Davan did not give up the ledger right away. He stood under the eave with both hands on its cover, the way a man holds a door he is not sure he wants to open. The wind had turned in the last hour and now came off the canal in short, wet pushes. It carried the smell of tar and fish from the lower docks, and somewhere behind the Office a gutter ran full and loud. The lamp in the side doorway laid a thin yellow line across the bottom step. Cassian could see the grain of the stone where the light touched it, worn into shallow dips by a century of clerks' boots.He thought about Cress's letter, the phrase about records held back for review. He had read that sentence four times and never asked who wrote the review schedule. He asked himself now, and the answer was a shrug he did not like.Behind them the Keeper's cane sounded on the cobbles. Cassian turned. She came up the last few steps slowly, one hand on the iron rail, her breath short but her eyes steady. Her coat was buttoned wrong, on

Nobody went first. The gutter ran loud outside, and the Keeper's breath rasped in the quiet. Holt kept his shirt open. The scar shone on his chest, and every pulse of it landed in Cassian's breastbone like a thumb pressed into a bruise.Aldric broke it. "Sayle. What was he to you?""A courier." Holt rubbed his split thumbnail with the other thumb, over and over. "Iver's nephew. Owed me a favor, and he was stupid enough to think favors meant something. I gave him the die and told him to carry a note to a boy in the marsh. I didn't tell him why.""He tried to sell us out in Brannock's loft," Aldric said. "He had a knife on a woman.""Then he was stupider than I thought." Holt didn't look away. "I'm not asking you to forgive that. I didn't plan that part.""What part did you plan?" Seraphine asked.Holt let out a long breath through his nose. The room smelled of cold tea and his sweat, sharp and old. "The report. The commission's report on the marsh settlements was going out at month's e