POV: Mara
Silvie slaps a ledger onto the table like a judge setting down a law. The cover is leather, cracked and ink-stained, its corners rounded by years of fingers. The title is knife-neat: TIDE BOOK.
“Crownward doesn’t run on wishes,” she says. “It runs on this.”
I brace my elbows, hungry for order like for bread. “Teach me.”
She flips it open. Columns and rows stare back—names, locations, times, little marks that look like birds’ feet. “This line is who. This is where. This is when. This—” She taps a column marked with circles and triangles. “—is appetite. Some eat when the bell tells them. Some when the sky forgets to be gray. Some are fasting because an inner voice told them to and I don’t argue with inner voices if I can avoid it.”
I smile unwillingly. “You argue with everyone else.”
“I don’t argue,” she says, offended. “I declare.” She points. “Regent: tea at dawn, soup at bell two, half-plate at bell five, fruit at bell seven if she remembers. Heir: eats like a soldier—when you put it in front of him. Jax: pretends he doesn’t need it, then faints in a corridor and lies about hitting his head on a door. Cadets: think salt is a food group. Lantern Guild: hungry when the color runs true. Council: hungry when… never mind. Council is a problem disguised as a menu.”
“Who eats where?” I ask, leaning in.
“Regent in hibiscus hall unless she’s walking the roofs. Heir in yard or map room. Shields at the posts unless I drag them off with a fork. You see the shapes?”
I do. They form a map of a living thing—the citadel’s breath. “If the bridge is closed—”
“We shift the meal like tide,” she says, pleased. “Not with panic, with grace. People tell themselves they’re less frightened if the dumplings arrive on time.”
Aster hums agreement.
“Steadiness is currency.”
“Write,” Silvie orders, shoving a charcoal stub at me.
I copy names and hours and appetites until my wrist cramps. My script is clean; I care about clean. Silvie watches, nodding once. “You’ll keep the morning line when Pia’s at guild,” she says. “You’ll also cut gossip in half before it rots fruit.”
“I don’t gossip,” I say.
“You will. We all do. But we call it ‘information movement’ and pretend it’s noble.” She taps a square where someone has penciled a small triangle. “That means…?”
“Appetite for heat,” I say. “Soup spiced.”
“Good. And this?” A circle within a square.
“Doesn’t tolerate onion.”
“You’re not useless,” she declares, which from Silvie is a four-course compliment.
We spend the afternoon walking routes. She shows me shortcuts and no-steps: doors that look inviting but spit you out in the wrong wing, corridors that funnel wind so badly trays fly like gulls. I memorize stairs that shift from two to three turns, because the city loves testing memory.
I don't mind the weariness. It gives me the feeling I'm worth something; worth being able to stand up for myself.
Silvie doesn't teach me surviving because I don’t need to be taught. I survived my whole life.
In the chime garden, she pauses long enough to tie a loose string. “People tell you who they are by how they eat,” she says. “Watch, listen, learn. The kitchen feeds the body. Tide Book feeds the building.”
“Who feeds you?” I ask without thinking.
She cuts me a look. “You, if that question means what I hope it means.”
“I’ll try.”
As we cross the south steps, a smear of red-black marks the stone near the railing. At first I think it’s old wine, then paint, then I see the strokes are letters, rough but deliberate.
MOONFELL BLEEDS.
The words punch me in the ribs like a fist. Aster bares teeth inside me.
“Cowards.”
Silvie’s mouth tightens. She calls, “Jax!” without raising her voice. He appears as if the stone coughed him up.
“South steps,” she says, pointing.
He takes one look, then signals a Shield to fetch a bucket and brush. “Saw anything?” he asks us.
“Just this,” Silvie says.
I hear my own voice say quietly, “They want me to look.”
Jax’s gaze flicks to me like a blade catching light. “Do you want to?”
“No,” I say, and mean it more than I expected. “I want to know who painted it.”
“We’ll find out,” he says, not as a promise to soothe me but as a statement of craft.
“Small brush,” Silvie orders the returning guard. “No smearing into the grout.” She glances at me. “Back to the routes. We don’t stop feeding people because idiots want applause.”
We move. The brush rasps the stone behind us. A gull shrieks like a door in a bad mood.
At shift’s end, I sit with the Tide Book and a bowl of stew that tastes like patience. Pia plops down beside me with a stack of chipped plates. “Did you learn the secret language?” she asks.
“I learned onion,” I say. “And appetite. And what your face looks like when you steal a dumpling.”
She gasps. “I don’t—”
I slide one onto her plate. “Please lie better.”
She cackles. Aster unwinds, amused.
Later, alone in my corner cot, I trace the Tide Book’s shapes in the air with my finger until sleep pulls my hand down. Outside, the chime garden sings one note, then another, and the city settles its thousand bones.
I feel… new.
I feel like I'm a coal being forged into steel. Slowly.