The scribe's place looked like a corpse someone forgot to bury. Half a ship, half a shack, leaned into the Wharf like it was trying to whisper a secret to the sea. You had to step around broken crates, seaweed-covered ropes, and what may or may not have once been a goat to reach the crooked door.
"You sure this is it?" I asked.
Hecate didn't even glance at me. "He's the only one who ever wrote about the clause. He's the only one who might risk repeating it."
The door didn't have a knocker. Just a bent spoon dangling from a frayed rope. Hecate tapped it once. Then twice. A pause. Then three times in rapid fire. Like a heartbeat.
Something thumped from inside, followed by the unmistakable sound of paper tearing and a muffled curse. Then the door creaked open.
He was tiny. Not small like a kid, but like someone who'd been compressed by years of disappointment. Ink-stained fingers. A beard tied in a knot. Eyes that looked like they'd forgotten how to blink but remembered too much. He didn't speak.
Hecate held up the copper slip. "Clause K-Nine. It held."
That got a reaction. He leaned in, like he needed to smell the words.
Then he grinned. "Well I'll be guttered. Come in. Before the Wharf notices."
Inside smelled like burned parchment and desperation. Paper stacked everywhere. On tables. Chairs. A sleeping cot. I think even the ceiling had notes nailed to it.
"Name's Bairn Mott," he said. "I'm the Wharf's most ignored scribe. And you... you're the runner, ain't you? The one who mouthed the clause?"
"Arlen," I muttered. "Yeah. That was me."
He laughed like it hurt. "You're either a genius or a suicide note with legs."
"Bit of both," I said.
Hecate didn't sit. She stood over his cluttered desk, pulling the scroll from her coat.
"We need this printed. Circulated. Discreetly but wide. Enough to spread the doubt."
Bairn eyed the scroll like it was a bomb.
"If I do this," he said slowly, "I lose what's left of my name. You understand that? The Syndic watches my ink line."
"Then write it where they don't look," Hecate said.
He squinted. Then sighed. Reached into a drawer and pulled out a battered red wax seal.
"I'll bury it in the clause digest. Somewhere between tide rations and canal tax revisions. Nobody reads those except ledger-rats and the desperate."
"Perfect," Hecate said.
He paused, then pointed at me. "But if this blows up, I want a front row seat to the fire."
We left just after fifth bell. The Wharf was breathing differently now. Still salty. Still wet. But nervous. Like it knew something had changed.
We walked in silence through alleys sticky with old rain. Down past Hollowbend, across Ropehook Causeway. Lanterns flickered. Boardwalks creaked. The Wharf whispered, but not loud enough to name.
Hecate walked faster. Her stride meant trouble.
"You think he'll do it?" I asked.
"He already has. He wrote it the moment we walked in. Bairn's a coward. But he's also vain. And this clause? This makes him feel remembered."
I nodded slowly, not sure if I believed it.
We turned into Binders Alley—and stopped.
There was blood on the wall.
Fresh.
Hecate pulled me back into shadow. Two men stood at the far end, one dragging something wrapped in oilcloth. The other held a cracked stave, its tip still hissing.
Syndic enforcers.
They spoke low.
"Said he knew the clause. Said he could write it."
"And now his tongue knows silence."
I felt something tighten in my chest. Not fear. Not quite. Something colder.
Hecate whispered, "They're already hunting sympathizers. The spread's begun."
We waited until they passed, then moved fast. Through alley bends and canal ladders. Across planks slick with fish oil and whispers.
By the time we reached her shack, the Wharf had changed again.
The next morning, everything was louder. Not noise. Not shouting. But tone.
You could feel it in the way vendors looked over their shoulders. In the way drunkards whispered instead of sang. In the way the gutter kids stopped stealing for a day and just... listened.
The clause had leaked.
Hecate and I sat in the back of a fish stall, drinking bitter root tea.
"Listen," she said.
I did.
A man at the stall next door: "Did you hear? They say a boy mouthed it. Froze the clause. Bought time."
A washerwoman passing by: "My cousin tried it. Got five minutes before the guards cracked her jaw."
A fishmonger: "Clause K-Nine. Not real. Just a trick."
But the fact they were saying it at all meant something.
"The Wharf knows," I said.
"It begins," Hecate replied.
We moved again by noon. The Syndic would trace the leak soon. We couldn't be where they expected.
Down near Nine Hook, the boardwalk dipped under water in some places. Whole homes half-submerged. But people still lived there. Still smoked pipes and fed gulls and told stories under oil lanterns.
We passed a man selling knockoff clause slips. He shouted, "K-Nine protection! Guaranteed! Your name, your life, your legacy! Half a crown!"
I stopped. Grabbed one. Cheap parchment. Wrong seal.
"They're already twisting it," I said.
Hecate sighed. "They always do. That's the price of momentum."
Then came the bells. Slow. Heavy. Arrest bells.
We ducked into a tunnel under Old Cross Canal. Watched from the shadows as three kids were dragged from a bakery.
"Clause kids," one enforcer spat. "Think delay makes them safe."
They beat one. Not to death. Just enough to bleed.
Hecate didn't look away.
"We caused this," I said.
"No," she replied. "They did. We just exposed the knife."
That night, in a hollow behind a shuttered ledger house, I stared at the two remaining copper slips.
One was for protection. The other for pressure.
"We go next to Gavri Thorn," Hecate said. "She controls two districts' supply routes. If she backs the clause, the Syndic can't cut the city off."
I nodded. "And after that?"
Her eyes burned. "We flip a priest. And if we fail... we make him burn anyway."