The rain over the Fishgut Quarter had turned to a greasy, clinging mist that smelled of rotting kelp and coal smoke.Freecs moved with his back pressed against the damp siding of an empty smokehouse. He paused at every cross-alley, his ears straining against the ambient rumble of the docks.Beside him, Vivina wiped a smear of wet rye flour from her cheek. Her breathing was ragged, her boots caked in grey muck from the granary courtyard."Did Joran turn them?" she whispered.Freecs shook his head once, his jaw tight."If Joran wanted to sell us out, we wouldn't have walked away from the granary gates," he said. "He’s a dog who knows which master pays him, but he doesn't bark for free.""Then we go back to the cellar," Vivina said, pulling her damp woolen shawl tighter around her shoulders. "We dry the grain dust off the ledgers and wait for Kjeldsen's runners."Freecs didn't answer immediately. He peered around the corner of the smokehouse, studying the narrow lane that led to the rear

The metallic tang of blood mingled with the pervasive, sickening stench of the low-tide muck as Freecs pressed his weight against the cold, weeping stone of the alleyway wall. Every breath felt like inhaling crushed glass, a reminder of the fractured ribs that had been knitting slowly under the pressure of too much movement and too little rest.He peered past the splintered remains of the tavern door. Three men in the charcoal-grey livery of the magistrate’s private guard stood amidst the wreckage of the Rusty Anchor. They were not merely searching; they were dismantling.Tables had been overturned and smashed into kindling. The floorboards were being pried up, one by one, with heavy iron crowbars. The tavern was being gutted, stripped of its secrets by men who didn't care for the history of the wood, only for the paper hidden beneath it."He isn't here, captain," one of the guards grunted. He tossed a handful of ruined ledgers into a guttering fire pit in the center of the room. "The