The Abbey door breathes warm and opens for us.
No glass light waits inside. No temple sting. Only hush—old wood, old paper, dust that falls like slow rain and never reaches the floor. The lantern's glow doesn't fight this place. It joins it, like a note sliding into a chord that already knew it by heart.
We step through together. The door closes until it kisses the jamb and waits—never slamming, never locking, a patient mouth.
Syth inhales. "Smells like apples that learned to read."
The entry hall is small and round. Symbols repeat on the beams—hand, boat, bread, cup—and a new one carved soft as a lullaby: word. A strip of script runs along the wall in crooked letters:
BREAD, WATER, WORD, WORK.WE KEEP EACH OTHER.
"That's it?" Syth whispers, disappointed and reverent at the same time.
"That's enough," Kirella says.
Beyond the hall a low scriptorium opens—tables scarred by years of elbows, shelves with cords tied around closed bundles, hooks that once held lamps. In the center sits a stone basin filled to the brim with dark water that never ripples.
A little placard carved into the rim says: READING WELL.
I kneel. The water is not a mirror. It is the opposite. It drinks reflections and gives back weight. When I hold the lantern above it, the glow deepens but doesn't spread. I feel the light inside my palms grow quieter and stronger, like bread getting heavy in an oven.
Kirella crouches beside me. "It feeds you?"
"It feeds the kept part," I say. "The part that isn't for show."
Syth leans over the Well with one hand on my shoulder so she doesn't fall in. "What happens if you drop a coin?"
"Don't," Kirella says.
She doesn't. She is a thief when hunger orders it, not when kitchens are the point.
We move through the scriptorium. Strings crisscross the shelves with tags that show routes—chalk maps rolled tight, twine tied in familiar knots. I tug one free. The parchment crackles but doesn't crumble. A child's hand drew this, careful as prayer: SIDEWAYS LINES like veins, circles for Commons, a star for Hollow Abbey, dotted trails toward places with names that taste like secrets—Ash Market, Thread-Bridge, Blue Pantry, Quiet Wharf.
Kirella spreads the map on a table and weighs the corners with little stones that already know this job. "We'll copy," he says.
Syth is already pulling charcoal from her pouch. "I copy fast," she says. "And I make fewer jokes when I copy." She glances up. "Not no jokes. Just fewer."
I hold the lamp for her. She works quick and exact, left hand guiding, right hand drawing. The lantern hums each time she lands a curve without tearing the paper. The hum feels like yes, this one stays.
On the far wall a niche holds three objects: a wooden cup, a bread trencher cut small, and a thin book wrapped in cloth. I unwrap the book. It isn't full of sermons. It's a ledger of routes and debts—not coin debts, kept debts. Each entry has a place and a promise: "Gloam Inlet—two bowls for strangers.""Blue Pantry—one door left open.""Thread-Bridge—three ropes replaced after flood." Names are initials. Dates are scratches. The pages feel warm under my fingers.
Halfway down I find a tiny mark that knots my stomach: Naraka tithe inquiry—inked, then crossed hard, then underlined with a word I don't know written angry.
"Elyka's reach asked here once," I say.
Kirella's jaw works. "And the Abbey said no."
Syth blows charcoal dust from the copy. "Good."
I set the book back as I found it and tuck a small note under the cloth—A bowl kept for three—B, L, R—so the ledger knows we remember.
The lantern's glow slides over a row of paper moths sleeping in a string of cubbies above the door. Their wings are made from old pages, edges scalloped by careful knives. One stirs when the light touches it; another opens and closes soft as hands clapping once at a kitchen table. I smile without choosing to. The moths are harmless.
Then one flickers wrong.
A thin shard glints where a wing joins a body—mirror flake, cheap and mean. The moth's movement is stiff, not soft; it jerks toward the lantern like something wired instead of alive.
"Market mirror," I say.
Kirella's hand is already at my back. Syth snatches a pinch of salt and tosses it in a clean arc. The salt clicks against the shard; the moth shivers and stills. I lift a small ring from the lantern with two fingers and pass it over the row. Warmth slips through paper and glue and whatever stitches keep old things from breaking. The wrong moths—four, five, six—settle. A few mirror flecks fall with faint, guilty sounds.
Something in the next room shifts—not footsteps, not water. A cord tightens overhead. A bell that isn't a bell but a bowl turned upside down makes a note like a wooden heartbeat.
Kirella signals with two fingers—quiet, left. We move through a low arch and into a side chapel of shelves and hooks. On the far wall hangs a rope braided from many thin lines: hair, straw, twine, thread. In the rope tiny brass tags ring like coins when someone breathes too hard. The placard above it reads:
CARETAKER'S LINE — PULL FOR WORK.NOT FOR ORDERS.
Syth grins. "Can I pull?"
"Why?" I ask.
"To see if the Caretaker yells at me," she says. "I miss getting yelled at and then fed."
"Work first," Kirella says.
We right a fallen stool, restack a shelf, brush salt into the door tracks. Nothing dramatic. The Abbey brightens as if lights hid under the floor and decided to do their job after all. The lantern hums low and pleased.
When we're done, I touch the rope.
It is warm.
It moves, not from my hand but from the other end. A low pulse runs through the braid like a long animal stirring. The brass tags sing again, now in a pattern, now on purpose.
A voice arrives, not in the air, not in our ears—through the rope, through the floor, through the lantern metal where our hands hold it. It sounds like a woman who never had time to learn to sing and sang anyway.
"Work?" it asks.
"Work," Kirella says without hesitation.
The rope gives one short tug—approval. Then three slow pulses climb from the floor under our boots to the skin under our ribs. It isn't language, exactly. It is routine. The lantern brightens and lifts a shade. A shelf door we hadn't noticed unlatches. Inside sit small tiles carved with the same symbols we keep seeing: hand, boat, bread, cup, word.
On the back of each tile a groove waits for rope. It is a cheap saint's halo. It is a badge that wants work instead of applause.
Syth threads WORD and BOAT and hangs them around her neck like a danger, proud and trying not to be. Kirella takes HAND. I take BREAD. The lantern warms my tile until the wood smells like toast. I try not to cry.
We leave two things in the shelf: the last of our hard biscuit and a coil of rope tied with a kept-knot. The shelf clicks shut, satisfied.
"Tithed," Syth says, testing a new word and liking it.
"Paid," Kirella says, and makes it not ugly.
We copy two more maps—Blue Pantry and Quiet Wharf—and roll them tight. Syth ties them with loops she can undo with her teeth. When everything that needed our hands has had them, we carry the lantern back to the Reading Well. I lower it and let the glow drink the dark and grow deep. It is heavier when I lift it—a good heavy, like a bowl full enough to share.
We turn to the door.
It opens before we touch it, slow, with the careful manners of big things that remember being small.
The passage back up is the same and not the same. Our rings from the way in remain, thin and patient. The air tastes like breath held and finally let go.
Halfway to the inspection room, sound finds us—three soft chimes, far but clear. The bridge-tooth line at Gloam Inlet sings the number for around, not up. The flood circles. It looks for new mouths.
"We have time," Kirella says.
Syth wiggles her shoulders until the tiles stop tapping her collarbone. "I have a word now," she says. "I can tell kettles no."
"You could always tell kettles no," I say.
"Now I can tell them properly," she says, chin up.
We reach the inspection room. The chalk letters—HOLLOW ABBEY SPUR—look less like warning and more like invitation now. Still, I check the corners because habits feed life.
Kirella plants a quick rope anchor on the rust ladder for later. The knot sits like a simple promise. The lantern sets a last thin ring on the floor for future feet.
We slide into the drain.
A paper fish floats toward us from the dark—the size of my palm, folded neat, wax-sealed with a stamp I don't like looking at because it looks pleased with itself. Syth plucks it from the water before it soaks through. The wax is a lockwright seal—half-lock, humming line.
"Don't," Kirella says.
We don't break it.
We carry it to the inlet instead, because some traps are lessons and some lessons are better with witnesses.
Gloam Inlet exhales us in—nets, ropes, chalk suns, the kettle Lelia forgave because it boiled when asked. Children count each other. Bora lifts the gate with one hand and a sound like patience. Root waits by our wall where the wax seal we set earlier sits dull and stubborn.
We set the lantern on its hook and the paper fish on the table.
"Mirror?" Root asks.
"Lockwright," Syth says, half proud to know the word and half wishing she didn't.
Bora brings a bowl. Lelia brings a knife. We stand around the paper like people who love ovens but respect fire.
"Together," Kirella says.
We break the wax seal with the knife, not fingers. We unfold the fish. Inside, neat letters dance, stable, smug.
It is a bounty.
Not for our heads. For our light.
Bring the kitchen lantern from the red-haired girl and the man who holds her hand.Coin on delivery.Keys on favor.Names crossed from lists.
There's a sketch—me in lines: hair like a spill of ink, a lantern that looks bigger than my arm, Kirella's shoulder a wall beside me. The lines are good. Too good. The hand that drew it saw us once and liked the way we looked when we kept.
Under the sketch: a place for the trade—Ash Market—and a time written like a joke: All day.
The letters murmur in the bowl like flies. Root sprinkles a pinch of salt. The sound stops.
Lelia taps the edge of the paper with the back of the knife. "You don't put a price on a kitchen," she says. Her voice is light and sharp. "You only get fed if you bring a bowl."
Bora flips the paper over with two fingers like a beetle. On the back a thin line of mirror dust clings to the crease. He breathes once and blows. The dust scatters—most to the floor, some to the lantern, which eats it without caring.
Root's face doesn't change often. It changes now. "He shifts from ears to offers," they say. "He buys what he can't hear."
"Markets are patient," Kirella repeats without smiling.
I take the charcoal from Syth and write across the bounty's face in big, wrong letters, the kind a child draws on purpose:
WE KEEP EACH OTHER.NOT FOR SALE.
Bora laughs like a quiet drum. Lelia kisses my cheek like a crime.
Root turns to the pillar and draws a new line—Ash Market—with a circle and a cross and a dot. "Soon," they say. "But first we make Blue Pantry ours."
"Food first," Lelia says. "Plans go better on full bowls."
The lantern hums deeper, hearing Pantry and liking the word. Syth touches her WORD tile like a saint touches a scar and doesn't make a joke this time.
The bridge-tooth line rings once—a normal pass. Voices relax. The Commons goes back to that sound good rooms make when meals end and mending begins. But some rooms keep two sounds at once—work and worry.
Kirella leans until our shoulders touch, like we span one beam now. "We bought time," he says.
"We'll spend it," I say.
"On stitches," Lelia adds.
"On routes," Root says.
"On not selling kitchens," Syth mutters, fierce and small and proud.
I hang the bounty on a nail near the lantern, face out, the words NOT FOR SALE loud and ugly and true. The lantern's glow sits on the paper and refuses to make it pretty.
We eat what's left of the soup. We plan sideways. We draw our next rings in chalk and mind.
At the very edge of the Commons, where the wall curves toward the canal and the rope bell waits to speak, the wax seal we set earlier trembles once, tiny, as if something under it remembered a word it wants to say.
The lantern stiffens in my hands—a warm, careful brace.
"Do you hear it?" I ask.
Kirella nods, eyes on the seal. "I do."
We listen.
The seal does not click.
It scratches, slow, persistent, like a nail trying to write on the other side of stone.
And the chapter ends there, with the Abbey door breathing behind us, the bounty pinned where we can't pretend it isn't, and the little sealed mouth in our own wall trying very hard to learn a new word.