The safehouse smelled of boiled coffee and the faint, metallic tang of sigil-ink. Lamps burned low on the long table where Rell had spread the tracer's readout like a map: pale lines of script, a lattice of donor marks, and a faint registry imprint that had only shown itself after the tracer's second pass. The shard lay in the center of the table, wrapped in oilcloth, its edge catching the lamplight like a small, stubborn moon. Around it, the Loom gathered—faces drawn, hands steady, the quiet readiness of people who had learned to make truth into a thing that could be held.
Aria stood with her back to the window, the city's night a smear of lanterns beyond the glass. She felt the shard's weight in her pack like a heartbeat. The tracer's lattice had teased out a spiral mark at the shard's margin, a donor sigil so faint it might have been a smudge if Rell's machine had not coaxed it into being. Rell tapped the mark with a gloved finger and the room seemed to lean in.
"Virelle," he said, and the name landed like a stone.
Luna's hand tightened on the strap of her satchel. The jasmine at her throat was a small weather; tonight it felt like a warning. "That's the patron house we've been finding in the margins," she said. Her voice was steady, but there was a thread of something under it—memory, perhaps, or the ledger's long, patient hunger. "If Virelle's donor mark is on the shard, then this isn't a stray procurement. It's a trust line."
Halv, who had been checking the tracer's seals, looked up. "Trust lines mean accounts. Accounts mean transfers. If Virelle's on the registry, they've been funding more than patronage."
Aria's jaw tightened. The ledger had been a rumor that became a map; the map had teeth. If a patron house had been stamping donor marks into codex fragments, the implications were larger than a broker's greed. It suggested a system—an institutional hand that had been buying, binding, and burying memory.
"We need a name," Aria said. "A face. Someone who can tell us how the mark got there."
Rell's fingers flew over the tracer's output. The registry imprint had a partial ledger line—an account number, a transfer date, a courier route that matched a manifest Rell had pulled from the Gray Market's hidden ledgers. The manifest listed a broker cell: Black Keel. A broker's name, a launch number, a private route to the Salted Bastion.
"Black Keel runs quiet channels," Rell said. "They use intermediaries. But there's an agent who handles patron transfers—goes by the name Jorren. He's been seen on the Bastion's docks."
Aria felt the map tighten. "We bring him in," she said. "Quietly. No market theatrics. We don't need Shade Hares or a public packet yet. We need a broker to talk."
Luna's eyes met hers. "You want me to hold the witness?"
Aria nodded. "If he talks, we'll need his testimony anchored. Forensics will want a steady voice."
Luna's mouth flattened. The Echo Shield was a teacher's ward; it could hold a witness's memory steady for a minute while forensics anchored testimony. The cost was a memory haze—small, private things that thinned for a day or three. Luna had paid that cost before; she would pay it again if it meant a ledger line could be traced to a patron house.
"We do it carefully," Luna said. "We don't let him go near a Shade Hare handler. We don't let him see the shard."
They moved at dawn, slipping through Saltport's waking alleys like a tide. Halv and Rell handled the logistics—routes, safehouses, a false manifest to cover their approach. Aria kept her hood low and her hands empty. The Gray Market's outer lanes were waking: vendors setting out trays of sigil-washed trinkets, a child with a tray of glass beads, a man who traded in names and kept a ledger of his own. The city smelled of frying oil and salt and the faint jasmine that clung to Luna like a private weather.
Jorren's stall was a nest of glass and bone, a place where brokers kept their quieter trades. He greeted them with a smile that did not reach his eyes and a hand that offered a cup of something that smelled faintly of spice and ledger ink. He was younger than Aria had expected—too neat, too practiced in the way of men who had learned to make themselves forgettable.
"You're bold," he said, voice oily. "You come into my market and ask questions."
Aria's blade was a shadow at her hip. "We don't want trouble," she said. "We want to know about a transfer. A manifest. A donor mark."
Jorren's smile sharpened. "You think I keep manifests on my stall? I sell curios. I broker favors. I don't keep ledgers in the open."
Halv's hand closed on a crate and shoved it forward. The crate burst open and a tangle of false sigils spilled across the planks. Apprentices shouted and the market's attention snapped. Jorren's men reached for blades.
Aria did not want a fight. She wanted a name. She stepped forward, voice low. "We have witnesses," she said. "We have a manifest that ties a launch to a patron transfer. We have a shard with a donor mark. We can make this public, Jorren. Or you can tell us what you know and walk away."
For a heartbeat Jorren's face flickered—calculation, fear, the ledger's arithmetic running through him. Then he laughed, a short, sharp sound. "You think threats work in the market? You think the Gray Market is afraid of a few teachers?"
"You think the market is a ledger," Aria said. "We think it's a map. We can follow the lines."
Jorren's eyes narrowed. He stepped back and, with a casual motion, produced a small glass shard from beneath his sleeve—a broker's tool, an echo-scraper. It flashed in the morning light like a promise. The market's noise seemed to thin as people sensed the shift: a broker's tool was not a blade for killing; it was a tool for unmaking testimony, for scraping a teacher's ward until it frayed.
"You don't want to make this public," Jorren said. "You don't want the Bastion to know you have a shard. You don't want House Virelle to know you're poking at their trusts."
Aria's hand tightened on the hilt at her hip. The shard in her pack hummed like a small, impatient thing. She could have drawn steel, made a scene, dragged Jorren into the light. But the Loom's work was not spectacle; it was precision. They needed testimony anchored, not a market brawl that would let the brokers bury the ledger under a pile of bodies and coin.
"Luna," Aria said, and the name was a small, private signal.
Luna stepped forward, the jasmine at her throat a thin weather. She did not reach for a ward at first; she let her presence be the anchor. "We don't want to hurt you," she said, voice low. "We want to know who handled the transfer. Who took the manifest to the Bastion."
Jorren's smile thinned. He flicked the echo-scraper between his fingers like a man who had practiced the motion until it was a language. "You teachers think you can hold memory like a coin," he said. "You think you can make people remember what they were paid to forget."
Aria felt the ledger's old, patient hunger in the broker's words. There was truth in them: memory had become currency, and currency had buyers. But the ledger had teeth, and the Loom had learned to follow them.
"Tell us," Aria said. "And we'll make sure you're not hunted for it."
Jorren's eyes flicked to the apprentices, to Halv's hand on the crate, to the way the market's attention had narrowed. He weighed the ledger's arithmetic in his head: the risk of speaking, the risk of silence. Then he did something Aria had not expected—he smiled, small and brittle, and tucked the echo-scraper back into his sleeve.
"All right," he said. "There's a launch. Launch three. Black Keel. A patron agent named Halven handles transfers. He meets at the Bastion's lower quay. He takes manifests in sealed crates. He doesn't like witnesses."
The name was a thread. Rell's fingers flew over a slate and matched the launch number to the manifest they already had. The tracer's imprint and Jorren's testimony fit together like teeth. Aria felt the map tighten into a line that led to the Salted Bastion.
"Why tell us?" Luna asked, voice careful.
Jorren shrugged. "Because you made a scene. Because the market's eyes are on me now. Because if the Bastion thinks I'm loose-lipped, they'll cut me off. And because—" He hesitated, and for a moment Aria saw something like fear cross his face—"because I don't like being erased."
The broker's confession was a small, human thing. People who trafficked in memory feared the ledger's erasure as much as anyone. They had names to protect, routes to keep, lives to hide. Jorren's fear was a currency Aria could use.
"We'll get you out," she said. "We'll make sure you're safe."
He nodded, too quickly. The market's noise rose again, and for a moment it felt like the world had righted itself. Then Jorren's hand slipped to his sleeve and the echo-scraper flashed again—this time not as a threat but as a reflex. He had been trained to keep a tool ready.
Aria moved before she thought. The Loom had rehearsed for moments like this: quiet confrontations that could turn violent in a breath. She stepped forward and caught Jorren's wrist with a practiced twist, a motion that used his momentum against him. The echo-scraper clattered to the planks.
Jorren's face went white. He spat a curse and then, with a quick, desperate motion, reached for a sigil-etched bead on his stall—a small ward meant to buy time. He muttered a phrase, a broker's cadence that smelled faintly of ink and coin. The bead flared, a thin lattice of light that tried to unmake the contact Aria had on his wrist.
Luna's voice rose then, a low, bright note that braided the market's noise into a thin, steady net. She moved with the teacher's economy of motion, a hand on Aria's shoulder, a hum at the back of her throat. The bead's lattice struck the hum and recoiled as if struck by wind.
But the broker's bead had a trick: it was tuned to reflect a teacher's cadence back at its source. Jorren had used a Mirror Rip—a broker's mimicry of a teacher's technique—to try to unbalance them. The lattice struck Luna's hum and folded, and for a heartbeat the world narrowed to a thin, bright point at the edge of Aria's senses.
Then the cost landed.
It was not a wound; it was a dulling. A small, private sense thinned like paper held to a lamp. Aria's tongue went flat in her mouth; the morning's coffee lost its edge. The market's colors did not change, but the world tasted less like salt and more like ash. The Mirror Rip had reflected Luna's hum, and the technique's cost—one sensory sense dulled—had landed on the nearest teacher: Aria.
She staggered, surprised by the sudden smallness of the world. The loss was immediate and intimate; a private thing gone before she could anchor it. For a breath she felt naked, as if someone had taken a page from a ledger she had not known she carried.
Luna's hand tightened on her shoulder. "Hold," she said, voice steady. "We anchor him now."
Rell moved with the practiced speed of someone who had learned to read machines. He set the tracer's net across Jorren's hands and the apprentices formed a loose ring. Luna's hum braided into a thin Echo Shield and took hold of Jorren's testimony like a net. Forensics poured light across his memory and the tracer translated it into a pattern that Rell read like a map.
Jorren's voice came, small and raw. He spoke of launches and sealed crates, of a patron agent who took manifests to the Bastion, of a donor mark stamped into a plate before the ink had dried. For a minute his memory was steady, and forensics anchored it into the Loom's ledger.
When the shield collapsed, the cost settled like a stone. Aria's tongue remained dull; the world tasted thinner. It would come back, Luna said later, but it would be a day or two before the edge returned. The Mirror Rip had done its work and exacted its price.
They left the market with a name and a launch number and a new, bitter knowledge: the brokers had learned to mimic teachers' techniques, to weaponize reflection. The ledger's arithmetic had become more dangerous; the tools of protection could be turned into instruments of erasure.
On the safehouse stairs, Aria paused and let the night press against her. The dullness in her mouth was a small, private wound. She thought of the shard in her pack, of the donor mark that had led them here, of the way a single sigil could reframe a city's story. She thought of Jorren's fear and the market's ledger that kept its own accounts.
Luna's hand found hers, fingers warm and steady. "You did well," she said, and the words were small and fierce.
Aria let herself believe it for a moment. They had a line to the Salted Bastion now, a name to follow. They had anchored testimony and learned a new danger: that the Mirror Rip could be used not only to reflect but to wound. The cost had been paid—Aria's taste dulled, a private thing gone for a day—and the ledger's thread had tightened.
They climbed the stairs into the safehouse together, the city's night folding around them like a cloak. Forensics would trace the manifest; Halv would ready a skiff; Rell would cross-reference the launch's manifest with the Bastion's docks. The Loom had a map and a direction. The donor mark had been a whisper; now it was a road.
Inside, Luna set a cup of bitter tea to Aria's lips. The first sip was thin, but it was a thing to hold. Aria closed her eyes and let the taste be a small, stubborn anchor. The ledger's arithmetic would demand more—names to be spoken, witnesses to be protected, costs to be counted—but for the first time since the shard had surfaced, they had a path that led out of the margins and toward a patron house's door.
Outside, Saltport's night moved on. Inside, the Loom began to stitch the next line.