Light bites my eyes.
Three soldiers block the alley mouth like lazy teeth. Beyond them, on the shrine steps, the man with the key turns his ribbon in little circles, the way a cat plays with a string before it pulls.
"Coin," he says, soft. "Or breath."
"Neither," I say.
He smiles like I told a joke he likes.
Behind us, the grate into the tunnel hangs an inch open. Far below, a lock answers his lifted key with another polite click. The water will rise again. The city is swallowing its own throat, the way cruel people swallow the laughter they force from others.
Kirella shifts to stand a half step ahead of me, not blocking me, not hiding me—just there. "Left wall," he murmurs, as if we were still on the boat. "Boxes to barrel to door."
I nod, tiny. My hands are steady on the lantern's handle. The glow gathers under the cloak like a breath I haven't let go yet.
"Now," Kirella says, and moves.
He takes two quick strides. The closest soldier lifts his spear, slow with certainty. Kirella knocks the shaft aside with his forearm and steps into the man's space. Elbow, heel, breath—simple as a prayer done right. The soldier folds to his knees, choking on silence.
I step with Kirella into the dark between two crates. The second soldier lunges. I slide under the point and brush the lantern's glass to his chest as I pass. The glow presses through his armor, warm as a childhood kitchen. He stares, stunned by something he doesn't have words for, and forgets to thrust again.
The third soldier is not stunned. He charges.
Kirella meets him. They lock, shoulder to shield, and the spear tip skates along the stones with a bright scrape. The man with the key does not come down the steps. He watches like a careful buyer who wants to see if the cloth still looks good after rain.
I set the lantern on the ground and pull the cloak off it.
The alley fills with a soft light that doesn't reach the shrine windows and doesn't anger the glass. It curls around the crates and finds the floor. I draw the light along the stones with my palm like chalk. It follows and leaves a thin ring where I touch, a circle wide enough for two bodies and one breath.
"Promise," I say.
Kirella hears me even while he fights. He turns the third soldier with a twist and drags him into the circle with us, not because the man deserves grace but because the circle does not ask for deserved. It asks for kept.
I press my palm to the ring. The light pulses once, then rises like warm air. For one heartbeat the world smells like bread and cut lemons. The soldier blinks, lost. He lowers his spear point an inch, then two. He looks at Kirella the way men look at a neighbor over a fence, not an enemy over a wall. The moment won't hold long—but a short bridge is still a bridge.
"Walk," Kirella says to him. "Away."
The man steps back, confused and suddenly tired. He doesn't run. He doesn't raise his spear. He just goes.
The key-man claps once, amused. "Lantern tricks," he says. "I knew you'd make the toy do something pretty."
He lifts the ribbon. "My turn."
A bell inside the shrine answers his hand. Not the fat bell for prayer. A small bell for orders. Doors on both sides of the alley open. Two more soldiers come out, helmets low, steps neat.
Kirella grabs the lantern and the cloak in one smooth motion and tosses the cloak over the glow again. We run.
Left wall, boxes to barrel to door. The door is not locked, which is a kind of trap, but it is a trap we can use. We slip inside a storeroom that smells like flour and old apples. I drag a sack down with a hiss and spill grain across the floor. The soldiers outside will skid if they don't look. Soldiers rarely look.
We cut through a back hall and out a side door into a narrow court where laundry hangs like flags of surrender. An old woman on a stool blinks at us and then at the lantern's breath under the cloak. She tucks her rosary into her sleeve and nods, once, like she recognizes the shape of a promise when she sees it.
"This way," she rasps, and points with her chin at a slit between two walls.
We slide into the slit. It lets out to a lane where herbs hang from strings above a door marked with a chalk line: WE KEEP EACH OTHER. The chalk looks new. The word we looks thick, written twice.
A boy waits under the strings—the same boy from the ferrymen's cavern. His eyes are bright with purpose.
"Left, then down," he whispers. "Bora said to run like you mean it."
"Where is he?" I ask.
"Making noise," the boy says, proud.
A crash answers him from the next court—a crate, a curse, a clatter of pans. Men shout. A woman laughs high and fierce. I don't know her, but I love her for a breath.
We go left, then down. The lane tightens and widens and tightens again, Jericho built out of habit instead of plans. The lantern's glow under the cloak marks edges and holes my eyes would miss. We dodge a broken stair, step over a gutter like a slit throat, and duck under a line of fish that haven't seen water in days.
At the end of the lane, a low arch opens to a crowded yard. Monsters fill it. Not the kind the city pretends to hate because it wants a show, but the kind it doesn't look at because they keep each other. A woman with moss hair, a tall person with bark-brown eyes, a grey giant with gentle hands. Lelia. Root. Bora.
Lelia sees us first. She lifts both arms. "Here," she calls, not loud and not afraid.
The yard opens like a throat. We slide inside and the arch shuts behind us with a bar that doesn't look like it could stop rain and somehow stops trouble.
"Welcome home," Root says.
"Home?" I echo, dizzy with the word.
"Until you leave," Lelia says, smiling with tired mouth. "Then again, when you come back."
Bora's big hands close around our shoulders, warm and careful. "You did not die," he says, pleased and a little surprised.
"Not yet," Kirella says. He holds the lantern close but not rude, like a guest who knows to keep muddy boots off the blanket. "They're circling."
"They always circle," Root murmurs. "Wolves with keys and men with mirrors."
Lelia takes my wrist and checks the cloth. "You burn," she says. "You don't show it."
"It's not holy," I say of the light under the cloak. "That helps."
"Holy is a word men use when they want a lock," Root says.
Bora gestures to the far wall where old bricks patch a newer hole. A tunnel mouth waits, dark and polite. Above it, someone has scratched a circle and two hands. "Old Lantern Line," he says. "We cleaned it last night. Rats argued. We won."
"You'll draw them here," I say. "The key-man."
"We already did," Bora says, and tilts his head. Outside the yard, something booms—a cart tipping, maybe, or a door falling. A dozen voices argue in three languages at once. It is a storm of small chaos. You can't track anything in a storm of small chaos.
"A gift," Lelia says. "Noise buys time."
"Not for free," Root adds. "Tonight you make a promise for us."
"Name it," I say.
"Two promises, small," Root says. "One: If you open a gate with that light, you come back and walk three people through before you vanish into your quiet ten years. Two: If you find a place where the glass doesn't hurt, you send word on a piece of paper and tie it to a fish line under the bridge with the broken tooth."
"I promise," I say. The words feel like stitches that close a wound but also draw two skins together. It hurts a little. It holds.
Kirella sets his palm over mine. "We promise," he says.
The lantern warms, hearing us.
Bora nods, satisfied like a father who just traded evenly. He lifts the bar and opens the tunnel door. "Go," he says. "We will not stop them forever."
Root steps close and touches my sleeve. "The Last Gate eats hope," they say. "But it hates kept things. Keep your kept close."
I look at Kirella. He meets my eyes, steady. "I know," he says.
We drop into the tunnel. Lelia lowers the door behind us and bars it. The sound is small. The safety is not.
The Old Lantern Line is narrower than the bathhouse throat and less proud. The walls are chalked with handprints. The ceiling weeps a slow, clean drip. The floor tilts now and then to remind you life is a hill. We move quick, saving the lantern's open glow for corners that taste like knives.
"Stop," Kirella says suddenly.
I freeze. A string stretches across the way at shin height, tied to a bell the size of a plum.
"Not soldiers," he says. "Hunters."
"The quiet ones," I say.
He nods, thinking of the key-man—not a soldier, not a priest, something in between and worse.
He snaps the string with two fingers and catches the bell before it rings. He tucks it into a crack in the wall like a tooth he doesn't want to swallow.
We go on.
The tunnel splits at a stone piled into the shape of a lion with no face. A hand-drawn arrow points left, a second arrow points right. Above them both, a child has written THIS WAY, which is not helpful and perfectly true.
We take left. The air slopes up. My shoulders tense for the press of light. The lantern's glow leaks a little from under the cloak, enough to map edges and lay a thin safety on the ground. I keep my eyes down. Floor, not glass.
A low rumble rolls under our feet. Water somewhere opens a throat. The key-man turns another lock. He is not with us but he is always with us.
"We have to move," Kirella says.
"We are," I say, and we do.
The tunnel staggers into a crooked stair cut into brick. We climb, counting steps because counting is a spell that keeps fear in a small cup. At the top, a wood door waits with a simple latch and a strip of daylight outlining it like a halo a painter drew drunk.
Kirella puts his ear to the wood and listens the way he listens to people. He hears breath on the other side—two slow, one fast. Not soldiers' layered rhythm. Family.
He lifts the latch.
The door opens into a room that used to be a shop and is now a life. Shelves hold jars of pickled things with labels that lie. A woman with three small horns and a man with hands like shovels sit at a table with a baby asleep in a basket. They are not shocked to see us. Their eyes flick to the lantern under the cloak, then to our faces, then to our hands.
"Bless your kept," the woman says.
"And yours," I say, not sure if it's a saying or a prayer or a math problem.
"Street is loud," the man says. "They net the block."
"We know," Kirella says.
The woman stands and points to a back door. "Through the alley to the broken tooth bridge," she says. "Under it, take the stone steps down. There is a door with a fish carved on it. Knock three times and say nothing."
"Thank you," I say.
She shrugs one shoulder. "We keep each other," she says, as if explaining why water is wet.
We slip through the back door into a tight passage that lets out near the bridge. Noise soaks the air—pans, shouts, a pot falling, a laugh, a curse, a song. The noise is a blanket. Under it, soldiers move in short lines, their order drowned by the city's music. The key-man's ribbon glints once near the shrine and then is gone. He is not a line. He is a circle.
We run bent and quiet. The bridge's tooth is a chunk of missing stone on the near side. Stairs drop under it to a damp walkway brushed by canal water. A fish is carved small on an iron door. I knock three times and say nothing.
The door opens on a woman with salt in her hair and a knife in her belt. She looks past me to Kirella, then back to me, then down at the faint ring on my palm where the lantern's promise marked me.
"Lantern line?" she asks.
"Yes," I say.
She steps back. "In."
We enter a storeroom of nets and hooks and coils of rope. The air smells like iron and river. The woman drops the bar back in place and slides a crate over the mark where it falls. "He hunts with ears," she says. "Not eyes."
"We won't waste words," Kirella says.
She nods, satisfied. "Good."
She tosses him a short oar with a wrapped grip and me a hook with a dull point. "Tide pulls strange today," she says. "Locks that never move are moving. If the Last Gate tastes fresh water, it wakes."
"It eats hope," I say.
"It chokes on kept," she answers, like Root did, and that makes my chest ache in a new way.
"Left branch to the Last Gate?" Kirella asks.
"Left, then straight when straight feels wrong," she says. "You'll know it. Your stomach will tell you you're a fool. Don't listen. Then a climb. Then your door."
"Thank you," I say again, a coin I keep spending because it buys more than it should.
She opens a low hatch to the water. A small skiff crouches there like an animal that trusts hands. We lower the lantern into its stand at the prow. The light settles and looks forward.
"Go," the woman says. "Before the locks turn again."
We push off into a narrow channel that pretends to be still until you touch it. Then it moves, fast and sly. The skiff cuts along the wall. The lantern's glow strokes the corners and lays soft rings on the water where the oar bites.
"Your hands?" Kirella asks.
"Fine," I lie.
"Floor, not glass," he reminds me.
"Us, not alone," I say back, and he smiles with his mouth and eyes both.
The channel bends left and then straightens into a run that feels wrong in my gut, like we're falling without moving. The air tastes like metal. The walls are smooth in a way walls don't choose unless someone told them to be.
"Straight," Kirella says, trusting a woman with salt in her hair.
"Straight," I echo, trusting a city that remembers promises.
We run the wrong-straight for thirty heartbeats. The water drops under us like a sigh. The skiff skims through a seam where two kinds of stone meet, and everything opens—the ceiling higher, the sound deeper, the air cooler. Ahead, carved into the far wall, is a gate the size of a city door, old and patient and shut. Its face is carved with circles and hands and a little boat. In the center, a sun tile waits with three niches: coin, knife, hand.
"The Last Gate," I breathe.
Kirella lets the skiff kiss the stone. We step out onto a narrow ledge, our shoulders touching the wall because the drop beside us is black and does not care.
"Offerings?" he says.
"Choices," I say.
We have one gold left. He has one knife. We have two hands.
I set the gold in the coin niche. He sets the knife hilt-first in the knife niche. We both press our palms to the hand niche.
"Speak," says the door. The voice is older than the bathhouse, older than the city, older than the idea that light is a thing you can sell.
I take a breath.
"I promise," I say, "that if this door opens for us, we will not close it behind us. We will mark the way—salt, chalk, rope, paper—for others to follow. We will come back for three. We will keep each other."
The stone warms.
Kirella lays his palm on mine. "I promise," he says, "that I do not go where she cannot. Not for orders. Not for fear. Not for shame sold as holy. Not for coin."
The warmth runs up my arm like a drink after thirst.
The sun tile brightens. The circles on the gate wake and turn, slow and smooth. Somewhere above, a lock clicks like a throat saying yes.
Then, from the channel behind us, a ripple of shadow slides along the surface and climbs the wall like a stain. A polite voice floats forward, patient as always.
"Little red," the key-man calls, gentle as a lullaby. "Draw me the line. I'll walk it."
His ribbon glints once in the lantern's low breath.
Water at our feet lifts, sudden, hungry. He turned another key. The ledge narrows as the water reaches for our boots.
The gate grinds and opens an inch, two, three. Light—not temple, not cruel—seeps from the seam.
"Now," Kirella says.
We grab the lantern. We step for the opening.
The water behind us lunges.
Something in the dark hooks my ankle hard—the edge of the ledge, the mouth of the flood, the hand of a man who has all year and hates to be late. My foot slips. The lantern tilts.
Kirella's arm snaps around my waist. He hauls me up and shoves me through the widening seam, not ahead of him, with him. The lantern bangs my hip and stays in my grip. The gate's lip scrapes my calf and leaves a hot line like a brand I chose.
We tumble onto the floor beyond the gate. The light here is soft and clean and smells like rain. The door keeps opening, steady as a promise.
Behind us, in the wrong-straight tunnel, the polite voice loses its smile for the first time.
"Ah," it says, very quiet. "Rude."
Water smashes against the gate and splinters into a white hiss that doesn't come through. The Last Gate hates kept, Root said. It also keeps what it keeps.
We lie there, breathing like people who have borrowed time and plan to pay it back with interest.
Kirella turns his head so our foreheads touch. "We're not done," he says.
"I know."
"Next?" he asks.
"Mark the way," I say. "Then run."
We sit up. The chamber beyond the gate is simple—stone, steps, a tunnel that slopes up toward a light that is not glass and not a lie. On the wall beside the gate, a smooth patch of stone waits like paper.
I take the paper bird I saved from the lantern shelves—the one that didn't burn when the mirror's light hit—and press it to the stone. It leaves a print of a bird with a thin line drawn to a sun. Then I take a piece of chalk from my sleeve and write in the simplest letters I know:
WE KEEP EACH OTHER →
Kirella ties a piece of rope to an iron ring and tosses the coil back through the seam so it trails into the wrong-straight. He knots the end in a loop a child's hand could find.
"Three first," he says. "Then the rest."
"Then our quiet ten years," I say, and for the first time the number doesn't feel like running away. It feels like a place we build.
We lift the lantern together and climb the steps toward a light that doesn't sell itself.
Behind us, the key turns again in a lock that has turned too many times today. The sound follows us like a promise made by someone we didn't ask to trust.
And the chapter ends there, with our hands under the lantern and the words WE KEEP EACH OTHER glowing faint on the stone behind us.