The Watch House woke like a mill—slow, competent, and loud only when grain demanded it. Notices were scraped clean and re‑written under the city's seal: a scale over an open hand. Chalk lines were squared. Boots discovered their feet.
Sergeant Mavren read the wall the way some men read faces. "South market first," he told two patrols. "Shrine street next. If anyone starts naming the thirteenth toll, correct them to counting. If anyone starts counting without the thirteenth, correct them to honesty."
"Sir," the patrols said, relieved to be given words that fit in the mouth.
Watch‑Captain Ysren stood at the long table with a cup that had not yet decided to be drunk. He watched the room assemble itself and then noticed Kaelthar and Selith arrive with a basket the size of a small argument.
"Gift?" Ysren asked.
"Work," Selith said, setting the basket down. "Evidence likes sides that do not collapse. If your House intends to collect truths, I suggest you carry them as if they were fish."
Mavren tested the weave with a thumb that had not been fooled by much. "Good," he said. "We'll line it with clean cloth. Truth remembers what it touches."
Ysren gestured to the emblem above the door—iron set into stone, scale above an open hand. "We remind ourselves to weigh before we take," he said, mostly to the room. "The city keeps its windows latched. We keep our fingers visible."
As if to be acknowledged, the emblem collected a halo of dust on the stone around it. Not a smear, not a stain. A ring—thin, neat, deciding to be where it was. Mavren lifted a hand and stopped it in the air, as if moving might startle a fact.
"Clever," Selith murmured. "Even the House wears a coin."
Kaelthar stepped close enough to see the center had refused dust. "Courtesy," he said. "To geometry."
Ysren exhaled a breath that turned into policy. "Mavren, mark it down. 'Ring of dust about the badge, center keeps itself.' Time: not yet noon."
Mavren wrote in a hand that did not apologize for being plain. "Aye." He looked to Kaelthar. "Weather?"
"Practice," Kaelthar said.
Elira appeared in the doorway carrying a small loaf from Mira with a pride that did not announce itself. "For officers," she said, then added, "and for men who become officers when no one of rank is looking." She nodded at Mavren.
"Much obliged," Mavren said, and divided the loaf as if law were bread.
Orren the bell‑warden arrived with the posture of a craftsman delivering a dispute. He held a length of rope with a fray that ended on a straighter line than fray has any right to end. "For your evidence basket," he said. "It fails, but it fails honestly."
"It declares itself," Mavren said, recognizing Hadrik's phrasing without remembering the potter. He set the rope in the basket as if giving it a seat.
"Before noon," Ysren said, "we will be at the tower." He glanced at Kaelthar. "And at the Flagon. And at the market. I accept multiple witnesses. I do not accept multiple truths."
"That is a large demand for a small world," Selith said, cheerful.
"It keeps me employed," Ysren said dryly.
Neris met them on the steps of the Silent Hall with ink on her knuckles and the look of someone who had learned that curiosity can be its own credential. "We have begun dating the rubbings not by day but by count," she said, ashamed and satisfied at once. "There are now four marked 'Thirteenth.' Each ring refuses a center the way polite people refuse to overstay."
"Polite people stay exactly long enough," Selith said.
"And then leave a note," Ysren added, glancing at the city where notes had begun to appear as small crowns on crows.
He left Neris with orders she had already written down in her head: "No copies leave. No sermons masquerading as glosses. If the city writes letters, the Hall will learn to read without speaking them aloud."
Olin stood a respectful distance away with a ledger that pretended to be resting. He had, for the first time, removed his hood. His hair admitted to being ordinary. "Captain," he said. "The counting‑house recognizes unusual circumstances. We have agreed to forgive errors of noon in contracts written this season, provided both parties agree that noon has behaved unusually."
"That is generous," Ysren said.
"That is prudent," Olin corrected. "We like commerce to believe in clocks. Clocks whose feelings are hurt spend poorly."
"Then post it," Ysren said. "A city believes what it sees nailed to wood."
At the Flagon, Mira had pinned a Noon Account sheet to the crooked handle outside and a second inside by the door. People signed with their work instead of their names. Ferrymen. Dyers. A Boy Who Runs. A Woman Who Sings. The board was becoming a map of trades that had decided to notice.
Rothgar set a bowl on the bar with the care some reserve for crowns. "For the Watch," he said. "Soup insists on being eaten warm. Law should learn from it."
Mavren took a spoon and did not bother pretending to be on duty against stew. "Aye," he said, with a gravity that performed the small ceremony of admitting gratitude.
Outside, a baker slapped flour from a peel and made an accidental ring on cobble. He lifted his hands as if surrendering to a phenomenon. "If any god is listening, I prefer mine sweet," he said to the air, and the air failed to object.
Noon climbed the tower as it does: by light and habit. Kaelthar stood at the corner of Market and Shrine, where three kinds of honesty share a wall and rarely quarrel about it. Ysren stationed himself a street away with Mavren and two constables, eyes on windows, ears on dust. Neris and a junior clerk waited inside the Hall with a sheet wickedly clean and pencils not yet guilty. At the Flagon, Mira and Elira held their posts at the witness board. Olin sat where he could see the door and the crooked handle's shadow.
First toll. Second. Third—the river held its breath as if asked a question it might be required to answer later. Fourth through eighth: ordinary, practiced, steady. Ninth remembered a forgotten cough. Tenth forgave it. Eleventh took attendance. Twelfth completed the lesson.
Silence squared its shoulders.
Thirteen occurred.
A ring of flour drew itself on the baker's threshold, center untaken. On the watch badge above the House door, dust brightened the ring it had already decided on and left the palm's center alone. In the Hall, Neris's clean sheet acquired the faintest gray circle under the hand that was not yet drawing. At the Flagon, the witness board's ink separated itself politely around a dry white heart.
Mavren looked to Ysren, who did not look away from the world behaving. "Write it," the Captain said at last. "Nothing broke, nothing lied. We can live with that for a day."
He sent one constable to carry the account to the Hall, another to the Flagon, and kept Mavren at his side because some truths prefer to be kept under a hat that knows when to remove itself.
Kaelthar watched the market resume as if excused from school. The crowned crow sketch on the nearest notice had acquired a second crown, smaller, drawn by a different hand—a joke becoming a conversation. He studied the double crown the way one studies a hinge.
"Saved for later," he said to no one, and to the city.
In the afternoon, Ysren convened a small parliament at the Flagon's long table: Orren of the shrine quarter, Neris from the Hall, Olin from the counting‑house, Hadrik the potter, Bran the ferryman. Selith stood behind them, hands in the reed belt that signified either craft or willingness to tie things back together after a discussion.
"We will gather accounts," Ysren said. "Not legends. Not theologies. Five trades, five eyes. Tomorrow at dusk."
"Five versions," Selith said, pleased to name a shape.
"Of the same event," Ysren warned.
"Of the same city," Olin amended.
Mira brought cups and put one down in front of each speech, then one in front of herself, because books are allowed a voice when the talk is about memory. "You may use this room," she said. "You will not enlist it."
Orren accepted a cup as if it were a bell he had to keep from announcing itself. "We will speak in plain measures. I will leave my sermon at home unless the city commits a sin."
"Cities sin by forgetting," Hadrik said. "I have bowls that would like to testify."
Bran scratched a new notch on the oar he did not carry into taverns and then looked at his empty hand as if surprised to find it empty. "I'll bring the eddy where the thirteenth sits. It may prefer a table."
Neris arranged paper as if aligning the conversation would align the world. "We do not propose meanings," she said quickly, before she could lose her nerve. "We propose observations. I can do that."
Ysren inclined his head. "Good. Dusk tomorrow. I will chair. The city will listen."
He looked to Kaelthar last. "And you, Master?"
"I will be present," Kaelthar said. "Presence is the first courtesy."
When the Flagon had emptied to its night work, Kaelthar stood a while by the city mark on the notice and then took the back steps to the little yard where barrels learn to be useful. A basin of water kept for spills reflected a coin of sky. The reflection carried a pale ring and refused a center. He touched the water lightly. The ring widened, thinned, and then chose to remain.
Elira came to the doorway and did not disturb him. "Supper?" she asked after the right amount of quiet.
"In a moment," he said. "I am learning how the city prefers to be read."
"Aloud or in the head?"
"In the head," he said. "For now."
She left him there with the basin and the small patient math that a day does when it has kept most of its promises. Above, the watch badge wore its ring politely. In the Hall, Neris filed a sheet under Thirteenth and added a tiny dot in the margin that only she would know meant I was afraid and I did it anyway. In the shrine street, Deya discovered that soot arranged itself as if rehearsing a bowl.
The city slept with its palm open and its scales remembering how to balance what could not yet be weighed.