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In the estuary city of Gharrow, an archivist-scribe confronts a thirsty presence gnawing at the bell that keeps the tide’s hunger in check. With a lamplighter, a blind bellfounder’s craft, and a brass vigil-moth, she must re-tune the bell, expose a corrupt Warden, and bind the old mouth beneath the choir.
Fog rolled off the estuary in thick skeins that snagged on ropes and the leaning masts like wool. Scales glittered underfoot where the fishmongers had shaken out their nets; gulls hopped between the stalls as if they owned the cobbles. Elin Wren stepped carefully past a coil of tarred rope and hitched her satchel higher on one shoulder. Ink had stained her nails a bruised blue; the smell of it clung to her the way salt clung to the air.
“Watch your boots, scribe,” Jorren called. He was already two lanterns into his morning rounds, a long pole balanced on one shoulder. The glass of his lamps had been freshly wiped and smelled of lemon oil. He grinned with the same easy confidence he used to climb the bell tower’s inner spiral when they were children. “The tide’s left teeth all over the market.”
“They’ll dull before I get to the archive,” Elin said, but she lifted her hem anyway. A shutter banged somewhere inland where the fog grew thin. In the high square, the statue of Saint Marrow pointed its stone finger toward the estuary as always, as if keeping count of the gulls.
The bell—Marrow Bell—hung above them all, out of sight, bones of its iron throat hidden inside the cathedral. Its voice rolled the city to sleep each night and woke it just before dawn. Today only the last aftertaste of the morning toll lingered, as faint as a ghost of mint.
“Mother Kees will have you copying tide calendars again,” Jorren said, walking beside Elin without being invited. “She keeps every one since your father’s year.” He glanced at her, then away. “Look, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine,” Elin said. She knew exactly where he was looking. The water had taken her father quietly, the way the channels cracked open under certain feet. No wreckage, no witness, only a coiled rope left on the other side of the tide-stones. The city had given a measure of grain and a prayer. The bell had rung, slow and low, as if it had known his name. “She’ll want to see what washed up with the dredgers.”
They cut through a lane that smelled of anchovy barrels and wet wood. Children used chalk to draw tide-stones on the walls, hopping from square to square, shouting warnings: No shoes on the blue line! No breath over the red!
At the cathedral steps, Elin paused. The slick gleam of old salt painted the lower stones. Someone had refreshed the white line across the threshold in the night, a jag of crystal that crunched like frost. “Hold a lamp for me?” she asked.
Jorren planted the base of his pole and watched her tuck stray hair behind her ear. “You breathe documents,” he said. “I breathe flame. Between us we might make a baptism out of fog.”
“Between us,” Elin said, and climbed.