Noon walked down the corridor, unhurried and carrying a knife it insisted was a spoon. The Chamber of Dials heard it coming in the few ways a room can: mercury steadied, brass faces decided what tremble counted as honest, benches learned to be cruel to knees. The pendulum stretched higher each swing, tasting the north kiss and giving it back. Lamps held their milk as if politics were a stubborn child.
Rowan kept his palm on the inner hinge. The weight of Bind lay under his skin with the good mood of granite. He did not feel dramatic. He felt like a chair that had agreed to be a chair even after the party left.
Calder spread paper on the dais lip, the neatness of a man who believed drafts could keep men from inventing storms. "Phrase it lean," he said, pencil already bored of fat. "Clause two wants venues, lamps, audits. Write as if money listens."
"Money listens," Rell said, arriving with a ledger under one arm and a bell that refused to ring for anyone not profitable. "It just mishears on purpose. Here." She slid a folded draft across, naggingly elegant: Standards for Medical Custody under Lampwatch, margins already bruised with arithmetic.
Blyth rested two fingers on it, a blessing that looked suspiciously like ownership. "We'll read," he said.
Mae sauntered in behind a tray that had lost three biscuits to process. "Procurement boys showed me their ink," she announced. "I showed them a door that sticks unless you lift." Her grin sharpened. "They lifted. I stole the good biscuits."
Tess hovered at Rowan's elbow like a ribbon practicing adulthood. The tooth-whistle had learned to be shy; it still escaped when she forgot to be careful. "Do you need my hand?" she asked, already setting her palm on the cradle's polished rim.
"I need you to be exactly that brave twice more before we breathe again," Rowan said. "Then I need you to eat a biscuit and not apologize."
She nodded as if given a job with a wage.
Fel Nor stood two paces back under a dial that believed him guilty for aesthetic reasons. He turned the cap in his hands until it learned to be a wheel. "You'll write my mother," he said to no one in particular and everyone at once.
"Later," Rowan began, then stopped himself on the word that had been stolen from him as a dodge. He tried again without the trick. "I will write her when it is the sentence's turn."
Fel tested that, found it unsatisfying and respectable, and set his jaw to holding.
The jury seam in the north wall took a preparatory breath, pewter choosing to be audible. "Noon approaches," it said, as if the clock were a guest everyone had to like.
Edda, who had spent half a night teaching silence to be useful, cocked her head at Rowan's wrist. "Anchor pace again," she said. "We are about to want three clauses while the room can stomach one. Teach your mouth to queue."
Rowan spoke to iron, not to people. "One clause upon the north kiss; read only; venues and lamps next; audits after that; later waits."
Bind took a fee—a small superstition he had never confessed to anyone because it made him feel like an old man: he stopped glancing back through doorways to check that lamps were truly out. The habit slid from his shoulders and chose the hinge. He felt lighter and more stupid; he accepted both.
"Invoice?" Edda asked.
"Ghost checks," Rowan said. "Gone."
"Good. Let ghosts work for themselves."
Voss watched the exchange with the fondness some men reserve for knives. His Wardens had arranged themselves along the chamber's edges to look like shadow with rules. He didn't say please. He never does. He smiled enough to count as a warning.
The pendulum climbed. The jury seam inhaled as if memory were a valve.
"Noon Appeal," the seam declared. "Petitioner: Warden. Respondent: Public Custody. Witness present."
"Present," Blyth said.
"Present," Voss said, and the word suited him the way rope suits a harbor.
The clerk—neutral as paint that had never been asked its opinion—rose. "Petitioner may read remedy draft."
Voss did not hurry. He held no paper. Rell's bell tilted, amused. "Standards for Warden Transfer upon Page Sleep, Revised," Voss said, tasting each word for hidden spice. "When the page sleeps more than one lamp's degree, the Keeper's hand shall lift. Wardens secure the volume to evidence safes. Breath is counted in rooms designed for that counting, not on streets that applaud themselves for existing."
"Rooms designed how?" Calder asked, pencil poised to murder vagueness.
"By Wardens," Voss said, courteous as bone. "Not by sentiment."
"By confession, then," Mae said. "You want to build the mouth and choose the words it can chew."
"You mistake design for motive," Voss said. "You always do."
Lysa corked her vial and set it down like a yes made of glass. "Wardens are part of the chain that cut the quickglass," she said. "Not all, not always, but enough to warrant chaperones that don't wear gray."
Rell lifted her draft without ringing her bell. "Medical Custody under Lampwatch," she read. "Custody occurs only in public venues registered to the Book; lamps at full; toneplates out of calendar; triage at the door; quickglass supply secured to the Gallery; no living charge within a hundred paces of a valve." She looked at Voss with the affection of a cat encountering a window. "We can quibble about who hires the nurses later."
"Budgets today," Blyth said. "Quibbles tomorrow."
The Assay Dial approved of all this with a surface that tried to appear uninterested.
Voss took one precise step nearer. "Where your draft says registered to the Book," he said, "I require registered to the Wardens as co-keepers."
Rowan shook his head once. The hinge hummed the refusal for him.
"Co-keepers are not a noun the Book recognizes," Calder said. "The page knows Keeper; it knows Public; it learned People on the Page before breakfast. It doesn't know Servant of the Keeper Who Thinks He's a Second Keeper."
Tess's tooth made a small accidental laugh. The Breath Dial chased it and pretended not to enjoy itself.
"Clause," the jury seam prompted, bored of drafts.
"Clause," Edda echoed, less bored. "Rowan."
Rowan leaned his mouth to the margin and let the room feel its own want before he named it.
"Custody occurs under open lamps in venues registered to the Book; toneplates out of calendar; breath counted by public witness; no transfer on sleep," he said. "Audits recorded in the margin. Read only."
The pendulum kissed the north. Ink rose faint, obedient as bread. Custody shall occur under open lamps in venues registered to the Book; toneplates out of calendar; breath counted by public witness. No transfer on sleep. The letters sat there, not proud, merely certain.
The invoice climbed out of the hinge and inspected his ribs for something tender. It found the cadence he used when apologizing without meaning it—short, shorter, yes—and tore it neatly away. He swallowed once and found he could not make that rhythm again. He tried another sentence in its place and heard it come out honest.
"Invoice?" Edda asked.
"Lies," Rowan said simply.
"Keep that one paid," Mae told him. "You'll like the interest."
The Heat Dial took a breath that smelled less like sabotage; the Coin Dial tried to insinuate itself into the paragraph and was told to wait its turn.
Voss considered the new line and filed it without a change of expression. "Appeal on no transfer," he said. "You have written a jail with windows."
Blyth answered like a wall that had learned diplomacy. "Windows make better jails than doors," he said. "People who watch do less harm than people who hold."
"Not my experience," Voss said.
"Not mine either," Rell admitted. "But it sells well."
The seam swelled itself important. "Sleep?" it asked, already in love with its favorite word.
Lamps dimmed a whisper of a degree. Noon's knife pretended to be a spoon again.
The light shaved itself thinner. The seam smiled pewter. Voss reached with language more than with hands.
"Under sleep," he said, "the Keeper lifts his hand. Standards demand it."
"Standards you wrote for your own glove," Mae said. "We brought biscuits; you brought a tailor."
"Keeper?" the seam asked, because metal had learned his name.
Rowan did not move his palm. "The page sleeps for appeal only. Witness breath remains bound," he said, repeating the sentence as if it were a charm against overcomplicated furniture. "Read only."
The hinge warmed. The Assay Dial kept its eye open, impolite. The Heat Dial sighed as if it had been about to do something regrettable and remembered it had paperwork.
Voss kept talking, because men like him know talk is a lever. "Add one phrase," he suggested, like a friend offering you a cheaper wine. "In the event of Keeper incapacity, custody reverts to Wardens until such incapacity concludes."
"Define incapacity," Calder said, pencil still hungry.
"Losing rhythm," Voss said, a little smile laid across the words like oil. "For instance, a clerk whose breath no longer counts minutes properly."
Rowan almost laughed. You cannot steal what I already spent. He didn't give Voss the comfort of seeing it. He pressed his palm into iron and spoke to the Book instead of to the man. "Keeper incapacity is measured by breath counted by public witness. If breath fails, witness names a hand. If breath holds, Keeper holds."
The page liked the shape of that and wrote a note in the gutter, faint as a whisper: Incapacity measured by public breath.
The invoice arrived and politely requested something he had not expected to owe yet: his slow habit of smoothing other people's words before he contradicted them. It left him. He felt the sharpness of himself and hoped the room could live with it.
"Invoice?" Edda asked.
"Polish," Rowan said. "Gone."
"Sharp is better," she said. "You're carving law, not furniture."
Rell's bell approved without ringing. "He finally sounds like the thing I keep trying to hire," she said.
"Hire him to stay exactly where he is," Blyth said, eyes not leaving the page.
The seam, unsatisfied by the lack of tantrum, opened again. "Sleep. Appeal allowed."
"Proceed," the clerk said, relieved to be reading lines he had practiced in his sleep.
Proceed.
Proceed.
A shadow moved where shadows are not permitted to choose. Not Voss—he was too fond of being seen. A gray coat, the forgettable sort, stepped into the thin light between bench and dais with a folded writ held like a curtain. He reached not for Rowan; not even for iron. He reached for Iori's chain.
"Don't," Edda said, a geometry, and the chamber heard it.
The gray coat did not stop. He did not grab, either; he laid two fingers under the chain as if checking the pulse of a patient he did not respect.
Iori did not flinch. Light gathered at his shoulders as if it were a coat he had been polite enough to hang and firm enough to reclaim. The chain made the domestic clink of an argument that will be settled by tea.
Rowan did not spend Lumen. He pressed two fingers against the dais seam and sent Kint out thin, a shelf at ankle height, so modest it apologized as it existed. "Down," he told the air under the man's boots. The man's weight remembered gravity with enthusiasm. His knees learned a better language and disagreed with standing.
Balance slid sideways inside Rowan; Steps corrected, the practiced lift, and the room settled as if someone had threatened it with mild manners. The invoice took a thing he barely knew he used: the idle hum that had lived in his throat while he copied long numbers. Silence stood in its place and didn't need to be trained.
The gray coat caught himself on the bench, offended by concrete. The writ flapped once like a scolded bird.
Voss didn't move. His lack of movement was a statement that filed itself. "You cannot keep the city from touching its own," he said.
"Then teach the city to touch correctly," Blyth said.
The pendulum kissed north because clocks do not admire theater. The page took the kiss as permission and pushed a last line through while it could: Audits shall be written in the margin in the hand of the Keeper or a hand named by witness.
The lamps dimmed one stubborn degree, pleased to participate. The seam opened, ecstatic at how necessary it felt. "Sleep," it declared, greedy. "Sleep now. Appeal now."
"Appeal," Voss said, and let triumph wear a small coat. "Transfer on sleep."
"Read only," Rowan answered, palm steady. He could feel the hinge waiting for a word he had not yet dared to say in this room—no without later to soften it. He looked at Tess, whose ribbon had remained green through more nouns than children deserve. He looked at Fel, who had decided not to sell his mother to the city. He looked at Iori, whose hand did not rise from the margin because being person had taught him patience.
The chamber drew a breath.
"Keeper," the seam said, metal friendly with his name. "Choose."
He chose. "The page sleeps for appeal only. Witness breath remains bound. Read only. No transfer," Rowan said again, the repetition not stubbornness—definition. "Proceed with words."
Voss smiled as if the knife had introduced itself and found the table laid. "Words, then," he said, stepping one pace nearer, unjustly polite. "My remedy defines transfer as moving the Book from a room that is not registered to the Wardens to one that is. This Chamber is not registered to the Wardens."
"It is registered to Public," Calder said. "By window and by dial."
"Then your public can watch me carry it," Voss said.
He lifted a hand—not to seize, to signal. Three gray coats took one courteous step.
Rowan's palm did not leave iron. He let the room hear the last tool he owned before heat: Bind cut small and mean. "Later waits," he said, and the sentence reached farther than grammar has any right to. The lamps brightened a fraction against their own boredom. Breath rose in benches as if called by someone who knew their names. The Assay Dial widened its eye, insolent.
The seam tasted the air again, tin less certain than it had been. The knife of noon leaned, curious.
"Proceed," the clerk said, voice steadier than his bones. "Remedy to be argued; no transfer until heard."
Voss's smile thinned. "Argue it, then."
Rowan breathed with iron and did not bother with rhythm. He put his mouth to the margin. "Write it in the open," he told the page. "Let the city read the knife while it cuts."
The chamber agreed in the only language it trusts: it stayed.