Veyra picked the east yard for theatrics: tarps like tired sails, stacked crates, rusted cranes, and—new this morning—fuel drums daisy-chained by twine and pride. A crowd would gather. Helix would arrive late. Someone would clap for the wrong reason.
We didn't bring applause. We brought wrenches.
Mara — Swift Step: Ghost Step, Lunge — lay flat on a catwalk, eyes on two Fang arsonists laughing at their own matches. Jonas — Iron Body: Stone Guard, Breaker — waited under the crane's arm, one hand on a water main valve that didn't know it was the hero yet. I checked the layout twice and the wind once.
"They've soaked the tarp lines," Mara whispered. "All this wants is a spark and an audience."
"Helix?" Jonas asked.
"Five minutes out," I said. "Maybe three if the tram gods feel guilty."
He nodded once. Guilt doesn't make trams faster.
Our job wasn't to win a fight. It was to make a fire do math.
I handed Jonas a spanner. He rolled the valve a quarter turn. Pipes complained. Somewhere under us, water thought about being useful.
"Mara," I said, "take the fuses on the north run first. Quiet."
She exhaled, then vanished two strides—Ghost Step—boards forgetting her. She reappeared at a tarred knot, blade whispering the twine free, hands easing fuse wire out from under soaked cloth. Another slip, another cut. Breath tax paid; footing light.
A lookout finally remembered to look. He frowned at the wrong shadow. Mara slid off his line—Quickstep—and he blinked at emptiness where a person had been. His mouth opened to inform the world. Lunge closed it with the flat of her knife against throat—a promise, not a cut. He nodded like a man who loved his voice enough to keep it for later.
Across the yard, a Fang with a flare gun stood on a crate and practiced being a matchstick. He aimed up, grinning. I palmed a Jammer puck from my pocket—yesterday's blessing—and rolled it under his platform. It hissed and went dull. The flare's ignition coughed and forgot how.
He shook it, annoyed. "Cheap," he said.
Jonas twisted the valve another quarter. A pipe shuddered; a hydrant two lanes over spat rust, then water with opinions. We'd mapped the yard for slope. Now we gave it a river.
"Left line," I told Mara.
She drifted through blowing tarp, hands working fast—cut, coil, tuck. A board cracked under a boot behind her. She didn't turn. Low Fall accepted the shove she didn't receive, rolled her under a beam anyway, and brought her up inside a second arsonist's reach. He swung. She wasn't there. His knuckles met iron. He learned new words about pain.
"Company," Jonas said, voice low.
Two more Fang hit the lane from the street, full of slogans and knives. The first sprinted at Jonas because some men study the wrong stories. Jonas planted—Stone Guard—and the rush died against a chest that decided to be a wall. A short arc—Breaker—to the ribs turned the man's ambition into a wheeze. The second tried a low sweep on wet concrete. Jonas' boot skidded a handspan—cost paid—so he gave ground, reset, and let the man slide past into a crate. Wood objected. So did bone.
The flare man finally got fire. He aimed high and loosed. The flare traced a smug arc—and hit a tarp Mara had already pulled free. It fizzled into wet rope and hissed itself ashamed.
"Helix two blocks," I said. "Time to make them heroes."
Jonas opened the valve all the way. Hydrants woke along the row like a line of old men realizing they still had something to say. Water shoved through trash, found low ground, and wrapped the fuel drum bases in cold decision. The chain of twine sagged, soaked. Fire hates wet math.
Mara cut the last fuse. A shout went up anyway—Fang love a plan too much to surrender it. Three bottles arced: rag-wicked, bright, sure of themselves. Two died in water. One kissed a crate and made a fast, ugly promise.
"Crate six," Mara called, already moving. Lunge took her through heat, blade flicking a latch. The crate tipped into the runnel Jonas had made. Fire chased it and found no friends.
Helix vans bellowed into the far gate. Vale jumped out first, slate under his arm, eyes already angry at everything. Agents dragged hoses toward the hydrants, baffled and grateful to discover they were already singing.
"Pretend you planned that," I murmured.
"Always," Mara said, grinning soot.
Fang scattered between pride and prudence. One decided to be brave and sprinted for the valve. Jonas met him halfway; Heavy Blow drove shoulder into sternum, a gentle suggestion that breathing was a privilege. The man sat down and started a new relationship with the ground.
A woman in a stitched coat—Veyra's cut, not Veyra—pointed at us from the gantry and made a neck-slicing motion. Subtle. She lifted a whistle to signal an angle we hadn't mapped.
"Go," I told Mara. "I'll borrow her map."
Mara took the ladder like gravity owed her money. I made for the office shack where foremen kept clipboards and men kept secrets. Inside: a yard plan, a coil of fresh fuse, a list of "volunteers." The window rattled. A rock came through with a note tied fancy. UMBR A in thick ink, the space a dare.
"Flattering," I said, pocketing the plan and leaving the flattery for later.
Outside, Helix hoses carved white lines across the yard. Fire broke, sulked, shrank. Vale barked orders that sounded good on reports. The stitched-coat woman realized applause would not arrive and cut her losses with a whistle that meant "afterparty, not funeral." Fang peeled away, cursing the math.
We ghosted out with the steam, past a vendor handing out wet rags like tickets. No banners. No names.
Back at the shop, rain started its second shift. The bell coughed. The inspection seal hummed to itself about duty. Jonas set two burned knuckles in the basin and winced when water told the truth.
"Cost?" I asked.
"Tax," he said.
Mara perched on the counter, hair damp, eyes bright. "Helix gets the credit," she said.
"Good," I said. "Credit spends fast. So does blame."
I set the yard plan on the table, weighed it with the warm loaf Kiel had sent. "One more thing," I said, and pointed to a red circle we hadn't drawn. "Fang traced our east cache. If Vale pushes tomorrow, it points here."
Mara's smile thinned. "We burn it."
"We burn it," I said. "Tonight. Quiet. Shelves empty first."
Jonas nodded, not happy, not arguing.
I wrote in the ledger:
East yard: fire turned to math. Helix drank applause. We take the smoke. Burn Cache Finch to keep the others breathing.
Sometimes saving a city means feeding it a piece of yourself. Tonight, the city would eat wood and paper instead of names.