The trap is almost beautiful in its stupidity.
A carriage, polished until it shines like a silver coin, sits abandoned in the slums. No guards. No driver. Just a chest strapped to its roof, heavy and obvious as a broken nose.
Bait.
Lira once told me: *"A clever rat smells the cheese and wonders where the spring is."*
But tonight, I'm not a rat.
Tonight, I am the knife waiting for their hands.
---
I circle the carriage once. Twice.
The rooftops watch with breathless hunger. Somewhere above, I catch the gleam of steel in the moonlight—crossbows drawn, men crouched in the guttered eaves.
Good.
I want them to see.
---
I walk into the open, my mask catching the torchlight, black and gold and faceless.
The moment I touch the carriage door, the trap springs.
Crossbows thrum. Boots crash down. Voices bark orders like panicked dogs.
But I am already moving.
Not away.
Through.
---
The first man lands hard, a dagger already flying from his hand. I twist low, the blade skimming past my shoulder. My elbow finds his throat, and he drops without a sound.
The second and third come together, thinking numbers will save them.
I let them.
Their blades flash like fish in a barrel, predictable and clumsy.
I catch a wrist, spin, feel the pop of bone under pressure. The other lunges—only to meet my knee smashing into his jaw.
They're trained for street fights. Brawls.
Not for someone who moves like water over broken stones.
Not for someone who's learning *how to be more.*
---
By the time the last man stumbles back, bleeding from a split lip and a broken nose, I am the only thing standing between him and the night.
He tries to run.
I let him.
Fear will carry my name faster than blood.
---
I open the chest strapped to the carriage roof with steady fingers.
Inside: ledgers.
Contracts.
Names scrawled in careful ink—the same names I saw in the vault. The same lies.
The Genns weren't trying to trap me.
They were trying to bait me into burning the evidence—to destroy the proof before the city could see it.
I laugh—a low, broken sound behind the mask.
They think I'm a fire.
They forgot:
**Threadless are weavers first.
Fire only comes after the thread is tight around the throat.**
---
I gather the ledgers carefully.
Seal them in oilskin.
Then I vanish into the deeper dark.
Tonight, the city saw the mask.
Tomorrow, it will see the truth.
And the House of Genn?
They will learn:
You cannot kill what you cannot name.