Rowan said. "Read only; witness bound." Iron hummed polite agreement.
Rell's smile found a better angle. "Let's not tear the toy in half. Put your question to danger. Medical custody addresses danger; Warden custody addresses guilt. We count danger today."
"Danger originates in quickglass," Lysa said. She stepped to the dais and lifted the cork a breath; the bead tried to climb, eager to be named. "This is not neutral fuel. It is living charge cut with parish waste."
The Assay Dial answered with a thin syllable—mother—and stopped, embarrassed to have confessed in a room with brass faces. The Breath Dial ticked; the Heat Dial leaned closer, like a gossip remembering to be interested.
"Chain your source," the clerk demanded, proud of sounding useful.
"Fel," Mae said.
The boy stood where Hollis had parked him—hat in hands, shame remembering uniforms. He looked at Voss; he looked at the floor; he looked at Tess's green ribbon because courage breeds best near uncomplicated colors. "Curate Pell Ren," he said. "Foundry parish. I ran string to plates he hid by Bay Two. He told me to say optimization like it was a prayer."
"Payment?" Rell asked, as if grocery-line small talk could be a scalpel.
"A sack with a sunburst," Fel said. "I kept the sack because it still counts as mine if I vomit. The coins went to my mother." He set his jaw to the line that meant he had finally decided which crime to keep. "I'll say it again, but not for free. I want people for my mother if I go in a book."
The Breath Dial liked that sentence best; it proved the room had learned barter honestly. Lysa touched her tongue to Echo, black on pink, and leaned a single picture into the dais: Pell Ren, left-lean sunburst, toneplate hidden under Bay Two's throat, the word optimization thawed out of its smirk. Her chest hitched with the price not yet invoiced.
Edda caught Lysa's elbow without touching. "Invoice?"
"The smell of yeast on festival mornings," Lysa said, surprised by the shape of the wound. "I still remember bread. Not the street."
"Paid," Edda said, and because she had been a teacher in another life and never forgave knowledge for being easy, she turned to the clerk. "Record the stink."
"Exhibit received," the clerk said, and Rell's mouth softened almost enough to prove she'd once liked something without owning it.
Voss kept his hands shown. "Your chain ties a curate to danger," he allowed. "It does not tie your witness to person."
"It ties your archive to theft," Calder returned.
"Not my archive," Voss said. "The city's." His eyes took a precise measure of Rowan's palm. "I will take the Book while it sleeps and show you how public I keep it."
The jury seam breathed pewter. "Sleep recognized for appeal; not for transfer." It had found the music of the earlier sentence and liked singing on-key.
The line should have sufficed. Men who write lines for a living do not love sufficiency. A Warden in gray advanced with a folded writ like a knife that had learned manners. He put the paper on the cradle as if paper had a right to be heavy.
Calder didn't touch him. "Out of calendar," he said to the writ, not the man. The writ struggled to remember ink and gave up.
Voss gestured, and two more gray coats slid flanking steps, the way rivers learn to cheat rocks. "We will not carry your Book," he told the room pleasantly. "We will merely escort custody by closing eyes that should be resting."
The lamps dimmed another fraction, trying to be helpful to the wrong nouns.
Rowan set two fingertips to the dais seam and bled Kint out thin along the base—no show, only instruction. "Down," he told iron. The cradle obeyed gravity with unusual devotion. Balance tipped half a thumbnail; he lifted Steps behind his teeth and steadied the floor. The invoice arrived with a small, mean honesty: his old dislike of mismatched cutlery had already fled; he had paid stairs and socks; new now, the little comfort of humming under his breath when he copied long columns dropped neatly out of his throat. He missed nothing. He noted everything.
"Invoice?" Edda asked.
"A song I never liked," Rowan said. "Good riddance."
"Look at you," Rell murmured. "Becoming a hole with taste."
"Becoming a hinge," Edda corrected. "Holes are for men who don't know where doors go."
The Assay Dial shivered; the Heat Dial exhaled authority. In the benches, mouths opened when Calder tipped his chin. Breath counted itself without the clerk's permission. The room decided it preferred public to polite theft. The two gray coats found their shoes declining to trespass. It is hard to shove a cradle when the floor would like your ankles to behave.
Voss didn't scowl; that would be a confession. "Very well," he said. "We will appeal with our tongues instead of our hands."
"Welcome to a city," Mae said.
The pendulum climbed toward north. Rowan felt it in his chest as a neighbor asserting the right to hang washing between their windows. The first clause—no rendering while breath witnesses—stood on the page like a table that had agreed to live through dinner. Under it, the faint field of more words brightened with appetite.
"Anchor pace," Edda breathed.
Rowan did. "One clause at north; read only."
The jury seam swelled, pleased to be needed. "Drowsy," it suggested, as if repeating a trick could elevate it to law.
"Awake enough," Blyth said, and because he was a bridge and bridges speak in plain stones, the chamber believed him one degree more than it believed pewter.
The pendulum kissed north. Letters rose where the field had been patient: Custody shall occur under open lamps in public venues registered to the Book. The faint ink hardened into a shiver that knocked a tear out of a porter who had thought himself immune to nouns.
Tess's tooth made a small accidental song. The Breath Dial approved; the Coin Dial pretended it had expected this from the start.
"Budgets," Rell said, businesslike at last. "Open lamps cost wick and wage. You've written yourselves a levy. Congratulations; you are a government."
Voss's eyes measured the levy and found it useful later. "And who audits the Keeper?"
"The Keeper audits himself on the page," Calder said. "That's the trick with honest books."
"Honest people prefer furniture," Voss said. "Chairs that move, doors that close."
"Speak slower," Mae told him sweetly. "The nouns you sit on are splintering."
The lamps dimmed that same neat single degree, as if determined to keep the seam in work. The jury seam opened, satisfied with its talent for repetition. "Sleep. Appeal allowed."
"Sleep acknowledged," Rowan said before Voss could make the word perform. "Appeal heard under witness; no transfer; read only."
The seam considered and, with the air of a doorman who had chosen to respect a guest's coat, shut.
The clerk found his comfort in calendars. "By custom, Noon Appeal. Parties to present remedy drafts: Warden transfer standards; Public custody standards."
"People-on-the-Page ordinance will be tendered at noon," Blyth said. "Clause one recorded. Clause two proposed."
"Medical custody standards by noon," Rell said crisply. "Lamps, venues, and triage. Send your procurement boys to my office. They can teach my numbers to swear."
"Warden transfer standards," Voss said, courteous as rope. "Seizure on sleep. Chain of custody. Evidence safes that prefer law to sentiment."
Mae waved cheerfully with two fingers. "We'll bring biscuits so your safes have something to gossip with."
The lamps let in a little more honesty. Morning owned the windows. The mercury in the Assay Dial steadied into that rude shine truth prefers when it knows it will be criticized in public.
Voss looked at Rowan and allowed himself a thin flourish, the sort of generosity men use when they have already bought the knife they plan to name procedure. "At noon," he said, "I will take your Book from you. Properly."
Rowan did not try comfort. He had traded that cadence for something harder. "At noon," he said, "you will ask. The city will answer."
He pressed his palm to the hinge and bought a final small sentence to protect what needed the hour: "Later waits." Bind took its due, and for the first time the invoice reached into a part of him he had not prepared to pay. Not a tidy. Not a rhythm. A memory. The precise sensation of his grandmother's hand closing around his wrist to keep him from touching the stove let go of him. He could recall the kitchen, the laugh, the salt. He could not recall the pressure—that loving, iron grip.
He was unsteady for one breath. Edda saw and did not move. Iori felt the shift and kept his palm where it had always been. Lysa said nothing because the right silence buys the right day.
"Invoice?" Edda asked softly.
"Grip," Rowan said. "I remember the lesson. Not the hand." He blinked until the room returned to him in the right order. "It is enough."
The jury seam tasted noon and found it not quite cooked. "Adjourn to benches. Noon Appeal to be heard."
Blyth removed his palm from the cradle with the sort of care some men reserve for newborns and dynamite. "Public returns at the bell," he said. "Witness remains."
Voss inclined his head as if it were a courtroom with feelings. "At noon," he repeated.
Rell rolled her bell and didn't ring it. "At noon," she agreed, pocketing the levy with her eyes.
Mae leaned on a dial until it pretended not to enjoy being leaned on. "Eat," she told anyone who would hear. "Bad nouns are always hungrier than you are."
Rowan kept his palm on the Book. The room sorted itself into conversations men mistake for rest. Outside the high windows, the city rehearsed being judged by a clock without forgetting how to breathe.
He lowered his mouth to the margin and said it one more time, because some promises like being fed in small pieces. "Later waits."
The pendulum approved with a small northward thought. The lamps held their milk. The Assay Dial kept its eye open. Noon walked down the corridor, unhurried and carrying a knife it insisted was a spoon.