Sector Three's rain turned greasy after midnight. Good for footprints, bad for pride. We watched Brass Dogs turf from the roof—rusted catwalks, pawn stalls chained shut, a mural of crowns flaking off a warehouse wall.
Mara — Swift Step: Ghost Step, Lunge — crouched over the skylight of the Dogs' "office." Jonas — Iron Body: Stone Guard, Breaker — waited in an alley that smelled like salt and old knives. I carried paper, ink, and a lie.
Inside, Dog Boss Rusk held court in a room full of trophies. Beard that tried to be a personality. Four men playing cards like they were paid to lose. A boy sharpening a machete too long for his arm.
"Two minutes," I mouthed.
Mara slid through the hatch like breath. Ghost Step turned floorboards into suggestions. She set the folded note beneath Rusk's ledger—where a cautious man pretends not to look and then does—and came back rain-specked and amused.
We watched. Rusk reached for his cigarette tin, saw the paper, paused. Pride makes men read what they shouldn't. He opened it.
Helix raid at dawn. Dogs framed as Umbra's knives. Veyra's gift under grain in the southeast storehouse. Move your stash now. — A Friend Who Likes Tomorrow
He snorted as if bored, then checked the room's corners and wasn't. "Get the wagon," he said, voice too casual. "New ward. New locks."
The card game stopped losing. Boots moved. The boy grinned like someone had handed him permission.
"Hook," Mara whispered.
"Line," I said.
We crossed roofs toward the southeast storehouse—a squat blockhouse with a busted eagle over the door. Veyra's "gift" would sit under grain: shard scrap dressed in syrupy red so Helix could hold it up for applause.
Jonas slid into the side door like the bricks remembered him. Inside, lanterns were lazy. He walked the aisles, palms brushing sack tops, listening to weight. You learn a lot from gravity.
"Here," he rumbled.
We cut twine. Grain hissed aside. A felted box winked up—brass corners, glamor dust. Inside, a nest of shard scrap glowing like a cheap trick.
"Pretty gallows," Mara said.
"Take it," I said. "Leave a story."
We slid in a decoy: stones wrapped in stained cloth, corner brass scuffed, just wrong enough to ruin a morning. We tied the sack, smoothed the grain, left by a window that forgot it was boarded.
Dawn drew a gray knife across the sky. Helix arrived on schedule—three vans, two squads, Vale out front with a slate and the kind of frown he saves for hoping he's right. We watched from a drainpipe.
"Brass Dogs," an agent barked. "Hands where we like them."
Rusk raised his. His men knelt without arguing, which is a miracle or a rehearsal. Two agents hit the storehouse, rope knives in their teeth like stories still matter.
They hauled grain. They found the box. They opened it. Stones stared back, heroic as potatoes.
Silence learned something.
Kerr blinked hard. Vale put his slate down as if it had offended him. The squad leader swore into his collar, the way reports start when regarding the expected evidence… doesn't find friends.
Rusk didn't gloat, didn't spit. He just looked tired and said, "Wrong poets. We don't write about Umbra."
"Shut up," Kerr snapped, because he had nothing else.
Vale scanned the sacks again, then the men, then the sky, then the ground, looking for whichever one wanted to lie. He settled for mild. "Search the other warehouse."
They spent two hours finding things no one claps for: dull ledgers, knives with names, the kind of crime that keeps a city alive. They left with "presence maintained" written on their faces.
Rusk watched the vans go. "New ward," he told his men. "New locks." He left last, pausing at the threshold like the floor had tried to warn him and he'd been busy.
"Sinker," Mara said.
"East yard," I answered.
Veyra's second move waited there: a public tip for Helix to "catch Dogs moving Umbra gear." Instead, the Dogs had moved already, and we had the gear in a bag that didn't look like a bag. The yard was tarps, stalled cranes, men who sold rust by the kilo.
We walked in as buyers. No masks—just the posture no one interrupts. I handed the glamour box to a vendor known for keeping both eyes and mouth shut.
"Hold this two hours," I said. "If someone comes for it, you never saw us. If no one comes, you never saw anyone."
He weighed the box with his face. "You paying me to forget?"
"I'm paying you to be you," I said, sliding coin.
Helix arrived thirty minutes late, which is punctual for a trap set by someone who respects your calendar. Vale talked to three vendors and got three different truths. Kerr blinked at everyone like facts were afraid of him. They didn't find the "gift." It wasn't theirs anymore.
We left before the frown turned into policy.
Back at the shop, the inspection seal hummed about duty. I let it preach. Mara hung her wet coat, eyes bright and tired. Jonas wrung rain from his sleeves with hands built for heavier things.
"Dogs moved clean," Mara said. "They think they were clever."
"They were," I said. "On loan."
Jonas set the glamour box on the table. Indoors, the red looked smaller. We opened it. Shard scrap winked dull, more dye than danger.
"Dispose?" he asked.
"Later," I said. "It's a mirror now. We'll show it to the right face."
"Vale?" Mara asked.
"He hates messy stories," I said. "Messy is our friend."
"And Veyra?" Jonas said.
"She'll need a bigger fire," I said. "We'll move the wood."
I wrote a line in the ledger:
Dogs relocated. Helix raided an empty stage. Veyra's gift lifted. No flags. No names.
Outside, the district tried on daylight. The spoon in the window bent the sun wrong again, as if reminding it whose city this was.
We had a vendor to tip extra, a courier route to learn, and a woman with a stitched coat who liked applause. Tonight we gave her silence.
Tomorrow we'd choose the noise.