They didn't wait for tomorrow.
Gate Two held. The repair crew swore they'd babysit the seal. Fenn looked at the street, the people pretending not to stare, the wall pretending not to breathe, and said, "Ash Lane. Now."
They cut across the ward at a patrol pace that made pedestrians choose a side without being told. Selra matched Fenn's stride, hands tucked in sleeves, eyes everywhere. Vorrik walked like a poster, lantern clipped just so, coat uncreased. Jore kept his head on a swivel, counting corners.
Ash Lane began with a turn and turned three more times before it admitted its name. Mirrors over doorways watched like tame birds. The light here sat flatter, as if someone had ironed it to remove wrinkles that revealed things. Kaelen felt Ashveil warm against his arm, the lantern's way of being suspicious.
"Same shop," Fenn said. "Three mirrors in a triangle over the door."
Inside: tin and oil and paperwork that had learned to hide when boots knocked. The old man looked up slow. Today his smile didn't even try to get all the way across his face.
"You again," he said.
"Leak inspection," Fenn said pleasantly. "And a chat."
Selra drifted, admiring cut edges, tapping a nail on rims to hear their song. Vorrik stood where he could see the street and the back room at once. Kaelen stepped toward the counter like he'd come to buy a mirror for a very specific kind of trouble.
"We found your stamp below the gate," Fenn said. "And a culvert spiral that wanted to drink the wall."
"I sell mirrors," the old man said. "Some to saints, some to thieves. All of them think they're clever."
Kaelen set two fingers on a hand mirror and warmed the corner gently. The ink mark stayed sharp. He reached for the next, this one smudged with a thumbprint. The ink bled, weak. He slid the first mirror toward the old man. "These don't smudge."
"Old stock," the man said.
"Older than the ledger stamp you started using last winter?" Selra said without looking up. "The dot's on the wrong side of the spine. The culvert stamp had the dot to the right."
The old man's gaze flicked to her, then back to Fenn. "If I say I don't know who buys unstamped stock by the bundle, will you believe me?"
"No," Fenn said. "But I'll believe you don't want us in your back room. Which is where we're going if you keep wasting my day."
He raised his hands in surrender. "You'll frighten my customers."
"You don't have any," Selra said, peering into the back. "They're at lunch. Or running."
A side door whispered on its hinges. Boots, quick, retreating. Fenn's chin tipped. "Kaelen. Selra."
They moved.
The back hall was narrow and stacked with crates that had once contained lawful things. A figure in a gray worker's coat bolted for a rear courtyard. Kaelen took the left, Selra the right. The runner hit the latch and shouldered the door, stuck. He cursed, yanked, kicked. Selra laughed once, not kindly.
Kaelen reached him first. The man spun with a short club that had seen work. Kaelen jerked the lantern chain from his forearm and met the swing with the cage, metal on wood, sharp. The club skittered. The runner tried to slip past Selra; she hooked his ankle with the chain of her lantern and tugged. He went down on one knee with a grunt. Kaelen planted him against the wall with a hand on the collar and a polite pulse to the sternum that made his breath forget itself for a beat.
"Breathe," Kaelen said. The man did, because people like breathing.
Fenn arrived, door finally giving, Jore at her shoulder. Vorrik kept the front, posture and scowl doing their jobs.
"Name," Fenn said.
The runner gave one that sounded borrowed.
"Try again."
He tried another. Fenn didn't care. She patted him down. Knife. Pried mirror. Paper folded to laziness. She unfolded it. A list of numbers. Two names. Times. One line at the bottom in a neater hand: tonight—east culvert—half core.
Selra whistled low. "Half core," she said. "Not a sip."
The runner's face pinched. "I don't know what it means. I carry. I don't look—"
"Everyone looks," Fenn said. "You looked, you ran, and now you're going to be helpful."
He clamped his jaw. Kaelen watched his eyes. People's eyes always told on their mouths. When Fenn said helpful, his gaze ticked, not toward the door, not toward the street—down, to the baseboard under a shelf.
"Selra," Kaelen said softly.
She crouched, pried a strip of molding free with her knife, and smiled. Behind it, a narrow slot held three things: a small ledger stamped with the right-dot spine, a coil of wire, and a wax seal, black, impressed with the ledger stamp plus a tiny ring around the dot.
Fenn held the seal to the light. "Who taught you the ring?"
The runner looked like a man who had learned not to know names. "If I say the lane, you go through the front and they burn my back door. If I say no one, you break my teeth. If I say a name that isn't real, I still can't work when you're done."
Selra leaned against the wall, casual. "You work after, you buy new mirrors, you get smarter about stamps, you don't glue them to gates. Or you go to a place with smaller doors and worse lamps. Choose."
His shoulders sank. "Not Ash Lane," he muttered. "Ash Lane likes side money, not heat. This is… someone who likes rules."
"Rules," Fenn repeated.
"The Bookman," he said finally, hating the way the word left his mouth.
"Bookman," Selra said, tasting it. "Cute."
"Cute burns people," the runner said. He swallowed. "It's not a person. It's… a ledger that moves. You put your name in, and jobs come out. You don't pick them. They pick you."
"A ledger that moves," Jore said, skeptical.
"Courier drop points," Fenn said. "Mirrors and stamps. No faces."
Kaelen looked at the seal again, the ring around the dot like a halo that didn't mean kindness. "Tonight. East culvert. Half core."
Fenn pocketed the seal and list. "You're going to lean against this wall until I forget you. If you run now, you'll trip over Jore and he doesn't move."
Jore smiled in a way that made the runner believe him. Fenn pointed at Kaelen and Selra. "We go now. Drenn meets at the Annex with the Archwarden. If he's late, he brings chalk."
Vorrik's voice floated from the front, dry. "He'll be on time."
They left the old man's shop to the smell of tin and fear. Ash Lane watched them go with a dozen polished eyes that didn't blink.
East culvert was wind and wet stone and a feeling like the city's spine ran through your teeth.
They reached the grate two turns before the appointed time. Fenn put them in shadow at an angle where their lanterns didn't broadcast their opinions. "Caps stay down," she said. "Eyes do the work. If it leaks, you plug. If it bites, you pull. We don't fight a war under the wall."
Selra tilted her head toward Kaelen. "You hear that? Don't fight a war under the wall."
"I'll write it on my hand," he said.
They waited. Street sounds thinned. Ash Lane quieted. The barrier hummed like a choir behind a door. Below, water argued with stone.
Bootsteps. Two sets. Then another two behind them, late. The runners wore gray coats with patches removed and good boots bought with bad money. One carried a canvas-wrapped bundle with both hands like it weighed more than it looked. Another kept looking over his shoulder at an alley like the alley owed him rent.
They went down. Fenn counted ten and followed, silent, a lesson in what light can do when it has nothing to prove. Selra slipped like a rumor. Kaelen set his weight on the steps where they wouldn't groan.
The culvert tunnel smelled like last winter. Sweat, oil, old iron. Their caps stayed down. Even so, Kaelen felt Ashveil tug toward the seam where cold threaded the air. He set his jaw and made the lantern behave.
The runners stopped in a small offset chamber that hadn't been in the plans of anyone who cared about plans. A lantern sat on a crate, hooded until the last moment. When it opened, the light it threw was wrong, blue-edged, thin, like a blade. The hands that opened it were gloved. The figure behind the light wore a hood pulled low enough to make their face a rumor.
No greetings. No names. The gloved hand held out a mirror the size of a palm, stamp visible, dot ringed. One runner lifted the canvas bundle a fraction. Metal inside shifted with a sound like teeth.
"Proof," the hooded one said. The voice was neither high nor low. It was unhelpful.
The runner raised the bundle to show a glimpse: crystal, cloudy and scored, the size of a forearm bone. A core, broken off a Beacon, or shaved from one in a way that should have brought the city running.
Kaelen's chest went cold. He felt the barrier hum change, a hair thinner.
"Half," the hooded one said. "The other half when—"
Fenn's pulse hit the room like a closed fist on a table. Tight. Precise. The blue-edged lantern flickered, then steadied. The hooded head snapped toward the tunnel where no one was. Selra's flare split into two threads, one to the light, one to the mirror-hand. The first thread knocked the hooded lantern cap down; the second snapped the mirror from their grip. It clattered across stone and stopped at Kaelen's boot.
The runners panicked like men who had practiced not panicking and never gotten good at it. One grabbed the bundle; the other pulled a knife; the last two chose "run" and made it two steps.
Kaelen stepped in. He wanted to flood the room with light and be done. He didn't. He set a pulse to knock knees, an arc to shave air in front of a knife-hand, a small flare to paint a seam on the floor no one wanted to cross. He didn't flood.
The hooded one moved well. Too well. They didn't fight like a smuggler. They fought like someone who had been taught what light does and how to step aside before it finishes doing it. They pivoted past Selra's threads, reached for the core, and met Fenn's blade of light with their gloved forearm. The glove smoked and didn't scream. The room smelled like burned paper.
"Drop it," Fenn said.
The hooded one laughed once, staccato. "You came early."
"You planned for late?" Fenn said. "Cute."
The bundle carrier fumbled. The canvas slipped. The core showed too much, its inner facets catching whatever light existed and throwing it back as a sick shine. The barrier hum thinned another fraction. The seam behind Kaelen breathed out.
He didn't think. He stepped on instinct he hadn't earned and hated. He pressed his hand to the canvas and pushed, not light, not a flood; the shape of "stay." The crystal's shine dulled a shade. The hum fattened back a hair. The seam cooled.
The hooded one noticed. Of course they did. Their head cocked, and Kaelen felt that same ugly attention from the box in the yard, recognition set like a key. "Ah," the voice said, almost pleased. "Ledger was right."
"Fix your books," Fenn snapped, and threw a cut that should've taken the hooded one in the shoulder.
They met it with their lantern. Not Lightkeeper make: a cage with narrow slats and a lens that didn't want to be watched. The light that came out of it curved around Fenn's strike like a fish avoiding a net. The cut kept going, hit stone, shaved a stripe from the wall.
Selra swore. "Mirror-bender. That's new."
"Not new," the hooded one said. "Just on loan."
Jore took down the runner with the knife. Vorrik arrived in the mouth of the chamber like a neat punctuation mark and drew a clean line across the floor. "Stop," he said, as if the word were an order the world recognized.
The hooded one recognized only opportunities. They dropped their lantern, kicked it under the crate, and flung three small mirrors at the ceiling. Light bounced. The room filled with bent glare, false seams, reflections of reflections, enough to confuse men, not enough to stop work.
Fenn didn't blink. "Selra, drop their angles."
Selra slashed two threads that shattered the thrown mirrors midair. Kaelen caught the third with a narrow arc that sliced so clean the glass fell halved and harmless.
The hooded one took the moment their own trick had bought them and vanished down a side slot that should not have existed. By the time Fenn reached it, her light drew only damp brick. The slot wasn't a door. It was a lie someone had taught the wall to tell.
"Damn," Selra breathed. "They're good."
"Good doesn't get to keep cores," Fenn said. "Jore?"
"Runners down," Jore said, efficient. "No screams. Small mercy."
Vorrik stooped and plucked the palm mirror from the grit near Kaelen's boot. He held it to the lantern-light. "Same stamp. Dot ringed."
Fenn took the bundle. Up close, the half core felt like a metal bone that had learned to hate blood. She wrapped it tighter. The barrier's hum stopped flinching.
She looked at Kaelen. "What did you do," she said, not a question, exactly.
He searched for words that weren't prophecy, weren't miracle, weren't anything people could write on a mirror. "Told it to be quiet," he said. "Politely."
Selra snorted. "Teach me 'please' like that."
Fenn's mouth tightened. Not disapproval. A thought that didn't like its own teeth. "We're leaving. Now. Jore, sit on the two who can walk. Drenn, keep your tidy line between us and whatever that was. Selra, eyes backwards. Kaelen, don't touch the core unless I hand it to you."
"Yes, Warden," he said.
They moved. The culvert returned to its usual argument with water. The barrier's hum found its old rhythm. At the grate, street air felt like it had been scrubbed with cheap soap. Fenn didn't slow until they were on the spine road and the Citadel's towers threw clean light into their faces.
At the archivist's door, Fenn didn't bother knocking. The woman looked up, saw the bundle, and pushed everything off her table like a stagehand saving the good props. She slid the copper ring into place. Fenn set the half core within it and stepped back.
The archivist didn't touch it. She just listened. After a long breath, she said, "Not shaved. Broken."
"From a Beacon," Fenn said.
"Or from the place where Beacons are born," the archivist murmured. "Either way, someone wanted the hum to stutter."
Fenn set the palm mirror down beside it. "Ringed dot. Again."
The archivist traced the ring with her little finger. "Not Ash Lane," she said. "An accountant with opinions."
"Bookman," Selra said.
The archivist's mouth quirked, unhappy. "Bookmen keep ledgers. Ledgers balance. When light and dark learn arithmetic, people vanish."
Vorrik folded his arms. "We should raid Ash Lane."
"And find empty stalls, clean floors, and three broken mirrors left out for us like gifts," the archivist said. "No. Tomorrow we ask nicer doors new questions. Tonight you sleep with your lanterns capped tight and your windows latched."
Fenn looked at Kaelen, then at the half core, then back. "And you," she said, "stop being polite to things that want you."
He met her eyes. "Working on it."
"Work faster," she said.
Outside, the bell marked the hour with three bright notes. The Citadel caught the sound and sent it through its ribs. On Ash Lane, somewhere behind a mirror that had decided to be a door, a hooded figure set a new stamp into black wax: dot ringed, circle neat.
The barrier hummed on like a patient thing that expected to be disappointed and preferred not to be surprised.