The lockhouse clock coughed twice and settled. Sun angled through the iron lattice, cutting the room into tidy stripes. On the evidence bench, the pouch slept under three red seals and a penciled note in Scale's hand: held for noon session. The Reading Master, wrists looped in linen, watched without comment, as if silence were a small luxury he could still afford.

A clerk in city brown arrived with a brass tag on a cord and a ledger tucked hard to his ribs. His hair sat too neat for morning work. The tag read: fumigation notice. The ledger's corners were chamfered like a book taught to behave at parties.

"Infestation form," he said briskly. "Specimen removal for quarantine. The—" his gaze flicked to the jar "—insect."

Hanna's eyes touched his cuffs. A narrow thread had been worked into the hem—three knots spaced like breath marks. She did not reach for him. She moved the jar half a finger's width so the prism eye faced his sleeve. A disciplined line lifted and stopped on the knots, bright as a thin nail catching light.

Han took the ledger. Paper smelled of oil of cloves: used by binders to disguise cheap glue. Inside, the first page bore the correct watermark; down the gutter, a ghost line betrayed a razor's pass. Someone had bound a false front over a true form.

"You'll take nothing," he said, and closed the book with a calm that felt like a locked window.

The clerk measured the room, then stopped measuring and smiled the way men smile when they've already rung the bell elsewhere. A faint hum padded in through the ceiling—three notes, held long, tuned to the sort of door that listens for songs. The lintel over the side chamber trembled, not with weight, with agreement.

"Again?" the beadle murmured.

"New singer," the Glasswright Third said. He set a small tuning fork to his thumbnail, struck it softly, and held it near the frame. The door's hidden spring tried to follow his pitch and stumbled. He twisted the fork with the scribe's square, shaving the note by a hair. The humming above lost certainty, wandered, and died.

The clerk's smile cooled. Hanna was already near. She plucked the threaded hem with thumb and forefinger and made the knots show on the back: dark dye worked into the thread—appointment code masked as mending. The Reading Master, seeing it, exhaled through his nose, a man noting a student's overconfidence rather than a colleague's fall.

"Who primed the lintel?" Scale asked from the threshold. She had appeared with no rattle of keys, as if the room had decided to include her.

"Vault warden on night rotation," the clerk said, abandoning the pretense of forms. "You'll find his stamp on the hinge pins. He believes in schedules more than saints."

"Then he won't mind a change," she replied. "Captain—pin him to the hours he claimed and ask the pins if they agree."

Boots went. The clerk flicked his eyes toward the Reading Master, looking for rescue and getting a study in detachment. He chose defiance, reached for the pouch in an arc meant to be quick rather than violent, and discovered how fast cloth can become restraint when Hanna knows where elbows bend. He met the floor without losing teeth. Dignity chose to wait outside.

The Third lifted the forged ledger again and angled it toward the window. Under the clove smell, pressure lines rose: orders to collect panes from three shops (two we knew, one we'd not), a notation beside a winter rune that didn't match any prior hand—an italic, almost playful hand—and a schedule block drawn as a simple square with a dot, a lamp mark used by lamplighters to mean: delay five minutes for smoke to clear.

"Another pick-up," he said. "A fourth supplier."

"Address?" Han asked.

"Upper Ragmarket," the Third read. "Back of the dye-hall with the green awning."

Scale handed the forged ledger to the lockhouse clerk. "Copy the pages, mark them as theatre, then file them as evidence against whoever taught paper to lie with perfume."

From outside, bells counted eleven, clean and unhurried. Beyond the lattice, market wagons angled for space. A boy in a ribboned cap trotted past with a tray of cups balanced like a promise; Hanna snagged two and paid with exact coin without taking her eyes off the prisoner.

"We don't have forty minutes," Han said, turning the forged ledger's lamp mark over in his head. "He expected a five-minute delay and an unlocked hinge. We ruined both. The rendezvous will shift."

"Then we move first," Scale said. "Take the Fourth to Ragmarket. Quietly."

Upper Ragmarket wore last night's dye under today's rainwater. The green awning kept arrogant shape. Behind it, stairs no one had bothered to sand led to a room with walls in love with steam. A woman with copper-stained wrists sat at a trestle, counting out slips dyed pale blue. Each slip bore the same maker's curl in the corner—the italic hand the Third had just named.

"City business," Hanna said, voice level.

"Color doesn't ask for names," the woman replied, not looking up.

Han set the jar on the bench. The prism eye harvested damp light and sent a line across the slips. Hidden gridwork swam up—delivery map for panes that leave no scar; notes on which offices preferred which bevel; a small drawn scarf with three knots and, beside it, a second scarf with a single black bar: a different appointment code.

"Who brings the cloth?" Scale asked.

"They bring themselves," the woman said. "Always punctual, always polite. One with a bar in the weave speaks for all the others."

"Reading Master?" Han asked.

She snorted. "He asks questions, not favors."

"Where now?" Hanna asked the Third.

"Roof," he said. "There's a pulley behind that shutter. The scarfed courier prefers rooftops where the city forgets to listen."

They climbed through steam out into wind. Ragmarket roofs stepped toward the water like pages laid to dry. A low frame straddled the alley—a light crane with a basket tethered by a quiet rope running to a skylight two houses over. In the basket: flannel sleeves for glass, a coil of scarf-thread with a black bar dyed into each length, and a tiny bell with no clapper, built to tick when a line drew taut.

Footfalls approached, sure and private. A figure in gray eased from the skylight, face shadowed by a brim that wanted to be overlooked. The scarf lay neat at his neck; the bar in the weave picked out rain.

"Late," he said mildly, seeing Hanna at the frame. His gaze took in the coil, the bell, the jar, then found Scale's eyes three roofs away. He did not run. He relaxed instead, like a man arriving at an answer he'd already disliked.

"Courier?" Scale called.

"Interpreter," he answered, which was either worse or exactly the same.

"Interpret this," Hanna said, and cut the rope above the basket, letting it drop six feet and arrest hard. The clapperless bell shivered and gave its tiny tick anyway—the sound of a plan discovering gravity.

He smiled once at the honesty of that tick, then unknotted his scarf and set it on the frame like a returning of library property. "You've read enough," he said. "Go write."

"We will," Han said. "And you'll sit where sentences land."

He offered his wrists. No theater. No sermon. In his coat pocket, the Third found the twin of the italic rune in pencil, worn to a nub. A tool, not a fetish.

By the time they returned, the Plaza had set out chairs and thirst. Noon crept along the cornice. The evidence bench held its weight without complaint. The Reading Master stood where witnesses stand when titles stop helping. Dockside Ninth's folio lay open to the page marked with R.M.; the green-awning slips dried under sand; the scarf with its black bar sat folded on the corner like a small, accurate confession.

Scale faced the stones and the faces. "We add a fourth shop and a roof courier to the chain," she said. "Funds crossed through municipal maintenance with a false name, then bought tools that erase accountability. We have signatures, maps, and the hands that carried them."

The Auditor, chalk resting quiet for once, said only: "Proceed."

Han lifted the first slip. Hanna watched the edges. The Third steadied the loupe. The beadle kept the crowd from becoming a tide. Above them, tower mouths waited for noon, obedient for now and surrounded by more eyes than they were built to endure.

When the hour struck, sound rolled across stone like a measured tide, and no hidden tune tried to bend it. Scale set the folio down and let the city watch ink become consequence. Han named each slip; Hanna named each place it touched; the Third named every beveler who thought anonymity a craft. The courier stood quiet, unmasked by daylight. A wind carried bakery warmth through the rows, harmless and clear. Seals cooled. The board steadied. What remained were doors that opened only when asked properly, and a promise to return if any hand, anywhere, taught a hinge to lie.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.