Dawn came in on paper and bolts.
The Foundry's vent stack sat in its cradle like a chrome bone. Filter frames clicked into place with a hush that sounded like someone setting porcelain on a table. Juno wrote AIR LOGS in grease pencil on the casing and underlined it once. Oren had his palm on the new balancer, listening with his wrist. The Blue Lamp over the back door spilled a quiet ring across tape, tools, and a jawplate wrapped in towel on a crate.
"Corridor exception: shielded," Nyx said, satin over wire. "Hands Channel credit banked. Producer Court in 00:19:40. Efficiency House brings Thole and a smile. Category Commerce moderates."
Leon opened the Civic Ledger on a pallet and tapped the cover once to steady himself, twice to warn the part of him that liked applause to sit down. He wrote: Foundry — Phase 3: Vent; Air logs; Court — Bowl on table; Hands; Receipts.
A small scritch ran under the bakery drain. The brace hummed, offended, then settled. Oren patted the grate with the back of his fingers. "Pretty," he told it.
Hands moved without faces. Kite rolled out the Council board and taped today's docket beside the crate where the Blue Lamp would go:
– Producer Court: Efficiency Fee Injunction (9:00)
– Foundry: Air logs start; filters check
– Unseen Work: Vent braces; corridor markers
Sister Irena set the Blue Lamp on the crate and smudged the bowl with ash, making the light kind. "No faces," she said out of habit. "Bowls only."
Mae stacked consent forms—plain language, no God words—and set a pen beside them like a tool, not a wand. "Hands Channel is ready for cutaways," she murmured. "Stories without faces. Memorial names at Unseen Work tonight."
"Dawnshield?" Leon asked.
"Two vans hovering," Nyx said. "Banner folded like a promise that got bored. Halo hungry. Trickster preheating a pie tin. Greed Lobby filed a fee brief addendum with italics."
Leon tapped the Ledger once and didn't tap again. "We bring receipts," he said.
[Hands Channel — Live (Ambient)]
– Hands tightening a brace on the vent.
– Hands chalking corridor arrows around Paper Street: bowls here, here.
– Hands tying a ribbon to the Ombuds pole.
– Timer: Producer Court — 00:09:15
"Table in three," Nyx said, voice going tin-bright. "Editor's Cut armed. Minor filter hard. They'll want your face; give them your hands."
Juno slid the jawplate closer to the light and looked like a person who had fallen in love with the obligation inside a machine. "Keep it breathing," she said to no one in particular and adjusted a filter latch.
Leon took the bowl in both hands and set it where a face would go.
The room changed.
Not in walls and floors—on people. A rectangle in the edge of Leon's vision lit with sigils like coins flipped face-up. A strip across the top wrote names that could have been weather systems if you squinted.
[Producer Court — Efficiency Fee Injunction]
Panel:
– Category Commerce (Moderator)
– Censor Office (Observer)
– Producer Counsel
– Efficiency House (Petitioner)
– Last City (Respondent)
Spectators:
– Reaper Office
– War House
– Glass Saint
– Trickster
– Craft House
Rules:
– Visual feed permitted; faces optional; hands acceptable
– Audio required; ambient inserts allowed
"Last City," said Commerce—metal cut clean. "Efficiency House petitions for injunctive relief against unlawful coil appropriation and requests a ten percent Transmission Efficiency Fee on captured Ether. Appearances?"
A gray suit hedged its bets on which decade it belonged to slid into the overlay. Thole's voice shook hands without leaving fingerprints. "Efficiency House," he said. "We seek to regularize an illegal siphon, recover a misappropriated Field Coil, and ensure grid stability through a modest fee."
Leon lifted his pen and touched the Ledger. "Last City," he said. He set the bowl where his face should be. "We invoke the Public Works Clause. Hands only."
He slid a page under the bowl. Not a speech. A receipt. A photograph of the panel Oren had coaxed awake; the coil's serial scratched into a slip; Oren's blunt pen: POSTED PRICE: 0 (emergency). INTEREST: 0 (public). SIGN: DAWES/O'SIGN. He added a second sheet: corridor metrics since the coil came home.
[Exhibit L‑1: Coil Receipt — Emergency Public Works]
[Exhibit L‑2: Corridor Metrics — Grid stability ↑; Retention ↑; Riot triggers ↓]
"Faces," said Censor Office, sugar on legal pad. "Live emotion—"
"Pilot credit meets your emotion," Nyx whispered through Leon's ear. "Hands only."
Mae slid Hands Channel metrics under the bowl, neat columns.
[Hands Channel — Pilot Metrics]
Retention: 86%
Skip: −18% vs median
Anchors delivered: Hands Night; Unseen Work scheduled (tonight)
Content policy: No faces; bowls; ambient only
Glass Saint tipped a little clink into the corner of Leon's eye.
[Glass Saint tipped +250 Favor: "Emotion as ritual (cont.)."]
War House made a yawning emoji Leon pretended he hadn't seen.
Thole smiled into the place where faces used to matter. "Public Works Clause is romantic," he said, pleasant. "However, grid is a commodity. Sponsors invest. Unregulated siphons erode confidence. Transmission costs must be recovered. Efficiency proposes a ten percent fee routed through a blessed converter. Tasteful. We waive penalties to encourage compliance. Exclusive lower‑third opportunities available."
Matron Feroce's stare entered the frame like weather. Not a face—two fingers tapping the rim of the bowl, then a tea scoop laid in the light like a blade with manners.
"Tea sells by daylight," she said, hands only. "Not candles by screams. He took the coil so we could count in the morning. Your converter would have taken a hand."
Craft House tipped like a draughtsman nodding at an orthographic drawing.
[Craft House tipped +150 Favor: "Testimony from the market (non-performative)."]
"Grid stability," Thole repeated. "The Widow threat—"
Oren touched the hot stick laid on the pallet and used a wrist instead of adjectives. "Detune first," he said, hands-only. He rapped the shaft, then moved his fingers half a finger-width, flatting a frequency nobody should like. "Without our coil and our lullaby, their halo feeds a Widow. The coil makes wrong notes possible. Wrong notes keep kids alive."
A thin drone nosed into the frame, pie tin smirking. Trickster. Nyx moved her finger on a console, and the editor's cut set the pie in Complaints.
[Trickster Attempt: Meme Insert — Neutralized]
[Public: +Goodwill]
Commerce sounded amused without changing shape. "Efficiency. Your exclusive lower‑third…in clinics?"
"Brand exposure is a way to raise funds," Thole said. "Tasteful."
Sister Irena's hands put two forms in the bowl's ring: Organ Donation Opt‑In (signed); Clinic Corridor policy. "Consent in clinic, bowls between," she said. "No halos. Bodies are law, not content."
Glass Saint's coin on porcelain came again, brighter.
[Glass Saint tipped +300 Favor: "Cruelty as mercy (again)."]
Reaper Office's name glowed a neutral gray. "Riot triggers decrease under corridors," they said, ledger-voiced. "Retention stable under Hands Channel. Finale risk reduced. Noted."
"Public Works Clause," Leon said. He wrote it under the bowl in a hand that had found a way to make dullness dangerous. "Declared emergency. Seizure with receipts. No external logos without Council approval."
"Greed House accepts the romance of bowls," Thole said smoothly. "We simply insist on reality. Grid costs."
"Then put your card on the table like everyone else," Matron Feroce said, laying the small rectangle with Greed's logo in the bowl's ring like a dead thing. Kite's hand slid it to COMPLAINTS. Murmur pinned it with a thumbtack labeled FEES.
Category Commerce let a beat sit. "Decision," they said. "Provisional denial of Efficiency Fee. Public Works Clause applies to coils taken in declared emergency for clinic corridors. Coil remains. No lower‑thirds in civic institutions without Council approval. In exchange, Last City must publish weekly grid logs (public); Hands Channel anchors twice weekly; corridor metrics; detune protocol."
Thole's smile did not change shape. "Appeal," he said, lighter than it should have been. "We will re‑file with a broader argument."
"Denied for now," Commerce said. "You may submit a Recycling Plant microgrant proposal if you wish to be useful. Court notes Foundry side‑effects acknowledged; mitigation queued. Adjourned."
[Order:
– Efficiency Fee: DENIED (provisional)
– Coil: Retained (Public Works)
– Logos: Prohibited in civic feed without vote
– Transparency: Grid logs; corridor metrics; anchors
– Suggestion: Recycling Plant grant invitation]
[Trust: +6]
[Merit: +10]
[Saint: +200 Favor]
[Craft: +150 Favor]
[War: −100 Favor ("I hate minutes.")]
Nyx exhaled like porcelain cooling. "You made dullness win," she said, proud and annoyed at herself. "Greed will pivot to a 'grant' like a snake learning the word charity."
"Let them," Leon said. He closed the Ledger and felt the weight of the jawplate in the crate—work, not leverage. "We'll put their card in Thanks only when it earns it."
He set the bowl back on the crate. The Blue Lamp's ring made air into a promise.
"Air logs," Juno said briskly. "Oren—brace the vent."
They went back to work.
Hands clicked filter frames, tightened braces, chalked corridor arrows. Sister Irena put the first air log on the wall like a calendar you didn't have to like to respect.
[Air Log #001 (Public)]
– Flow: steady
– Odor: negligible
– Particulate: below threshold
– Note: roach scouts—moderate; watch drains
Nyx's overlay put a small red pulse at the alley mouth. "Roach migration up," she said. "Vent warms the night. Sluice Gate available."
[Edict: Sluice Gate — Favor 800 + Ether 200]
Effect: Reroute runoff; +Security (Drains)
Side-effect: Draws burrowers if left open
"Not yet," Leon said. "We comb first; we pour later." He angled his head toward Oren. "Detune the neighborhood."
Oren laughed under his breath and set a hand on Etta's cousin. "She likes country," he said, and laid the wrong note over the alley with a gentleness that looked like a joke until a scout put both front legs over the curb and then thought better of living in the wrong key.
"Market," Matron Feroce announced, arriving under her teal lantern with a ledger and a stare. "Holidays posted. Vendors who honored bowls get dots. Those who didn't get my look and a new chance."
"Your stare is policy," Leon said, and wrote it down, because sometimes you make a law by saying something true where other people can snip it out and carry it away.
Hands Channel crawled verbs along the bottom of Leon's vision like a prayer: hands bracing; hands chalking; hands writing a dot on a calendar; hands sliding a form under a Blue Lamp and not saying a name; hands folding a paper crane and setting it on the shelf in the Foundry where engines learn to be kind.
"Courier," Nyx said suddenly, business returning to her voice. "Producer Office memo. They want to 'help monetize the bowl.' Licensing. Pitches for 'Blue Lamp' merchandise. It has a halo on the mock‑up."
Leon tapped the Ledger once and wrote, very neatly: Bowls are law; not brand.
"Complaints," he said.
"Done," Nyx said, delighted.
Murmur read aloud from COMPLAINTS with theatrical restraint. "Complaint: 'Vines ate my kiosk sign again.' Thanks: 'The bowl let my hands say goodbye.'" They wrote TRIM on one card and MEMORIAL on the other.
Tarek tapped his notebook. "Publish detune protocol," he said. "Duty to detune before rescue. Duty to retreat to bowls. Duty to write."
"Board," Mae said, and wrote DIGNITY ZONE protocols in block letters under the docket, inked where lamplight would remember.
Outside, the line over Iron & Sixth sang the way a city does when it's not trying to impress anybody. The Widow did not like the wrong note and decided to go be curious somewhere else.
Leon put the jawplate into the light a second, then covered it again. "We print," he said, mostly to Juno and a little to the part of himself that wrote down laws because he didn't know how to pray. "Protein first. Grafts next. Chitin guards. Closed Loop."
Juno's leaf-printed gloves flexed. "If no one sues us for breathing," she said, not cynical, just accurate.
"Greed will send a grant," Nyx said. "We'll tie a ribbon around its neck and make it behave."
Dawnshield's vans passed like weather trying to be a choice. Kade looked at the bowl like a mirror that had learned to tell the truth and found no angle he liked as much as the ones he used to.
"Unseen Work at dusk," Sister Irena reminded no one and everyone.
"Unseen Work," Leon echoed. He wrote it into the Ledger where names lived, with a dot for hands and a dot for bowls.
The lamppost blinked honest—blink, two, three, four, blink. Etta purred. The brace under the bakery drain hummed obscenities to itself and decided to remain loyal.
Nyx's overlay slid a new pulse onto the map—Paper Street, alley two blocks north. "Scavenger density," she said. "Vent brings cousins. We can reroute the rain with Sluice and make them fall in love with the wrong curb."
Leon set his palm on the crate as if there were a temperature in wood he could use to make decisions. He did not tap twice.
"Buy Sluice," he said. "We'll write a river."
[Edict: Sluice Gate — Purchased (Favor −800; Ether −200)]
Effect: Reroute runoff along Paper Street spine; +Security (Drains)
Side-effect: Draws burrowers if left open
Heat: +1
Oren popped a curb plate with a narrow bar and set a valve in the gutter like a pen into a pen loop. He twisted once. The street obeyed—water diverted into the quiet pocket behind the bakery where enzyme had learned to be a law. Scouts followed scent to where the wrong note and the right wall both were waiting.
Juno hummed the second bar of the song she used to apologize to systems, and then she smiled and didn't apologize at all.
"Ad in 00:50," Nyx murmured, pleased against her job description. "Say something they'll be able to carry without feeling like a show."
Leon glanced at the Blue Lamp and at the Ledger and at the air log on the wall; he didn't look at a lens.
"Public works is a broom," he said. "We swing it like a law."
[Glass Saint tipped +300 Favor: "Dullness as a blade."]
[Craft House tipped +150 Favor: "You made a sentence act like a plan."]
[War House: −100 Favor ("At least buy a brick.")]
Murmur slid a rumor card under the lamp: PRODUCER COURT BRANDED BOWL OFFER (REJECTED). Kites's jar made a soft clink as someone put a blue button in THANKS because their hands needed to.
The Foundry exhaled a first, warm breath through a vent that didn't stink. The air log on the wall earned its second line.
Under the baker's drain, something big shifted in a narrow bed and decided not to write its name in pipes yet.
"Unseen Work at dusk," Sister Irena said again.
"Seconded," Brutus said with his palms.
Nyx's timer for the next anchor slid into the corner like a second spine: 08:12:30. The court had learned where to look; the bowl had taught it what to see.
Leon picked up the bowl. The ring made policy out of air. He put his hand on the Ledger and felt the names through paper.
"We pass laws," he said, to the crate, to the vent, to the wrong note. "We keep them. We build with what's left."
[Cliff: Unseen Work at dusk (anchor #2); Sluice Gate running—scavenger diversion; Greed's 'grant' arriving; Bio‑Foundry Phase 4 (tank) begins; Widow latency reduced for next raid]