The east canal woke before the city.
Mist lay on its skin like paper not yet written. Barges bumped the dressed-stone banks with the manners of animals waiting to be fed. Lock gates hunched under iron bands; winches creaked in their sleep; gulls walked the railings like auditors with wings. A notice, fresh-nailed at dawn by a priest with a steady hammer, hung over the lock-house door:
BLESSING OF CURRENT — FREEGRATITUDE IN ROPE WELCOME
Below, a clerk's hand had bracketed a phrase in smaller letters: (House of Accounts Approved)
It wasn't.
"Brackets," Halvern said, squinting up, his spectacles catching fog. "The punctuation of cowards."
"Rope is wage," Serren muttered, and the staff in his palm sounded like a gavel when it touched the stone. "They are trying to steal hands by the coil."
A pair of sailors in rolled sleeves and patience were coiling a hawser on the bollard. The younger—scar across his eyebrow, jaw that had learned to lose—wound the lay with care that looked like prayer. The older—knuckles like knots—gave the canal a look sailors reserve for captains they have decided to tolerate.
A priest in white stood at the lock-house threshold with a smile he had polished in glass. Beside him, a young man in black with a round wooden ear hung from twine—the counterfeit kind, edges too neat, paint too smug—jingled a donation bowl with the enthusiasm of a bad chorus.
"Blessing!" the priest called. "Free!" The bowl chimed as if it could rename the sound of taking.
Ernest didn't go to the bowl. He walked to the coil.
"Name?" he asked the rope.
It warmed under his palm, embarrassed to be addressed and pleased anyway. A faint line inked itself along the outer strand: Tow, moor, rescue.
"You hear that?" Rowan said loudly enough that the priest could be included without dignity. "The rope sings better than most choirs."
The boy in black stepped forward, showing his ear. "Official verification," he said brightly. "Two coppers to confirm intent. Civic convenience."
"No fees for listening," a woman with a fish-basket snapped from the lock-steps. She'd learned the sentence yesterday and loved how it felt. "Pins don't get paid."
Elane appeared beside Ernest with sleeves bound back and her cedar wand tucked through her belt, an office writ turned casual. She looked at the sign above the door, then at the bowl. "By Concord of Intent: free means no obligation now or later," she said, not shouting. "By City Covenant: no ribs counted. By common sense: rope belongs to the hands that tie it."
The priest's smile thinned, offended at being asked to be accurate. "We intend no lien," he said smoothly. "Only gratitude."
Mikel looked at the bowl. Letters were trying to drown at the bottom. He fished one out with a glance: …to establish obedience.
"Say obedience," he told the priest.
The priest's mouth opened and closed—weather in a throat. "Obedience," he managed, cheeks coloring.
The bowl's sound changed—less of a chime, more of a cough. The counterfeit ear on the boy's chest warmed like guilt.
"Badge," Serren said to the wooden ear, tone making room for confession. "What do you intend?"
The paint bled a single word along the rim: coin.
"Take it off," Rowan told the boy, not gentle and not cruel. "Keep your shirt."
The boy flushed, stripped the ear, and held it like a word he didn't want to say anymore.
"Now we do this by paper," Halvern said, already unrolling a card. "Complaint: false fee for listening; mislabeling of free; attempted rope lien. Witnesses: bollard, coil, gate."
The rope liked being written down. The coil tightened, proud of its tasks.
"Draft the canal clause," Elane said.
Ernest spoke to stone and water both. "The canal may offer current and steadiness under witness. Price: declared labor later—in public works, not in rope, not in lungs. Aid shall not replace wage. No lien by sign."
The lock-house lintel thrilled, went still. It had wanted to be a law since it was quarried.
The priest bit his lip as if discovering his mouth could feel. "We serve mercy," he said, trying to make the statement a lever.
"Good," Celina said, ribbon warm under green. "Serve it by being accurate."
Raindrops—just three—fell from a sky that wasn't quite there. Letters formed in them quick as minnows: OBEDIENCE LIMITED TO MERCY AND BALANCE. They popped on the lock gate and left the words behind like footprints.
Serren planted his staff on the quay. "Training," he said. "Before any blessing. Rope class."
Two dozen sailors marked time with patience and came over. Serren held the hawser up. "Say what you intend," he told the coil.
A murmur ran down the rope like a cat being stroked: hold, lift, save.
"Now, tie whatever knot you were going to tie after a sermon," Serren told the sailors.
Half the men started to throw a showy bend that impresses girls on piers.
Serren cleared his throat without music. "Name the person you mean to keep alive with that knot."
Silence, then one man said, "My brother," quiet, as if someone might charge extra for naming love in public.
The knot in his hands came clean and true and not showy at all.
Mikel stepped onto the edge of the lock and looked down into the great dark water seasoned with centuries. His chronometer ticked politely. "Tide," he said, to see if it would admit its habits.
twice, then rest, the canal answered in a ripple against stone.
"Good," Mikel said. "We'll set the gate on your rhythm, not our vanity."
He walked the lock edge toward the winch house, found the gear that refused to be loyal to time, and oiled it until it sighed like work admitting joy.
Rowan caught a movement at the corner of his eye and turned—not guard-fast, sailor-fast. A barge nosed into the lock mouth too early, towline slack and sulking in the slick. The young sailor with the eyebrow scar scrambled for the prow with a boathook. His footing went wrong on weed. The hook jerked. The boy reeled back, heel finding open air on the edge of stone.
Ernest felt the space behind the boy begin to write fall.
"Stand," he told it—not the boy, never the boy—the span of air between a rib and a bruise.
The boy's heel found something that wasn't quite there and became there because he asked it to. He pitched, flailed, came down on his feet with the expression of a child who had been spared a joke too sharp to bear.
Rowan snorted laughter he didn't have time for, grabbed the towline, and threw it to the bollard. A sailor made the hitch on reflex, wrong. Serren said, "Name him," and the man started over with a grip that intended to see his brother at dinner.
"Blessing," the priest said again, weakly, because he'd run out of theater.
"After the clause," Elane said. "Put your hand to the gate."
He did. They raised it on the tide's second beat. The barge slid in without bruising the stone. Someone on the deck cheered. No one minded.
At the back of the crowd, a hawk-sigiled cousin—numbers in his eyes, polite venom in his smile—handed out a pamphlet that had learned to look honest overnight:
HARBOUR SUBSCRIPTION — TIMELY PASSAGESIGN TODAY, GUARANTEE SLOTCOLLATERAL: ROPE
"Your arrogance is a public service," Countess Gold said sweetly, plucking one out of a sailor's hand. "It saves us time."
"By covenant," Elane said, turning to include the river and the guilty paper, "no aid replaces wage.No sign collects dues in tools.No rope as collateral."
The pamphlet—miracles have taught paper manners—blushed in ink and came apart at the binding.
The hawk-cousin bowed as if he'd meant to be corrected. "We will return with coin," he said.
"You will return with nothing until you understand the price of word games," Lady Aldery said, stepping forward with winter in her mouth and accuracy warming it. "House Aldery will fund canal maintenance for the season. Publicly. The canal will refuse gifts that try to be ropes."
The lock-house liked that. Shutters creaked in pleasure.
"Now," Serren said, pleased to use a thing for what it was made for, "the class resumes."
They tied what would hold, not what would show. Boats moved. The priest watched a small miracle he had not designed: labor learning to love itself aloud. He raised his bowl again, quieter. "Price: if healed, help later—not here, not smelling of incense. Or refuse."
People chose. No ribs were counted.
By midmorning, the canal had learned a sentence: give help without leash. The lock gate kept time with the tide like a newly trained heart. The bowl wrote no lien around its rim and seemed proud of the tattoo.
Halvern posted the Canal Clause on the lock-house door:
AID: CURRENT, STEADY WATER, TIDE KNOWN.PRICE: PUBLIC WORKS LATER BY CONSENT.WAGE FIRST.NO LIEN BY SIGN, NO ROPE AS COLLATERAL.WITNESSES: GATE, BOLLARD, COIL, TIDE.
He underlined ROPE because some truths need to be big to be heard.
A cheer went up that was more relief than victory. The city likes it when nouns go back to being what they were designed to be.
"Next," Elane said, sliding her wand into her belt again, the gesture of a woman who trusts the room to keep working while she breathes. "We docket the Riverkeepers."
"Who?" Rowan asked, delighted already.
"The people who will listen at water," she said. "Pins for tide, not for gossip. Shiftwork. Oath."
Ernest laid his palm on the lock-rail. "Oath," he said, and offered words that had learned to be short:
We stand by water and count what's true.We say the price.We tie for rescue first.We write what we see and leave when asked.Witness: gate and flow.
The gate warmed. The flow agreed by not dragging anyone under.
Celina pinned an ear to a boy's collar—eyebrow scar. "Riverkeeper," she said.
He nodded like a man agreeing to hold a ladder.
They left the canal running on its new grammar and walked toward the quarter where rope lives when it's not working—warehouses, sheds that smell of hemp and tar, yards where boys learn to lay strands into strength. The counterfeit badges had been doing business there too.
The first shed they entered was clean as a prayer. Coils hung like halos from pegs; splicing benches waited; a cat slept with mean innocence under a bale.
A man in a black coat leaned on the counter counting money. His wooden ear shone too neatly. Behind him, a girl of ten—hands nicked, face precise—worked a splice that would not fail and knew it.
"Inspection fee," the man said. "Civic convenience."
Rowan reached past him, took the money, and set it back on the counter. "Return," he said. "Civic honesty."
The man tried to smile with his knuckles. Serren put his staff down on the floorboards with the weight of a lightning strike that had decided to be bone. The man's smile fell off his face and looked for something to do; it found leaving.
Elane turned to the girl. "Name your rope," she said.
The girl's hands didn't stop working. "This one wants to save somebody," she said, not shy. "This one wants to stay dry."
"Price it," Elane said.
"Three coppers," the girl said. "Two if he tells me who he plans to pull back on board."
"Write that on your wall," Countess Gold said, already calculating the ways a city that prices its mercy stays rich.
The girl looked at Ernest. "Can I write no liars?"
"Yes," he said. "And no flattery."
She grinned and bit her twine off like a declaration.
By noon the badges with strings had stopped being brave. A box of counterfeit ears sat on a fish-stall with a note in an embarrassed hand:
FREE WOODEN CIRCLES – BADGE MAKER SORRY
"Honesty by cowardice," Halvern observed. "I'll take it."
Magistra Elane added a smaller sign under it in the neat hand of policy: BRING TO OFFICE – WE'LL SAND OFF THE LIE.
They did.
Afternoon set the city to its lists: canal clause posted; Foundry's sign removed; rope yards licensed by witness, not bribe. The Office's little room, no longer embarrassed by its window, took pins and returned receipts. A boy in hawk colors paid a fine without spitting; an old woman collected a coin without bowing. The bell's third note held the other two like a braid that wanted to last.
At sunset, House Aldery posted its own notice in winter blue:
NO LIENS IN TOOLS. NO CONTRACT BY ALTAR.BREATH NOT COLLATERAL.COMPLAINTS HEARD AT DUSK.
Lady Aldery signed it with a hand elegant enough to cut and set it with nails hammered true. Lord Aldery stood behind her, learning how to look like he agreed with a future when it refused to look like him.
Countess Gold's presses spat paper that would wallpaper ignorance. RIVERKEEPER OATH.CANAL CLAUSE.NO FEES FOR LISTENING. She paid her men in coin and bread and pride and did not call any of it mercy.
The old priest sat on the chapel steps and watched the city behave. He did not sing. He counted breaths without stealing them.
Team Two climbed the dormitory stair with rope dust on their cuffs and canal damp in their lungs. The clerk with the ledger grinned without hiding it. The door opened.
Rowan dropped onto the bed and pulled a length of twine from his pocket, started a bowline, stopped on purpose, tied a figure-eight instead, and looked pleased. "For rescue," he said to no one and everyone.
Mikel set his chronometer on the sill; the second hand waited for him to set the minute and didn't sulk. Celina untied her ribbon; the warmth stayed, owning itself. Out the window, the lock gate cycled on the tide's second beat. A boy on the rail—eyebrow scar—stood with his hands behind his back, not as a soldier, as a Riverkeeper. He was breathing. It was visible.
Ernest stacked the day on the sill: a scrap of pamphlet, a splinter of peg, a pin with the lie sanded off, a bit of hemp that smelled of salt and pride. He opened his notebook and gave the city its arithmetic:
Canal—sign "gratitude in rope" corrected; Canal Clause posted; priests admitted intent; bowl tattooed "no lien."
Counterfeit badges routed; first Listener pins functioning; "no fee for listening" enforced.
Rope taught to introduce itself; knots tied with names; Riverkeeper Oath sworn.
House notice—no tool liens; dusk complaints.
Subscription pamphlet washed; Foundry clause holding; tide teaches the lock.
Next: draft "Tools Non-Collateral" into law; review East Gate altar; audit badge-maker's new employer (probably ours).
He closed the book and set both palms on the sill. The stone warmed, happy to be a table, not a pulpit.
Down in the yard, a choir of first-years tried the three-note chord and, for the first time, didn't apologize when they missed—they just sang it again until the bell answered.
Rowan, eyes closed, lifted his voice for the ritual that had learned to be a lullaby.
"The forest bent," he said.
"The nobles bowed," Mikel replied, deadpan softened to fondness.
"The beast knelt," Celina said, memory cleaned and kept.
"The chain obeyed," Rowan finished. "The mirrors cracked. The heirs knelt. The priests hungered. Light bent. Silence held. Stone listened."
Ernest added, looking out at the canal where rope lay proud and gates kept time with water, "And the current learned not to charge for breath."
Night came in on the tide.The city set its pins on a nail and slept with its knots ready.Tomorrow would ask for receipts. The world would have them.