A sparrow split the light above the square and was gone. Murmurs thinned to the scratch of pens and the shuffle of boots as witnesses signed what they'd seen. Scale closed the folio with a palm that meant "enough for now," then tipped her chin toward Han and Hanna. "Money runs faster than speeches. Go where it runs."

Dockside Ninth had unblinking shutters and a bell that rang only inward. Inside, the air wore chalk and dry ink. Tellers looked carved from patience. The same clerk who'd produced the blue folio earlier waited with a face that had learned careful neutrality.

"Withdrawals?" Han asked.

"Not yet," the clerk answered. "Requests. All marked seasonal maintenance. All bearing a winter barb in the curl of the letter R." He slid a tray of drafts forward. Each carried the italic hand they'd found at Ragmarket.

Hanna checked the counter. Along the brass rail, tiny notches lived at fingertip height—positions for a coded tap. She laid her finger flat and felt faint warmth. Someone had signaled recently.

"Hold on these," Han said. "Write it as a liquidity test by the court."

"Our charter forbids unilateral holds," the clerk replied.

Scale's badge arrived on a breath—she had followed without hurry and still arrived ahead of trouble. "Your charter recognizes lawful freeze when fraud is alleged," she said. "Allegation stands."

Stamps struck paper. A sigh moved through the bank like a draft meeting a closed door. The Reading Master, brought under escort, watched the process with a collector's interest, as if he were learning how an unfamiliar instrument made sound.

A junior teller, pale with resolve, coughed into his sleeve. "There's a side chest," he said. "Client keeps private plates there. Not coin plates. Authorizations."

"Key?" Hanna asked.

The teller produced a pewter token shaped like a leaf vein. The chest accepted it with a click that felt like a decision. Inside lay a roll of thin slates, each etched with a ladder of short lines. At one end of every slate: a scarf glyph—bar, knots, combinations marked with dots.

The Third held a slate to the window. "Steam code," he said. "Lamplighters use taps. Choir uses hymns. The scarf messengers use vapor. Five vents on Bleachery Lane run hot at noon, and the flows write syllables in air."

"Send runners to the Lane," Scale told the captain. "No whistles. If any vent opens without city hand, shut the feed at the main."

They reached the dye quarter as lunch fires found their stride. Bleachery Lane exhaled coughs of white that rose, vanished, returned—a language for those who owned the schedule. On a rooftop opposite the vents, a low iron cage cradled a drum valve with a speaking horn aimed down the alley. Beside it, a man in a plain cap checked a watch against a folded card.

Hanna laid a small mirror on the coping so sunlight jumped across his cheekbone. He blinked reflexively, looked up, and saw the wrong crowd. His hand moved for the valve. The Third tapped a wrench against a rivet—one clear ping—and the lamplighter on the corner, already watching for signals, slammed the street feed shut. Steam dwindled to a ghost.

"No broadcast," Han said, stepping over the parapet. "We've read your schedule."

The valve man measured the distance to the next roof and didn't like it. He set both palms on the horn's rim—surrender, or bluff. "I only repeat what the card says."

"Show the card," Hanna said.

It held the italic hand again, quick and playful: bleeds, pauses, a pair of symbols drawn like small teeth. At the bottom, a place name in miniature—Calendar Garden.

The word carried weight in the mouth: not piety, not law—routine, the kind that keeps seasons from tripping. The temple's garden housed the tall brass frame that advanced feast days and workdays with an elegant clatter, reviewed every equinox by people who thought accuracy a form of kindness.

"Winter's desk sits behind that frame," Han said.

"Winter's habit does," the Reading Master corrected, calm as ever. He had climbed without complaint, hands bound, eyes busy. "Desks come and go."

"Good," Hanna said. "Habits can be broken."

Calendar Garden received only soft shoes and quiet tones. Today, soft shoes tried to look like they belonged to gardeners. Two men in green livery stood by the frame with watering cans that were much too heavy to be water. The frame itself, a marvel of teeth and rails, ticked its nonpartisan time.

Scale held up her writ. "City inspection. No adjustments while I speak."

One can rested on the gravel with a thud that declared metal inside. The other paused mid-pour, angle wrong for any plant. The nearer livery man smiled with a politeness that had been trained to hide contempt. "We'll need to reset the saint's day dial," he said. "Tiny work. No disturbance."

"Open the cans," Hanna said.

"Gardeners don't answer to lockhouse badges," he replied.

"The calendar answers to all of us," Scale said. "Open them."

They obeyed after the smallest eternity. Inside: clapper sleeves wrapped in cloth, bevel panes in flannel, a narrow baton engraved with notches at odd intervals. The baton would ride the calendar rails and skip teeth to pull dates ahead or back while the frame sang fidelity.

The Third whistled, low and involuntary. "Tidy treachery," he said.

Han took the baton and weighed it, then turned to the Reading Master. "Which petal is Winter?"

"That one," the man said, nodding toward a brass tier near the equinox dial. "It looks like any other. It isn't. Pressure a hair to the left and a month behaves."

Hanna slid two fingers under the tier and found the hairline. A sliver of chilled metal hid where brass met brass. It bit skin with an innocence only money affords.

Scale looked to the gardeners. "Name the office that sent you."

They chose silence, then the wrong excuse. "Calendar oversight."

"Not on the city ledgers," Han said, showing them Dockside Ninth's folio. "You're paid by maintenance money that was supposed to whitewash stairwells."

One swallowed. The other stared at the frame with the devotion of a man who can't bear to see a trick spoiled. Hanna took the baton from Han and laid it on the gravel. She set her boot heel down until the notches blurred.

"Enough," Scale said. "We strip the frame of every cleverness that isn't printed in the charter. Gardeners go under oath. Any hand that reaches for a petal answers with a week."

The captain posted guards at the rail, two per dial. The Third mapped hidden bits, naming, pointing, making removal a careful unmaking rather than a ransack. The Reading Master, watching his own architecture come apart piece by measured piece, let a curious fatigue show. "You'll be back next season," he murmured. "Men prefer machines to memory."

"Then we'll write this into memory," Scale said.

Work spread outward. Runners fanned to lamphouses and bell lofts with orders that sounded like common sense when spoken plainly. Bank ledgers shed their italic smiles. Dock workers, hearing that the scarf code had split, turned their heads at ceilings when steam valves breathed wrong and reported it with the zeal of people invited to help.

Afternoon took the edges off shadows. The Plaza's stones cooled. In the lockhouse, seals held. The pouch had grown heavy enough to sink a small boat. Han felt the new weight and let it sit. Hanna's coat carried dust, oil, flannel lint, and satisfaction carefully kept from her face.

On the courthouse steps, the Emeritus waited without attendants, palms empty, gaze level. "You have your chain," she said. "You will use it."

"We have a record," Scale answered. "We'll use that."

"The difference is smaller than you think," the Emeritus said, and left before anyone could measure whether that sentence hoped or warned.

Evening promised weather from the river. Flags along the mint flinched, then remembered their jobs. Han stood a moment where he could see three towers and the Garden's brass spine through leaves. The city's noises had changed key: fewer secret clicks, more ordinary clatter.

"We've got one door left," Hanna said, almost lightly.

"Winter's is never where the sign hangs," Han said.

"Tomorrow," she replied. "Tonight we teach the frame how to forget being clever."

He nodded. The Third, chalk under his nails for once instead of glass dust, smiled in a way that looked new on him. The Reading Master looked smaller without steam, scarves, or an audience, yet he watched the reassembled hour marks as if he were memorizing a world he planned to outlive.

Night thought about arriving and then decided to wait until the last dial settled to the exact day it owed. A faint cheer rose from somewhere ordinary—the sort of cheer baked into loaves and clean ledgers rather than triumphs. For once, nobody tried to turn it into a password.

Streetlamps lifted their halos; steadiness traveled rooflines, quietly choosing doors to bless before morning came.

Kept vigil everywhere.

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