Water climbs the walls.
It doesn't splash. It rises—slow, cold, sure—like a patience that finally stands.
Kirella leans into the pole and drives the boat forward. The lantern at the prow hums in its stand, the warm glow pushing the current back as best it can. The tunnel breathes in long stone sighs.
"If he has all year," I say, "we have one minute."
"Less," Kirella says.
Ahead, a rusted grate hangs half down over the channel. The gap under it is thin as a smile that doesn't reach the eyes. Water bulges through the teeth and hisses.
"There," he says. "Hold us to the side."
I brace my feet and catch the damp stone lip with both hands. The boat kisses the wall and holds. To our right a small recess opens, barely a shelf, with three shallow niches cut into it—sun, hand, hand—and the faint scratch of words:
HAPPINESS IS A PROMISE KEPT.
"Two hands," I say.
"Two lives," he answers.
I lift the lantern from its stand. It warms my palm like a breath. We press our hands into the niches—his on the left, mine on the right—while I hold the lantern between us so its glow floods the sun. The stone drinks the light. A low click travels through the wall like a heartbeat.
The grate shudders.
"Now," Kirella says.
We push off. The boat shoots forward. The grate rises just enough. The iron teeth scrape the lantern's handle and throw a short shower of sparks. We shoot through with a sound like tearing cloth and land on the far side in a rush of cold spray.
I laugh once, too fast, too bright. It sounds like someone else.
"Breath," he reminds me, soft.
I breathe.
The tunnel widens, the ceiling arching like a ribcage. Fine glass-eels swim out of the cracks—thin ribbons of pale light that slip through water and air both. They curl around the lantern's glow, hungry moths in a moonless room.
"Don't let them touch you," Kirella says.
I yank my hood forward and throw his cloak over the lantern, dimming it to a muffled warmth. The eels waver, confused, then scatter along the walls, leaving faint trails that sting my eyes.
We skim past them. For three strokes it is quiet again. Then the boat clips a hidden stone and the pole snaps with a dull crack.
Kirella catches the broken haft before it floats away. He measures the length with his eyes, thinks, and hands me the shorter piece. "If we spin, brace us," he says.
"Understood."
His voice steadies me more than the wood.
We round a bend. Ahead, a green glow pools on the ceiling and wobbles. A cavern opens—low, wide, lined with rock shelves and piers made from old beams. Lanterns hang in nets over the water, their light wrapped in colored cloth. Three ferrymen watch from a plank platform, faces shadowed, wrists wrapped in cords the color of old blood.
Kirella slows us with a palm on the wall. I keep the cloak half over the lantern. The ferrymen do not reach for weapons. They reach for knives and their own hands.
"Payment?" the tallest asks, voice flat as a coin on wood.
He opens his palm. A thin scar runs across it. The woman beside him opens hers—the same mark. The third tilts his head at our empty wrists as if we offend him by not bleeding already.
"Palm-mark," he says. "No mark, no boat."
"We have a boat," Kirella says.
The tallest glances at our broken pole and then at the waterline, which has crept up the stone by the width of my thumb. "For now," he says.
I lift the edge of the cloak. The ferrymen's eyes narrow at the warm glow beneath.
"And that is?" the woman asks.
"A promise," I say.
"Promises don't float," the third mutters.
"They do," I say, "if two people carry them."
I set the lantern on the pier. It brightens a little, gentle as a kitchen lamp. The ferrymen flinch and then hold very still, as if any move might cost them something important that nobody told them the price of. I raise my hand, palm up.
"Your boats use blood marks," I say. "Marks bind—sometimes to men, sometimes to fear. I offer a promise mark."
"Words," the tall one says.
"Light," I answer.
I put my palm by the lantern. Kirella lays his over mine. The glow presses through our skin and leaves a soft ring on each of our palms, a pale, warm circle that fades to a whisper but does not vanish.
"No blood," the woman says, surprised. "No pain."
"No chains," I say.
The ferrymen look at each other. They have the gaze of people who have been cheated in every way men can invent and have learned to count before they speak.
"What do you want?" the tall one asks.
"Fast passage," Kirella says. "Left branch, toward the Monster Ward inlet. Then a map line—the Old Lantern Line to the Last Gate."
The three murmur. The third spits into the water like he's paying tax. "Left is safe enough," he says. "Old Lantern is watched. And the Last Gate?" He shrugs. "The Last Gate eats hope."
"Let it choke," I say.
The woman studies us. "Price?" she says at last.
I touch the pouch sewn into my seam. "One gold now," I say, "and a promise for three people—Bora, Lelia, Root—no mark, one ride, when they ask."
The ferrymen's eyes sharpen at the names. The tall one looks at my face as if reading a ledger there.
"You owe them," he says.
"I do," I say.
"Then we accept."
He does not reach for our palms. He puts his hand over the lantern instead—one breath, one pulse—and when he lifts it, a thin pale ring rests in the center of his scar like a coin laid on top of a wound.
"Your mark," he says. "Our word."
He whistles once, low. A boy no older than thirteen slides a spare pole along the edge of the cavern and hooks it toward us. He bows a little, shy and pleased.
"For your boat," he says.
"Thank you," I tell him.
"For your names," he whispers back, and I understand: the ward pays kindness forward like a hidden tax.
We push off. The ferrymen's platform falls behind. The water runs faster now, not just rising but pulling, like the city has decided to drink from its own throat. I tuck the gold away and keep the lantern under the cloak, leaking just enough warmth to steer.
"Wrists," Kirella says. "Let me see."
We wedge into a shallow alcove where the rock thins. He wraps clean cloth around the raw places where the grate and glass-eels kissed my skin. His fingers work quick and careful. He has patched more soldiers than he has killed. The thought sits in my chest and makes a small, strange heat.
"We don't belong anywhere," I say, not sad, just stating the mess.
"Then we build somewhere," he says. He ties the cloth with a simple knot and tests it with a gentle tug. "Us first. Others next."
The words settle inside me like a stone in a river—weight, then quiet.
We push out of the alcove. Behind us, the flood deepens. Ahead, the tunnel narrows and shows its teeth—three sets of iron ribs fallen crooked across the water, like a jaw that broke wrong and healed worse. If we hit them broadside, we lodge and drown.
"Angle," Kirella says.
"Angle," I echo.
He shoves hard on the pole. The boat slews. The first rib kisses our hull and tries to bite. I grab a hanging line that crosses the ceiling like an old vein and shadow-step onto the narrow ledge beside it—a fast blur that leaves a faint red shimmer on the damp stone.
The shimmer will betray us later. Right now it saves us.
I haul the line. The boat jerks and slips through the first gap. Kirella ducks the second rib by inches and rides the third with a curse and a grin that tries to live. We're through.
Water slaps the walls in applause that isn't for us.
The tunnel breathes deeper and opens a side mouth where dried herbs hang from pegs and a hand-painted line of letters marks the stone:
WE KEEP EACH OTHER.
We drift in. The smell of sage and mint steals the bite from the air. A clay cup sits on a shelf with a tea bundle wrapped in twine. Lelia's careful hand has tied it. I dip the bundle in the water and squeeze a little warmth from the lantern over the cup. The tea doesn't steep right—it tastes like travel and trying—but my head clears a shade.
On the wall, a child's map scratched in charcoal shows a long curve labeled Old Lantern Line with a star near the end: Last Gate.
"Left at the fork, then up," I read. "Up is bad for me."
"We'll cover you," Kirella says.
"'We' is two," I say.
"That's enough," he says.
We push off again. The boat slides back into the main flow and rides the city's pulse. The ceiling drops. The water rises. A current from below presses our hull like a hand, urgent, not gentle.
"He turned another key," I say.
"Then we turn another promise," Kirella answers.
The channel climbs a shallow slope and ends at a dead-looking wall with a round shaft cut up into darkness. A ladder of iron rungs climbs the shaft toward a grate. Daylight leaks through the bars in thin, dusty fingers. The light is not holy here. It is simple and small and still hurts me more than it should.
"Surface or drown," I say.
Kirella ties the cloak tighter under my chin. "Floor, not glass," he says, the old chant we made new.
We wedge the boat in a notch so it won't float away if the water lifts. I lift the lantern. It answers my touch with a steady pulse. Together we climb, my hand above his, his hand under mine, two bodies learning one rhythm.
At the top, the grate sits heavy in its frame. Through it I see boots and the clean edge of a spear tip. Voices drift down, blurred by distance and arrogance.
"Change of watch," someone says.
A third voice is softer, too smooth.
"Wait," it says. "Listen."
The voice strokes stone and makes it purr.
Kirella presses close enough that I feel his heart in my back. He nods at the latch with his chin. "On three," he whispers. "One, two—"
"Three," I breathe.
We push.
The grate rises with a groan and sticks halfway. Bright glass light from a shrine window across the alley splashes my face. It bites deep, not with heat but with shame it didn't earn. The world tilts. My hands slip on the rung.
Kirella's arm straps my waist and hauls me close. "With me," he says, voice steady as a doorframe.
I blink the light into pieces and see shadow at last—narrow slats on a wall, the back of a barrel, a stack of empty crates. We heave the grate the last inch and ease it down on the stones without a clang.
Boots step closer. A spear tip writes a lazy circle in dust.
"Little red," says the soft voice from the shrine steps. "Your light points the way."
He is right. Even under the cloak, even with my eyes down, the lantern's breath paints a faint glow on the fog in the alley. It is a candle behind a curtain. It is enough.
"Back," Kirella mouths.
I shake my head, very small. Forward is the only way that isn't drowning.
I slip out of the shaft and into the alley's thin shade, crouched behind the crates. Kirella follows, smooth as a whisper. He pulls the grate almost closed behind us, leaving a sliver so the boat won't break when the water rises.
Ahead, three soldiers stand in a lazy line, spears butt-down, helmets tipped back like men who think God likes them. Beyond them, on the shrine steps, the key-man toys with his ribbon and smiles at the morning.
"Your choice is the same," he calls softly, not bothering to look at us because he knows I am listening. "Coin or breath."
He tilts his head, charming.
"Or neither," he adds, as if giving a child a third sweet.
He lifts the key. Somewhere behind us, a lock answers with an old, polite click.
And in that click is the start of a flood we cannot see yet.
I tighten my grip on the lantern's handle. It warms my fingers, steady, waiting.
Kirella's shoulder brushes mine. "Floor," he whispers.
"Not glass," I say.
I straighten into the worst of the light and step out from behind the crates.
The soldiers' eyes widen. The key-man's smile widens more.
And the chapter ends right there, with the light in my eyes and the sound of the next lock turning.