The Auditor straightened, chalk studying her knuckles the way frost studies stone. "I appreciate a zealous maid," he said with a politeness sharpened into an insult, "but the temple speaks to seals, not to elbows."

"Then speak to this," Han said, drawing a cloth and opening it on the stone. Inside lay his seal—bronze, the face engraved to declare lineage and right—and beside it another, similar enough to cheat a clerk at a glance, different enough to offend anyone who has ever used his hands. He had asked no one's leave to show it; he preferred forgiveness to permission where proof liked to arrive on time. "A forged seal was used yesterday to sign a tithe remittance. It bears my crest, badly. It bears the temple's countersign, perfectly. That perfection is the problem."

The Plaza's sound changed. Paper visors softened voices. A forged seal touches every kind of appetite at once: outrage, relief, gossip—a season's worth of conversation.

"Where did you find it?" Scale asked, weighing Han more carefully.

"In the wake of a trial that hasn't happened yet," Han said. "A clerk who is not here unfolded it as if to help. I prefer to believe he did so because someone practiced him into thinking he was a friend. The counter was dusted with grit too fine to be shop dirt. It didn't taste of chalk. It tasted of glass."

The Auditor's glove did not move. "You allege forgery. You provide a prop."

Hanna reached into the satchel and laid the pressed vellum from the mold beside the seal. The crowd leaned as one leans toward a window when weather changes. The vellum wore three ledger references and, in its margin, an emboss: Bellhouse Nine, and—subtler—an aureole of glass pollen, glittering when the Plaza's light found it, ike the memory of a window. "This was packed into a bell mold at the foundry," she said. "A dead-drop for someone who works with heat but signs papers with a pane."

The Auditor's beadles stiffened; the crowd tasted a strike. Scale extended her hand. A clerk gathered the items, carried them up with both palms as if his fingers might be accused of choosing sides.

"What is your answer to forgery?" Scale asked the Auditor.

"Simple," he said. "He forges a remittance, then produces his own forgery and claims offense. Alternatively, he allows a clerk to dabble, learns of it, and arrives eager to point where I stand."

"Alternatively," Han said, matching the word because the Plaza liked balance, "I ask for a right that has no romance and less blood. Trial by inventory."

The phrase had the power to straighten backs. It was old and it was dreadful in its simplicity. Not single combat, not clever riddles. It meant: we open books under sun and eyes and patience until the numbers confess who deceived whom. It meant every man went home late.

Hanna heard the shift in the Plaza and felt the city's body settle to listen. Her jaw eased by a fraction. The Auditor's weaponry had been architecture and paper; Han had chosen an architecture older than the temple's stone.

Scale looked to either side. Coin shook her head once; Anchor rolled her wrist in a gesture that meant watch the channel. Key pressed lips. Scale raised her hand. "Lord Han requests trial by inventory. Temple?"

The Auditor watched the Plaza's masks and saw, perhaps, that spectacle would not serve him here. "The temple consents," he said smoothly, "on condition that the materials his guilt revolves around be surrendered pending review."

"Surrendering tools before one proves the crime tends to cause crimes," Han said. "Let them stay under the Council's lockhouse, not yours."

"Council will hold the cipher and the Index until dusk," Scale said. "At sunset, we begin inventory. If either party fails to present materials, receipts, and timelines, that party loses voice. Does either side object to sunset?"

Hanna preferred roofs before dusk. Han preferred roofs at dusk, when office windows forget to lock and wind reveals who walks careful. He considered the Plaza's appetite and the temple's patience. "We do not object," he said.

"I object to delay," the Auditor said, too quickly, and then made a faint correction of tone. "But doctrine submits to law when law remembers who taught it to count."

Scale ignored the tip. "So ordered." She tapped the haft of a ceremonial staff against the dais rail. It made no noise. The Plaza needed none. A lockhouse clerk scurried with a key-laden belt. The cipher moth rode Hanna's glove to the stand; she coaxed it into the bell jar with a wrist-twist that made compliance feel like dignity. Han laid the oilskin-wrapped Index on a waiting board. The clerk sealed both with wax and string and a City stamp that hated to share authority yet did so with an adult's grace.

"Between now and sunset," Scale went on, "both sides will prepare inventories: provenance, transport, custody, names, timings, and non-temple witnesses to be sworn. The Plaza remains open for petition and festival. May all of you enjoy the fiction that law tastes like almonds."

Laughter ran like a ribbon. The session turned to minor matters—a boundary dispute where a fence had learned to walk, a boat that wanted to be a shop when moored—but the Plaza's attention remained in the space between Han and the temple, the way people listen to a singer while pretending to admire the ceiling.

They withdrew as soon as courtesy permitted. Hanna's pace was ordinary until it wasn't; she set a course that made angles out of straight walks, and the city allowed them to borrow the edges of its buildings. In the arcaded shade of a spice house she took a breath once and let it go so slow a fly could have ridden it unharmed.

"We need two things," she said. "A witness who can speak hammer-code without looking like your friend, and a way up that doesn't teach glass to scream."

"We have the foundry master for the code," Han said, "if he's willing to hate beadles more than he loves his quiet. For the way up—" His eye climbed the Plaza's perimeter to the line where the shops' roofs met the second layer of city. Beyond that line: green, glass, frameworks. A conservatory lived there, and men who loved panes more than prayers.

"The forged seal rides on their dust," Hanna said. "So does the vellum. If we find the table where they press the counter, we find the story the temple plans to tell at sunset."

"And we change the ending," Han said. He did not smile. Stories are his business; endings are his creditors.

They cut through a lane smelling of mint and coal soap, then between two courts linked by an alley that believed in cats more than men. A boy with a broken flute practiced every note except the right one. Two beadles worked hard at not being seen. Hanna let them succeed—for now. At the foot of a service stair she stopped and checked the cheap iron with a knuckle. It answered with a respectable ring. She nodded and started up.

"Glass shoes," she said.

"I have boots," Han answered.

"You have boots that swear loyalty to floors," Hanna said. "I'll carry the part where the roof decides to teach you manners."

He made the wise choice and didn't argue. On the first landing he paused and looked back across the Plaza where the mask-visors still made a flock. The lockhouse clerk crossed with the bell jar in a stout basket, a guard on either side. The moth's shadow moved once on the glass like a thought remembering to be patient.

"At sunset," Han said, more to the clock than to Hanna. "Trial by inventory."

"And before sunset," Hanna said. "Trial by height."

They climbed into a quarter of the city that never quite decided whether it preferred air or stone. Between chimney stacks and melon-bellied cisterns, the wind kept small promises to itself. Far off, a set of wind organs tuned themselves by arguing. The line of glass that was the conservatory winked like politeness over a knife.

They would have time for one look, one answer, and one dash back through the city's throat before the Council's staff tapped dusk into law. If they failed, the Plaza would belong to the temple's version of numbers. The thought had the clean pressure of a hand on a shoulder. Han accepted it. Hanna liked pressure. She set her palm to the parapet and swung onto the next roof as if the city had sent an invitation by mistake and she intended to keep it.

Behind them, High Court Plaza steered itself through ordinary cases, practicing the civic courage that thinks almonds are justice. Ahead, panes waited to accuse. The afternoon narrowed toward the hour when ink dries too fast and men's faces look like coins. They crossed the last gutter and entered the roofline, where words mattered less than balance, and the truth—if it wished to be found—would be hiding in dust the temple never bothered to count.

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