The square before the Gate was a bowl of faces and lantern light, a place where the city's breath pooled and the Council's envoys could not pretend not to see. Flags snapped on the parapets; the Bastion's black spiral hung like a challenge above the gate. The Loom had chosen the hour when the market's tide was highest—when curiosity and outrage would swell together and make a public packet impossible to ignore. They had called witnesses, set forensics in place, and arranged the teachers in a tight semicircle around the ritual hinge: a carved stone brazier Halv had found in a ruin and Rell had sealed with tracer wax.
Aria stood at the brazier's edge with the lead-lined case at her feet and the manifest unwrapped. The donor spiral glinted in the morning light like an accusation. Around her the Loom gathered—Luna at her shoulder, Halv and Rell flanking, apprentices forming a ring of witnesses and exits. The Mass Cadence had been rehearsed until the teachers' throats knew its shape; the public would hear it and the ward would hold the packet's edges steady while the manifest was read aloud. But the Gate Duel would be the hinge: someone had to anchor the ritual focus against the Bastion's muscle, and that someone would pay.
"You know what this will cost," Luna said, voice low. Her fingers flexed at her sleeves; the jasmine at her throat was a private weather. The Mass Cadence would demand voices and the Gate Duel would demand a body willing to be a conduit. The Tidebind Lunge Aria had used before was the only thing that could lock the brazier's focus long enough for the public reading to finish. It was a technique that bent the tide's geometry into a human strike and left the body hollowed afterward.
Aria nodded. She had counted the ledger's arithmetic in her bones for weeks—Echo Shields, Thornkin bargains, Mirror Rip redirects—and she had learned to make sure no one paid alone. Tonight she would be the hinge. She tightened her fingers on the brazier's rim and felt the manifest's weight like a small, stubborn heart.
They set the packet in motion with the teachers' chorus. Luna's voice rose first, low and precise, and the Mass Cadence braided into being: a layered hum that folded the crowd's attention into a single net. Forensics fed the tracer's lattice across the manifest as Aria read the registry line aloud—Virelle; trust transfer; Salted Bastion vault—and the crowd's murmur sharpened into a single, hungry sound. The packet was public now; the ledger's margins had been pried open.
Then the Bastion answered.
A champion stepped from the gate's shadow like a man who had been paid to make himself a spectacle. He wore a donor token at his throat and a blade at his hip; his gait was the practiced arrogance of muscle that believed coin made it law. He moved with the economy of someone who had been paid to make a hinge fail. The crowd's mood shifted; a ripple of fear ran through the front rows.
Aria felt the brazier's focus want to slip. The champion's presence was not merely physical; it was a pressure that sought to pry the ritual's seam open and let the packet's truth fall back into private hands. He wanted the public reading to become a provocation, a reason to call the Council's muscle and bury the ledger under a pile of coin and threats.
She stepped forward.
The Tidebind Lunge was a motion she had practiced until the cost was a ledger entry she could feel in her bones. It borrowed the tide's pull and folded it into a human strike: a step that took the skiff's drift and turned it into momentum, a shove that used the rock's slickness as a fulcrum. Tonight she would use it to anchor the brazier's focus and to hold the public hinge against the champion's pressure.
The lunge landed like a bell. Aria's shoulder slammed into the champion's chest and the two of them went down onto the flagstones in a tangle of limbs and blade and salt. The brazier's flame flared and the Mass Cadence tightened into a net that braided the crowd's attention into a single, humming thing. For a breath the ritual held; the tracer's lattice steadied and Rell's fingers moved with the quiet certainty of a man who read machines the way others read faces.
Then the aftershock hit.
It was not a wound so much as a betrayal of timing. The Tidebind's echo unspooled through Aria's muscles like cold; her limbs answered late, a fraction of a breath behind her intention. Her hands fumbled the brazier's rim; a coil slipped. The motor impairment was immediate and severe—precise motions that had been second nature now refused to obey. Her fingers could not tie a knot; her feet missed a notch. The world narrowed to the scrape of leather and the metallic taste of adrenaline.
The champion pressed his advantage with the economy of someone who had been paid to make a spectacle. He feinted, a step that sought to disarm rather than to kill, and the crowd's breath hitched. Aria met him with desperate, clumsy parries. Each motion cost her more: a delayed wrist, a hand that would not close when she wanted it to, a foot that answered late. The champion's blade nicked her forearm; blood mixed with the brazier's smoke and the taste of iron filled her mouth.
Luna's voice braided into the Mass Cadence like a lifeline. She did not stand at the brazier; she stood at Aria's shoulder, a hand on her arm, a cadence that steadied the ritual's edges. The teachers' chorus tightened into a net and the brazier's flame pulsed with a stubborn light. The ritual focus wanted witness; it wanted someone to be the hinge between public truth and private power. Aria had to be that hinge.
The duel narrowed to inches. The champion sought to sever the ritual's thread by any means that would not make him a murderer in public: a shard flashed at the edge of his sleeve, an echo-scraper meant to reflect the teachers' cadence back at its source. He slashed at the brazier's flame, aiming to sever the tracer's lattice and to send the Mass Cadence into a collapse. The shard's edge struck the brazier and the flame sputtered.
Aria moved because she had to. She used the last of her practiced redirections—small wrist twists, a shove that used his momentum against him—and the champion staggered. The shard shattered on the flagstones and the Mirror Rip collapsed like a cut rope. The crowd gasped; the packet's hinge held.
But the cost landed in full.
The Tidebind's aftershock deepened into a motor impairment that made Aria's limbs betray her in small, precise ways. Her hands shook so badly she could not tie the whistle at her throat; her legs buckled when she tried to stand. Worse, the champion's shard had found a seam in the reflected cadence and a small, private memory—one she had kept like a coin—slid away. It was not a name of consequence to the ledger, but it was a domestic thing she had guarded: the sound of a laugh at a kitchen table, a small detail that had kept her human. The Mirror Rip's backlash blurred it like water on a page.
She staggered, the hollow where the memory had been like a coin she could not find. Panic rose, quick and hot, and she tamped it down with the practiced calm of someone who had learned to hold a line. The brazier's flame steadied; the Mass Cadence held. Forensics recorded the manifest's registry line and the tracer's lattice translated pressure into a pattern that would be read in council chambers and in courts.
When the duel finally ended, it did not end with a killing blow but with a binding. Halv's rope looped around the champion's wrists and Rell's tracer snapped a cord of light across his throat. The donor token clinked against the flagstones like a small, accusing eye. The crowd surged, some shouting for justice, others for restraint. The Council's envoys moved through the press with the practiced indifference of those who had seen too many spectacles.
Aria sank to a low step and let the exhaustion take her. The motor impairment was a heavy, honest thing in her bones; her hands trembled and her fingers fumbled the knot she tried to tie. Luna crouched beside her and took her face in both hands, fingers gentle and sure. "You held the focus," she said, voice close and fierce. "You gave them a chance to see."
Aria wanted to believe the words. She wanted to feel the victory in her bones. Instead she felt the hollowness: a small memory she could not call, a taste dulled, a name that hovered at the edge of her mind like a coin she could not find. The Tidebind had anchored the ritual and the public packet had been read; the city had seen the donor mark and the manifest. But the ledger's arithmetic had been paid in a currency that could not be counted on a ledger: Aria's body, Luna's lullaby, the teachers' small sacrifices.
They moved as a team then, careful and deliberate. Witnesses were shepherded to safehouses; forensics copied the tracer's readout into lead-lined cases; the bound champion was handed to the Council's envoys with a chain of custody that could not be broken. The Mass Cadence collapsed and the teachers sagged like a net hauled in; their faces were pale and their voices thin. The cost was visible now: a day's clarity thinned, a lullaby that would not be the same for a while, a teacher's taste dulled.
On the Loom's stairwell, as the city's noise rose and fell like a tide, Luna wrapped a warm cloth around Aria's wrist and pressed a cup of bitter tea into her hands. "We'll count it," she said, thumb stroking the back of Aria's hand. "We'll make sure you don't carry it alone."
Aria closed her eyes and let the safehouse's dim light hold her like a small, private promise. The Gate Duel had been a hinge in the ledger's story; the public had seen the seam. Names would be spoken in council chambers; patrons would marshal counsel and muscle; the Loom would have to follow the donor list into places that did not answer to public packets. They had won a public truth, but the victory was not clean.
When she tried to call back the memory that had slipped, it hovered at the edge of her mind like a coin she could not find. Luna's hand tightened around hers and Aria let the night hold them both. The ledger's thread ran on—bright, dangerous, and paid for in pieces of themselves—and they would follow it, together, one costly step at a time.