Chapter 52: Third Bell Hunts!
Pell Tarrow did not chase them.
HISS!
Kael’s answer stayed simple. If the bowl hunters wanted a body, it would have to reach close enough for his hands to matter.
DRIP!
The old stink of people treated as material clung to Lower Ash Bowl’s cookfires, counters, wet drains, and hook aprons. Kael had begun to hate that smell before he had words for it.
Hooks hid under clean aprons. Bowls, counters, bells, and chain rigs gave butchery the shape of work.
CLINK!
A bone token rolled inside a nearby tray. The little sound made three starving people twitch, because in that bowl a bone token could buy food, passage, betrayal, or the right to watch someone else bleed.
Third Bell was not cheap.
Pell could afford it.
The second sign followed.
A man who could call in more hook hands after being humiliated did not need to win the first fight. He could make the next corridor smaller. A woman with black painted teeth approached him carefully.
"Pell. Your frame died."
Pell looked at her until she lowered her gaze.
"No," he said. "A frame died after performing civic service. Write that down."
"Yes, Pell."
"Black-water man broke the weighing jaw. Mark the direction he ran. Mark every body beside him."
Her stylus scratched across bone slate.
SCRAPE! SCRAPE!
"And the count keeper?"
Pell’s mouth became almost calm.
"Alive. That matters. A dead count ends. A breathing count gathers sympathy. I dislike sympathy. It becomes witness."
Behind him, the feeding house callers watched from the soup pillars. Their wide mouths had stopped singing. Their hook grafts twitched with the kind of fear that wanted to become profit before anyone else named it.
Pell lifted his chin.
"You three."
The callers flinched.
"Pell?"
"You sold his trail poorly."
One caller spread both hands. "The trail was clean. The man was rude to the trail."
A few nearby stall workers laughed before they remembered who Pell was.
Pell did not laugh.
"You will sell better. The next trail is not his feet. It is his burden. Fourteen survivors. The boy who counts is hurt. Large chain man with a ruined shoulder. Crescent woman from the corpse bowls. Salvage bundle from the wounded wild. Names, weights, injuries, tastes. Every drain child knows something. Buy it."
The callers bowed.
"With what coin?"
Pell glanced at the broken frame.
"My humiliation. Spend it before it spoils."
The third sign came last.
He knew what the callers, hook boys, and stall workers had seen.
He would turn it into currency before shame hardened around him.
CLANG!
First one bell rang.
Third Bell had not arrived.
A small service bell.
Two hook boys dragged a bronze ladder toward the upper platform. Another servant carried a bowl covered in black cloth. A third brought a string of name beads. Each bead was pale and scratched with a pit mark.
Pell took the bowl.
He cut his thumb on the rim.
DRIP!
Blood fell into the cloth covered water.
Callers lowered their mouths. Hook boys stopped shifting. Knives stayed hidden but ready.
Pell spoke without raising his voice.
"Wake Third Bell. I want every hook listening."
The black cloth over the bowl twitched.
"What will you pour in?" asked the voice from the wall behind him.
"The weighing jaw is broken. Fifteen bodies slipped below. The black intake scar woke. And he made me step back." Pell paused. "I want him cut down."
Callers, hook boys, and stall workers murmured at that.
Personal offense could not buy Third Bell alone. But mixed with public disorder, it could sweeten the bowl. The wall voice asked, "Collateral?"
Pell looked toward the drain where Kael had vanished.
"My clean robe."
The callers stilled. Even the hook boys stopped moving.
Even the callers stared.
Pell untied the outer layer of his pale robe and let it fall into the black bowl. It sank slowly, drinking his thumb blood. A clean robe in Lower Ash Bowl meant nobody had successfully dragged you into filth. It said the pits had not dragged him down yet. It said other people had carried the dirt for him.
Pell gave his up because he wanted the bowl hands to know he would spill blood to cut Kael down.
The wall voice hummed.
"Collateral accepted. Third Bell purchased."
CLANG!
This time the sound rolled through every bowl platform.
CLANG!
The ash drains answered with little metal teeth.
CLANG!
Below, in the lower channel, Kael felt the third bell through the water before he heard it.
The vibration crawled up his knuckles.
Renn stopped counting.
That scared everyone more than the bell.
Orrek turned in the narrow passage, shoulder scraping stone.
"Why did the skinny one stop?"
Renn swallowed carefully and winced.
"Third Bell."
Vaela cursed under her breath.
"Pell bought it."
"Bought what?" Della asked.
"It tells the bowl hands to stop hiding what they want."
"That is a terrible kind of honest."
"Most kinds are."
Kael kept his hand in the water.
The clicking teeth had pulled back when the bell rang. Not gone. Waiting. The sluice teeth knew the bell pattern. That meant bowl hands had fed them for a long time.
"Does Third Bell make you stronger?" Orrek asked.
Kael looked at him and kept feeling through the water. "Only if it hits me."
"Shame. I was hoping bowl hands being ugly counted as an attack."
"If ugly gave power, you would be a king."
Orrek grinned despite the pain. "There. You are learning jokes. Terrible ones, but still."
Vaela made a sharp motion for silence.
From above the drain grates came voices.
The voice did not shout.
Bargaining.
"One boy with shoulder cut."
"Old man breathing bad."
"Count keeper neck marked."
"Crescent woman from corpse lanes."
"Wild salvage. Wild salvage. Who saw the bundle?"
The bowl hands were not chasing with feet.
It was chasing with information.
Every whisper built a net.
Renn started counting again, but softer.
"Fourteen. Still fourteen. Kael rear. Vaela front. Orrek middle. Sair salvage. Della with Tavin. Miro left wrist. Old Noll breathing twice bad. Twins silent. Brak holding line. Sella angry."
Sella whispered, "Stop adding angry."
"Stop being useful with it."
She almost smiled.
Then the drain grate ahead rattled.
RATTLE!
Everyone froze.
A small face peered through the slits above. A girl, maybe nine, with ash painted under both eyes and a bone bead tied to one ear.
She looked at Kael.
"They bought Third Bell."
Vaela lifted a crescent.
The girl did not flinch.
"I know. I heard it before you did."
Kael said, "What does it take?"
The girl blinked.
"For warning?"
"For anything you say next."
She swallowed.
GULP!
"Not coin. My brother is in Ash Sluice Three. He cleans teeth. If the bowl hands pour copper smoke through there, they will make him pull the wrong lever. Don’t kill him."
Orrek muttered, "Road has teeth and children cleaning them. Lovely." Vaela’s eyes narrowed. "Name."
"Jaro. Left ear gone. Laughs when scared. Bad habit."
Renn repeated, "Jaro. Left ear gone. Laughs when scared." The girl looked at him. "Why did you say it back?"
"So he does not become only a lever."
Her face changed.
For half a breath, she looked like a child.
Then the bowl pipes swallowed her back.
"Third Bell sends copper smoke first. If you smell bitter copper, do not breathe. Keep blood out of the left trough. It carries family scent."
Vaela said, "Why help?"
The girl bared small teeth. "Because Pell kicked my bowl once. Because the black water man broke his toy. Because I want to see what happens. Pick one."
Kael nodded.
"Go."
She vanished.
SCRAPE!
The grate slid back into place above them.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Then Orrek whispered, "Black water man."
"Do not start," Vaela said.
"I like it. Sounds damp and unpleasant. Fits him."
Kael moved forward.
The bell vibration rolled again through the water. No shards came. The Sovereign Root stayed quiet because a bell bought with blood and cloth was not a fist, not yet.
His ribs tightened once, then loosened.
Kael did not need a signal to know the bowl hands wanted him cornered.
He had eyes.
He had wounds.
He had fourteen living weights moving ahead of him. And somewhere in Ash Sluice Three, a one eared boy might be forced to choose wrong.
The smoke did not hurry.
That made the survivors hate it more.
Fast danger could be struck, dodged, cursed at. Slow danger gave the mind time to invent worse shapes. Tavin kept glancing at his own shoulder as if the smoke might reach into the cut and pull his name out. Della murmured numbers under her breath, not Renn’s clean counts, just fragments of food left and cloth left and people left.
Vaela listened to the bowl floor above without looking up.
"Pell is not trying to catch us here," she said.
Orrek scowled. "Then why ring all the metal in the world?"
"To make the next person who helps us afraid before they see us. To make every route keeper ask if our coin is worth his fingers. To make children like Jaro shake before they pull a lever."
Renn whispered, "That earns nothing?"
Kael flexed his burned hand.
"No."
"Feels like it should."
"Feeling is not pressure. Not until it bites."
Renn nodded once, unhappy but listening. That mattered too. If the group started believing fear itself fed Kael, they would chase terror like food. That path led to stupidity, and stupidity killed tired people faster than knives. The route bent downward.
The water grew warmer.
Ahead, the first breath of bitter copper slid through the dark.
Vaela covered her mouth.
"Copper smoke."
Kael raised one hand.
The whole line stopped.
Above them, Third Bell rang again.
CLANG!
Clerks, sellers, hungry buyers, and guards who smelled weakness made a rough half-ring without being told. The shape had not become formation yet; it was instinct learning discipline.