The next day, the two "bookish tax auditors" began the official audit on the surface and the investigation beneath it.
The accounts truly were clean. Sharlo spent the morning checking the town clerk's tithe ledgers. Not one remark, not one correction—clean as a fair copy of a script. With feigned casualness, he asked, "Do you still have the old files on petitions and remissions from three years ago? I would like them for comparison."
The clerk cheerfully went to look. After searching for some time, he scratched his head. "Strange. The old files... where did they go?" The writing above him wavered slightly: 【He will fail to remember, and cease to try.】 Three breaths later, the clerk straightened, his confusion smoothed away. "Sir, perhaps they were lost when the chapel moved. Is it important?"
"Not important." Sharlo smiled. "Not important."
Viola visited six households that had "benefited from the Miracle." The reformed saddler served her tea and described how the bell had "washed him clean." The two reconciled families now shared a sheepfold and kept no separate accounts. Every household was welcoming, candid, and happy—
"Every word was true." When they compared notes at dusk, Viola's brow was drawn tight. "But I found a pattern. They describe life 'after the Miracle' vividly and in detail. The moment I ask about 'before the Miracle'—the saddler, for instance; I asked why he used to drink—the account becomes... official. 'I was lost in those days.' 'My former life was clouded.' Six households, almost the same words. Sharlo, they have not forgotten their past. Their past has been 'rewritten' into one uniform dark history, there only to set off the present."
"Every sheep in the fold remembers that 'wolves live outside,'" Sharlo said quietly. "Whether anything else lies outside—grassland, rivers, other flocks—is unimportant. It is also forbidden to matter."
The bell at morning prayer gave them their first complete observation of the "Miracle" in action.
The chapel was packed. The new resident priest ascended the pulpit—a man of about fifty with a mild, doughy face and a voice soft as teased wool. Sharlo sat in the final pew and watched the writing above him. It was not dense, but it was extraordinarily steady. The uppermost line read: 【He will tend the flock for the bell.】
Tend the flock for the bell. Not for a god, but for the bell. The priest himself was one of its shepherding tools.
The prayers were ordinary, concerned with fair weather and good harvests. The real "rite" followed them: everyone rose, stood silent, and waited for the bell.
Dong—
The instant the deep-green chime descended, Sharlo forced his eyes fully open.
He saw it. The bell was not sound—or not sound alone. In his sight, its stroke became a nearly transparent film of rippling force. It spread from the belfry and washed across the town. Wherever it passed, the words above each head brightened. As they did, an exceedingly fine strand of something—one hundred times finer than the Dawn Tower's silver threads, fine as the shadow of a cobweb—was gently and painlessly combed away.
The cobweb shadows drifted toward the belfry and entered the deep-green copper bell.
The chime dissolved after three breaths. The congregation raised their heads and filed out with mild smiles. Every person thanked the priest, and the priest answered every one. Sharlo moved amid the stream with cold sweat covering his neck—
At last he understood the difference between this bell and the Dawn Tower. The tower's silver threads were thick; they collected whole passages of dreams, and for three hundred years at least a lampkeeper had pinched the flame's ration. What this bell took was too fine to see. No one limited its portion. And—he looked up at the belfry—what it collected was not stored inside the bell.
The deep-green bell was hollow beneath. The cobweb shadows passed through it, fell into the belfry's foundations, and continued downward, deep beneath the chapel, until they vanished.
The bell was only a funnel.
The thing that was truly eating lay underground.
After morning prayer, the two walked slowly through town, each digesting what they had seen.
As they passed the saddler's shop, the reformed drinker was oiling a saddle outside in even strokes and humming a hymn. Three years ago, those hands had shaken too badly to hold an awl. Now they were steady as a pendulum. Sharlo watched for a moment, then asked, "Master, with hands that steady, why don't you take an apprentice?"
The saddler looked up and smiled ingenuously. "I did. Took a lad two years ago. Last year he said he wanted to make his way in the capital, so he left."
"You didn't try to stop him?"
"Why would I?" The saddler bent back over the leather, his voice serene and without the smallest ripple. "Every man has his lot."
Sharlo stared above his head. The line 【He will be content with his lot】 remained steady, but at the instant the saddler spoke the words "every man has his lot," its edges brightened almost imperceptibly—like a line delivered aloud and approved by the prompter.
Half a street later, Viola spoke abruptly. "I was thinking about myself just now."
"Mm?"
"If Rope-Makers' Lane had possessed such a bell six years ago." Her gaze remained straight ahead, her voice unnaturally level. "My mother would have been 'content with her lot.' My father, 'content with his lot.' The night of the fire, our neighbours would have slept 'content with their lot.' No one would have climbed a fence, meddled in another person's affairs, or kicked through somebody else's shutter." She paused.
"Sharlo, Mr. Hooper—the man who dragged me out of the fire—was, in the mayor's words, the most 'discontented with his lot' of men. Forever defending strangers and poking into their affairs. Three times he climbed another person's wall: twice to fight fires, once to catch a thief."
She stopped and looked back at the white-stone chapel. The deep-green bell shone mildly in the light before dusk.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
"Hang this bell in every town in the world and there will never be another fire—because dye works will be content with their lot, and candle flames will be content with theirs." She spoke one word at a time. "But if a fire does start, no one will climb a wall again."
That evening at the inn, Sharlo undertook a laborious task: drawing the bell wave.
He knew nothing of music, but he could see. From memory, he drew the deep-green wave from morning prayer again and again—its rise and fall, the intervals, the curve as it closed. He made more than a dozen attempts, selected the closest, attached it to the confidential dispatch for the capital, and added: For comparison by a music clerk.
Three days later, the conclusion in the reply stitched this case into the larger design.
The bell-wave pattern formed an adagio lullaby. Its form shared one source with RETURN OF THE SCARLET QUEEN and MARCHING SONG; all belonged to the lost ecclesiastical dirge form.
Conclusion: the maker of the Pacification Bell and the Dirge Society's "tuning" employed the same temperament. In the three thousand years since the Soulherd cast this bell with its own hand, someone had replaced its wick—or retuned it—within the last three hundred.
* * *
The other half of the answer to what lay underground came from the sheep.
That afternoon, Sharlo paid the pasture a "friendly visit." Lambton's sheep were famous for their fat bodies, gentle temperaments, and fine wool. The old shepherd showed him the pens with proprietary pride. Once the man was happily talking, Sharlo asked with apparent idleness, "The sheep have been unusually obedient these past three years too, haven't they?"
"Indeed." The old shepherd beamed. "Not one has strayed in three years. Before, every season brought a few pig-headed creatures that jumped the pen, wriggled through the hedge, and ran toward that hill. Now, not one."
"Toward that hill?" Sharlo followed his pointing hand. Southeast of town rose a gentle hill, bald at the summit without a single tree. "Why did the sheep used to run there?"
The old shepherd opened his mouth, but the answer caught at his lips. He scratched his head, his face taking on the familiar bewilderment of a hand reaching into an empty pocket. "Eh? Why was that... The old people always said beneath that hill... there was something beneath it..." The writing above his head swayed: 【He will fail to remember, and cease to try】. Three breaths later, the old man waved cheerfully. "Ah, who can explain an animal?"
Before leaving the pasture, Sharlo observed a lesson at the town school.
Officially, "the gentleman auditor was inspecting the town." Matilda was teaching arithmetic. Thirty-seven pupils sat in perfect ranks, their slate pencils rising and falling together, every answer neat and correct. The room was so quiet that sheep bells could be heard beyond the window.
Sharlo sat in the final row and watched half the lesson before conducting a small experiment. While Matilda wrote a problem on the blackboard, he deliberately "fumbled" his black notebook. It struck the floor with a sharp slap, startlingly loud in the silent room.
Not one of the thirty-seven children turned around.
Not one. Even the boy nearest him did not shift a shoulder. The rhythm of the slate pencils never faltered.
Sharlo bent to retrieve the notebook, cold sweat prickling his back. He had sat through classrooms in two lifetimes—the age when chalk stubs flew at heads, when a dropped needle made half the room look around. A child's neck was the least obedient thing in the world. Curiosity grew in their bones.
Yet in this classroom, thirty-seven necks were content with their lot.
The dismissal bell rang. The children filed out, and each bowed to Sharlo in passing with perfect manners and eyes straight ahead. After the last had gone, Matilda approached, saw his face, and wrote one line on a sheet of paper.
Now you understand the half-line I left unfinished.
Sharlo picked up the pen and replied. The nib pressed heavily as he wrote.
I understand. Their way of stealing children is to steal them into adulthood.
That evening, they conversed on paper again. Sharlo wrote the words "southeastern hill" for Matilda.
The teacher stared at them while the colour slowly left her face. She rose and withdrew a handwritten local chronicle from the deepest part of her bookcase—the sole surviving copy of A HISTORY OF LAMBTON, compiled by the former priest before his death. She opened it to one page and pushed it across.
The page recorded the town's origins. Lambton had once been called "Foldmound"—fold as in sheepfold, mound as in a mound of earth. The chronicle quoted a broken stele from the former dynasty: this place was anciently called the Soulherd's resting place. The earthen mound to the southeast was known as "Sheeprest Hill." Tradition held that after the shepherd died, he was buried beneath the hill; every age thereafter built a fold around it for sacrifice, hence the name.
After the shepherd died, he was buried beneath the hill.
Matilda picked up her pen. For the first time, her script lost its order. Sir, while the old priest lived, he went alone to make offerings at Sheeprest Hill at the end of every autumn. I once asked whom he honoured. He gave only one strange answer, which I remember to this day—
"An old gentleman who died long ago, but did not quite finish dying."
Sharlo's nib hovered above the paper for a long time without descending.
Faith devours the Soulherd. The fifth of the Seventeen Dirges. Beneath this town lay a shepherd who had "not quite finished dying." Three years ago, the Patriarchal Society placed an ancient bell above his grave and began collecting the finest threads from seven thousand living people, three times each day, to feed into the tomb.
Feeding something that could neither wake nor finish dying.
At last his pen touched the paper, but what he wrote was a question that made Matilda stare. Miss Lu, one final question. For three years the bell has rung three times a day without interruption. Was there ever one day—one exception?
The teacher considered for a long time, then wrote: Yes. Once. Last winter solstice—the night your "sun returned" in Kandelburg. The whole continent was in chaos. The bell stopped for one night.
What happened in the town that night?
Matilda's pen paused. She wrote one word at a time.
Every dog in town wept that night. And from the direction of Sheeprest Hill, there came a sound. I have been deaf twelve years, sir. I did not hear it with my ears. Across three miles, I felt it through the earth beneath my feet.
The sound was slow and heavy. Once. Then again.
As though something very deep below had turned over.
By the time their written conversation reached that point, two candles had been replaced. Sharlo tucked the final sheet into his inner pocket and rose to leave. At the courtyard gate, Matilda suddenly caught his sleeve, found paper and pen again, and wrote one final passage rapidly by the door lamp.
Sir, one more small matter. It may be groundless, but twelve years of deafness have taught me never to disregard a "sensation."
I was in the street on the day the bell arrived. The whole town came to see, and the bell cart passed before me. Sir, from twenty paces away, my teeth ached at the roots. A deaf person's ears are dead; her bones are living. The bell was covered in red silk and did not ring. It travelled the whole way in silence. Yet when it passed me, my bones heard it "humming"—very low, without pause, like a sleeper humming a song that refuses to end.
Even when it does not ring, it is ringing. It has rung for all these three years.
Sharlo stood beneath the door lamp for a long time after reading it. Then he picked up the pen and replied: Miss Lu, those bones of yours are more precious than every examination division in the kingdom. Take care of them. Take care of yourself as well.
On the night road back to the inn, Viola heard this part and said abruptly, "Have you noticed? In this case, everyone able to 'see' is missing something."
"Mm?"
"I cannot sleep, and so I am awake. She cannot hear, and so her bones listen. You—" Viola looked at him. "You have no script, and so you can see the script. In three years, not one of Lambton's seven thousand 'whole' people noticed anything. Yet we who are missing a piece have each felt one corner of the truth."
Sharlo walked a few more steps before answering softly. "In my last li—where I studied theatre, we had an old saying. An actor would 'go on blooded.' The audience believed a player who took the stage wounded, because anything flawless is scenery. People are all missing pieces."
He raised his head toward the silent belfry in the night.
"That is where this bell gives itself away: it has mended an entire town until not one flaw remains," he said. "It can deceive those who are whole. It cannot deceive those who go on blooded."