The man with the key smiles like a knife that wants to be used.
"Gold or your life?" he says again, friendly as a baker.
I keep my face still. I try to breathe slow. My coin pouch presses hard against my ribs, warm under the seam.
"Neither," I say. "You get nothing."
He tilts his head. "Then I take both."
Kirella steps closer to me, a half step, not enough to start a fight, enough to draw a line. The soldiers behind the fence rattle it with their hands. The key turns once, twice, and the gate yawns wider with that tired sigh.
"You're fast," the man tells Kirella. "But I am patient. And patient men eat fast men."
He gestures with the key. "Hand me the coin, little red. Kneel, and I'll call you brave. Run, and I'll call you dead."
I force my mouth to curve as if I have a secret. I do. It's small, but it is still a secret.
"You want the coin?" I say. "Then come get it."
I take one step back into the dark and let the cloak slide from my shoulders so the light catches my hair—bright, blood red. A lure. My hands stay low, empty. I angle my body so the seam with the pouch is away from him.
Kirella understands. I feel the change in him, like a held breath.
The man laughs soft. "Bold."
He lifts the key, slips it into a second lock on the yard gate, and eases it open. The soldiers file through two at a time. The bored guard from the bridge is not bored now. He lifts a whistle to his lips.
Kirella moves first.
He kicks the whistle from the man's hand and slams the gate with his shoulder. The first two soldiers squeeze through, but the third hits iron and swears. Kirella rips a broken plank from a crate and jams it between the bars.
"Run," he says.
I run.
We cut across the yard. We zig behind a stack of wet crates, through a torn curtain, and into a narrow washing hall where rope lines hold rows of soaked cloth. The cloth smells like soap and city and the last hands that wrung it.
Boots slam the yard stone behind us. The man with the key does not shout. He does not need to.
"Left," Kirella says.
We turn left into a low passage and almost collide with a small figure crouched by a bucket. Green skin, soft ears, yellow eyes wide. The same child from the alley crate.
He puts a finger to his lips. Then he points with the other hand to a square hole at floor level covered by a loose grate.
"Down," he whispers.
Kirella kneels, fingers on the grate. "Can you fit?" he asks the boy.
The boy nods. "I live there," he says, proud.
Boots hit the washing hall. Voices spill after them. "They went this way—"
Kirella lifts the grate. "You first," he tells me.
The hole smells like damp earth and pepper. I slide on my side and drop to my elbows. The space is tight, but darkness is kinder to me than light. I wriggle forward. Kirella comes after me. The grate settles back into place with a soft clink.
We crawl.
The tunnel is low and muddy. My hair catches on a nail. I breathe through my mouth. Far above, the city hums. Here below, water drips in slow patience. I hear the boy ahead of me, light and quick. Behind me, Kirella's breath is steady, even now. It steadies mine.
After twenty breaths, the tunnel opens into a little chamber under the floorboards of a room. Candlelight leaks through the cracks like thin rain. The boy taps on a loose board, and hands pull it up from above—broad, gentle hands with rough, careful fingers.
A face peers down. Grey skin. A heavy brow. Kind eyes.
The "Brute" I did not kill.
He reaches with both arms and lifts me up like I weigh nothing. He sets me on my feet, and there is grateful shock in his face, like he is surprised the world ever let him pay back a debt.
Kirella climbs out after me, quick and quiet. He dusts his palms.
We are in a small, warm room that smells like tea and sage. A kettle sighs on a low brazier. There are blankets on the floor and three cots pushed together, a family's attempt at making a corner safe. Two more faces watch us from the back—a woman with hair like moss, and a tall person with bark-brown skin and eyes like the inside of tree rings. Not human. Not quite monster, either. Just people.
The boy slides under the moss-haired woman's arm and peeks out.
"Ward," Kirella says under his breath.
The big grey man gives a little bow. "We don't call it that," he says. "But yes. Family."
He looks at me and presses his fist to his chest. "You spared me," he says, voice low. "I am Bora. This is Lelia, and that is Root." He tips his head toward the tall one.
Root lifts two fingers in greeting. The fingers look like twigs, but the gesture is polite and human. Lelia pours tea in three little cups without asking, like a mother who knows thirst when she sees it.
"Thank you," I say.
Bora glances at Kirella. "He is human," he says, not unkind. "He wears soldier boots."
"He helped me," I say.
Bora studies Kirella's face a moment longer. Whatever he sees is enough. He nods.
We sit on cushions. The floor creaks above us, then settles. Wherever the man with the key is now, he is not here yet. But he will come. Patient men always do.
Lelia pushes a cup toward me. "Drink," she says. "It clears the glass-sickness."
I sip. The tea tastes like smoke and mint and a bit of lemon peel. Warmth loosens the tightness in my neck.
"We can't stay," Kirella says, not rudely. "They're close. We need a way to the old tunnels."
Root's eyes flick to him, then to me. "Old tunnels lead to old doors," they say. Their voice is soft and deep, like soil after rain. "Sometimes those doors open."
"Sometimes they don't," Bora says.
"Sometimes they kill you," Lelia adds.
She is not cruel. She is honest.
"Do you know the Shrine?" I ask. "The one people whisper about. The Happiness Light."
The room goes very quiet.
Root answers first. "People whisper many names. Temple. Shrine. Lantern House. Promise-Gate. All the same place, or all different. Hard to say."
Bora's mouth twists. "Hard to find."
Lelia sets down her cup. "Hard to leave."
Kirella leans forward a little. "But it exists," he says. It is not a question.
Root's eyes find mine and hold. "We know a way to a way," they say at last. "Not for free."
"Nothing is free," I say. "Name the price."
Lelia looks at the boy. He pretends he is not listening. He is very bad at pretending.
"A ferry," she says. "For three. The inner canal. The men who sell space on the boats take coin, but they take blood first. Not from bodies—" She glances at me, apologizing without words. "From hands. From palms. As a mark. The mark binds you to the boat. It is not safe for us. We need a way past their mark."
Kirella rubs his thumb along his scar, the one that crosses his lifeline. "I can talk," he says. "I wore their boots once."
"Words won't be enough," Root says. "They smell fear and faith both."
"I have coin," I say, keeping my voice even. "Enough for a ferry and a month of food."
Bora shakes his head. "They don't count coin the way you do. They count cruelty."
Of course they do.
"Then we don't take the ferry," Kirella says. "We take the tunnels."
Root lifts their hand and draws a quick shape in the candle smoke—a circle with a line through it, then a small bright point where the line breaks the circle. The smoke holds the shape a breath longer than smoke should. Not magic. Just a habit for a people who spend their lives under ground.
"The tunnels are watched now," Root says. "But the old bathhouses—those the soldiers fear. There is a door in the oldest bath that opens into a throat of stone. The throat leads down to the Lantern House."
"The Happiness Light," Lelia says softly, as if saying it too loud might make it vanish.
"Show us," Kirella says.
Bora looks to Root. Root looks to Lelia. Lelia looks to the boy. The boy looks to me.
I hold his gaze. "If we get out," I tell him, "I'll come back for you."
He blinks. "You promise?"
"I promise," I say. "My word." I lift my palm, open, the way Kirella did with me.
The boy slaps his palm to mine, as serious as a priest.
Kirella watches. I feel his eyes on the side of my face like a warm light that does not burn.
Lelia stands. "Then listen. The bathhouse is through the spice lane, behind the broken lion. The alley smells like pepper and mold. Do not breathe deep." She gives me a square of cloth. "Wet this and hold it to your face."
I tuck the cloth into my sleeve. "Thank you."
Bora moves to the door and cracks it a finger's width. He stiffens. "They're searching," he says. "Not the soldiers. The quiet ones."
"The man with the key," Kirella says.
Bora nods. "And his friends."
Root smothers the candle with two fingers. The room falls into a soot-sweet dark. Lelia collects the cups without a clink. The boy crawls under a cot like a mouse.
"Time to go," Kirella whispers.
Bora slides the door wider. A hall runs left and right, both ways in shadow. He points right. We pad along the wall, soft as dust. We pass a doorway where someone snores and a stair that tilts like a broken tooth. The building breathes around us—old wood, old hopes, new fear.
At the back, a low door opens to a yard filled with drying herbs on strings. The smell is so strong my eyes water. We slip between the strings like fish through reeds.
Root points to a gap in the fence. "Spice lane," they murmur.
We squeeze through, drop into a narrow cut between two buildings, and run crouched. A cat hisses and bolts left. From the street ahead comes a sharp, clean sound—the ring of a single iron tap on stone. A signal.
Kirella stops dead and lifts a hand.
We retreat one pace. Two. The signal rings again, further right. Another answers, left. A third answers behind.
"They're netting the block," Kirella says.
"Bathhouse?" I say.
"Straight," Root says, "then left at the broken lion. There will be steam."
We move as one. Straight. Left. The broken lion is a stone statue without a face, its mouth worn smooth by ten thousand hands. Warm damp air leaks from a crack in the wall behind it, sweet and foul at once.
I wet the cloth with a trickle from a leaky pipe and press it to my mouth. Pepper stings my tongue. Steam kisses my eyelashes. The crack widens into a door only if you know how to see it.
Kirella fits his fingers in the grooves and pulls. The seam opens like a sigh. We slip inside.
The bathhouse is a ghost. Empty pools. Dead lamps. The tiled floor is slick with a skin of moisture that makes our steps whisper. In the center room, a round pool holds black water that doesn't move. Even sound seems to bend around it.
Root walks to the far wall and lays their palm on a tile carved with a faint sun. "This door opens for three," they say. "Not for one."
"Why three?" I ask.
"Because the first time it was opened, three were brave," Root says. "Doors remember."
Bora sets his hand to the tile. Root sets theirs. Kirella looks at me.
I lay my hand beside theirs. The tile is cool. Under my palm, something alive wakes and listens. A soft click. A breath from the wall, like the building itself relieved a pain. The seam splits and slides, stone over stone.
A stair waits beyond, steep and narrow, cut from the same black rock as the pool. The air smells like old dust and something else—something like sun caught in glass.
"The throat," Root says.
Bora faces Kirella. "We cannot go," he says. "If we leave, they will tear this place apart for those who remain. We stay and mislead the hunters."
Lelia steps from the shadows behind us. "Take the boy," she says to me.
The boy shakes his head. "I help here," he says. He raises his chin. "I'm not scared."
I kneel so our eyes are level. "Then keep your promise too," I say. "Live long enough for me to come back."
He nods once, very solemn.
Boots scrape in the outer hall. The signal taps answer. Close now.
Kirella takes the cloak from his shoulders and drapes it over mine again, tugging the hood low. He ties the knot under my throat with quick fingers. His hands are steady. Mine are not.
He notices.
"Breathe," he whispers. "Floor, not glass."
I breathe.
"Together," he says.
"Together," I answer.
We start down the throat of stone—single file, one hand on the wall, feet finding each narrow step. The door begins to slide shut behind us.
Just before it seals, a smooth voice curls through the crack like smoke.
"Little red," the man with the key calls gently. "You can run in circles forever down there. I have all night. I have all year."
The seam closes. Darkness holds us, cool and close.
I feel for Kirella's hand. I find it. He laces his fingers through mine like he is afraid I will vanish.
"We won't run forever," I whisper.
"No," he says. "We steal a light. Then we leave."
Below us, a faint glow wakes in the stone. Not bright. Not holy. Not cruel. Just a glow like a memory of sun.
We descend toward it.
And above us, the bathhouse door opens again with a polite, patient sigh.