The fire was still smoldering when we got to the edge of Saltpier.
Smoke curled like a lazy serpent over the cracked cobbles, ash swirling in little eddies where wind met heat. A cart had been overturned, its wooden slats blackened and shriveled, wheels melted into puddles of tar. A registry booth—once marked with the Syndic's golden seal—now stood like a hollow ribcage, bones blackened and screaming. The scent of burning ink lingered, sickly sweet, clinging to the lungs like guilt. Nearby, a broken crate spilled charred documents into the gutter, their corners twitching as if still breathing.
"Third one tonight," said Hecate.
She wasn't looking at the fire. She never did. Her eyes were on the people. The crowd. The shifting tide of expressions. Some held awe. Others panic. But most wore something worse—hope. Hope was the beginning of revolt.
I crouched, fingers brushing the soot. "They're not just angry. They're organized."
"No," Hecate said. "They're remembering."
And that was far more dangerous.
The square had changed. The usual hawkers had packed up, their voices replaced by a quiet buzz. The watchmen didn't dare step past the edge. Even the pigeons had taken a new flight path. Names, erased or otherwise, were being whispered under breath, sewn into coat linings, scratched into doors. A tanner yelled about stolen hides; two boys fought over an inkstone near a broken fountain. Ordinary chaos, but today it crackled.
We stayed until the heat faded. Kids with sharp bones and hollow bellies began to circle the edges, looking for salvage. One of them—a girl with two left shoes and an oversized jacket—caught my eye. She stared like she knew me. Like she expected something. Her face was smudged with ash, but her eyes were clear.
"Name?" I asked.
"Yul."
"Got family, Yul?"
"Had."
Hecate didn't interrupt. She let it unfold. She always did, like she was pulling a thread no one else could see.
"Take this," I said, handing her a folded slip. Not a clause. Just a name: Gavri Thorn.
"He'll feed you. Or he'll try. If not, come find the Priest in Red. He's not hiding anymore."
Yul looked down at the slip like it might burn her, then ran. She didn't say thank you.
Back in the Wanehouse—a squat, half-flooded ruin where Hecate had taken to nesting—we unrolled the map. Rats scurried in the rafters. The ceiling dripped ink-colored water. It smelled like mildew and wax. A mattress had been dragged into one corner, and half-melted candles burned beside a cracked bowl of salt.
"This is too fast," I muttered.
"The Syndic will retaliate."
"They already are. They picked up a tinker in Lowcoil yesterday. No name. Just grabbed him off the street. Said his tools were 'suspicious.'"
Hecate leaned forward, her voice soft but lined with iron. "And we have no way to stop it. Yet."
She pointed to a spot marked with charcoal on the edge of the Wharf. "There's a man. Calls himself Brack. Former clause-runner. He disappeared five years ago. I think he's back."
"Back doing what?"
"Selling names."
I stared at the mark. It was small. But it pulsed. Like a wound trying to scab over. Rain drizzled against the broken windows.
Finding Brack was like trying to catch fog in your teeth. We chased rumors from scaffold to sewer.
The Latchstring boys said he ran a game under the old rope-works, where losers wagered pieces of themselves—an eye, a tooth, a memory. A blind drunk near the Gut said Brack had climbed inside a printing press and lived there now, chewing up Syndic notices and spitting out counter-clauses. A girl who'd etched her own name backwards into her arms said she'd seen him hand a paper bird to a rat who then whispered to a butcher.
The streets themselves whispered. Graffiti was changing. Not just symbols, but entire clauses. The word 'undo' scrawled next to doorframes. The phrase "Names return" inked into the seams of overcoats. It was a language learning to breathe again.
In Skirl Market, a pot seller muttered, "He writes with ghost ink. Letters that vanish until the wind knows them." At a bone dice den, a man with no fingers offered us a slip written in red. We turned it down.
But it wasn't until we found the ink.
Fresh. Still wet. On a discarded cloth tucked behind a drainpipe. A clause, half-formed.
"That's Brack's style," Hecate said, tapping the curling script.
"You sure?"
"It stutters. Look—every 'k' is crossed twice. No one does that unless they're trying to rewrite the past."
We followed the trail. Through rusted alleys, over roofs slick with fish oil. We dodged two patrols, one syndic drone, and a preacher trying to bite his own tongue off. The closer we got, the more the walls pulsed with memory. Painted names, old and new, burned and repainted. Gutterfolk whispered codes we half-recognized. A boy passed us chewing a strip of clausepaper.
And then we found the door.
It wasn't marked. Just a knothole in the stone, a whisper of a hinge. But it bled heat and ink.
Inside, a dozen candles lit a room the size of a coffin. Shelves lined the walls, each packed with slips, ledgers, inkpots, and vials of something that shimmered like oil and blood. The floorboards were stained black with spilled declarations. You could feel the words humming.
Brack sat at a table in the center, bald, with eyes so wide it felt like he could see time. He didn't look surprised.
"You brought her," he said.
Hecate didn't speak.
"I figured it'd be you two. After Thorn, after the priest... well, ink follows fire."
I stepped forward. "We need names. Real ones. Hidden ones. The kind that were erased."
Brack tapped a glass vial with a single fingernail.
"Do you know what this is?"
"Ink."
"No. Not ink. It's memory. Stolen from someone who died without a slip. We mix it with ash and water, then write. And what comes out isn't quite true... but it's close enough to hurt."
He stood, slow. Every bone creaked like an old door. He walked to a wall of ledgers and pulled one down.
"These aren't just names. They're fractures. Every line a break in the Syndic's back. You want a war? This is your cannon."
"We want justice," I said.
Brack laughed, low and sad.
"Same thing. Just messier."
He handed me a slip. On it, a name I recognized.
Not mine. Not Hecate's. Someone else. But someone I thought lost.
"They erased her," Brack said. "But she remembers you. She's waiting."
"Where?"
"At the edge. Always at the edge."
He meant the Blight. The zone the Syndic never patrols. Too broken. Too wild.
That night, we ran. Slipped through pipeworks and rope lanes, dodging searchlights and sound traps. The Syndic had begun setting curfews. Anyone caught out after dark was assumed guilty of "noncompliant naming."
We didn't care.
At the edge of the Wharf, where the tide hissed against the stones and buildings leaned like drunks in prayer, we found her.
She stood in a pool of lantern light, barefoot, a paper mask over her face. Her hands were wrapped in bandages soaked with ink. Behind her, a circle of children sat quietly, each holding a slip. One hummed a tune I remembered from childhood. Another traced circles in the dirt.
"You're late," she said.
Her voice. I knew it.
"Rinna," I whispered.
She pulled off the mask. Her face was older. Scarred. But it was her.
"They said you drowned."
"They said a lot of things."
We embraced. For a moment, everything else—the Syndic, the war, the clauses—faded. My heart hitched against the smell of ink and salt in her hair.
Then she pulled back and looked at Hecate.
"You're the Auditor."
"I am."
"Then audit this."
She handed Hecate a bundle of slips.
Names. Hundreds of them. Children. Elders. Lost ones. Names not just forgotten—but taken. Unwritten.
"We remember. And we're ready."
Hecate's fingers trembled. Just once.
"So are we," she said.
And the war began.