The docks kept their own hours; night made them honest. Derrigan moved through a maze of crates and tarpaulins with the steady, unobtrusive steps of someone used to being unnoticed. The ledger was wrapped in its rain‑colored cloth and sat quiet in his satchel, a private weight against his ribs. He liked the feeling—two hands of the world, one that asked, one that kept.
Seo‑yeon found him at the caravan's nearest approach, already unrolling a coil of rope with efficient fingers. Her breath came in small even puffs. "There's a broken latch on the back hatch," she said. "I can get it if you cover me."
"You cover," he said. "I'll check inside. If you get in fast, we make it look like a rescue by neighbors, not a raid."
She glanced at him—part approval, part impatience. "You treat everything like a civics exam."
He tightened the sling on his satchel and let his voice go low. "Oliphym," he said, the raid name soft on his tongue. The word was not a costume; it was a posture. She nodded as if the single syllable clarified everything they needed to know.
The hatch gave easier than it looked: a rotten hinge and a misaligned bolt. Seo‑yeon slipped through first, a shadow folding into shadow. Derrigan followed, ducking under banners singed at the edges. The caravan's interior smelled of soot and lavender; someone had tried to make a refuge from ruin. Two pallets held meager stacks of bedding and a small pile of scavenged tins.
On the far pallet two small shapes huddled beneath a scrap of cloth. The awake child's lashes were crusted with ash; the other breathed shallowly beside her. Derrigan moved with the practiced gentleness of someone who had carried sleeping things across broken thresholds before. He set the ledger on the pallet and opened it to the emergency card with hands that did not tremble until he had to write.
"What are your names?" he asked the awake child.
The reply was a shard of vowel and breath that caught at his chest—a sound that held itself together like a promise. He wrote it exactly, the pen scratching careful lines. As the ink set, a single word along the margin rearranged itself in neat, deliberate strokes until it read the same name he'd just written. The effect was small, intimate, like a private echo. Derrigan pressed his thumb over the margin as if to steady the page and felt, for a blink, the ledger like a held breath between two people.
Seo‑yeon was already checking the pallet for signs of injury. She wrapped the smaller child in a spare blanket with a mechanic's efficiency and lifted her. "They're cold, but breathing. We should move."
"Don't carry the ledger," she added, noticing the book. "If anyone sees it—"
"It stays with me," he said. He closed the ledger and slipped it back into the raincloth, the familiar ritual comforting. The margin line still seemed to hum beneath the cloth, though he could not hear anything but the scrape of rope and the distant clank of a crate.
They moved fast. Derrigan climbed down first with the smaller child cradled under his coat, feet finding old handholds. Seo‑yeon followed with the other, checking the street for patrols as she went. At the corner an overturned barrel made a good blind, and they pulled their way past it like thieves walking away from a kindness.
Back in the warehouse the children were set by the hearth—Derrigan had no hearth to speak of, but an old oil drum and a grate made do—and Seo‑yeon fussed over improvised hot broth while he leafed through the ledger by lamplight. The name in the margin no longer rearranged itself, but the edges of the page seemed softer, as if something had pressed against the paper and left the shape of a hand.
"You could at least inventory them," Seo‑yeon said, spoon in hand. "Names, age, any sigils. The union needs records."
He made an entry on the next blank line: Found at Dock 9; two rescues; one with ash markings; temporary shelter provided. He added the children's names on the right, the margins taking the color of his pen like careful skin. He paused before he added anything else. The ledger had already done something for them—turned an accidental salvaging into an accounted promise. Writing the account felt like acknowledging a debt he now intended to bear.
A quiet sound crawled up behind them as the warehouse door shifted. Derrigan's head snapped up. A tall figure stood framed by the doorway in the weak amber of the alleylight: a man in a plain coat with a small emblem stitched to the sleeve, the kind of marker that announced direction without speech. The man's eyes were cool and quick, measuring.
"That's a dangerous book you carry," he said, not unkindly. "Books bind things."
Derrigan stood. "We deal in keeping people safe."
The man's smile was thin. "People are heavy with pacts, lately. Better to leave such matters to the guild."
Seo‑yeon put herself between the man and the children with the natural territoriality of someone who kept lists for the living. "We made it look like a neighborly rescue," she said. "No need for guild bureaucracy tonight."
The man's eyes flicked to the ledger's raincloth peeking from Derrigan's satchel. "Names have value," he said. "If you keep accounts, make sure someone reputable can verify them. Otherwise those names become a commodity."
Derrigan felt the ledger warm against his ribs like a pulse. "These are people," he said. "Not stock."
"People are the truest stock," the man replied. "But good. Keep them safe. For now."
He left as quietly as he had come, the emblem catching the light for a breath. When the door closed Derrigan slid down against the crate and let out a breath he had been holding. "Guild rep," he said quietly. "They're sniffing around."
Seo‑yeon's forehead creased. "We should file for temporary guardianship," she said. "Legalities are messy, but we can delay officials with proper paperwork if we document the rescue correctly."
"Tomorrow," he said. "Tonight, we help them sleep."
They fed the smaller child broth. The awake one watched him with the guarded interest of someone learning new currencies—food, warmth, a soft word. Derrigan hummed an old lullaby he had learned from a neighbor once, the notes threadbare from disuse. The child's eyelids drooped, soot smudging her lashes like a halo. For a moment he allowed himself to imagine a life where the ledger was a ledger and nothing more, where names stayed lines and promises did not rearrange themselves into replies.
But the margin's echo had moved into him. He had felt it in the caravan and again when the union man stood in the doorway. The ledger did not simply record; it answered, in small ways that made him think too much and sleep too little. The phrase from the back cover—When a story answers, listen to where it leads—pressed at the base of his skull like a foreign coin.
Seo‑yeon cleared the table and gathered the blankets. "I'll start the manifest," she said. "You'll need to file an emergency entry with the ward board in the morning."
He nodded, fingers tucking the ledger into the satchel with the habitual care of someone handling something fragile. He wanted to tell her the margin had rearranged itself to a name, the way the ledger seemed to agree with the world in the smallest possible currency. He wanted to tell her everything, but truth sometimes had a way of asking for proof.
Outside, a shadow moved along the dock's edge, the silhouette of a figure turning toward the sound of a single pen scratching paper. Derrigan could have sworn that for a heartbeat the ledger warmed against him as if reading the world back with equal attention.
He went to bed that night with the ledger folded by his pillow and the raincloth tucked tight. He slept the sleep of someone who had done what he could for now. When he woke he would write more names, inventory more small debts, and tidy the accounts of a city that would not keep still. For the ledger, for the children, and for the thin, private promise in his chest, he would keep doing the math until it balanced.