He's hunched over the dock when they find him. Hands in the water, shoulders shaking like he's trying to hold himself together. He looks like a man who has been trying to remember something in the dark but couldn't.
Nysa walks up and the shoreline cuts the sound of the city clean. The scroll is still under her shawl. The seal at her wrist ticks soft as a heartbeat. Ilias moves beside her like a shadow that can block knives.
Idran looks up slowly. His eyes are wet with salt and something older. He's thin. The work of nets carved into his arms. A torn piece of paper is clutched in his hand, its edges feathered with water. Ink has bled into the tear.
"You Idran?" Ilias asks. He keeps his voice level so folks won't hear the wrong thing.
Idran lifts the paper like it's a relic. He stares at the ink. The name on it is in the King's slanted script. Kaelthrax's hand. Nysa sees the tilt and the pressure; she recognizes the stroke the same way she recognizes a chorus she once sang.
"This is mine," she says. Not a question.
Idran blinks. His jaw works. "It fell," he says. "A lantern fell. We were at the harbor and a hand—" He stops. His breath clatters. "Cold. A glove that did not fit a man's hand. It dropped the lantern and it went under and everything went dark after that."
"We're looking for you," she says. "The King—"
"King?" Idran laughs a short, broken sound. "The King's name is a heavy thing. I throw nets. I mind a small boat. I don't remember being a name that carries men." He runs his thumb across the ink until his finger is blue. "But I have this." He holds the paper out like an offering. "I woke up with it in my hand."
A boy at the pier spits and points. "That man's a drunk," he says. "Keeps Kaelthrax's letter and then prays to the tide. Good coin for a scrap like that." He grins at the idea of selling a note from the King.
Ilias steps between them. "Leave him be," he says. Voice low. His hand hovers where his knife would sit. The fishermen shift like a tide. They don't like strangers prying. They don't like the palace's reach in their nets.
Idran stares at Nysa. For a beat he studies her face like a woman who's seen the ghost of someone familiar. He lifts his hand and, quick, fingers something around his neck—a small medallion. It's dull brass, carved clumsy, green with salt. The sigil on it is a child's mark, a looped y with a tail. Her mark.
Nysa freezes. No one expected this. Not like this.
"I kept this when the house burned," Idran says. His voice is flat. "Found it by the docks. I thought it might mean something. I called her little sister back when the voice in the waves told me names. I thought it was a story. I thought the tide told lies."
The word "little sister" sounds wrong in his mouth. He says it in a language Nysa has never practiced, the vowels falling like rocks. But she understands it perfectly. The meaning drops into her like a stone into water. Her stomach goes empty.
Ilias's face shifts. He reels a little, like a wound remembered. The scrap in his coat threatens to burn through. He doesn't speak.
From the warehouse behind the pier, a man in a half-shell coat comes out heavy. He's not a fisherman. He's the sort that takes things for coins. He squints at the torn letter, then at Idran.
"That's a Palace scrap," he says. "The King doesn't lose things for no reason. You got yourself lucky." He smiles like he's smelling profit. "You could sell that. Or I could take it on behalf of Halvor." He names the regent. The word pulls teeth. People around them stiffen.
Ilias's hand drops to his coat. The man takes a step forward. "Not for you," Ilias says.
The man laughs and spits into the water. "The guard said you were escorting a—" He glances at Nysa. His eyes go flat. "—palace clerk. Coin for a scrap saves the day."
Idran tenses. He hides the medallion under his shirt. The paper trembles between his fingers.
"You gonna sell it?" the man says. He moves like a predator. Two goons step from the shadows, heavy as threats.
"So you plan to—" Ilias begins.
Before he finishes, the goons move. Hands out, they try to drag Idran roughly. The paper rips more. The scene opens hot.
Ilias doesn't think. He moves with practiced theft. He grabs one goon's wrist, flips him hard. The fight is quick—dirty and wet. Nysa doesn't like watching violence. She's used to books biting not men. The second goon draws a knife. Ilias counters, a small flash. He takes a cut across his palm. Nysa tastes blood in the air with a tiny, stupid flinch.
The goons back down when the crowd presses. Nobody wants to get involved when palace scraps are on the table. The dealer scowls and slinks back to his men. "You'll be sorry," he grumbles.
Idran cradles the torn paper like a wound. He breathes hard. "He tried to take it," he says. "He said the regent wants papers that belong to the King. He said he'd—"
"What does Halvor want with a scrap?" Nysa asks.
"Names are currency," Ilias says. He's licking the wound on his palm with his lips. "People buy names to hold power. Halvor buys history. He pays men to collect scraps. He wants to control who gets remembered."
Idran looks at Nysa then, like the world narrowed to the face of one person. He cups the medallion between his fingers and finally pulls it out. He presses it into Nysa's palm. It's warm despite the sea.
"You her?" he asks, voice small. He tries the other language and then switches. "Little sister?" he says in the common tongue, as if asking for permission to say it.
She doesn't move. The medallion is heavy with salt and small proof. It fits like a key in a lock she didn't know she had. The name in her head is not a name yet. It's a shape.
"You speak—" Nysa begins, then stops. The language slides into her like someone slipping onto a familiar seat. The memory is not whole. It isn't a story. It's a small, stupid certainty that this man knows her.
Ilias stares at the medallion. He swallows air and climbs up on a barrel like a gambler exposing his hand. "We're not here to steal him," he says loud enough for the dock to hear. "We're here to bring him back. He's got a paper from the King. That's enough."
The dealer laughs again like he owns the world. "You think the King just sends papers in bottles? You think the King pet names fishers? You two are playing at power. Give me the paper and I'll give you coin. Take what you want to the palace and watch your head roll. That's how it works."
Nysa doesn't argue. She reaches for the torn paper. Idran gives it up without resistance. The ink is smudged at the fold. The handwriting is sure and cruel and used to giving orders.
"Do you remember anything else?" Nysa asks.
"Glove," Idran says. "Cold. A hand in a glove bigger than any man should have. The lantern fell. I grabbed it. I tried to help a man under him—" His voice breaks then. "But then there was fog. I woke up with this in my hand and I dream of a lullaby I can't sing."
The lullaby is a line of sound that makes something inside Nysa ache. It is also one of the pieces she read in the margin of the scroll. It stitches something open just enough to hurt.
The dealer sneers, takes another step forward. "Give me the paper," he demands. "And maybe the King will not be so merciful when you return."
Ilias slides his knife free and points the flat edge at the dealer's throat. It's a small threat and a large one when there's nothing to lose. The man blinks, then grins like someone seeing a better bet. He backs off.
"We move now," Ilias says. "We leave with him. No more talk."
They do. Idran pads beside them with old boots and a new weight. He keeps glancing at Nysa as if trying to line her face up with something he's lost. The medallion is safe in his hand for now.
As they step away from the docks the harbor spits a gull into the gray. Idran mumbles under his breath the language again—three soft words that mean less than they feel. He says "little sister" once more and tucks the medallion back to his chest like it holds the last thing he remembers.
Nysa holds the torn paper against her palm and feels the salt in the fibers. The seal at her wrist sits heavy. Time is a thin rope that tightens.
They move inland at a pace that keeps them away from the dealer and his men, away from the regent's reach for the moment. Idran walks with the slow care of someone carrying something fragile. Nysa watches him and realizes the man is both a stranger and an anchor. The medallion is a name. The paper is a question.
She has a month. The King will pull the chain if she fails. She has a seal attached to her life. She has a thief who lied and then didn't. She has a man who calls her little sister in a tongue that lives inside her bones. And she has a torn letter that smells like the King.
None of it is neat. None of it is safe. The lantern memory from the scroll feels close now. Nysa tucks the paper under her palm and keeps walking. But agrees to not say a word about Idran.