[POV: Halven Voss — continued]
"A useful idiot," Varis repeated slowly. "I like useful idiots. They're predictable."
He looked back at the log. "And the result? What did your test reveal?"
Voss's heart hammered. The assassin. The one he'd sent to probe Mora.
"It came back clean, sir," Voss said quickly. "He's exactly what he seems—a coward who cried and babbled about his pension. No manifest, no weapons, no spine."
"So you recalled the order?"
"For now," Voss said. "Because the Friday shipment is huge. If I kill him now, I have to do this paperwork myself. And I might make a mistake. I thought... I thought we could use him. Burn him out until the shipment is gone. Let him do the heavy lifting."
Varis tapped his finger on the desk. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Then, the pressure lifted. Just a fraction.
"Logical," Varis said. "Laziness is a vice, Halven, but at least you're honest about it."
He pulled his gloves back on.
"Keep him," Varis said. "Until Friday."
Voss let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "Thank you, sir."
"But Halven?"
Varis paused at the door. He didn't turn around.
"Yes, Regent?"
"If the shipment is late... or if the numbers are off by even a single ounce..." Varis turned his head slightly, just enough for Voss to see the cold, dead curve of his smile. "You take his place in the Plaza. The guillotine is hungry, Halven, and I haven't fed it a Director in months."
The door clicked shut.
Voss collapsed into his chair. His legs gave out. He grabbed the wine glass and drained it in one gulp, the red liquid staining his lips.
The Plaza, he thought, a memory flashing behind his eyes—the thud of the blade, the cheer of the crowd, the way the last Director's head had rolled into the basket like a discarded cabbage.
Friday, he thought, his hands shaking so hard the glass rattled against his teeth. I just have to survive until Friday.
He looked at the window. The storm was picking up again, the rain lashing against the glass.
He thought of the man on the roof. The "useful idiot."
I just saved your life, you fool, Voss thought, staring into the dark. Don't make me regret it.
[POV: Silas]
Dawn came grey and wet, the same as every dawn in Stoneveil.
Silas followed Kessa through the maze of checkpoints that connected the Crown complex to the stillstone routes. She walked fast, her boots splashing through puddles without breaking stride, her Crown ring flashing in the dim light whenever she raised a hand to signal the guards.
"Keep up, Mora," she said over her shoulder. "The morning shift crews don't wait for slow paperwork."
Arlen wouldn't complain. Arlen would shuffle faster and look grateful.
Silas shuffled faster and looked grateful.
The first checkpoint was a stone archway wedged between two warehouses, manned by four guards in Crown colors. They checked Kessa's ring, glanced at Silas's coat, and waved them through without a word.
The second was more thorough—a weighing station where crates of raw ore were measured and logged before being loaded onto wagons. Silas watched the process with a courier's eye: scale, manifest, stamp, move. Each step took roughly thirty seconds. A bottleneck if the line backed up.
If someone wanted to stop a shipment, this is where you'd do it. Jam the scale, forge the stamp, lose the manifest.
He filed the observation away and kept walking.
The third checkpoint marked the edge of the city proper. Beyond it, the road curved down toward the pit mouth—a massive scar in the earth where Stoneveil's wealth was torn from the rock.
Kessa stopped at the barrier and turned to face him.
"You've been scribbling in that notebook since the first gate," she said. "What are you writing?"
Silas held up the small leather journal he'd been carrying. "Timing. Weight variances. Guard rotations." He shrugged, playing up the nervous clerk. "The Director said to look for inefficiencies. I'm looking."
Kessa's eyes narrowed. "Voss doesn't care about efficiency. He cares about numbers that match."
"I know." Silas tucked the notebook away. "That's why I'm also looking for places where the numbers don't match. Makes it easier to fix them."
She stared at him for a long moment. Then she turned and kept walking.
She doesn't trust me. But she can't figure out why.
They passed through the final checkpoint and descended toward the pit.
The smell hit him first.
It was old rock and fresh sweat, metal dust and something organic—the wet, copper tang of exhaustion that came from bodies pushed past breaking. The air was thick with it, coating his tongue and settling in his lungs like a warning.
The pit mouth was a massive wound carved into the hillside. Wooden scaffolding clung to the walls like a nervous skeleton, platforms and ladders zigzagging down into the dark. Torches burned at regular intervals, their light swallowed by the depth.
Workers moved in steady streams along the paths. They wore roughspun tunics stained grey with dust, their faces covered with cloths that did nothing to stop the stillstone particles from working into their skin. Some carried tools—picks, hammers, chisels. Others carried baskets of ore on their backs, bent double under the weight.
Silas watched a group of them emerge from a tunnel mouth at the lowest level. They moved slowly, shuffling more than walking, their shoulders hunched against some invisible pressure.
They look like they're already dead. They just haven't stopped moving yet.
One of the workers stumbled. A woman—maybe thirty, maybe older, her face aged by the dust until it was impossible to tell. She caught herself on the wall, coughing hard into the cloth around her face.
The cough was wet. Deep. The kind of sound that came from lungs that had forgotten what clean air felt like.
Kessa didn't slow down.
"Don't stare," she said quietly. "It's bad form."
Silas forced his eyes forward. But his ears stayed tuned to the sounds behind him—the coughing, the shuffling, the dull thud of ore baskets hitting the ground.
Stilllung. The dust eats them from the inside.
He'd read about it in the Ore Primer Kessa had given him. Grade-A stillstone was hard enough to score diamond, resistant to heat and acid, worth more than gold by weight. But the process of extracting it—cutting it, crushing it, hauling it up from the depths—released a fine particulate dust that settled in the lungs and never came out.
Long-term exposure meant chronic coughing, blood in the spit, eventually drowning in your own fluids. There was no cure. There was only distance—staying far enough from the source to keep breathing.
And everyone down there is close to the source every day.
They reached a foreman's station perched on a ledge overlooking the main pit floor. A heavyset man with a clipboard sat behind a rough wooden desk, checking names off a list as workers filed past.
"Morning count," Kessa said, leaning against the desk. "How many short?"
The foreman glanced up. "Three didn't report. Two from yesterday's shift, one from last week."
"Dead or run?"
"Does it matter?" The foreman shrugged. "Either way, they're off the list."
Kessa nodded, her face blank. She turned to Silas.
"This is where you start, Mora. Match the names to the output logs. If someone's not producing, flag them. If someone's producing more than they should, flag that too. Voss likes patterns."
Voss likes knowing who to blame when the numbers don't add up.
Silas took the clipboard the foreman offered. It was covered in a fine layer of grey dust.
He began to work.
A child appeared at the edge of his vision an hour later.
Silas was crouched by a stack of ore baskets, pretending to count weights while actually mapping guard positions. The foreman had wandered off to yell at someone, and Kessa was deep in conversation with a shift supervisor. For a few minutes, no one was watching him.
That's when he saw the boy.
He couldn't have been more than twelve. Thin arms, hollow cheeks, eyes that looked too old for his face. He was carrying a basket half his size, staggering under the weight as he made his way up a steep ramp toward the checkpoint.
Halfway up, he stopped to cough.
It wasn't a normal cough. It was deep, rattling, the kind of sound that came from lungs that were filling with something they couldn't expel. The boy bent double, his whole body shaking with the force of it.
When he straightened, there was blood on the rag around his face.
Twelve years old. Maybe less. Already dying.
Silas watched him resume his climb, each step a visible struggle. The guards at the checkpoint didn't look at him. The foremen didn't help him. Nobody did anything—because this was how Stoneveil worked, because the boy was just another unit of labor with a limited shelf life.
The spoilage rate isn't just theft. It's bodies. Eight hundred and forty-seven last quarter, averaged across all categories. And that's just the ones they count.
The boy reached the checkpoint and set down his basket. A guard checked the weight, made a mark on a clipboard, and waved him through to pick up an empty basket for the return trip.
The whole cycle took less than a minute.
Silas looked away before anyone could notice him staring.
If I stay here long enough, will I stop seeing them too? Will they just become numbers on a page, the way Voss sees them?
He didn't know the answer. And that scared him more than the fighting ever had.
Evening found Silas alone in the Archive.
The smell here was different—dry rot, cheap glue, the dust of a thousand dead records. No blood on the floor, but the violence was still there, written in neat columns and careful margins.
He pulled the latest Spoilage log from the shelf and carried it to the reading desk.
Spoilage (Human) - Quarterly Average: 847.
The number sat in the margin like an accusation. He'd seen it before, but it hit different now—after the pit, after the child, after watching an entire industry built on burning through people like fuel.
Eight hundred and forty-seven bodies. Not criminals. Not rebels. Just workers who didn't produce enough to be worth keeping alive.
He flipped through the pages, scanning the entries. Names he didn't recognize. Grades he now understood. Causes of "spoilage" that ranged from "exhaustion" to "insubordination" to "lung failure."
They count the dead like broken tools. And they call it efficiency.
A thought surfaced, cold and practical:
If I had poison, this would be faster. One vial in the water supply at the foremen's station. One dose in Voss's morning tea. One drop in the Regent's wine.
He reached inward, calling up the [Storage Space] menu. The familiar lattice bloomed behind his eyes.
There, in the corner of the grid, the seed-icon sat dormant.
[Skill Seed Detected: Toxin Mastery (Uncommon • Green)]
[Status: Dormant]
[Catalyst: Unknown – conditions not yet met]
Blood? Ash? Something else I don't have yet?
He studied the blurred description, trying to parse meaning from the locked text. The Citadel didn't give gifts without strings. Whatever this seed required, it would be expensive—in coin, in blood, or in something worse.
Not now. The mission timer is already ticking, and I don't have time for experiments.
He closed the menu and returned to the log.
But the cold thought stayed with him:
If I had poison, I could end this faster. But faster isn't always cleaner. And I'm not sure I want to be the man who kills a city to save it.
The note was waiting on his desk when he returned to his room.
Plain paper. No signature. Just six words in an unfamiliar hand:
The eel vendor has a brother.
Silas read it three times. His heart stayed steady—no spike, no panic—but his mind was already racing through implications.
Someone knew about his connection to Jessa. Someone had been watching him, the same way he'd been watching everyone else. And someone had decided to share information rather than act on it.
Ally or trap? Test or invitation?
He burned the note in his candle flame and watched the ashes curl.
Tomorrow, I find out which.
He lay back on the thin mattress, staring at the cracked ceiling. The image of the boy coughing blood into his rag played behind his eyes, overlaid with the numbers in the Spoilage log.
847 per quarter. 282 per month. 9 per day, roughly.
He did the math without wanting to.
9 people die in this city every day, and nobody even notices. And I'm supposed to kill one Regent and call it justice.
The mission timer pulsed at the edge of his vision.
[Mission—Stoneveil Regicide]
[Time Remaining: 4 days 0 hours]
Four days. And every hour I waste, more names go on that list.
He closed his eyes.
Sleep came slowly, and when it did, it tasted like dust.
Morning came grey and cold.
Silas woke with a purpose. The note from last night burned in his memory. The eel vendor has a brother. Someone knew about Jessa. Someone was watching.
Time to watch back.
He skipped the Records Office and headed straight for the market district. The eel stall opened early—he'd noticed that on his first pass through the Harbor Quarter. If he wanted to learn Jessa's patterns, he needed to see her when she thought no one was looking.
The stall was already smoking when he arrived. Silas found a spot in the shadow of a warehouse doorway, close enough to observe, far enough to avoid notice.
Jessa worked the morning rush with brisk efficiency. She gutted eels with a knife that moved like it knew exactly where to cut. She bantered with regulars—dock workers, cart pushers, a few Crown clerks grabbing breakfast before their shifts. Nothing suspicious. Just a woman running a business.
But the way she holds that knife. The way her eyes track every face in the crowd. That's not a vendor. That's someone who's been trained to watch.
He waited until the rush thinned. Jessa stacked her tools in a battered crate and pulled a canvas cover over the counter.
Early close. Interesting.
She shouldered her bag and started walking.
Silas followed.
The crowds were still thick—workers heading to second shifts, vendors restocking carts, guards changing posts at the checkpoints. Stoneveil hummed with the ugly energy of a city that never quite woke up and never quite slept.
Jessa moved through it like she knew exactly where every shadow fell.
She didn't take the main streets. She cut through alleys, ducked under overhangs, and twice doubled back on her route for no apparent reason. Counter-surveillance. A pattern designed to shake anyone who wasn't paying close attention.
She's good. Not just street-smart. Trained.
Silas kept his distance, using the skills he'd learned running packages through Seattle's rougher neighborhoods.
Stay low. Move when they move. Use the environment to break line of sight. Never follow directly behind—always off-angle, using corners and crowds as natural barriers.
If she's connected to Sparkweave, she'll lead me to something useful. If she's not, I'll know before I make my move.
The first signal came at the corner of Market Street and the Lower Terraces.
Jessa paused at a wall marked with old graffiti and advertising bills. She adjusted her bag, shifted her weight, and in the motion managed to draw a small chalk mark on the stone—a simple curve, almost invisible against the weathered surface.
Dead drop signal. Someone's going to check this spot within the hour.
She kept walking. Silas memorized the location and followed.
The second signal was more subtle. A loose thread pulled from her sleeve and dropped into the gutter of a specific drainage ditch. The third was a coin flipped—deliberately—into a beggar's cup, the metal catching the light in a specific way.
She's part of a network. Contact points, signal chains, probably encrypted meanings I can't read. This isn't amateur stuff.
He'd assumed Jessa was connected to the resistance. But watching her work, seeing the precision and planning behind each gesture, he realized she wasn't just connected.
She's trained. Experienced. Maybe a courier, maybe more.
The contact appeared at an intersection near the old fishing warehouses.
He was a dock worker—heavy shoulders, calloused hands, the kind of man who could disappear into any crowd near the harbor. He walked past Jessa without looking at her, their shoulders brushing for a fraction of a second.
Something passed between them. Silas couldn't see what—a note, a coin, a small object—but the handoff was smooth enough that anyone not specifically watching would have missed it entirely.
Whatever that was, it went from her to him. Something flowing outward. She's more than just a lookout.
The dock worker continued on his way, vanishing into the crowd. Jessa paused at a vendor's stall, pretended to examine some fish, then moved on.
Silas stayed back, cataloging what he'd learned.
She's not just a sister worried about her brother. She's connected to people who know how to move. Which means approaching her is about more than just one life—it's about gaining access.
The courier part of his brain—the part that assessed routes and calculated risks—saw the opportunity.
If I can offer her something she needs more than she needs to distrust me, I can turn this into an alliance. But if I push wrong, she'll burn me as a Crown spy and I'll be dead before dawn.
Watch first. Learn the pattern. Then approach with something she can't refuse.
Jessa stopped at the corner of a narrow alley that led toward the Tannery District.
She didn't continue. She just stood there, her back to the street, her shoulders slightly tense.
Then she turned around and scanned the rooftops.
Silas froze.
He was pressed into the shadow of a doorway, his body angled to minimize his silhouette. He'd picked the spot deliberately—a recessed entrance where the light didn't reach, with a clear exit path if he needed to run.
But Jessa wasn't looking at doorways. She was looking up—at the eaves, the chimney stacks, the places where a more ambitious tail might have positioned themselves.
She knows she's being followed. Or suspects it.
He held absolutely still, not even breathing. His heart was steady, but his mind was racing.
Did she spot me? Or is this routine? Some kind of final check before she goes home?
Jessa held her position for ten seconds. Twenty. Her eyes swept the rooftops, then the windows, then the street itself.
Silas watched her gaze pass over his doorway without pausing.
Finally, she turned and continued down the alley.
He didn't follow.
That was too close. She's better at this than I expected. If I push now, she'll catch me.
He waited until she'd vanished into the dark, then waited another five minutes to be safe. When he finally moved, he took a different route entirely—circling back toward the Crown complex through streets she would never use.
The eel stall was dark when he passed it.
But the coals were still warm.
Silas crouched by the brazier, holding his hand over the metal. Heat rose against his palm—not the banked warmth of properly extinguished coals, but the lingering signature of a fire that had been burning more recently than it should have been.
Someone was here after she left. Someone tended the fire.
He looked around the stall, searching for signs. A boot print in the mud, pressed deeper on the left side—someone heavier, or someone carrying weight. A smudge on the canvas cover where it had been touched by damp fingers.
Another watcher. Someone following her, the same way I was.
He straightened, his mind racing through possibilities.
Calder's agents? Unlikely—they would have arrested her by now, not shadowed her. Rival cells? Possible, if the resistance was fragmented. Someone from Varis's personal operation? A third player he hadn't identified yet?
I'm not the only one watching her. Which means I'm not the only one who knows she's valuable.
He walked back to the complex, cataloging everything he'd learned.
The note had been right. The eel vendor did have a brother. But more importantly, she had connections—and someone else wanted them.
This afternoon. I approach her with something she can't refuse.
He had three days left. And every hour he wasted, more names went on that list.