Madame Celeste Gearhart set the master totem on her workbench and waited for it to breathe. It did nothing. She had carved it for three years, one groove for every restless spirit haunting Everblack. When it was finished, every ghost in the swamp would answer to her. But finished wood was still just wood. The totem lay dead under her hands. Her workshop filled the inside of a giant living tree. Gears turned in the walls. Dried herbs hung from the ceiling, and a small cauldron bubbled over her fire. Celeste leaned on her cane and studied the totem through her monocle. She knew the problem. She had known it for months and refused to say it aloud. A totem that binds many souls needs a core to carry them. A conducting core. Common stones cracked at the first spirit. She had burned through a dozen. To hold every ghost in the swamp, she needed something rare enough to channel them all at once. Nothing she owned would serve. Celeste pulled a wooden box from a high shelf. Inside lay a single seed, black and hard as iron. Years ago a dying swamp-witch had pressed it into her palm. "Only bloom in the whole bayou," the old woman had whispered. "Root it in bone. Feed it a life." Celeste had not understood then. She understood now. She planted the seed in a clay pot packed with grave-dirt and ground bone. Then she opened the cage beside her fire, where a fat marsh-toad blinked up at her. She had raised it from a tadpole. Her thumb rubbed its warm back once. "Forgive me," she said, and pressed it into the soil. The pot shuddered. A shoot climbed fast, thickening, splitting into thorns. A single bloom opened at the top, its petals sharp and shining like cut glass. Light bent through them and scattered across the walls. When Celeste touched a petal, cold ran up her arm, and every candle in the room bent toward it. The bloom pulled at the dead. It wanted to hold them. Her hands shook as she carved a hollow in the totem's chest. She set the shining bloom inside and sealed it with wax and blood. For a moment nothing moved. Then the totem grew warm. A low hum rose from the wood. Out in the dark swamp, far past her tree, something answered—a long, hollow moan, then another, then a hundred more. Celeste smiled and lowered her cane. The core worked. The totem lived. But the moaning did not stop. It grew louder, closer, circling her tree from every direction. She had called the spirits of Everblack, and they had heard her before she was ready to command them. The bloom had opened a door. Now she had to learn to hold it shut.

The moaning circled Celeste's tree and pressed against the walls. Cold seeped through the wood. The gears in her walls slowed and groaned. Frost crawled up the totem in her hands. The spirits she had called wanted the bloom inside it, and they were close enough now to take it. She needed a ward, and she needed it before the walls gave way. Her books offered nothing strong enough. She knew only one place that sold what she needed. Celeste wrapped the totem in oilcloth and pushed out into the fog. Her cane sank in the mud. She followed the black water to the market barge, its lanterns swinging under a striped canopy. Stalls crowded the deck. Behind a curtain sold the things no honest trader would name aloud. She had bought from that back stall before. A warding charm strong enough to hold the dead cost more coin than she carried. A man blocked the ramp. He wore a rice hat and a red robe stitched with gold. Captain Zhou Ming steered cargo down this river, and he had refused her passage twice before, when the Guild watched him too closely. He looked at the bundle under her arm. "You brought that here," he said. "The whole barge feels cold." "I need a ward," Celeste said. "I can't pay in coin." Zhou Ming did not move. "Then you can't buy one." Behind her, the fog thickened. A lantern shattered. Vendors grabbed their stalls as a wind with no source tore through the canopy. The spirits had followed her across the water. "They came for this," Celeste said. She unwrapped the totem. Its grooves glowed faint blue. "If it breaks here, it breaks over your barge." Zhou Ming watched a crate slide across the frosted deck. He made his choice fast. "The stall. Go." He pulled the curtain aside himself. Inside, an old woman pressed a bundle of bone and iron thread into Celeste's hands. Not coin, the woman said, but a debt. Celeste agreed. She smeared blood from her thumb across the charm and hung it on the totem's neck. The ward caught. A ring of pale light spread from the bone. The cold snapped back. The wind died. The moaning dropped to a low hum, no longer clawing, only waiting. The spirits still filled the fog, but they could not touch the bloom now. Celeste's arms shook. The ward held them off, but it did not bind them. It only bought time. Zhou Ming stood at the ramp, watching the frost melt off his deck. "Take it away from my river," he said. "And whatever you owe that stall, pay it before the locks close." Celeste tightened the oilcloth. The charm would fade. She still had to learn to command what she had called, or the next surge would tear through wood and bone alike.

The ward on the totem held, but Celeste felt it thinning already. The spirits waited in the fog, patient as flies. A charm could not command them. Only a rare conducting core could bind the dead to her totem. She had read of such cores in her oldest books. All of them named one place where broken machines went to rust. She wrapped the totem tight and turned her cane toward the salvage yard. Fog softened the heaps of rusted metal. Twisted pipes and dead gears rose in stacks taller than her tree. Celeste picked through a tangle of brass fittings and worn parts. Her fingers found nothing that hummed with power. The core she needed was a machine's heart, and this yard had swallowed a thousand such hearts. She dug until her back ached and her monocle fogged. "You'll cut yourself doing that." A boy climbed down from a scrap pile. Goggles covered his eyes, and one arm ended in a wrench instead of a hand. A gear turned slow in his leg as he walked. He owned this place. His dead parents had left it to him, and he knew every rusted bolt in it. "I need a conducting core," Celeste said. "Gears that cradle a crystal. It channels power." Gideon studied the bundle under her arm. "That thing is cold. It's making the fog worse." He did not step back. Instead he tilted his head, curious. "I've got one core like you're saying. Found it in my father's workshop. I never got it to run." "Show me," Celeste said. He led her to a bench under a leaning roof. From a locked box he lifted the core. Brass gears interlocked around a crystal that glowed blue-green even in the fog. Celeste's breath caught. This was it. This was the heart her totem lacked. "What do you want for it?" she asked. Gideon's wrench-arm twitched. "It was my father's. I don't sell his things." Then the fog around them dropped colder. The spirits had found her again. Frost crept up the bench legs. The boy's goggles fogged white, and he stumbled back. "They follow you." "They want what's inside my totem," Celeste said. "If I bind them, they leave. This core is the only way." Gideon looked at the frost climbing his walls. He looked at the core in his hands. He was alone here, and the cold was reaching for him too. He pressed the core into her palm. "Take it. But you fix my river of ghosts. Not just yours." Celeste closed her fingers around the warm crystal. She pried the spent bloom from the totem and seated the core in its socket. The gears bit down. The bloom's light flared, no longer wild but steady, channeled at last. The moaning in the fog changed pitch. For the first time, the dead turned toward her and waited to be told.

The dead waited for her word. Celeste carried the totem home to her cottage inside the old bayou tree. Gears turned in its walls. Dried herbs and glass bottles crowded the shelves. She set the totem on her workbench and drew a slow breath. The spirits obeyed now, but only barely. They were raw, freshly bound, like unbroken horses. One clumsy command could snap her hold and free them all. She would test them with something small. A single task, simple and clear. If they could do it, she could trust them with more. If they failed, she would learn the limit before it killed her. Celeste needed a messenger. She gripped her cane and hobbled to the door. On a branch outside perched her crow, its black feathers plated in brass. Tiny gears turned at its shoulder. A ring of glass glowed in one eye. The bird had served her for years, silent and faithful. It hopped closer when she whistled. "You'll carry my will," she told it. "They'll ride inside you." She held the totem toward the crow and spoke one word to the spirits. Not a hard command. Just this: lift the bird. Guide its wings. The fog stirred. Cold poured from the totem. The crow's wings snapped open on their own. Its feet left the branch. For a moment it hung in the air, steady, guided by hands it could not see. Celeste's heart lifted with it. Then the spirits pushed too hard. The crow jerked sideways. Its brass wing struck the trunk. Gears screeched. The bird tumbled and beat the air in panic. Celeste felt her grip on the dead start to tear, like cloth pulling loose. She did not shout. A shout would break everything. She lowered the totem slow and pulled the cold back into it, word by word. "Enough," she breathed. "Set it down. Gently." The spirits eased. The crow dropped the last foot and landed hard on the dirt. It shook itself, feathers ruffled, one gear ticking wrong. But it lived. And the dead had not escaped. Celeste sat down on her step. Her hands trembled around the cane. She understood now. The spirits could not hold a shape or steer a body. They were too green for that. But they had answered a simple call, and they had let her rein them back. That was the truth she needed. She would not command them by voice alone. Voice was too blunt. She needed a finer tool, something that could split one order into many small ones the raw dead could follow. A master totem strong enough to hold every spirit in Everblack could not run on a single core and a shouted word. Celeste looked at the totem, then at the wounded crow. Her binding held, but it was thin as thread. To carry the whole restless dead, she would need far more than she had. She rose, gripped her cane, and went inside to plan.

Celeste had planned all night at her workbench. The answer was clear. Her totem needed a channeling material, something fine enough to split one word into many. But she had never worked such a stuff. Guess wrong, and the raw material could shatter her hold on the dead. She would not risk that on scraps from her own shelves. She needed the real thing, and only one place sold it. She took her cane and rode the passage out to the floating market. The barge rocked under lantern light. She found the cursed stall crammed at the back, its awning stained, its jars packed with bundled charms and grimy roots. She had bought her warding charm from a merchant here once, on credit. This time she wanted something rarer. A boot thumped the deck behind her. Celeste turned. A young woman leaned against the stall post, one leg carved of wood, a curved sword at her hip. A patch covered one eye. The other eye studied Celeste like a coin she meant to bite. "Voodoo work," the pirate said. She nodded at the totem strapped to Celeste's back. "That thing pulls the dead. I felt it from my deck." She smiled. "I trade in things nobody else will touch." "Then you have a channeling stone," Celeste said. "Fine-grained. Spirit-clean." The pirate reached under the stall and drew out a bundle. She unwrapped a small gray shard, dull as ash. "Ghost-silver," she said. "Cut from a drowned bell. It splits a spirit's voice into whispers. But it cracks if you feed it wrong. Most fools cut their own tongues out trying." Celeste took the shard. It was cold and light. She had read of such stone but never held one. One clumsy binding could burst it and free every spirit chained to her totem. Her hands were steady. Her doubt was not. "The price," Celeste said. "You already owe this barge," the pirate said. "So no coin. You owe me a favor instead. A big one. When I call, you answer." She held out her hand. "Deal, or walk." Celeste looked at the shard, then at the totem. She thought of the crow tumbling into the dirt. Voice alone would never hold the dead of Everblack. This stone might. She pressed her palm to the pirate's. "Deal." Back in her cottage, Celeste set the totem on the bench and eased the shard toward its core. The spirits stirred. Cold breathed out. She spoke one soft word and let the ghost-silver take it. The word broke apart into a dozen thin threads. Each thread reached a different spirit. They held. No surge. No tearing. For the first time, her command spread clean and quiet. Celeste sat back. The shard had not cracked. Her control was finer now, sharper than voice alone. But she had bound herself to a stranger's favor, and she did not know what that pirate would one day ask.

The ghost-silver held the spirits quiet for three days. On the fourth, a crow tapped Celeste's window with a scrap of red cloth in its beak. She knew the color at once. The pirate had marked her stall with red. Now the debt had come due, and she would answer or lose the stone that steadied everything. Celeste took her cane and rode the passage to the floating market. She found the pirate queen behind her stall, one boot propped on a crate, sharpening her curved sword against a whetstone. A patch covered one eye. Earrings swung as she worked. She did not look up. "You felt my call," Mei-Ling Chen said. "Good. I hate chasing debts across a river." "Name the favor," Celeste said. Mei-Ling set the sword down. "A rival captain took cargo of mine. He keeps it in a fog-bound hold across the water. My men won't go near it. They say the dead walk his deck." She smiled. "You pull the dead. So pull them off my cargo." Celeste's grip tightened on the cane. Using the totem here, far from her workbench, was the risk she feared most. One clumsy command and the spirits could tear loose. But the ghost-silver was already inside the totem. Refuse, and the pirate would take it back. "I'll need to stand close," Celeste said. "And you'll not touch me while I work." Mei-Ling led her by skiff across the black water. Mist swallowed the lanterns. The rival's deck sat low and silent, its cargo stacked under a torn tarp. Pale shapes drifted along the rail. Cold rolled off them. Celeste unstrapped the totem and set it on the boards. She spoke one soft word. The ghost-silver caught it and split it into thin threads, each thread reaching a single drifting shape. The spirits turned toward her. For a moment they strained, hungry, and her arm shook with the pull. Then the threads held. The shapes bent low and slid away from the cargo, out over the water, gone. Mei-Ling stared at the empty deck. "I've hired witches before. None cleared a hold in one breath." She hauled the tarp back and counted her crates. Then she looked at Celeste with a new, sharper eye. "That totem is worth more than any favor." "The debt is paid," Celeste said. "Paid," Mei-Ling agreed. She wrapped her fingers around the sword hilt, not to draw it, only to hold it. "But now I know what you can do. And I know men who would pay a fortune to own the woman who does it." Celeste strapped the totem to her back. She had kept the ghost-silver. Her control had held far from home, and that was proof her arc could still climb. But the pirate no longer saw a debtor. She saw a weapon worth stealing, and Celeste had shown her its full edge.

The skiff dropped Celeste at her landing, but she felt no relief. Mei-Ling wanted the totem now. And the totem lived on her workbench inside her tree-grown cottage, the great candle-crowded table where she carved and bound the dead. If the pirate sent her crew while Celeste slept, they would take it all. She could not guard the bench and still eat, still rest, still breathe. She needed eyes she could trust. She climbed the gear-wrapped roots and pushed inside. Candles flickered over the scattered bones and the spell chalked across the worn table. The totem sat at the center, its ghost-silver dull in the dark. She lit no lamp. She thought instead of the boy who owed her nothing and yet trusted her, the one whose ghosts she had banished. At dawn she sent her clockwork crow across the water. Brass wings beat, gears ticking under black feathers. It returned with Gideon riding a salvage barge behind it. He clanked up the roots, wrench-arm swinging, goggles glowing blue. He stopped when he saw her face. "Your bird looked scared," he said. "Birds don't get scared. So you're scared." "A pirate wants my totem," Celeste said. "Her crew will come for it. I cannot watch this table every hour." Gideon walked to the bench. He touched the ghost-silver with one metal finger, careful, the way he touched broken engines. "You want a lock," he said. "A real one. Not a charm." "I want a trap." He grinned. The gear in his leg clicked as he crouched under the table. "I built worse in the yard. Give me the day." They worked until the candles burned low. Gideon fitted a cradle of brass around the totem, bolted to the table's heart. He wired it to the cottage pipes, to the crow's perch, to a bell. If anyone lifted the totem free, the bell would shriek and the crow would fly straight to Celeste, wherever she stood. She added her own work. She fed a warding thread into the cradle so the spirits inside the totem would bite any hand but hers. They tested it near midnight. Gideon reached for the totem. The bell screamed. Cold light flared and snapped at his wrench-arm. He yanked back, laughing. "Works," he said, shaking sparks off his fingers. Celeste rested her cane against the table. The workbench was no longer bait left open. It was a jaw waiting to close. The pirate could send her crew now. They would find the totem chained, guarded, and hungry. But Gideon frowned as he packed his tools. "A trap holds thieves," he said. "It won't hold Mei-Ling. She won't send crew. She'll come herself, and she'll make you carry it out on your own two feet." Celeste looked at the crow on its perch. She had bought time again, not safety. The pirate would not steal the totem. She would take the woman who made it.

The bell screamed at dusk. Celeste dropped her pestle and spun toward the workbench. Her clockwork crow beat its brass wings and shrieked with it. Someone had touched the totem. But no crew came. The alarm meant only one thing, and Gideon had warned her of it. Mei-Ling had come herself. The cottage door swung open before Celeste reached her cane. Mei-Ling ducked under the low frame, peg leg thudding on the root-grown floor. Earrings caught the candlelight. Her one eye swept the table, the bones, the dull ghost-silver in its brass cradle. She had sold Celeste that stone. Now she smiled like a woman collecting more than a debt. "You built a fence around my prize," Mei-Ling said. She rested one hand on her sword. "Clever. But I don't need to carry it out. You'll carry it for me." Celeste gripped her cane and did not step back. "You owe me nothing. I owe you. So take the favor you're owed and leave the totem." "The totem is the favor." Mei-Ling drew the blade an inch. "Free it from your little trap. Walk it to my boat. Or I gut you and pry it loose myself." Celeste's mind raced over the wiring beneath the table. The trap bit any hand but hers. Mei-Ling knew that. She would force Celeste to disarm it first. So Celeste bought a breath. She limped to the bench and laid both hands on the cradle, as if to unbolt it. Instead she pressed her palm flat to the ghost-silver and spoke a binding word. The stone woke cold under her fingers. She did not lift the totem. She reached through it. The spirits inside stirred, and she flung her will outward, toward the water, toward the pirate's moored boat. Mei-Ling frowned. "What are you—" A groan rolled up from the landing. Wood cracked. The spirits Celeste commanded seized the pirate's boat and tore it apart at the seams. Boards splintered. Rope snapped. The hull sank into the black river with a long, wet sigh. Mei-Ling wheeled toward the sound, sword high. When she turned back, Celeste stood ready, the crow perched on her shoulder, cold light crawling over her hand. "I channel the dead across the water," Celeste said. "I just proved it on your boat. Come closer, and I do it to your bones." For the first time, the pirate's smile broke. She measured the witch, the stone, the ruined boat. Then she backed to the door. "You've made an enemy who doesn't forgive," she said. "I'll come again with more than a sword." "Swim home first," Celeste said. Mei-Ling vanished into the fog. Celeste sagged against the table, heart pounding. She had kept the totem. But she had spent her secret. Now Mei-Ling knew exactly what the totem could do, and she would return prepared to take it whole.

Three days after Mei-Ling swam home, Celeste tested the limit she feared most. She stood at her workbench and pressed both hands to the ghost-silver. She reached out through the totem and called every restless spirit in Everblack at once. They came. The candle guttered. The crow shrieked. But the single core in the totem could not feed them all. Halfway through the binding, the pull went weak. Spirits slipped her grip and scattered back into the fog. The stone cooled. Celeste sagged against the table, breathing hard. One core split her commands well. It could never power the whole swamp. She needed a second source of power, and she knew where sap ran green with poison. Celeste took her cane and her cutting knife and limped out into the marsh. She followed the black water until the tree loomed above her. Its trunk twisted like rope. Its canopy hung heavy with poison-green caps that dripped slow onto the roots. Steam-bugs died at its base. Old bones lay tangled in its roots. This tree drank the dead, and the dead answered it. Its sap could hold spirits the way her core did. Celeste cut into the dark bark. Green sap welled up and ran down the blade. She caught it in a clay jar. A cap shifted overhead. A low hum rose from the roots, like many voices at once. The spirits already tangled here did not want to be tapped. A root lashed loose from the mud and coiled toward her ankle. Celeste struck it with her cane and pulled back. She kept cutting. She filled the jar and sealed it before the tree could take her too. Back at the cottage, she worked through the night. She hollowed a channel beside the core and poured the poison sap into it. She fed a thread of ghost-silver through both. Then she pressed her hands to the totem and called again. The sap woke cold and hungry. It pulled with the core, not against it. Twice the power now flowed through her hands. Spirits poured in from every corner of Everblack, and this time none slipped free. She held them. All of them. The crow went silent on her shoulder. The whole swamp bent to her will at once. Celeste lifted her hands, shaking, and the totem still held its charge. She had solved it. One core and one poison well, joined, could bind the dead across all of Everblack. The master totem was nearly whole. But the sap did not sleep. It kept pulling after she let go. It fed on the spirits she'd bound and wanted more. Celeste watched the ghost-silver glow long after her command should have ended. She had built a totem strong enough to hold Everblack. Now she had to learn to hold the totem.

The sap still glowed when Celeste woke. It fed on the bound spirits without her hand on the stone. She pressed the totem cold at last, but the danger stayed. Mei-Ling had promised to return prepared. Celeste knew the pirate would strike the totem's weakness, and now the totem had two. If Mei-Ling forced the sap to run wild, it would drain her spirits faster than she could hold them. Celeste needed a way to shut the sap off on command. She could not build it alone. She limped through the fog to the salvage yard. Rusted machines loomed in the gray light. Gideon met her between two shelves of pipe and gauges, wrench-arm swinging as he sorted scrap. He did not smile. "You built the trap. Now you're back," he said. "That means it went wrong." "The totem holds too much," Celeste said. "The poison keeps feeding after I let go. If my enemy jams it open, it eats everything I've bound." Gideon set down a gauge and looked at her a long moment. He had given her his father's core once, and helped wall her totem in brass. He owed her nothing more, and they both knew it. "I can build a valve," he said. "A cut-off. But I don't have the venom to seal it against the sap." A voice answered from the shelf above. "Venom I have." A platypus stepped into view along the rusted rack. He wore a top hat and a wide steampunk belt lined with glass vials. His beaver tail dragged behind him. This was the poison-seller who worked the marsh, Percival Venomsworth, a trader Celeste had bought from before but never trusted. He tipped his hat. "My saliva stops many hungry things," he said. "For a price, madame." "Name it," Celeste said. Percival's flat eyes gleamed. "A vial of your sap. I have plans of my own for what feeds on the dead." Celeste did not like the thought of that duck-billed inventor holding her poison. But Mei-Ling was coming, and she had no time to bargain further. She gave him a sealed jar. He gave her a vial of thick venom. They worked all afternoon. Gideon shaped a brass valve to fit the sap channel. Celeste coated the seal with the venom until it hardened black. She fitted the valve beside the core and pressed her hands to the totem. She called the spirits, held them, then twisted the valve shut. The sap stopped pulling. The stone cooled at her word. The hunger obeyed. Celeste breathed out. She could bind Everblack now and cut the poison off before it turned on her. The master totem was almost whole and finally safe in her grip. But Percival tucked her sap into his belt and walked into the fog without another word. She had armed herself against Mei-Ling, and handed a stranger the seed of her own weapon.

Three days after Percival vanished into the fog, a crow dropped a scrap of oilcloth on Celeste's workbench. She unrolled it beside the cauldron. The words were burned into the cloth with a hot iron. "Prove the totem still answers only to you. Come to the market barge. Bring it." No name. None was needed. Celeste knew the pirate she owed. That one had sold her the ghost-silver on credit, and now the debt had teeth. The message meant the pirate had watched her sink Mei-Ling's boat. Anyone who could do that was a weapon worth testing, or worth stealing. Celeste weighed the choice by the fire. Refuse, and she broke a debt no witch survived breaking. Obey, and she carried her totem out where a rival could grab it. She looked at the taxidermy platypus on the mantle and thought of Percival's flat eyes. She wrapped the totem in oilcloth, took her cane, and went. Captain Zhou Ming stood at the barge rail when she reached the water. Forty years on the river had carved his face. He had barred her from these decks once, then relented only when her spirits threatened his cargo. He did not smile now either. "You bring trouble aboard again," he said. "The Guild watches my locks. I cannot host a fight." "No fight," Celeste said. "A test. Then I'm gone." Zhou Ming studied the bundle under her arm. "One test," he said. "Then off my deck." He stepped aside. The pirate waited beneath the hanging lanterns. She was young, one eye covered by a patch, a sword at her hip, a peg for one leg. Earrings caught the lantern light when she turned. This was Akiko Stormsail, who had bound Celeste with a loan and never once named her price. She smiled like the debt already belonged to her. "Show me it obeys you," Akiko said. "Only you. Or I take it as payment now." Celeste set the totem on a crate. Crewmen crowded close. She pressed her hands to the stone and called the spirits she held. The ghost-silver hummed. She sent them up into the lantern ropes and made every flame gutter at once, then snap bright on her word. Cold wind swept the deck. The crew stumbled back. Akiko did not move. Celeste twisted the valve shut. The stone cooled. The spirits went still, hers alone. Akiko's smile faded to something harder. "It answers you," she said. "So it would answer me, if you were gone." She had come to prove the totem loyal, and Celeste had proven it too well. "The debt still stands. I'll call it when I choose." She turned and limped down the deck. Celeste gathered the totem. She had passed the test and kept her weapon. But Akiko no longer wanted a debtor. She wanted the witch dead and the totem hers.

Two nights after the market barge, the wards on Celeste's door began to hum. She rose from her workbench inside the tree-cottage. Gears ticked along the walls. She limped to the shutters on her cane and looked out at the fog. Nothing showed. But the charms on her frame did not lie. Someone was crossing the water toward her, and no ward she owned could stop a knife once the wielder stood close. Celeste knew the visitor. Akiko Stormsail wanted her dead. The pirate had seen the totem answer only its maker. Now she meant to make Celeste the corpse and the totem the prize. Warding charms turned back spirits, not steel. Celeste had built her whole defense against the dead. Against a living pirate with a sword, she had nothing. So she stopped trying to keep Akiko out. She set a trap instead. On the shelf near the door sat her carnivorous bloom, its brass jaws folded shut, its stems coiled quiet. Celeste fed it a drop of sap poison and whispered a command into the totem. She sent two spirits into the plant's metal joints. Then she snuffed the candles and sat in the dark beside her cauldron, hands on the stone. The door opened without a knock. Akiko stepped through, sword drawn, one eye bright under her hat. She moved fast for a woman with a peg leg. "You should have stayed on the barge, witch," she said. "Debts don't die. But you can." "Come take it, then," Celeste said. She did not rise. Akiko crossed the floor toward the totem on the bench. She passed the shelf. Celeste opened the valve. The spirits surged into the bloom. Its brass jaws snapped wide and its stems whipped out, seizing Akiko's sword arm and pinning it to the wall. The pirate cried out. She hacked at the stems with her free hand. The metal joints held. Sap poison dripped from the jaws onto her sleeve and ate through the cloth. "I don't want you dead," Celeste said. She stood and leaned on her cane. "I want you gone. Drop the blade." Akiko's fingers opened. The sword hit the boards. The bloom held her fast, jaws inches from her throat. She stopped fighting. Her one eye fixed on Celeste with a new kind of respect, and a colder hate. "Tell every pirate on this river," Celeste said. "The witch's house bites." She twisted the valve. The stems loosened. Akiko tore free, snatched her sword, and backed to the door, blood on her sleeve. "You've made an enemy of the whole fleet now," Akiko said. Then she was gone into the fog. Celeste barred the door. She had survived the knife. But she had traded one hunter for many. The fleet would come, and no single trap could stop a crew. To finish the master totem before they did, she needed more spirits bound, and faster.

The morning after Akiko fled, Celeste stood at her workbench and counted the risk. The fleet would come soon. She needed every restless spirit in Everblack bound to her totem. But the totem could hold only so many. She had felt it strain the last time she pushed it. Bind too many spirits at once, and the whole thing would crack before the pirates ever arrived. She had power. She did not have room. She set her hands on the totem and reached out. Cold pressure filled the cottage. Spirits poured toward the core, drawn like iron to a magnet. The gears on the walls rattled. The candle flames bent flat. Celeste pulled in a dozen, then a dozen more. The totem grew hot under her palms. Something inside it hummed too high, a strained metal whine. She stopped. Her breath came short. The totem was near full, and the fleet had a hundred dead men she had not yet claimed. A knock came at the door. Not spirits this time. Something heavier, and a scrape of claws on wood. Celeste lifted the bar and opened it. Percival Venomsworth stood on her threshold. The platypus barely reached her knee, but he tipped his brass top hat like a lord. A row of colored vials glinted along his belt. He was the one who had traded her the venom to seal her totem's valve. In return she had handed him a vial of her own sap poison. She had regretted that trade since. "You look tired, Madame," Percival said. His duck bill clicked. "You've been feeding it too fast. I can smell the strain from the water." "Say what you came to say." He waddled inside without asking. From his belt he drew a small brass drum wound with copper. "A reservoir," he said. "You bind the spirits into this first. Then feed them to the totem slow, a few at a time. The core never overloads. You hold ten times as many." His flat tail swept the floor as he set it on the bench. "I built it after our last deal. I do so love a dark little contraption." Celeste eyed him. "And your price?" "Another vial of your sap. You have plenty." His black eyes were bright and unblinking. She knew she was arming him again. She had no time to refuse. She filled a vial and set it in his waiting paw. Celeste fixed the reservoir beside the core. She reached out once more. This time the spirits flowed into the drum, not the totem. The whine was gone. The brass held them, patient and cold. She could gather a hundred now, and feed them across the coming days. The overload was solved. Percival tucked her poison into his belt and tipped his hat. "Until the next deal," he said, and waddled into the fog. Celeste watched him go, holding a weapon that was hers.

The reservoir solved one problem and revealed another. Celeste could hold a hundred spirits now. But the dead she needed were not close. They lingered in the far reaches of Everblack—drowned men in the swamp lake, bones under old wrecks, ghosts pinned to graves miles across the fog. Her totem pulled only what came near. She had no way to reach the rest before the fleet arrived. She stood in her cottage, deep inside the living bayou tree, and stared at the reservoir. Gears turned slow on the walls. Time was turning faster. She needed a hand that could go where she could not. Celeste crossed to the workbench and lifted a cloth. Under it sat her mechanical crow. Brass plates lined its dark wings. Tiny gears clicked in its neck. One glass eye glowed green. She had built it years ago and tested it once with borrowed spirits. They had steered it too hard and nearly snapped its wings. She had not trusted it since. Now she had no choice. Celeste set the crow beside the totem. She threaded a strand of ghost-silver wire from the totem's core into the crow's chest. The green eye brightened. She spoke low. "You carry my reach. You do not fly free." She fed three spirits from the reservoir into the wire, not the crow's whole body—only its wings and eye. The bird jerked. Its beak snapped once. Then it settled. Celeste raised two fingers. The crow lifted from the bench, hovered, and turned toward the window. It obeyed. The finesse she'd added to the totem held the spirits steady inside it. She sent it out through the round window into the fog. Through the ghost-silver she felt what it felt. She saw the swamp lake below, gray and still. She guided the crow down to a sunken wreck. Cold pressure rose from the water—dead men, bound to the hull for decades. Celeste reached through the crow and the totem together. The reservoir drank them in, one after another, patient and full. No strain. No overload. All day the crow flew Everblack's far reaches. It found graves in the marsh. It found bones under fallen trees. Each time, Celeste pulled the spirits home into the brass drum. By dusk the reservoir hummed heavy and cold. She had gathered more dead in one day than in the past month. The crow returned and landed on the bench. Its wings folded. The green eye dimmed as she drew the spirits back out of it. Celeste set her hand on the warm brass drum. It was nearly full. She had solved the distance. She had reached the scattered dead at last. But a full reservoir was a rich prize. If the fleet took her cottage, they would not just take a totem now. They would take an army of the dead, ready to be bound. The race had changed. She had to finish before they came.

The reservoir hummed heavy and cold on the bench. Celeste pressed her palm to the brass drum and felt the dead crowd inside it. A hundred spirits, bound and ready. But the fleet was near. She had heard their engines on the water at dawn. If they landed and took her cottage, they would take the drum too, and an army with it. She could not fight them. She could not run with it strapped to her back. She had to hide the prize where no pirate would think to look. She stood at the round window and stared at the swamp. Below spread a vast lake dotted with broad green leaves, each pad wide as a boat. The water beneath them was black and deep. No man searched under a lily pad. No pirate dove into swamp mud for treasure. The lake would swallow the drum and give it back only to her. But spirits could not sit loose in cold water. They would scatter the moment they left the brass. Celeste crossed to the totem. The resin flower glowed in its chest. The silver rock gleamed in its belly. The coiled vial along its side pulsed with light. She turned the valve at its base and opened the totem to the reservoir. "Take them," she said. "Hold them. Sleep." The drum shuddered. Spirit by spirit, the dead poured from the reservoir into the totem. The vial along the totem's side brightened until it burned like a lantern. The gears at its base clicked faster. Celeste watched the sap and core drink the whole army down. The finesse she had built held them steady. No surge. No overload. When the drum fell silent and empty, the totem stood swollen with power, hot to the touch. Now only the totem mattered. One thing to hide, not two. Celeste wrapped it in oilcloth and bound it with rope. She carried it down through the tree's hollow roots to the water's edge. She waded to the nearest floating leaf and lowered the bundle beneath it, letting the black water pull it down. Ghost-silver wire trailed up from the mud to her hand, thin and cold. Through it she still felt the totem below. It answered her from under the lake. She climbed back into the tree as the engines grew loud. Bootsteps thudded on her dock. Fists struck the door. Voices called her out. Celeste sat by the empty bench and folded her hands. Let them search. They would find a cottage, a workbench, a witch with nothing. The prize lay drowned under a green leaf, still bound to her, still hers. But the totem now held every spirit at once. The reservoir had spread the load. The totem held it all alone. She had hidden the army. She had also strained the vessel that carried it, and she could not test it now, buried under black water, with pirates at her door.

The pirates left before noon. Celeste heard their boots pound down her dock and their engines pull away across the water. She stayed still until the sound faded. Then she gripped the ghost-silver wire in her fist. It ran from her hand, through the tree's roots, down into the black lake. Below, under a lily pad, her totem held a hundred spirits alone. She had crammed them all into one vessel and never tested it. Now the cottage was hers again. Now she had to learn if it would hold. She waded into the shallows and pulled the wire hand over hand. The totem rose from the mud, wrapped in oilcloth, dripping. She cut the rope and peeled the cloth back. The resin flower still glowed in its chest. But the coiled vial along its side pulsed too fast, brightening and dimming like a heart under strain. The silver rock in its belly ticked. The whole totem trembled in her hands. The dead pushed against their cage, and the cage was bending. Celeste carried it up into the workshop and set it on the bench. She turned the valve half a notch, easing the sap's pull on the crowded spirits. The trembling slowed. She spoke low. "Sleep. Stay bound. Answer only me." The vial steadied. The ticking evened out. It was holding. The totem now carried her whole army in one body, and it obeyed. A shadow fell across the round window. Celeste turned. A peg leg thumped on her dock. Mei-Ling Chen stepped through the open door, one eye sharp under her captain's hat, her sword still sheathed. Celeste had destroyed her boat as a warning once. Mei-Ling had promised to return knowing exactly what the totem could do. Now she stood in the workshop and looked at the glowing thing on the bench with a slow, hungry smile. "So the pirates missed it," Mei-Ling said. "They dug in your mud and found nothing. But I know you, witch. You never leave your prize far from your hand." Celeste set her palm flat on the totem's head. "You saw what one command did to your boat. This holds a hundred spirits now. One word from me and they tear through this room." She was not certain the strained vessel could survive that. She said it anyway, and kept her hand steady. Mei-Ling studied the fast-pulsing vial. She had learned to read the totem too well. "It's overfull," she said. "You've bound too many. It's close to breaking. I don't need to fight you. I only need to wait until it bursts, and then I collect what spills out." She stepped back onto the dock and settled against the rail, patient. "I'll be watching the lake, Celeste. Every hour it strains, you weaken. And I have all the time you don't."

Mei-Ling settled against the dock rail to wait, and Celeste turned back to the bench. The totem still trembled under her palm. The valve held for now, but the coiled vial pulsed too fast. A hundred spirits pressed against one wall. Waiting would not save her. She had to bleed some off before the vessel split. She needed a place to send them, a body to carry them out of the totem and away. Celeste pulled a fresh block of carved wood from her shelf. It was small, unfinished, only a rough head and shoulders. She had meant it for a lesser charm. Now it would be a drain. She pressed it against the totem's side and turned the valve one careful notch open. The sap surged. Spirits poured from the master vessel into the smaller wood. The block warmed in her hand. The totem's shaking eased. She had emptied perhaps a third. But the little wood was never built to hold this. It cracked down the center. Green light leaked from the split, and the light took a shape. A hooded figure rose from the bench, skull-faced, its eyes burning green, bone beads clacking at its throat. A second form followed, this one a drifting purple flame with white eyes and a ragged feathered cloak. They were not her bound dead anymore. They had slipped the leash in the transfer. "You crammed us in the dark," the skull-faced one said. Its voice scraped like a rusted hinge. "We are Baron Shadowveil. We do not sleep at a witch's word." "And we do not go back," hissed the purple flame. "Baron Nightshade remembers the crush of that vessel." Celeste did not flinch. She lifted the master totem in both hands and aimed the resin flower at them. "You slipped one cage. You will not slip this one." She turned the valve wide and spoke the command hard and low. "Answer only me. Return." The two spirits fought. The skull-face lunged for her throat. The flame swelled toward the window and the waiting captain beyond. But the sap caught them both. The vial along the totem's side flared white. Green and purple light bent back, dragged across the room, and streamed into the resin flower. The two Barons screamed and folded inward. The totem swallowed them whole. Celeste shut the valve. The trembling stopped. The vial pulsed slow and steady now, no longer straining. She had bled off the overload, then pulled the escapees back before they reached the dock. The vessel would hold. Through the round window, Mei-Ling straightened at the rail. She had seen the green light, the struggle, the calm that followed. Her patient smile was gone. The totem was not going to burst on its own. The captain touched her sword hilt and stepped down off the dock, toward the water and her waiting crew.

Celeste watched the captain vanish down the water path toward her crew. The totem sat quiet on the bench now, its coiled vial pulsing slow. But quiet was not the same as safe. The two Barons she had dragged back obeyed only because the sap forced them. Force wore thin. She had felt it wear thin already, back when the skull-face lunged for her throat. When the pirates came in numbers, she would need every spirit inside to fight without a leash yanking their necks. A slave army breaks the moment the master looks away. She unstopped the totem's resin flower and called the two Barons out into the open air of the cottage. Green light poured from the flower and took its skull-faced shape. The hooded figure rose, bone beads clacking, eyes burning. Beside it swelled the purple flame of the other. Baron Shadowveil turned its burning eyes on her cane, on her monocle, on the geared totem at her feet. "You call us out to cage us again," Shadowveil scraped. "We will not carry your war." Celeste did not raise the totem. She set it down instead, flower pointed at the floor. "No cage. Look around this room." She swept her cane toward the shelf of jarred bugs, the potions, the carved lesser totems watching from their perch. "Pirates come to take all of it. They will melt you down for scrap silver. I have fought them alone for weeks." The purple flame narrowed its white eyes. "Their grudge is with the witch, not with us." "Their grudge becomes yours the moment they own this totem." Celeste leaned on her cane and met the burning gaze. "I am not asking you to serve. I am offering you their crew. Fight for me and take your fill of the dead I cannot reach. When the pirates fall, you feed." Shadowveil drifted closer. The bone beads swung. "A witch bargains where she once commanded." "A witch learns." She held out one dark hand. "Your word, Baron. Not the sap's grip. Your own." The skull-face studied her open palm for a long moment. Then it clasped her wrist. Cold shot up her arm like river water. "We accept," Shadowveil said. "For blood, not for chains." The purple flame dipped its feathered cloak in agreement. Celeste guided them back into the resin flower. This time they went willingly, curling in without a scream. The vial glowed steady. She stoppered it and set her hand flat on the totem's carved chest. Under her palm, for the first time, the two proud spirits sat still by choice. She had bent them without breaking them. But a bargain sealed in blood carried a price she had not yet been asked to pay. And down the water, the captain was already gathering her fleet to strike.

The totem sat quiet, but Celeste felt the Barons stir beneath her palm. The blood bargain held. It would not hold on faith. She had promised the two spirits the dead of her enemies, and now they wanted their meal. Green light leaked from the resin flower without her call. The skull-face pressed its face to the glass. "You swore blood," Baron Shadowveil scraped through the vial. "We hunger. Feed us, or the pact rots." She had no fresh corpses. The pirates still lived down the water. If she starved the Barons, they would slip her leash when she needed them most. Celeste stood and gripped her cane. She could not conjure the dead from air. But she could hunt them to her door. She carried the totem to the workshop bench, beneath the gears wrapping her tree-grown walls. Then she opened the shutters and worked her mechanical crow loose from its perch. She sent it out over the swamp with one command: find the fleet, and lead them here. Mei-Ling Chen came before dark. She limped up the water path on her carved peg leg, sword already drawn, dreads swinging under her red hat. Two dozen pirates crowded the bank behind her. She stopped at the cottage door and smiled at Celeste through the window. "You called us in yourself, witch. That saves me a knock." She had waited weeks for the totem to burst. Now she meant to take it with steel. "Come inside, then," Celeste said. She backed toward the bench and set her hand on the totem. Mei-Ling kicked the door wide and stepped through. Her crew pushed after her, filling the small room, blades up. Celeste twisted the totem's valve and unstopped the flower. The Barons poured out. The skull-face swelled to the ceiling, bone beads clacking. The purple flame spread its feathered cloak across the doorway. This time no sap chain yanked their necks. They came free, by their own word, and they were hungry. Shadowveil fell on the nearest pirate before the man could swing. The purple flame swallowed two more. Screaming filled the cottage. Mei-Ling slashed at the skull-face and her sword passed through smoke. She understood then. She turned and shoved her own crew toward the door, but the Barons were faster. Celeste watched from the bench, one hand steady on the wood, feeding no command, only holding the door of the flower open. When the room went still, six pirates lay dead. The Barons drank their spirits down and slid back into the flower, sated, quiet, loyal. Mei-Ling had fled to the bank with what crew remained. Celeste stoppered the vial. The bargain was paid. The Barons served her by choice now, fed on real blood. But she had spent six lives to feed two spirits. To bind every restless dead in Everblack, the master totem would demand a slaughter she was only beginning to count.

Dawn came, and with it the smell. Celeste opened her shutters and gagged. Six pirate corpses lay on her dock where the Barons had dropped them. The heat had already started its work. Flies hung thick above the bodies. She leaned on her cane and studied the mess. The Barons had drunk the spirits, but the flesh remained. Rot would draw swamp scavengers by nightfall, and scavengers drew worse. Anyone hunting her would smell the killing from the water. She could not bury six men alone before dark. She had one mouth already fed and always hungry. In a wide clay pot beside the bench grew her carnivorous bloom. Its fanged petals hung open above a nest of thick, twisting stems. She had raised it on poison and spirits, and it had swallowed a pirate captain whole once. Since then it had eaten only marsh rats. Now it turned its huge bloom toward the dock, sensing the meat. The stems flexed against the pot's rim, dripping. "You want them," Celeste said. "Then earn your keep." She dragged the pot to the doorway. The plant strained toward the corpses, but its roots held it to the pot. So she cut a length of ghost-silver wire from her bench and looped it around the base of the bloom. Then she set her hand on the totem and reached for the three weakest spirits inside. She fed them down the wire into the plant's stems. The bloom shuddered. Its leaves stiffened. The stems lifted from the pot like arms and hauled the whole plant onto the dock boards. The bloom fell on the first corpse. Fanged petals closed over the man's chest and pulled. Celeste heard bone crack. The plant dragged the body into its throat and swallowed. It moved to the next. She stood in the doorway and guided it with small pushes through the wire, one corpse at a time. The stems worked fast now, greedy. By midmorning four bodies were gone. The bloom swelled, its stems fat and glossy. The fifth corpse nearly stopped it. The plant strained and gagged. Celeste twisted the valve on the totem and pushed more spirit-force down the wire. The bloom gulped the body down. It took the sixth slowly, sated and swollen. When the last boot vanished into the throat, the dock stood empty. Only dark stains marked the wood. Celeste threw a bucket of lake water across them. The smell was gone. No corpses, no evidence, no scavengers coming. She hauled the heavy plant back to its pot and cut the wire. The bloom drooped, full and quiet. But she saw the truth as she wiped her hands. She had fed the Barons on blood, and now she had fed the plant on flesh. Every tool she owned hungered. To bind all the dead of Everblack, she would keep feeding them, and each mouth she fed grew a wider throat.

The dock was clean, but Celeste's peace lasted one day. At dusk a small boat bumped her pilings. She knew the shape on it before she saw the face. A round body in a brass-buckled belt. A top hat tipped over one eye. Percival Venomsworth waddled up her steps, tail dragging, and set a stoppered vial on her workbench without asking. She had sold this platypus two vials of her sap poison. Once for venom to seal her valve, once for his brass reservoir. Each trade had armed him with her own weapon. Now he came holding a third vial. She recognized the color inside. Her sap. Her poison. He had brewed it into something. "You've been busy, Madame," he said. His voice was smooth and pleased. "I feel your totem from the water now. It hums. It pulls at the dead for miles." He tapped the vial. "Powerful things should be shared. I want a cut. A share of the spirits you bind." "And if I refuse?" He smiled around his beak. "Then I visit the market barge. I tell Captain Zhou Ming and every ear on it that the witch in the tree cottage killed six of Mei-Ling's men. I have your sap to prove your hand. Refuse me, and hunters row here by morning." Celeste leaned on her cane and said nothing. He thought his vial made him safe. He thought her poison protected him. He did not understand what her poison fed. "Sit," she said. "We'll talk terms." He climbed onto her stool, delighted, and uncorked the vial to show her his work. That was the moment she needed. She set her free hand on the totem in its brass cradle. She reached past the small spirits, down to the two who owed her blood. She spoke one word inside her skull. Feed. The lantern flames went flat. Cold poured through the cottage. Baron Shadowveil rose from the totem's mouth, a purple skull wrapped in torn shadow, green eyes burning. The Baron had drunk pirate blood at her order. It hungered for more, and she had promised it dead enemies. Percival scrambled off the stool. He flung the vial. The sap splashed the spirit and did nothing. His poison was hers, and hers did not bite its own master's servant. The Baron closed over him. Celeste heard the top hat crush. When the cold lifted, the stool was empty. A wet brass buckle lay on the floor. The Baron sank back into the totem, sated and loyal, its debt paid in a mouthful. Celeste picked up the buckle. The threat was gone. But she saw the cost plainly. The Baron had held its shape longer this time, moved surer, obeyed less. Each corpse she fed it bought her strength and loosened her leash. To bind all of Everblack, she would keep feeding this mouth, and it grew stronger than she did.

Percival's brass buckle still sat on Celeste's workbench when the totem woke her at dawn. Its brass cradle rattled. The wards Gideon had wired around it hummed a warning note. She swung down from her bed, took her cane, and crossed the gear-cluttered floor of her tree cottage. She laid her palm on the totem. Baron Shadowveil stirred inside, and she felt it clearly. It was too strong. Her word to feed had become a request. Soon it would stop asking. She pressed her mind against the spirit. Sleep, she ordered. The purple skull inside the totem turned its green eyes toward her and did not obey at once. It waited, weighing her. Then it sank back. But the pause had lasted a breath too long. The totem's hold on the Baron was slipping, and every corpse she fed it widened the crack. She could bind all the dead of Everblack only if she could still command what she bound. A servant she could not stop was no servant. Celeste needed a leash the Baron could not chew through. She thought of the marsh, and the twisted tree with its poison-green caps. Its sap had doubled her totem's power. But raw force had made the Baron stronger, not tamer. She needed a cage, not a whip. She went out to the plant at the edge of her dock. The carnivorous bloom rose on thick coiling stems, its fanged mouth open and wet. She had fed it pirate corpses and Percival both. It hungered like everything she owned now. That was the answer. Hunger against hunger. She cut a length of ghost-silver wire and wound it through the plant's stem. Then she carried a shard of the poison tree's bark and worked it into the totem beside the Baron's chamber. When the Baron next pulled for freedom, its own force would run down the wire into the waiting mouth of the plant. The plant would drink the spirit-force meant for escape. The more the Baron strained, the more the bloom fed, and the weaker the Baron grew. She tested it. She loosened her hold and let Baron Shadowveil rise. The skull lifted from the totem, green eyes bright, torn shadow spreading. It reached for the door. The plant's stems went taut. Its fanged mouth flushed dark, drinking. The Baron's shadow thinned. Its reach shortened. It looked at the plant, then at Celeste, and understood. It could hunger, or it could roam. It could not do both. The Baron sank back, sullen, held. Celeste leaned on her cane and breathed. She had her leash. But she saw the shape of the trap she had built for herself. The plant that caged the Baron now hungered too, and it fed on the same spirit-force she needed to bind Everblack. She had one mouth watching another. Both were still growing.

By morning the plant had grown greedy. Celeste stood at her dock and watched it swallow spirit-force from the wire. Every pull from Baron Shadowveil fed the bloom, but the bloom also sipped from her totem itself. Its fanged mouth glowed with stolen light. She pressed her palm to the totem and felt the drain. The same force she needed to bind Everblack now ran into a hungry flower. Feed the plant, and she starved her totem. Starve the plant, and the Baron slipped free. She had built two mouths and only one supply. She needed a bigger source. One that never ran dry. She thought of the twisted mushroom tree in the marsh, dripping poison from its green caps. Its sap had doubled her power once. If she could pull that poison endlessly, she could feed both mouths and still bind the dead. But she could not haul buckets forever. She needed a machine. She sent her crow for Gideon. He came by midday, wrench-arm swinging, goggles bright over his small brass face. The orphan boy had built her trap and her valve before. He climbed onto her dock and stared at the pulsing plant. "You made it worse," he said flatly. "It's eating the totem now." "I know what I made," Celeste said. "Now help me feed it without starving myself." Gideon set down his tools. "Poison from the marsh tree. Piped straight here. Endless." He tapped his gear-leg, thinking. "I can build the engine. But it needs to hold what it draws." They worked three days. Gideon ran a pipe from the mushroom tree across the marsh to the tree cottage. He fed it through the gears in the living bayou walls. Inside, he raised a towering brass machine bristling with valves and small glowing windows. It drew poison from the tree without end. It held a vast captive glow, chamber after chamber lit green with room for a million spirits. And it gave the totem a harness point at its heart. Celeste locked the totem into the engine. She opened the valves. Poison flowed from the marsh in a steady green line. The plant drank its fill from the machine and left the totem whole. The Baron pulled for freedom and the bloom fed on its strength, but now the engine fed the bloom. Both mouths ate. Neither starved. Then the engine did more. It amplified the totem's reach. The glowing windows flickered as spirits streamed in from the furthest corners of the swamp. Ancient dead she had never touched answered the pull. The chambers filled and there was room for a hundred thousand more. Gideon wiped his wrench-arm and stepped back. "You wanted power, reach, and safety," he said. "You have all three now." Celeste leaned on her cane and watched the spirits pour in. The engine hummed. She had solved the starving. But now the machine hungered for spirits by the thousand, and it would not stop until every last one in Everblack was inside it.

The engine hummed all night, and by dawn the spirits arrived in a flood. Celeste stood before the machine and watched its windows blaze. Faint dead sighed through the walls first. Then stronger ones came, shoving, roaring, wearing the shapes of drowned men and burned crews. They forced their way toward the totem at the machine's heart. Weak spirits scattered before them like minnows before a pike. Celeste felt her hold thin. The strong ones would swallow the weak, then tear loose together. One vessel could not sort them. She needed something that separated the powerful from the faint, or the flood would shred her grip and free everything at once. She sent her crow across the marsh for the boy. Gideon came fast, wrench-arm swinging, goggles glowing blue over his small brass face. He had built her valve and her poison engine before, and he never pretended to like it. He climbed into the cottage, saw the windows flaring, and set his jaw. "You let it pull too hard," he said. "They're stacking up. The big ones are crushing the small ones." "I know what is happening," Celeste said, gripping her cane. "Build me a sorter. Something that catches them by strength before they reach the totem." He pulled tools from his belt without arguing. "Rows of chambers," he muttered. "Weak ones fill the small windows. Strong ones drop to the heavy ones below. Gears meter the flow." He tapped his gear-leg. "Give me till dark." They worked through the day. Gideon raised a tall brass frame beside the engine, ringed with little arched windows and studded with dials. He ran pipes from the machine into its top. Inside, spinning gears weighed each spirit as it entered and dropped it to its proper row. Celeste fed poison sap through the seams to hold each cell shut. The tower filled window by window, faint blue at the top, deep violet and red below where the strong ones sank. Celeste locked her totem to the sorter's base. She opened the flow. The flood poured in through the top and split apart. Weak spirits filled the high windows. The strong ones dropped, chamber by chamber, separated and pinned. No wave crushed another. Her hold steadied. She pressed her palm to the totem and felt each spirit sitting where it belonged, waiting. Gideon wiped his wrench-arm and stepped back. "Now they can't gang up on you," he said. "Sorted. Held apart. You can pull them one row at a time." Celeste breathed out. For the first time the flood obeyed. But the strong ones glowed hot behind their glass, thick and crowding the lower rows already. The sorter kept them apart. It did not keep them weak. The most powerful dead of Everblack now sat stacked in her cottage, each one straining its cell, and the machine kept dropping more beneath them.