Stone picked the soles clean as the stair bent left, then right. Damp air pushed up from the service corridors, carrying the cold tang of iron locks and paper that had learned to live without sun. Han counted steps by the change in pitch—lime, then slate, then a rung of old grating where runoff chose its path. Hanna ghosted a hand along the wall until her palm read the hidden door seams like Braille.

A guard's lantern breathed once and dimmed, then steadied. Scale came down behind with the lockhouse keys hung in order across her chest, metal whispering against metal. Two court archers eased in last, string hands dry, boots careful. The beadle who had walked beside them did not ask where to stand. He took the point where narrow meets wider, posture telling any watcher that city rules had descended and brought friends.

"Lower intake runs under the vault row," Han said. "Vent gates link to every storage cell from the old days. Doctrine didn't build this, but doctrine loves old tools."

Hanna set ear to the next door's hinge. "Breath on the other side," she murmured. "One. Maybe two. Quiet feet. Not ours."

Scale slid a narrow key into a throat no map admitted existed. The door gave up its suspicion with a dry click. She did not swing it wide. She let it open to the first knuckle of darkness.

A whisper traveled along stone: someone further in dragging something soft across grit. Vellum or cloth. The sound a sleeve makes when it agrees to be involved.

Han lifted the moth's jar a fraction. The quartz bead drank the lantern's narrow ring and sent a hairline toward the left branch. Another thread flicked to the grating ahead, where cold air moved because an unseen hand told it to.

"Split?" the beadle asked.

"Never for doctrine in its own tunnel," Hanna said. "We keep one shape."

They flowed as a piece, knees loose, shoulders turned to avoid metal bite. At the left bend, a small shrine lived in a recess: old civic vows carved into slate, rubbed smooth by generations of fingers that wanted the city to remember itself. Hanna touched that slate with a knuckle, a half-second salute to stubborn stone.

Voices bled through the vent gate: one low with authority and winter in it; one clipped like a blade that had been honed too often. Han recognized the second from the Plaza—the Emeritus's patience turned into instructions.

"…open the bleed, let Archive air go thin, make the Leaf want home," she said, tone calm as a lesson. "No need for doors when pressure serves."

The winter voice answered: "Timing?"

"When the Plaza lights fully, when their counting owns all attention." A rustle, then that gentle rasp again: vellum handled like a living thing.

Han met Hanna's gaze. No spare words. She slid past the hinge post and pointed with her chin at the grille's lower pin, blackened from oil that doctrine trusted too confidently. The beadle produced a slim wedge from somewhere honest men shouldn't know and worried the pin as if soothing a knot. It surrendered to his patience without complaint.

Scale's hand rested once on Han's sleeve. Permission and admonition both fit into that touch. He nodded and kept the jar steady.

The grille lifted just enough to admit what needed admission. Hanna went first, shoulders compressing, breath measured to avoid telling the room she'd arrived. Han followed, then Scale, then the beadle. The archers held the door and watched the rear with the comfort of men who finally had a clear job.

Beyond the grille, the passage widened into a junction chamber with two vents yawning like missing teeth. Stamped into the nearest lintel: CITY—INTAKE C. Someone had chiseled a second word beneath and waxed it to kindness: CHOIR. Doctrine rarely bothered to erase; it preferred to annotate.

The Emeritus stood by a bronze wheel valve the color of old honey. No sash. No badge. Authority anyway. Beside her waited the Glasswright Third from the Plaza, bell key tucked away, hands empty, eyes wider than his training liked.

"Inventory travels," the Emeritus observed without surprise as Hanna's shadow resolved into a person. "Curious habit."

"Custody walks," Hanna said. "Doctrine sits and declares itself the horizon."

Scale stepped into the lantern spill, keys quiet. "City claims the passage and the valve," she said. "Turn nothing without my voice."

The Emeritus held up both palms, the vellum slip balanced across them like a thin animal at rest. "Observe, then," she said. "No one touches the wheel."

Han's attention angled past her to the far vent throat, where wind carried a new scent—tallow smoke and alum varnish: Archive breath. Someone had opened a sister valve elsewhere. Pressure had changed its mind.

He set the jar on a flat stone and loosened the lid to a sliver. The bead refracted the lantern's small world and drew a line toward the vellum slip, then another toward a narrow by-channel half-hidden behind corroded slats. Not the wheel's duct. A shunt cut into the old masonry—doctrine's improvement to city bones.

Hanna saw it next. "Your hand never needed that valve," she said softly to the Emeritus. "You only needed our eyes on it."

The Emeritus's mouth admitted admiration without moving. "Attention is a valve," she agreed.

Scale's finger rose. "Block the shunt."

Hanna was already there, palm flat, weight forward. The beadle drove his wedge into a seam and torqued. Stone answered with a tired sigh. Han slid the jar beneath the opening, lid fully off now. The moth woke to work, bead shining a line through dust that didn't belong below ground—fine glass grit, doctrine's favorite. The beam spilled along the shunt's lip and found a narrow roll of parchment tucked where fingers could barely reach.

The Third spoke for the first time, voice almost an apology. "Routing chart," he said. "Air paths. Pressure gates. A map without streets."

"Take it," Scale ordered.

Hanna pinched the visible edge and eased the roll free one heartbeat at a time until stone relented. She did not read. She palmed it to Scale, who slipped it into a leather pouch treated against damp, the kind that wanted to live a long time in evidence.

Air tone shifted again—Archive breath strengthening now that the cheat path had closed. The wheel valve rattled against its seat, then quieted. The Emeritus's eyes narrowed the smallest degree.

"You are tidy," she said to Scale. "I respect tidy."

"Respect law," Scale answered. "Tidy is a courtesy."

Footsteps echoed in the return duct—quick, light, coming fast from the lockhouse level. The guard captain's voice rode the stone: "Cells hold. Seals intact. Light all along the row. No shift in hinges."

The Emeritus accepted the report as though she had ordered the outcome. "Then you have your Leaf until judgment," she said. "Use it well and it will forgive the indignity."

Han tilted his head. "You talk as if pages listen."

"They do," she said. "Ink hears itself."

The Third's gaze had fixed on the jar, not the bead but the moth's stillness. "Where did you find it?" he asked, curiosity reaching for something larger than fear.

"Night Market Vaults," Han replied. "Picked to read inks doctrine prefers."

"Then you have the right antagonist," the Emeritus said. "A fair contest needs another instrument."

"Name the hand behind your valves," Scale said. "Office will not suffice."

Silver hair moved like soft wire as the Emeritus inclined her head. "Names serve after verdicts," she said. "Before, they are weather."

Hanna's weight shifted. "Weather changes," she said.

"It does," the Emeritus agreed. She laid the vellum slip on a ledge with deliberate gentleness, as if returning a lent thing. "I'll meet your inventory where light keeps score."

She stepped back into the darker run, not retreating so much as allowing the corridor to decide which way a person belongs. The Third did not move. He looked to Scale, then to Han, then to Hanna, and finally to the beadle, who answered with a small nod that meant: choose.

"I'll walk with custody," the Third said, and something in his shoulders unclenched when the words found air.

Scale signaled the archers. "Escort the Emeritus to the stair and keep her in sight. No touches, no theater." To the captain above: "Hold the row. Double witness at every door. Any breath change, sing."

The shunt received a temporary wedge hammered firm. The wheel got a seal in red wax kissed by city stamp and Scale's own ring, heat shared from the guard's lantern. Han tightened the jar lid. The bead dimmed, then returned to a quiet, patient glow.

On the climb back, voices from the Plaza swelled—counting spoken to prove that counting still worked. When they cleared the last turn, night had settled into its work and the board waited, wax pure, seals whole, witnesses ready. The crowd's mood had shifted from curiosity to appetite; numbers, finally, would have to tell a story instead of simply pretending to be sturdy.

Scale mounted the dais and raised the routing chart so the lockhouse clerk could see it before sliding it into the pouch with the ledger. "Doctrine admits a path under law," she said. "City closes it. We go on."

Han placed the jar beside the sealed board. Hanna stood with one palm near the pouch and the other near the counter-die pocket in case some brave fool wanted to write answers with metal again. The beadle took his square of stone beside the dais and looked like he had always owned it. The Third stood a pace behind Han, posture empty of theater, hands ready to show work.

"Next page," Scale said.

Arithmetic resumed, but now every digit had a place to land besides a favorable doctrine. The Plaza listened with the interest of a room that had found out it could breathe without permission.

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