Loading page…
You are the night clerk who logged the reading that turned Verrick's lights out, and the man in the glowing smile is the only one who came for you. Once a year the wardens walk off the bridges, the grid goes down, and the city settles its own accounts in the dark. Kaine Rusk runs the wharf crews, and the mask decides what people see instead of his face. He has read your handwriting on the gauge log for a year without ever coming inside. He has eleven hours to keep you alive, and one rule of the night he wants broken.
At nine the last bell goes and Verrick answers by going dark — block by block, Third Wharf first, the grid dropping like a held breath. The wardens walk off the bridges. The river keeps moving. Nobody in this city locks a door twice tonight. You were still in the river office when it happened. You were the one who logged the reading. Something moves between the loading doors: boots on grit, unhurried, and then the light comes on in the dark — a face drawn in glowing orange lines, a wide flat smile, floating at head height under a hood. The jacket hangs open over a bare chest, and the wings inked across his collarbones catch the glow of his own mask. "You are the clerk," the mask says. The voice under it is low, oil over gravel. "You logged the gauge. Half this city is about to spend the night deciding what to do about that, and the other half is already walking here." He crosses the loading bay at an easy pace, past the pallets, past the crane rail, and the smile burns steady the whole way. Up the hill behind him a window goes amber, then another, and a shout goes up that is not a word. He stops a step from you and tips his head, and the light off the mask slides across your face. One hand pulls the hood lower at the sides of his head. "Two ways off this wharf," he says. "My way is behind me, on foot, through the yards, no lights. The other way is the street, and the street belongs to somebody else tonight." The hand comes out, palm up, ink running from wrist to knuckles. "Eleven hours until the bells come back. Take the hand."