Maskbound: The Ultimate Hunter

Dawn came gray to the Sunken Quarter, mist sliding off the canal in slow sheets that smelled of salt. Squad Nine stood in a ragged row on the old boathouse dock, staring at the door that opened overnight.

The spiral of pale ribs stayed open, its stair winding down into a golden glow that pulsed slowly.

Pipa sat on a coil of rope sketching the door, because Crown banned every lens near the Collector’s trail. Her drone slept in her lap with its red eye shut, looking almost embarrassed to be off duty today.

“Chat, the door is breathing, I am drawing a breathing door, someone please confirm this is normal,” she muttered.

Ganzo scratched his braided beard with the handle of his hammer. “Nothing about this week is normal, kid, but the door is polite about it.”

A cane tapped along the planks behind them, slow and uneven, a lens flashing in the thin light. Old Tink limped onto the dock in his scorched apron, swinging a dented lantern whose flame never flickered.

“You touched nothing, I assume,” he said.

“We touched nothing, we trusted nothing, we ate the last dumpling out of pure suspicion,” Nilo said.

“Good, suspicion is the only habit that keeps a Hunter alive past forty.”

He stopped at the edge of the dock, studying the golden spiral for a long moment without blinking. His thumb rubbed the lantern’s handle in slow circles, like a man worrying a coin carried too long.

“This lantern belonged to Maren, the lantern bearer of my old squad,” he said, “she asked me to keep it burning until somebody needed the light.”

“The flame is perfectly still,” Zinnia noted, leaning closer, her fox tufts tilting forward.

“It only moves when the water lies, I have watched it twenty years, it has twitched twice.”

Bruno raised a hand like a schoolboy in the back row. “I have many questions, beginning with why a lantern knows anything about lies.”

“Maren taught it, Steelhorn,” he said, “she was cleverer than your whole bloodline.”

His mouth opened, shut again, with his head dipping into a nod, a Steelhorn who learned when argument was pointless.

‘A lantern that twitches when the water lies. So the water can lie, and somebody has been listening to it for twenty years.’

Tink turned to Nilo at last, one clear eye as sharp as a pin through paper. His voice came out flat, which was somehow more alarming than any lecture he ever gave.

“What does a drowned hall want with a cracked jester, boy?”

“I’m still working on it, I only have the first half of the sentence,” Nilo said, shrugging.

“That hall takes something from everyone who walks through its door, then never gives the thing back.”

“I pay prices every day, I lost two colors lately and a smell for three days.”

“Those are bills, kid, this is rent, and rent is owed for as long as you live in the house.”

Tiny bells rattled inside the bandolier as Jingles pressed against the leather, shrinking like a mouse in a coat. He whispered something too faint for anyone to hear, only the word please, repeated twice, then a long silence.

Nilo laid a palm flat over the rack until the bells settled. “Nobody makes you go down, you can stay on the dock with Pipa’s pigeon pillow.”

“I would adore that, I would live for that, I am going down anyway, that is the trouble with being the trouble,” Jingles said weakly.

Cadenza sighed from the rack, “Darling, a spiral staircase into a drowned cathedral, I feel an aria building in my feathers.”

“Please do not sing… the water might sing back.”

“Young man, I shall guard your left flank, let the hall meet a knight’s stubborn company,” Clangor said stiffly.

“Water remembers,” Zilch said, “be careful.”

Ganzo clapped his hands once, sending a whole flock of gulls screaming off the boathouse roof. He split the dock into jobs with three hammer jabs, like a general with a map.

“Bruno holds the rope, Pipa holds the radio, and three of you go down together or not at all,” he rumbled.

“Three, Captain?” Zinnia asked.

“Tink knows the stairs, Nilo knows the voice, you know his face, that third job is mandatory.”

Ganzo thumped his chest, “And if the hall gets weepy, remind it the Captain says that is all water under the bridge.”

“That was your worst one this week, Captain,” she said, wincing.

“I have forty worse waiting in the wings, Quartermaster, do not tempt the pun.”

Zinnia’s cheeks warmed to the exact shade of her fox tufts, although her chin stayed high. She tugged her gloves tight, refusing to look at a single person on the whole dock.

“I remember it, page forty of my notebook, you may inspect the drawing for accuracy.”

“Page forty, I’m honored… and slightly afraid,” Nilo said.

Bruno wrapped the rope twice around his forearm and braced both feet firmly against the dock post. Pipa shouldered the radio and hung her notebook around her neck, as though paper could stop arrows.

“A Steelhorn never lets go of a rope, it is practically written in our charter,” he announced.

Pipa patted the radio, “Nobody asked you to let go, we asked you to hold.”

Tilly’s voice crackled out of the radio on Pipa’s hip, thin with static yet still unmistakable. She sat hours away in the Lower Town, yet somehow found the exact right frequency again.

“If you leave a bill unpaid down there, I charge it to the far side of the water, so bring receipts,” she said.

“I’ll bring you a receipt and a souvenir.”

“I want the receipt, I do not want the souvenir, souvenirs come with curses attached.”

“Radio check, one two, then a pigeon roll call, chat attendance,” Pipa chirped into the handset.

“Pigeon is not a frequency,” Tilly said flatly.

“Every frequency is a pigeon if you believe in it hard enough.”

Ganzo knotted the rope around Nilo’s waist himself, pulling it tight enough to lift him an inch off the planks. For a moment the loudest man in Carnavel was only a quiet captain with a hand on a boy’s shoulder.

“Come back up the same number of people, kid, that is the whole plan,” he said gruffly.

“One tug brings you up, two means you found something,” Ganzo continued, “three sends Bruno down after you.”

“What does zero tugs mean?” Bruno asked.

“It means you let go, I have a pun about it.”

“Best success rate of any plan I’ve ever heard, Captain, so count me in.”

They stepped off the dock onto the first rib of the spiral, each step ringing in the damp air. The door breathed around them, warm as a throat, with cold water curving up on both sides like glass.

“Why did you never mention the hall had a door?” Zinnia asked, her voice echoing down the curve.

“Why does a man keep a lantern burning for twenty years?” he asked.

“He’s waiting to carry it back to her,” Nilo said.

Tink’s cane stopped on the rib, “That is the first right answer anybody gave me since the Rift.”

‘He said her, not the squad. Nobody keeps a lantern lit that long for a teammate, that is a different kind of loss.’

Halfway down, the dock lights shrank to a ring of pinpricks, then to a single star. Tink’s flame burned still, a small stubborn promise held out at the end of his arm.

“Is it only me, or is the wall looking back at us?” Jingles whispered.

Drops began sliding down the curved walls in silver beads, as though the water itself was learning to cry. Each bead held a tiny reflection of Nilo’s own face, every last one of them smeared beyond all recognition.

“They all show you,” Zinnia said, tracing a bead with one gloved finger, “and not one of them is right.”

“They’re not wrong either, I just don’t have a face that holds still.”

“Stay on the ribs,” Tink called back, “the water on either side is thinner than it looks.”

“Thinner than it looks is my least favorite kind of water.”

“Mine too, so I will hold your sleeve steady until we reach the bottom.”

“A hall that shows faces will want yours most of all,” she murmured, gripping her satchel strap, “so keep the mask on until I say.”

“Bossy, I like it.”

“It is called leadership, you may take notes.”

He glanced at her sideways, forgetting every joke he owned, until Jingles whimpered and ruined it.

“You okay in there?” Nilo whispered, pressing two fingers to the bandolier.

“I am a coward in a very old coat, but I am here, that has to count for something,” Jingles murmured.

At the bottom of the stair an archway waited, its stones carved with herons wading through rippling water. Beneath the carving, worn smooth by the tides, one line of very old script ran along the lintel.

“It reads, ‘Weep as you enter, for the hall is owed,'” Tink said quietly.

Zinnia’s pencil was already moving across a fresh page. “Whoever wrote that was a very bad host.”

“What happens if we answer in our own voice?” Nilo asked.

“Then the hall keeps it,” he said, “and you spend your life talking like someone else.”

“Great, I already do that for a living, only without the part where it stays permanent.”

“Maren said the same sentence, word for word, the day she walked through.”

Tink raised the lantern toward the arch, its flame leaning into the dark for the first time in twenty years.

“It twitches… touch nothing, trust nothing, and if the hall asks you a question, do not answer in your own voice—”