Temple guards try to seize the petition, but Amara and Cael complete service on Oriel with the public market bell.
The market bell hung above the fish stalls, and someone had nailed a temple notice across its rope.
NO HAND SHALL RING FOR A FALLEN SAINTESS.
Amara read the notice while vendors packed eels into salt and pretended not to watch her bleed through Cael's borrowed coat. The stamped petition lay inside a tin bread box under her arm. Each time Oriel's name pulsed through the metal, her fingers went numb.
Cael squinted up at the bell tower. His right hand was wrapped in wet linen from the registry fire. "They moved quickly."
"Marek knew the service rule."
"Every priest knows rules they tell clerks are obsolete." Cael jerked his chin toward the square's far side.
Three temple guards stood near the fountain, polished in white lacquer, each with a sunburst baton. Between them waited High Priest Marek, dry beneath a gold canopy carried by two acolytes. Rain hit everyone else.
Marek lifted his voice. "Amara Vale. Return stolen property and no one here needs to be detained."
Fishwives lowered knives. Bakers stopped stacking loaves. A dockworker with a scar across her cheek set down a crate and kept one hand on the rope hook at her belt.
Amara stepped around a puddle shining with fish scales. "The petition was stamped by the Mortal Registry."
"A basement clerk cannot drag the Dawn into a street performance."
Cael muttered, "Basement clerk objects to tone."
Marek's gaze cut to him. "Master Orris, your family held that office with dignity until this morning. Hand me the box."
Cael's burned fingers tightened. He looked afraid, which made Amara trust him more. Brave people who did not feel fear often turned out to be merely careless.
"Service requires bell, name, seal, and cost," Cael said. "You cannot forbid a civic bell by temple notice."
"I can forbid riot."
"Then stop making one."
A guard strode forward. Amara moved first, not away but toward the bell rope. Another guard caught the bread box under her arm. Metal dented. The petition inside shrieked like struck glass.
Pain lanced through Amara's ribs. The filing was tied to her blood heat; damage to it tugged at her body. She drove her elbow into the guard's wrist. He cursed. The bread box skidded across wet cobbles.
The scarred dockworker caught it under one boot.
Marek's expression sharpened. "Lysa Thorne. You owe temple tithe on that healed spine."
The dockworker smiled without warmth. "Then add it to my stack."
"Do not involve yourself."
"You involved me when your miracle made my back work and my wages vanish."
Amara knew the name now. Lysa. One of the old healed recipients from the lower docks, famous for carrying two sacks at once after a dawn rite. The temple processions had used her as a living banner for Oriel's mercy.
"Lysa," Amara said, "the box has to reach the bell."
"And if I help?"
"You become visible to the case."
"Good." Lysa kicked the bread box up, caught it, and tossed it over the first guard's head.
Cael caught it badly with his wrapped hand and nearly went down. The square erupted. Not into battle; into obstruction. A baker dropped a flour sack under one guard's boots. Two fish boys tipped a barrel. Someone's grandmother began screaming that temple men had stepped on her onions, though they had not reached her stall.
Marek raised his baton. Gold light gathered at its tip.
Amara shouted, "No miracle without consent in a civic square."
The words left her mouth with no saintess music behind them. Still, the stamped petition answered. Red lines crawled over the cobbles from the bread box to Marek's baton. The gathered gold sputtered.
Marek stared. "You have no grace."
"I have your clause."
Cael reached the rope. A guard slammed a baton against his shoulder. He kept standing. The wet linen on his right hand smoked as he looped the rope around his forearm.
"Name!" he shouted.
Amara climbed onto the fountain rim. Rain ran into her eyes. "Oriel of the Dawn, god of first light, patron of the Dawn Temple, defendant in petition for coerced miracle debt and revoked consent!"
The square fell silent enough to hear eels slap inside crates.
"Seal!" Cael called.
Amara tore open the bread box and pressed the stamped form to the bell rope. The red seal bit into the hemp.
"Cost," Cael said, and his voice broke on the word.
Before Amara could offer her hand, Lysa stepped to the rope. "I will pay."
Marek lunged. "You are temple property until debt release."
Lysa spat rainwater at his boots. "Then sue me back."
She gripped the rope below Cael's injured hand. The service chain appeared out of the air, a strand of sun-hot links wrapping her wrist and his. Lysa's jaw clenched. Cael made a sound he tried to swallow.
Together they pulled.
The market bell rang once. Its iron note rolled over stalls, roofs, temple steps, and the wet white notice nailed above it. The paper blackened from the center outward.
A circle of sunlight opened in the clouds. Not warm sunlight. Court light. Flat and pale as a mirror.
Oriel's voice did not speak. Instead, a woman's voice, cold and immense, sounded from every puddle in the square.
"Service accepted for preliminary review. Amara Vale and attached petitioner Lysa Thorne shall appear at the Mirror Hall by noon."
Marek looked up as if the sky had betrayed him.
Lysa released the rope. The service chain left a red bracelet burned into her skin. Cael's wrapping had charred through; his palm bled where the links had passed.
Amara took the dented bread box from him. "Can you walk?"
"Noon," he said, pale and furious. "I can limp to noon."
The court light narrowed into one bright shard over the fountain. In its reflection, Amara saw a hall of mirrors waiting with all its doors open.