[POV: Silas]
The Crown Complex corridors were empty at this hour.
Silas walked with his head slightly bowed, clipboard pressed to his chest like a shield. He'd worn this mask for three days now—hunched shoulders, shuffling gait, the general air of a man who counted weights for a living. Arlen Mora was a creature of paper, not blades. Paper creatures didn't attract attention.
Form 77-B. Secondary Inspection Request. One signature, and the convoy gate stays open for ten minutes.
Stone walls thick enough to stop a battering ram. Lantern light that never quite reached the corners. A guard leaned against a pillar down the hall, cleaning his nails with a knife and not bothering to look up.
Nobody looks at the paperwork guy. That's the whole point.
He approached Voss's office.
The door swung open before he could knock.
Black-and-gold armor caught the torchlight first. Then the hawk-crest badge on the breastplate—the mark of the Regent's personal guard. Then the longsword at her hip, practical and worn, not ceremonial.
Silas's stride didn't break. Arlen Mora wouldn't recognize elite guards. Arlen Mora was too busy worrying about weight discrepancies to notice executioners.
But Silas noticed.
The instructor from the Plaza. The one in the full helm who decapitated Garran Holt. One stroke—clean, efficient, no hesitation. I couldn't see her face that day. The visor was down.
Now it wasn't. Dark eyes, severe features, hair pulled back in a warrior's knot so tight it probably hurt. She moved unhurried, but Silas had seen enough killers to recognize the coiled readiness.
She was just in Voss's office. Probably shipment security. That's the only reason the Regent's guard would bother with a records director.
Silas nodded once—a clerk acknowledging a superior—and stepped aside to let her pass. Eyes on the floor. Nothing to see here. Just a man with a form to file.
Their paths crossed in silence.
He felt her pause. Not a full stop. Just a hesitation in her stride.
Then she walked past without a word, black-and-gold armor catching the light as she turned the corner.
Silas exhaled. His hand was steady as he reached for Voss's door. But his mind was racing.
She looked at me. Most clerks probably flinch when the Regent's executioner walks past. Speed up, look away, start sweating. I just... nodded.
Arlen Mora would have flinched.
Too late to fix that now. Problem for later. Right now, I need that signature.
He knocked twice. Waited.
"Enter."
The Records Director sat on his raised podium, hunched over a stack of papers. The massive iron braziers that heated the hall threw weak light across the cramped space. Clerks had long since vacated the surrounding desks, leaving only Voss and his quill, scratching across a page with the frantic energy of someone who expected to be interrupted.
Silas approached the podium. He kept his stride stiff, his shoulders hunched.
"Director Voss." He kept his voice flat, apologetic. "A moment of your time."
Voss didn't look up. "What is it, Mora? I'm rather busy."
"The Friday shipment." Silas held up the clipboard. "The manifest lists it at fifty tons. But the dock scale reading from yesterday came in light."
Now Voss looked up. His eyes narrowed behind those fish-bowl spectacles.
"How light?"
Good. I have his attention.
"Point-four percent, sir. Crown regulations require secondary verification before convoy departure." Silas set the form on the edge of Voss's podium. "Form 77-B. Secondary Inspection Request."
Voss stared at the paper like it might bite him.
He sees the trap. Not from me—from the Capital. If the numbers don't match when the shipment reaches Warehouse 4, they blame him. And Varis has already made it clear what happens to people who disappoint him.
"You're telling me," Voss said slowly, "to stop the shipment. For a fraction of a percent."
"I'm telling you to pause it, sir." Silas kept his voice calm, reasonable. "Ten minutes at the convoy gate. I verify the weight with the dock team, sign the 77-B, they roll. If it matches, no report. If it doesn't..."
He let the sentence hang.
Voss's jaw tightened. His fingers drummed the desk.
Come on. You know what happens if the Capital finds a discrepancy. You know Varis will throw you to the guillotine without a second thought. This is your chance to cover your ass.
"...you'll want documentation that you caught it first," Silas finished.
Silence. The quill had stopped scratching. The braziers crackled. Somewhere outside, a guard's boot scraped against stone.
Voss reached for the form.
His signature was a sharp, aggressive scrawl.
"If it takes eleven minutes," Voss said, shoving the form back across the podium, "I will have your head on a pike by sunset."
Silas took the paper. Tucked it into his clipboard.
"Understood, Director."
He turned and walked out.
The corridor was empty now.
Silas checked the form as he walked. Voss's signature, wet and slightly smeared, stared back at him from the bottom of the page. Form 77-B. Secondary Inspection Request. Signed.
The convoy gate opens at noon. Stays open for ten minutes while the dock team "verifies the weight." Ten minutes is enough time for Corin's people to hit the convoy, cause chaos, and slip Taren out through the confusion.
Sparkweave gets his distraction. Jessa gets her brother. And I get to be there when Varis Calder dies.
He passed through the main hall, nodding at a guard who didn't bother to nod back. The bell tower chimed the half-hour. Five hours until noon.
Silas tucked the clipboard under his arm and walked toward the docks.
The trap is set. Now I just have to survive the spring.
Silas found an alley between two warehouses near the convoy staging area and pressed his back against the cold stone wall. The bell tower was visible over the rooftops—iron hands pointing to half-past eleven. Thirty minutes until the convoy moved. Thirty minutes until everything changed.
He checked the approach routes one more time. The alley opened onto the plaza where the convoy would pass, with a tanner's shed on the left providing shadow and a water barrel on the right offering cover if he needed to duck.
Across the plaza, scattered throughout the crowd, Corin's people were already in position—vendors, dockworkers, a few beggars with hands too steady for coin rattling. Sparkweave was probably coordinating them through his Static Weave. Silas couldn't see the network, but he could see its effects: a nod here, a hand signal there, too precise to be coincidence.
He called up [Storage]. The familiar grid bloomed behind his eyes: the Shipwright Shank, the green vial, the identity scroll, the stillstone records he'd been using as cover for days.
He retrieved the Shank first. It materialized in his palm with a faint sensation of weight snapping into place—brass guard, nicked spine, the edge still faintly discolored from the poison Jed had applied before trying to kill him. Then the vial. Small, glass, the liquid inside thick and swampy green. The wax seal was cracked but the cork held. The smell hit him immediately: crushed mint and copper, with an acrid undertone that made his eyes water. Crown apothecary. Military grade.
The last time I saw this, it was in Jed's hand. He was about to put it in my chest. Now I'm using it to kill a man who's never even heard my real name.
He pried the cork free with his thumbnail. The poison clung to the blade like honey, hissing faintly as it hit the air—a thin sheen that seemed to darken at the edges, already eating into the metal. Lethal, if the hissing was any indicator. More than enough for a prison warden.
Jed said he worked for Calder. Kael works for Calder. Regent's poison for the Regent's warden. How nice...
He capped the vial and stored it back in [Storage], but the Shank went into his belt—not [Storage]. He needed it within reach the moment he entered the Pit.
The bell tower chimed the quarter-hour. Eleven forty-five.
Silas stepped out of the alley into the thin morning light. Somewhere in the Tannery District, Jessa was counting the minutes until her brother walked free. Somewhere below the plaza, Taren was waiting in Cell 4, bruised and broken and hoping Silas would keep his word.
Fifteen minutes. Let's go set the trap.
The convoy staging area was a controlled chaos of wagons, draft horses, and irritated guards in Crown colors.
Twelve wagons loaded with tarps marked PROCESSED ORE sat in formation near the main gate—a massive iron gate framed by guard towers, currently open and waiting. Fifty guards stood in loose clusters, most of them looking bored, a few looking dangerous. The gate captain was a weathered man in his forties with a scar running from jaw to ear. He had his own clipboard, and he looked like he'd been doing this job for thirty years and stopped caring about surprises around year five.
Silas approached with his clipboard held high—the universal signal of bureaucratic importance. He kept his stride stiff, his shoulders hunched, and his face arranged in the expression of a man who had found a discrepancy in someone else's paperwork and was reluctantly about to make it everyone's problem.
Arlen Mora. Nervous auditor. Crown clerk with a form to file.
He stopped two paces from the captain. "Secondary Inspection Request. Director Voss's signature."
The captain took the form. His eyes moved from the wax seal to the aggressive scrawl of Voss's signature to Silas's face, then back to the seal—no flicker of recognition, just procedure grinding forward.
He's checking the seal. Crown wax, unbroken. He's checking the signature. Voss's handwriting, unmistakable. He's checking me. A nervous clerk in a dove-gray tunic, ink-stained cuffs, the posture of a man who counts weights for a living.
That's the point. That's always been the point.
The captain flipped the form over, checked the back (blank), flipped it again for the stamp. "Voss is signing secondary inspections now? Since when?"
"Since the Capital sent a memo about weight discrepancies." Silas let a note of anxiety creep into his voice. "Director's orders, sir. I'm just following procedure."
The captain grunted. If he didn't like it, he didn't show it.
He signaled the convoy—raised fist, palm flat. Universal hold. The lead wagon's driver pulled up on the reins, and the rest of the column creaked to a stop behind him. The gate stayed open.
"Ten minutes," the captain said. "Make it quick, clerk."
"Thank you, sir." Silas tucked the form back into his clipboard and walked toward the front wagon, pretending to inspect the tarp fastenings. The clock tower was visible over the rooftops. Five minutes until noon.
Ten minutes. The gate is open. The convoy is stopped.
Now we see if Sparkweave's people can deliver.
Noon.
The bell tower roared—twelve deep peals that echoed off the stone walls and shook the air. Silas was pretending to inspect the third wagon's tarp, making notes on his clipboard, when the first cry went up.
A bottle arced through the air. It shattered against a guard's helmet—not glass, something heavier, maybe a flask filled with sand—and the guard stumbled backward, blood streaming down his face. For a moment, everyone froze.
Then the crowd erupted.
Corin's mercenaries surged from three directions at once—dockworkers dropping their loads, vendors shoving aside their carts, the beggars producing blades from beneath their rags. Swords and cudgels flashed in the noon sun. Two men with crossbows fired from rooftop positions, and the first volley took down three guards before anyone could raise a shield.
The gate captain screamed orders. "SHIELDS! FORM UP! PROTECT THE CARGO!"
Civilians scattered. A woman grabbed her child and ran, knocking over a fishmonger's cart. The fish spilled into the stampede, adding the stench of brine and scales to the chaos. Screaming everywhere—the high, panicked shrieks of people who'd never expected violence to find them at the market gate.
Silas didn't run.
He walked—fast, deliberate, hugging the edge of the chaos where the crowd was thinnest. Running would draw attention. Walking with purpose said I belong here, I'm getting to safety, don't worry about me.
The attack's coordination is too precise to be coincidence. Sparkweave's network at work. Corin is probably out there somewhere, leading the charge.
A guard spotted him—young, panicked, blood on his face from the first volley. He grabbed Silas's arm hard enough to bruise. "You! Clerk! Get down!"
Silas didn't break character. He let his face go pale, let his voice shake. "The wagons—the Director said—"
"Forget the wagons! They're everywhere!" The guard shook him, eyes wild.
A crossbow bolt whistled past, close enough for Silas to feel the air displaced. It thunked into a wagon wheel two feet away. The guard flinched, and his grip loosened.
Silas used the moment to twist free. He stumbled away—deliberately clumsy, like a scared clerk running from danger. The guard yelled something after him, but Silas was already moving, and the riot was too loud for words to carry.
The moment the guard looked elsewhere, Silas's stride shifted—smooth, deliberate, angled toward the rear of the plaza where the Pit entrance waited.
Some of them won't survive this. Corin, Sparkweave, their people—they know the risk. They took the deal anyway.
Sparkweave had his own reasons for wanting this attack. I gave him the gate timing; he gave me Taren. Fair trade. But I'd bet my last Coin his real prize is forcing Varis into the open.
But that's his problem. Taren is mine.
The Pit entrance was exactly where Silas remembered it from yesterday—a service tunnel at the rear of the plaza, marked by an iron grate and normally guarded by two of Kael's men. Today, the grate stood open and unattended. The guards had been pulled to the riot.
Silas checked behind him once. The plaza was a warzone: smoke rising from an overturned cart someone had set ablaze, guards forming a tight defensive circle around the wagons, mercenaries pressing from all sides with the coordinated ferocity of men who knew they were already dead if they failed. Somewhere in the chaos, a flag was falling—one of the Regent's banners that had hung from the gate tower, torn down and trampled underfoot.
He turned back to the Pit entrance. The grate was unlocked—Kael probably never expected an attack from this direction. Why would he? The enemy was supposed to be dockworkers and disgruntled laborers, not a coordinated assault timed to the minute.
Silas slipped inside.
Stone steps spiraled down into darkness. The air changed immediately—cool, damp, carrying the ammonia-stench of the prison below. The sounds of battle faded with each step: steel on steel becoming a distant echo, the screaming thinning to silence, until all he could hear was his own breathing and the soft scuff of his boots on wet stone.
The walls were slick with condensation. The torches were sparse, casting pools of orange light separated by long stretches of black. Silas found himself walking lighter—balls of his feet, weight distributed—and recognized it as the old reflexes, the muscle memory he'd learned running drops through Seattle's underpasses. Some skills never left you.
Somewhere ahead, a door creaked. Voices murmured. Then silence.
Ten minutes. Corin is buying me ten minutes.
Kael should be down there. Taren is in Cell 4. The Shank is at my hip.
The spiral descent narrowed. The last pool of light from above shrank to a point, then vanished entirely. The darkness swallowed everything.
This is the easy part. Everything after this is the hard part.
Time to keep a promise.