The muffled sounds of the warehouse settling for the night were a distant hum. The coarse blanket of Salt-Weep was a stark contrast to the intellectual heights Lutz now needed to scale. He still had some time before sleeping. The final, delicate threads of his plan required a sharpened mind, not a rested body. He cleared his small table, pushing aside the physical tools of his trade to make space for the metaphysical.
First, the language of nature: Hermes, he needed to finish it up.
He opened his lexicon and notes, the pages filled with his own precise script. This wasn't about memorizing vocabulary anymore; it was about internalizing the architecture of the language. He focused on the root words of command, of prohibition, of binding and severing—the foundational grammar of rituals. He whispered phrases into the silent room, not for pronunciation, but to feel their shape in his mouth, their weight in the air.
"In thy name i summon." The words felt like laying down a bar of cold iron.
"Sever connection." A sensation of a sharp, clean cut.
"This space is bound." A feeling of walls snapping into place, invisible but absolute.
He wasn't just learning to speak; he was learning to impose his will through syntax and semantics. A single misplaced syllable in a ritual could invite a catastrophe, or simply render the effort null. He practiced until his mind ached, until the familiar shapes of Feysac and Loenish felt clumsy and blunt in his thoughts compared to the razor-edged precision of Hermes.
Then, he shifted to divination. He laid out a simple cloth embroidered with cardinal directions, a practice mat for the art of reading unseen currents. He didn't use his pendulum; that was for direct questions. Instead, he took a worn deck of tarot cards he had bought at the Gallowsmarket a few days ago, their edges soft from use. He didn't ask about the future—that was a fool's game, too vast and mutable. He asked for clarity on the present. He focused his intent, shuffling slowly, his breathing steady.
"Show me the hidden pressures acting upon this warehouse."
He laid out three cards. The first, The High Priestess, representing overwhelming institutional power. It landed squarely in the position of "External Forces." The Church. The second card, The Tower, symbol of obsession and self-destruction, landed in the "Hidden Influences" position. The third card, The Fool, appeared in the "Foundation" position. The Vipers themselves, and the secret they now contained.
It wasn't a prediction of doom; it was a confirmation. The pieces were exactly where he thought they were. The pressure was building. The reading was less about revelation and more about calibration, a way to check the spiritual barometer. He carefully gathered the cards, the act itself a form of Cogitation, settling his mind after the intense focus.
Finally, he turned to the most tangible of his studies: Henrik's journals on stitching and leatherwork, he had mostly finished them, but he had to make sure he wasn't missing any key secret.
He pored over the pages, the careful, measured script a ghost of the craftsman himself. He wasn't just reading instructions; he was looking for the why. Why use a saddle stitch instead of a running stitch for high-stress areas? Because each stitch is independent; if one fails, the others don't unravel. Why burnish the edges of the leather with gum tragacanth? To seal them against moisture and prevent fraying, making the harness last for years.
He found a note, scribbled in a margin, that made him pause. "A sheath is not a prison for a blade. It is its first home. It should hold it tight, but release it without a sound. The draw is part of the cut."
Lutz looked at the crude sheath he'd made for Creed. It was functional, but it was a prison. He hadn't considered the draw. He took out the stiletto, practicing pulling it from the sheath, listening for the tell-tale whisper of friction. Henrik was right. In the silence he needed for his work, even that tiny sound could be a death sentence. He made a note: redesign Creed's sheath. Incorporate a silent retention spring or a treated leather liner.
Another journal entry detailed how to stitch patterns that not only reinforced the leather but distributed weight and stress along natural lines of force, like the architecture of a bridge. It was engineering, translated into needle and thread. This was what separated a piece of gear from a masterpiece. His harness needed to be a masterpiece.
As the candle on his table guttered low, its light dancing over the open pages and the skeletal form of his harness, Lutz felt a rare sense of synthesis. The Hermes studies sharpened his intent. The divination confirmed the battlefield. The leatherworking journals provided the blueprint for his armor. These disparate disciplines were not separate paths; they were all tools for the same purpose: survival through superior preparation.
He closed the journals and blew out the candle. The room was plunged into darkness, but his mind was alight with diagrams, verb conjugations, and symbolic arrays. He had checked the things he might have missed. He had found them, and he had begun to integrate them. The final trail of his studies was not an end, but a gateway. He lay down, the ghost of Henrik's wisdom and the cold grammar of Hermes his lullaby. Outside, the city slept, unaware of the thief in its midst who was diligently learning how to steal his own future from the jaws of gods and monsters, finally, the land of dreams came to him, and with that, the first day of his masterpiece was over.
The air in the small, windowless office deep within the Chevalier Church was thick with the smell of old paper, cheap lamp oil, and a pervasive, low-grade anxiety. The single brass lamp on the wall cast a jaundiced light over Matthias Brenner's desk, which was buried under a landslide of paperwork. It was late, and the usual hum of the Trade Compliance office had faded to a distant, hollow silence. Brenner rubbed his tired eyes, the wire rims of his spectacles digging into the bridge of his nose. The pin-covered map of the harbor seemed to swim before him, each pin a tiny, sharp accusation.
The door creaked open, and a young, earnest clerk named Erik stepped in, his face pale. "Inspector Brenner? Sorry to disturb you so late."
Brenner waved a hand, too weary for formality. "It's fine, Erik. What is it?"
"It's about the Vipers, sir." Erik held up a small slip of paper. "I took a statement earlier from one of our regular informants at the docks. A man named Jenkins. He was at The Salty Mermaid, and he overheard a drunken dockhand. The man was quite... vocal."
Brenner leaned forward, his interest piqued. "Vocal about what?"
"He was complaining about his cut from a recent job. Said he'd been part of a crew unloading a ship—he mentioned the Ocean Snake's Bane by name—and that 'Gunther's boys' had taken the best of the plunder for themselves before the Church arrived." Erik consulted his notes. "He specifically mentioned... 'sparkly bits.' Said they glowed 'like a piece of the moon.' He saw them carry the box off towards the Salt-Weep."
Brenner's blood ran cold. Sparkly bits. Glowed like the moon. The description was crude, but it aligned perfectly with the kind of forbidden, mystical items the Church was tasked with controlling. And "Gunther's boys" was unmistakable dockyard slang for the Vipers.
"Did the informant get a description of the dockhand?" Brenner asked, his voice tight.
Erik shook his head. "No, sir. The man was a blur, drunk and stumbling. He left before Jenkins could get a good look. It was all over very quickly."
Before Brenner could fully process this, there was another knock. This time, it was the diligent, perpetually stressed clerk from the library, a man named Ankewelt. He looked even more harried than usual, clutching a single, creased sheet of paper as if it were a live wire.
"Inspector," Ankewelt began, his voice trembling slightly. "You asked us to be extra vigilant with any documentation related to the recent... disturbances. I was cross-referencing some of the Ocean Snake's Bane manifests tonight, and I found this."
He laid the paper on Brenner's desk, smoothing it out with nervous fingers. It was a customs manifest. Brenner's eyes, trained for detail, scanned it. Bales of cotton, machine parts... and then his gaze snagged on Crate 7A: Assorted Religious Artifacts & Curios. The intended destination, a reputable auction house, was scratched out with a rough, heavy line. Beside it, scrawled in a different, coarser hand, was the address of a warehouse in the Salt-Weep district—a known Viper front.
"This... this can't be right," Ankewelt stammered. "The alteration is amateurish. But the original document seems genuine. It's as if someone was sloppy, or... or as if this was meant to be found."
Brenner didn't answer. He was staring at the three pieces of evidence that had materialized on his desk in the span of ten minutes. It felt less like an investigation and more like a hailstorm.
First, the anonymous letter from the child: "The Baron's new toy glows in the dark. He keeps it in his wall."
Second, the drunken rumor from the docks: "Sparkly bits... glowed like the moon."
Third, this forged manifest, physically linking the artifact crate to the Viper's warehouse.
He looked from Erik's nervous face to Ankewelt's worried one. The silence in the room was profound, broken only by the faint hiss of the gas lamp.
"It's a pattern," Brenner said softly, more to himself than to them. "Too clean. Too convenient."
"Sir?" Erik asked.
"Think about it," Brenner said, tapping a finger on each piece of evidence in turn. "A child delivers a cryptic note with a specific, architectural detail. A drunkard in a tavern shouts a corroborating, if crude, description of the object. And a clumsily altered document just happens to find its way into our hands, confirming the location." He looked up, his eyes grave. "This isn't a leak. This is a delivery service."
Ankewelt's eyes widened. "You mean... someone is feeding this to us? On purpose?"
"Precisely," Brenner said. "The question is, who? And why?"
Erik frowned. "A rival gang? Trying to use us to remove the Vipers for them? It's an old trick."
"It is," Brenner conceded. "But the artifacts... that's a new level of risk. You don't involve the Church in a mystical affair unless you're either desperate, or you're confident the fallout will destroy your enemy completely." He leaned back, the chair groaning in protest. "Whoever it is, they're not just pointing a finger. They're handing us a loaded cannon and telling us exactly where to aim it."
The three men sat in silence for a long moment, the implications settling over them like a shroud. The bureaucratic machine of the Church, slow and methodical, was being manipulated. They were being turned into a weapon in a shadow war they didn't fully understand.
"Whatever this 'toy' is," Brenner said finally, his voice firm with a newfound resolve, "it's real. The descriptions are too consistent. And the Vipers have it." He looked at the map, at the pin standing in the heart of the Salt-Weep district. "Our anonymous benefactor, whoever they are, has given us a target. A very, very valuable target."
He stood up, gathering the papers. The weariness was gone, replaced by the cold clarity of a hunter who has finally caught the scent.
"Erik , log these statements. Ankewelt, I want that manifest authenticated by the document division first thing in the morning. I don't care if it's a forgery; I want to know how it was forged." He picked up the child's note, the paper crisp in his hand. "I need to speak with Lieutenant Mark. Immediately. It seems our strategy of slow pressure is about to be accelerated."
As the two clerks hurried out to fulfill their tasks, Brenner was left alone in the dim office. He looked at the three pieces of paper, a trinity of lies that pointed to a single, explosive truth. Someone out there in the foggy night was playing a dangerous game, using the Church as their grandmaster. And as he headed for the door to find the Lieutenant, a chilling thought occurred to him: the player who was this clever, this audacious, was far more dangerous than any common gangster. They were an variable he couldn't calculate, and that made them the most terrifying threat of all.