Ravna looked at night like a fold-out star map, only instead of constellations, workshops, workshops and stone balconies hung with scrolls of dried algae twinkled. At the bottom of the valley slept a salt lake, whitening with a phosphorescent glow, as if someone had poured a handful of powdered aurora in there. Above, on terraces of basalt, cold air currents circulated, which cartographers called rivers of wind and which were caught on thin metal flags. Lucia Wrzos knew these rivers better than the streets. She drew them with pale ink, which tarnished in the light of day and became clear as a whisper after dark. Her desk, standing by the window in the studio of the Cartographers' Guild in Spire Square, was tolerably tidy: magnifying glass, thick aiming threads, drop-shaped lead weights. That evening, the order was interrupted by a parcel wrapped in grey fleece. It had no seal or name of the deliverer, just a trace of salt on the edge, as if someone had dipped the package in a lake. Inside waited a parchment as dark as morning coffee and the pungent smell of juniper. The map showed Ravna, with its familiar layout of terraces, stairs, drainage channels and balloon carriage rails. However, by the northern wall of the old quarter of Half Dusk, a narrow dash appeared, a street between two buildings that Lucia had never seen, although she had walked that way hundreds of times. Above the dash, in small writing, shone an inscription: Bezokna Street. The ink of the map seemed to move in places, as if it were breathing, and the stylus guiding the street was moving in and out of the texture of the parchment, getting lost and finding itself in layer after layer. In the margins, someone had placed a mark with thirteen petals - an astrologer - identical to the one Lucia remembered from her mother's ring. Her fingers trembled ever so slightly until she touched the paper again to make sure she hadn't made it up. She slid the window down, letting in a trickle of coolness and the smell of the salt lake. The bells in the Tower of Seasons struck nine times - the metallic sound swept through the city like a wave. Lucia hesitated a second, then grabbed her coat, slipped the map into a leather briefcase and walked out into Iwa Zagwia's studio. Iwo was a rune locksmith and letter polisher. He could read meanings from faded inscriptions, and once claimed to understand the language spoken by staircases. He lived above a clock parts shop where a greenish patina raced against the shadows. As Lucia rolled down the creaking cage, he sat in an armchair, under a copper lamp, and diluted linseed oil on something that looked like a rusty elephant. - 'A street came to me,' she said instead of a greeting. - One that is not there. Iwo raised an eyebrow, put down his brush, wiped his hands. - If that's not poetic, it's dangerous. Show. She unrolled the parchment. The lamplight trembled as the ink shone for a moment with a slightly metallic reflection. - 'This was written by someone familiar with old pyrophoric inks,' muttered Iwo, leaning over. - They give off light when they feel the heat of the skin or a flame. See, the line runs along the margin, as if it had more to say. And the asterisk... - He glanced at Lucia. - Where have you seen this before? - On my mother's ring - she replied, too quickly. - 'She kept it in a casket, she only showed it to me once. Then it disappeared. As if it had never existed. Iwo did not ask where his mother's ring disappeared from. In towns like Ravna things disappeared and came back, but usually to other people. - Do you want to go? - He just asked. - To see if that dash bites into the basalt. Lucia took a deeper breath. There was an uneasiness in her stomach, a sharp, bright string. - I want to,' she said. - And I prefer not to go alone. The twilight had its own air: more humid, with the smell of moss and old books that no one cared for. Here, tenements clinked with parapets, ledges and muffled conversations, and narrow passages twisted like letters Iwo could easily name. They passed a bakery baked with a fire of salt that poured a fine rain of sparkling grains. When they turned into Stone Cat Street and reached the north wall, they stopped in front of a wall that Lucia knew down to the crumbling joint. It was smooth, cool and deafening when she inserted her hand into it. Nothing in it promised passage. Yet the map in the folder moved, as if someone had sighed inside it. Lucia placed the parchment on her knee, held it with clips, and its lines glowed a soft blue, like light in the sun passing through a bottle. Then a chill fell from the air above the wall. It was not the chill of the night - it was the chill from within the stone. It drew a thin, milky line along the face of the walls, which thickened into a crack. Lucia swallowed her saliva and slipped her fingers into the crack just as she would have slipped them between two pages of a book. When she spread them a little, the basalt gave way, melted in and sank in, as if it had always been a canvas onto which someone had finally applied the right solvent. Ahead of them stretched an alley, streaked with shadow, so narrow that if Lucia and Iwo walked side by side they would rub their shoulders against both walls. It had a smooth floor, as polished as if a thousand feet had mirrored it, and yet there was not a single footprint on it. Nor were there any windows. Doors - if there were any - were sunk in the smoothness like breaths in a fur coat. - 'Someone named it not just maliciously,' muttered Iwo, standing on the threshold. - It's a name that listens. Lucia shuddered. Names that listen was a speciality of the old guilds. There were times when signing the wrong document made things decide to have an opinion towards you. They entered. Bezokna Street smelled of salt and sage. They could hear Ravna behind the wall - the wheels of carts, the distant singing - but the sounds did not fully penetrate here, as if someone had put a thick, soft band-aid over the city. After a few steps they saw a door: handleless, made of planks with a dense drawing that resembled lines from a map of air currents. A single sheet of paper lay on the threshold. Lucia picked it up and froze. On the white, with a sharp, black hand, someone had written her childish nickname, one that only a certain person used and only until a certain summer. - Luka - read Iwo quietly. - 'Who called you that? - Someone who is no longer in Ravna - she replied, without looking at him. There was a dry salty lump in her throat. - And someone who couldn't have known I was coming here. Iwo shifted from foot to foot and lifted the lamp closer to the boards. She felt his presence, usually calm and scholarly, tighten at one thin point. At her eye level, an astragalus glittered in the wood: thirteen petals cut into the grain so precisely that it seemed as if the shape swam beneath the surface of the wood like a fish under ice. - 'This is a door whose language was not yet in my mind,' said Iwo. - 'But I see something I can read. - He moved his fingers over the relief without touching. - In the encircling line is the inscription: 'Enter if you remember the salt'. Lucia took a vial loose from her pocket. Cartographers carry it for balance when drawing on damp parchment. She sprinkled a dab onto her hand and blew as one would blow a blessing. The crystals sat on the board and immediately sucked themselves into the structure of the wood, as if the door had been made of a tongue that hadn't eaten for a long time. The air solidified. A soft condensed hum dripped down from the walls, like dew that had unexpectedly found its way into the chamber. And then, from far above the city, the bells of the Tower of Leek rang out. They counted almost involuntarily: one, two, three.... twelve. After the twelfth, Ravna usually held her breath for a moment. This time the pause was joined by something else: a trembling that was not a sound, yet had a rhythm, like the thirteenth step at the end of a staircase. Lucia felt the parchment in the folder grow warm. The ink on the Street of the Windowless, thin, trembling, began to run off the lines, like molten silver. It flowed slowly, drop by drop, each one sliding down the skin of the parchment, gathering at the edge and - to her horror and fascination - penetrating the gap between the boards and the doorframe. - 'He opens it with ink,' whispered Iwo, quite as if he didn't want the words to clatter against the wood. - Or the ink remembers which way. Then something moved just as quietly from the darkness behind the door. It was not a step or a whisper. It was a shift of weight, barely marked, that only a presence can evoke. The asterisk on the door sparkled with an inner glow, moonlit, translucent. Lucia raised her hand - no, the hand itself rose, as if it were a separate organ that can remember. The flame dimmed in Iwa's lamp, a thread of light brought the mood down to a single icy point. From the other side of the boards, someone said her name, the first one, given in a whisper before anyone had managed to record it in the books. And at the same moment, the bolt on the other side moved away with a long, hushed rasp, as if the wood was learning to breathe again.