Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
I slip into the Bone Inn to see whether Bob has come through.
The barman clocks me at once and scowls with practised commitment. From beneath the counter, he produces a thick folder and slides it across the scarred wood without a word.
I leave a few notes in thanks.
His scowl softens towards neutrality as the money disappears into his pocket, and he resumes polishing the bar.
Folder tucked beneath my arm, I step back outside.
Cáel and Mina wait beside the door.
“Your tower block apartment,” he says. “Does anyone have it on record?”
“No. It’s completely off the books.”
“Could we read those there?”
Better to examine Bob’s documents somewhere private, where we are unlikely to receive uninvited guests.
“Of course.”
We drive towards my apartment.
I double back several times and take an unnecessarily tangled route through the Districts. Cáel does not question it. He watches the passenger-side mirror while I keep an eye on mine.
Only when I am certain no vehicles are following us do I turn towards the tower block.
I park beside Cáel’s car, still where he left it. He opens the boot, lifts out a bag and follows Mina and me into the building without complaint.
“Could we stay here tonight?” he asks as we begin the climb.
“Tonight?”
All night.
I already anticipate the conversation about sleeping arrangements.
One mattress on the floor.
No sofa.
No spare room.
Not the finest safe house in Elyrion.
“I only have one bed,” I warn.
“I’ll take the sofa.”
I say nothing.
We continue climbing.
Plainly, he didn’t notice the absence of a sofa during his earlier visit.
At the top, I unlock the door and let us inside.
Cáel steps over the threshold, pauses and looks around. “Ah,” he says.
“Right,” I reply.
I offer a small smile. “You can leave if you want. It’s fine.”
“No.” He surveys the floor as though deciding which patch to claim. “It’s fine.”
Cáel removes a slim strip of purple from an inner pocket and presses it against the doorframe.
Fine lines spill across the wood, so faint I would miss them if I were not watching.
“A portable ward,” he explains. “It will seal the windows and entrance, warn me if anyone interferes and blur our magical presence from outside. It won’t withstand a determined assault, but it should give us time.
” He touches the strip again, then gestures towards Mina and me.
The ward flickers once, cool light running around the edges of the room as it recognises us.
“You carry those around?”
“Occupational hazard.”
The lines fade from sight. The apartment looks exactly as neglected as before.
He sets down his bag and begins unpacking.
Only then do I realise he has brought food. Chicken for Mina. For us, a mixed salad, sandwiches, apple slices, tiny two-bite cherry pies and a handful of chocolate.
“Are you all right with cheese?” he asks. “There’s cheese, cheese and ham, and egg. I noticed you chose the egg sandwiches at the Spire.”
He noticed that.
I had not noticed him noticing.
People who care pay attention. How you take your tea, what you refuse, what you reach for first.
Oh, no.
I have been handing him tea for days without once asking whether he even likes it.
He asked my favourite colour, and I never thought to ask his.
It frightens me.
Not the physical danger. That I can handle.
This.
Not knowing how to be a person with another person. Not knowing how to let someone in without either shutting them out entirely or giving them too much, too soon.
Perhaps I was never especially good at it.
I feed Mina, fetch filtered water and put the kettle on. I change the ceramic filters every four months, by which point they are almost spent, but they still strip enough brown from the tap water that, once boiled, it is nearly drinkable.
Then I remember the paper bag.
I fetch Thea’s pots and line them along the worktop. Tap water, unfiltered, which is the only honest sample I have. Filtered water from the jug. A little of everything in the fridge, which does not take long: bread, margarine, three carrots, half a tin of pale soup.
The last pot I fill from my coat pocket.
The pastry has gone hard as a stone. I bought it days ago for a woman who was not sitting beneath the coffee shop window, and I have carried it about ever since without deciding what to do with it.
I break off a corner, seal it in and label the pot in careful capitals.
It is a strange way for a kindness to end up.
“What’s that one?” Cáel asks.
“Breakfast,” I say. “Sort of.”
He takes the bag and tells me it will be on a courier in the morning.
“Is tea all right? I’m sorry, I don’t have coffee. How, um…” I glance back at him. “How do you like it?”
“However it comes. Tea is fine.”
With the mugs made, Cáel settles into one corner of the small living room, bracing his back against the wall. I take the opposite corner.
The room is barely eight feet across, so we are still close enough that our knees almost touch if either of us stretches.
“Thank you,” I say as we eat. “This is very thoughtful.”
“There are cherry pies if you like pies.”
“Who doesn’t like cherry pies?”
He laughs beneath his breath.
When we finish, I brew fresh tea, spread Bob’s documents across the floor between us and sort them into piles.
Everything is photocopied; the file is thorough and orderly.
Bob either spent the night raiding archives and abusing every scrap of authority he possesses or set his team to the task, a choice that carries risks of its own. I try not to dwell on that.
Bob is careful.
He would not expose himself lightly.
Cáel places the key card taken from the freight site beside the paperwork. Its infrastructure code appears six times in the file, each occurrence beside a maintenance authorisation bearing Preston’s signature.
I find the earliest of them near the bottom of the second pile. A single sheet, dated fifty years ago, authorising stabilisation works to the legacy civic building in the Ink District. Three lines of description. One signature. No department named.
I pass it across the floor and watch Cáel read it twice.
“He was signing these before I was born,” he says.
“This one is more recent. A work order from six months ago.”
The operatives, the freight site and the hidden rune repairs all belong to the same programme.
Every recorded repair near an anchor site over the past fifty years bears Overseer Preston’s signature. Through direct purchases, government acquisitions and layers of holding companies, he controls property directly above or adjoining every known site.
If that is not a confession written in freehold, I do not know what is.
The pattern is deliberate.
Consistent.
Documented.
I try not to let my grim satisfaction show.
For Cáel, each incriminating page is another nail in the coffin of a colleague who helped him enter the city. The two may never have been friends, but betrayal still costs.
He wears an odd, distant expression, as though replaying every encounter he has had with the Overseer and finding each memory altered by what lies before us.
We read on.
With each document, the case grows stronger, and by the final page, there is almost no doubt that Preston has overseen the network for decades.
“He has been my official liaison since I arrived,” Cáel says quietly. “He arranged my access to the city. Until today, he seemed reliable.” His jaw tightens as he looks down at the documents. “How could I have been so blind?”
“It would be helpful if everyone had a glowing sign above their head offering useful hints about their ill intentions.” I lift one shoulder. “It never makes sense when it’s someone you know. All we can do is follow the evidence.”
He nods slowly. Then he stands, takes the device from his coat and crosses to the far side of the room, where the window would be if the window were not boarded.
He speaks quietly. I do not try to listen, and I catch perhaps one word in five. A name. A date. The word liaison.
Of course he is reporting it. His government sent him here on Preston’s invitation, and Preston has spent fifty years running an ancient rune network that is stealing people’s magic four hundred miles from Velmora’s border. He would be negligent not to.
He comes back, folds himself into his corner and picks up the next page as though he had never moved.
We return to the pages.
By the time afternoon slips into evening, the picture is clear. Preston’s fingerprints are everywhere: methodical, patient work spanning decades.
Yet beneath the modern deeds and alteration orders lie foundation plans centuries older than Preston.
His signature does not begin the paper trail.
It appears on every purchase, repair and reclassification that has kept the ancient structures under government control.
He may not have built the rune network, but he has spent fifty years tending it.
The most recent purchase was completed three weeks ago.
According to the live map on my skin this afternoon, the anchor beneath that property carries an odd, tight pulse unlike any other surviving point.
The Salt District.