# Chapter 7: The Man Behind the Monster

Leon was already warming up when I arrived at the courtyard — sixth bell, grey morning, the winter light too tentative to commit to anything brighter than pewter. He had the Telessi sleeve on his left forearm, running short bursts into the practice wall, each one leaving a bright scorch that faded in three seconds.

"Thirteen," I said, stepping into the ring.

"Thirteen," he agreed. "Don't push it. Hold thirteen clean before you try for fourteen."

Sound advice. Advice I was inclined to follow because Leon gave it without ego — he wanted my ceiling to move, but he wanted it to move *right.* I settled into the stance, let the ring warm against my finger, and began threading.

Nine seconds. The targeting locked in — that familiar window where the fire found its channel and the ring stopped resisting and started *conducting.* The drift that had plagued me at thirteen was there, faint, a lateral pull I could feel in my wrist. I didn't fight it. I absorbed it, the way Leon had shown me — let the disruption enter the weave and become part of the pattern rather than something to correct around.

Thirteen seconds. Ugly, but held. The ring vibrated at the boundary of its tolerance, and I released before fourteen could turn stability into damage.

"Better," Leon said. "The compensation at ten is almost gone. You're absorbing instead of correcting."

"Almost."

"Almost is progress." He killed his practice burst and turned to face me properly. "So. Galden."

I'd been waiting for this. Leon had given himself two days on the broker — yesterday had been his second.

"The financial trail goes deeper than I expected," he said. "Galden keeps clean records for a man who facilitates anonymous purchases. The crystal sale went through an intermediary — we knew that — but the money behind the intermediary came through a trade account that's structured like institutional finance. Not a private buyer. Someone with access to Compact-level disbursement channels." He paused. "I couldn't get more without making Galden nervous, and nervous brokers burn records. Ledger's people might have better tools for the financial side."

I noted that. Institutional money. Another thread pointing at the same architecture.

"Carter's suppliers," I said.

"Done." Leon pulled a folded paper from his coat — names, addresses, terms. "Three contacts outside Compact-regulated channels. One's a mineral specialist in the eastern trade district — handles inscription-grade stock, no Compact certification, quality's solid. Second is a reagent supplier operating through the grey market — I've bought from her before, never had a complaint. Third is smaller, specialty compounds, but his catalogue overlaps with what Donnick's was providing before they went quiet." He handed me the paper. "Carter should test with a few small orders before committing. These people are reliable, but reliable and Carter-standard aren't the same bar."

"I'll tell him."

"Tell him I vouched for them. That means something to these people." Leon folded his arms. "Now. You were going to tell me about the warrens."

I gave him Carson. The chapel-workshop, the overbuilt everything, the man himself — six-three, two-eighty, gorilla hands, the anti-Phelan. How he'd identified Hendrick Voss as Carter's squeezed supplier without being told the name. The rumour campaign — two to three weeks of face-to-face credibility work within the warrens. Carson's network reaching where Leon's contacts couldn't, and Leon's contacts reaching where Carson's ended.

"Carson Johnsby," Leon said. "The Right Reverend."

I looked at him.

"You know him."

"I know *of* him. Or rather, I know his church." Leon's expression shifted to something between amusement and genuine appreciation. "The Church of the Ahole. You've seen the shrine?"

"The ugly one with the fishbone."

"That's the one." Leon leaned against the courtyard wall, and the grin that spread across his face was the particular grin of a man who'd been waiting for an opportunity to explain something he found delightful. "Ahole — the deity who blesses those who do unto others before they do unto you. Core tenets: do what makes you happy, don't concern yourself with what other people think, help others only when it genuinely pleases you. Not bad people — just honestly self-interested. They have Godsday services."

"Fish fries."

"Fish fries with beer and wine and family games. The line between religious observance and a neighbourhood cookout is — well, there isn't one. They gather, they eat, someone says something Carson said and everyone responds with 'So said the Right Reverend Carson,' and that's the liturgy." He was enjoying this. "I've encountered his followers through the grey market. Three of my regular contacts are church members. Good people to deal with — they're upfront about wanting what benefits them, which makes negotiation straightforward. No pretence of altruism to navigate around."

"And the philosophy?"

Leon considered this with the air of a man examining a mirror he hadn't expected to find.

"Honestly? Doing what you want regardless of how others feel about it is rather appealing." He paused. The pause held self-awareness the way a glass holds wine — full, but controlled. "Hell, I might join."

(*The irony of a man who sells pre-Compact artifacts without asking who's buying, describing a philosophy he already lives by as something he'd need to sign up for. Leon's moral framework was the Church of the Ahole without the fishbone and the tax benefits. He just hadn't had the honesty to name it until now.*)

"You'd fit right in," I said.

"Don't say that like it's an insult. At least they're honest about it." He pushed off the wall. "Carter?"

"Carter."

* * *

Carter's shop was two streets over, and the shelves were still thin. He noticed us the way he noticed everything about his workspace — immediately, precisely, with the professional awareness of a man who could inventory his stock by feel.

"Leon," he said. "Phelan."

"We have something for you," I said.

I laid it out: Leon's three alternative suppliers, Carson's reputation campaign in the warrens for Hendrick Voss, the two-pronged approach that would rebuild his supply lines outside the Compact's reach. Leon filled in the details — names, terms, quality assessments — with the brisk efficiency of someone who'd done the groundwork and was delivering a finished product.

Carter listened without interrupting. When we finished, he picked up Leon's list, read it twice, and set it down on the counter next to a half-finished buckle assembly and a row of punching tools laid out in order of size.

"I'll test with small orders," he said. "Two, maybe three items from each. See how the quality holds, how the delivery works, whether their definition of 'inscription-grade' matches mine." The relief was there — in the set of his shoulders, in the way his hand rested on the list like it was something solid in a room that had been getting less solid for weeks — but Carter expressed relief the way he expressed everything: through professional confidence in the solution. "If the quality's there, I can have a working supply chain inside a month. Compact-independent."

"Carson's campaign will take two to three weeks on the local front," I said. "His credibility handles the warrens. Leon's contacts handle the rest."

Carter nodded. He was already thinking ahead — I could see it in the way his fingers tapped the edge of the list, measuring something against a project in his head.

"I've got an idea I've been sitting on," he said. "Non-standard materials. These suppliers would be a good first real test — if they can source what I need at the quality I need, that tells me everything about whether this relationship works long-term."

He didn't elaborate. Carter never did, not about work in progress.

"I'll let you know when it's ready," Carter said. "For now — thank you. Both of you."

He shook Leon's hand, then mine. The grip was Carter's grip — firm, precise, the handshake of a man whose hands measured everything they touched.

We left him standing at his counter with a list of names and the quietly fierce expression of a craftsman who'd been told the tools were coming back.

* * *

Leon and I parted at the edge of the guild quarter — he had a buyer to meet in the canal district, something about a batch of second-era inscription tools that needed authentication. Normal work. Work that paid for the Telessi sleeve and the courtyard sessions and the life Leon had built on the principle of not asking too many questions.

The guild hall was quiet at mid-morning. The receptionist nodded me through without the waiting-list performance. Past the filter. Third door on the right.

Ledger was at his desk. The map behind him had new pins — two more red, clustered in the northeast. The worn folder sat at his elbow, thinner than the case file, older than the assignment.

"Have a seat, Locksmith." he said.

I sat. Something in his voice told me the agenda was his, not mine.

"The woman in the merchants' quarter," Ledger said. "She didn't survive."

The words landed with the specific weight of facts that change the shape of a case. Not dramatic — Ledger didn't do dramatic. Clinical. The clinical delivery of a man who understood exactly what the sentence meant and was watching to see if I did too.

"When?" I asked.

"Last night. The healer reported this morning." He opened the case file. "Severe cerebral deterioration consistent with the other victims, but the extraction volume was significantly higher. The healer's report suggests the cognitive damage was irreversible before she died — the body followed where the mind had already gone."

(*Murder. The word changes the air in the room. The draining pattern was assault — terrible, damaging, but the victims survived. Now one hasn't. Now Kae is a killer, whether he meant to be or not, and the case is murder, and every conversation I have from this point forward carries that weight.*)

"I have updates," I said. "From the warrens."

Ledger listened. I gave him the Compact field operatives — two men, well-dressed, trained to be polite, asking about Kae by name in the warrens. The same morning I'd been there. He made a note. I gave him Kae's physical state — the oscillation between debilitation and mania that Carson and Drannick both described, the deterioration accelerating, the pattern of someone whose dependency was outrunning whatever the crystal could provide.

"And the dependency itself," I said. "It's the pain. Congenital chronic pain — he's had it his whole life. Elara managed it partially. Whatever she did — herbalism, healing, some combination — she gave him enough relief to function. When she disappeared, that management disappeared with her. The crystal provides complete relief. First complete pain relief he's ever experienced."

"Instant dependency," Ledger said.

"Instant and total. He's not using the crystal because he wants power or because he enjoys hurting people. He's using it because stopping means the pain comes back, and the pain has never stopped before Elara, and Elara's gone."

Ledger was quiet for a moment. Then he reached for the worn folder — the thin one, the one that predated the case — and opened it. I saw a page of notes in his handwriting, dense, annotated.

"Elara was a healer," he said. The words came out measured, each one placed deliberately. "That's what the records indicate. She practiced in the warrens — unregistered, informal, the kind of healer who works on reputation and need rather than licensing and fees. She had connections to Compact-adjacent organisations, but she operated independently."

"That's why Kae needed her," I said. "She managed his pain. Healing magic, applied consistently, by someone who understood his condition."

"Yes." Ledger closed the folder. The motion was careful — not hiding, but closing. Finishing a thought he'd started somewhere else, weeks ago, before the draining case existed as a guild assignment. "The question is why she was killed."

"Kae didn't kill her."

"No."

"He had no reason to. She was the only person keeping him functional. Removing her guaranteed his spiral."

"Which is precisely the point," Ledger said. His voice had the quality of a mechanism engaging — the analytical register that meant he was no longer listening, he was constructing. "Removing Elara removed Kae's alternative pain management. Without her, the crystal becomes the only option. Without alternatives, dependency is immediate and total."

I saw where he was going. "Someone removed her *to guarantee* the dependency."

"That's not opportunistic. That's not a crime of circumstance." Ledger met my eyes. "That's engineering."

The word sat between us. Engineering. Someone had looked at Kae's situation — the chronic pain, the sole source of relief, the vulnerability — and systematically dismantled the one thing standing between him and total dependency on the crystal. Then provided the crystal.

"Pre-meditated," I said.

"From the beginning."

"The Compact operatives in the warrens," I said. "Working theory: they're damage control. The Compact knows about the draining — they detected it, they suppressed the report, they're not officially investigating. But they've got people on the ground trying to find Kae. The official position is silence while the field-level response is containment."

Ledger made another note. "Contradictory but consistent with how large organisations actually work. The left hand covers up while the right hand cleans up."

"If they find him first—"

"They'll contain it their way. And containment, for the Compact, doesn't usually involve answers." He set his pen down. "I'm pulling on a financial thread. The crystal purchase — Galden's records suggest the intermediary's funds came through channels that look institutional. Not personal wealth. Structured disbursement, the kind that requires authorisation above a certain threshold." He paused. "I expect to have something concrete by end of week."

I nodded. Leon had reached the same conclusion from the broker's end. Two sources, one shape.

"Leon D'Nardis," Ledger said, and the tone shifted — lighter, almost conversational, except that Ledger didn't do conversational without purpose. "His contributions to this case have been considerable. The crystal identification, the broker contacts, the supplier network for Carter. He has a skill set the guild doesn't currently have access to."

I waited. Ledger let the silence do the work for exactly long enough, then: "Has he ever considered formalised work?"

"Leon would rather eat his own boots than join a guild. Any guild." I leaned back. "He's minor nobility who walked away from the family name because it came with expectations. He's licensed by the Compact only because the alternative is prison, and he considers *that* an unreasonable compromise. You're not going to put a collar on someone who chewed through the last three."

"I'm not suggesting a collar. Consulting arrangements exist. Contract work. The guild values specialists who—"

"Ledger." I almost smiled. Almost. "Leon once turned down a standing offer from the Artificers' Consortium because they wanted him to file quarterly reports. He said — and I'm quoting — 'I'd rather go back to the crypts and let the dead ones manage me.' He meant it. The man treats any form of institutional obligation like a physical allergy."

Ledger made no note. He didn't need to. The question had been a probe, not a proposal — testing whether Leon was an asset he could acquire independently or whether he only worked through me. The answer was neither. Leon worked through Leon. But Ledger would file that, too. "Keep me informed. And Locksmith — this is a murder case now. The guild's name is attached to the outcome."

I stood. The weight of the case was different leaving than entering. Assault was terrible. Murder was final.

"I'll find him," I said.

Ledger looked at me with the particular expression of a man who believed me and was calculating what that would cost.

* * *

I told Mere the next evening.

The victim's death had been sitting in my chest for a full day, settling into the specific gravity of something that couldn't be undone. The case was murder. The word had changed the shape of every thought I'd had since Ledger's office.

Mere was at the kitchen table with her herbalism texts when I sat down and gave her the full picture. Not the summary — the picture. Kae's chronic pain. Elara's role and death. The crystal dependency. The engineering of it — someone removing Kae's only alternative to guarantee addiction. The two Compact operatives. Carson. The victim who'd died.

She processed without interrupting. Her questions came after, precise and structural.

"The Church of the Ahole," she said, when I reached Carson's philosophy. "Leon told you about it."

"He gave me the briefing. He was remarkably well-informed."

Mere considered the doctrine the way she considered everything — on its logical merits, stripped of context and comedy.

"The underlying principle isn't wrong," she said. "Self-interest as primary motivator is honest. Most moral frameworks pretend altruism is natural when it's actually transactional. People help others because helping makes them feel good, or because they expect reciprocity, or because social consequences for not helping are worse than the effort of helping. The Church of the Ahole just names what everyone else euphemises."

She said this without humour. She was not joking. She was analysing a moral framework and finding it structurally sound.

(*Leon found the Church amusing. Mere finds it logically defensible. Two completely different reactions to the same theology, and both of them are seeing the same thing — a creed that admits what most people won't. Leon recognises himself in it. Mere recognises everyone in it.*)

"Carson's advice quality is about sixty percent," I said.

"That's higher than most people manage." She turned a page in her herbalism text — the conversation was happening alongside her reading, not instead of it. Mere could run two things at once without losing fidelity in either. Three was her limit. I'd watched her chop vegetables while monitoring a simmering reduction and then try to listen to Devod explain one of his ideas — she'd nearly taken off the tip of her index finger. Two streams, perfect. Three, and something had to give. Usually something sharp. "The chronic pain. Is it treatable?"

"Elara was managing it partially. Healing magic, applied consistently."

"Partially." She looked up. "How partially?"

"Enough to function. Not enough to eliminate."

"What kind of pain? Neuropathic? Inflammatory? Structural?"

"I don't know yet."

Mere went quiet. The quiet had texture — not absence, but processing. Her pattern recognition was working on something I couldn't see yet.

"The dependency cycle," she said. "The crystal provides complete relief. Elara provided partial relief. He went from partial to nothing to complete. The contrast between total relief and total pain would make the withdrawal exponentially worse than if he'd never had relief at all."

She was right. And I hadn't framed it that way.

(*I understood the shape of it, though. Not the pain — the cycle. I'd never met a fixation I couldn't abandon. Earth magic, three months. Ward theory, two and a half. Lockpicking — actual lockpicking, the mechanical kind — eleven weeks before the thrill bled out and I couldn't make myself care about tumblers anymore. My brain consumed new things the way fire consumed kindling: total commitment, diminishing returns, ash. The difference was that my cycle ended in boredom. Kae's ended in agony.*)

"He can't go back," she said. "Even if you took the crystal away. He can't go back to the baseline pain, because baseline is no longer what it was. He's been at zero. Every nerve in his body knows what zero feels like now. Returning to constant pain after experiencing its complete absence — that's not withdrawal. That's torture."

The word landed in the kitchen at Chandler's Row and stayed there.

"That changes the question," I said.

"It does. You can't just stop him. You have to replace what the crystal provides. If you can't replace it, taking the crystal is the same as—" She stopped. Calculated. "As killing him. Not immediately. But the pain would break him."

The quiet in the room was the kind that follows when someone says something true and the truth needs a moment to settle.

"A woman died," I said. Not because Mere didn't know — I'd told her. Because the fact needed to exist in the room between us, spoken aloud, given weight in the space where we lived.

"Yes," Mere said. "She did."

She didn't add anything. She didn't need to. The death was present in the conversation the way weather was cold outside — an ambient condition that affected everything without requiring comment.

We sat with it. Two people in a kitchen, processing a case that had become a murder, in the productive quiet of minds that worked differently but arrived at the same conclusions.

* * *

The fish fry started at fourth bell on Godsday and I arrived at fifth.

Fashionably late was not the intent — I'd spent the morning with the case map, tracing the pattern of victim locations against Ledger's latest pin placements, looking for the geometry of Kae's movements. The northeast vector was consistent. The extraction pathways all pointed the same direction, which meant the crystal's collection point — wherever Kae went after draining — was somewhere in that quadrant. The arcane district, or near it. I folded the map under one arm and walked to the warrens.

Carson's chapel had been transformed. Not fundamentally — the workbenches were still there, the tools still hung on the walls, the ugly shrine still presided from its corner with its expression of divine indigestion. But the space had been rearranged around a long table made from planks on sawhorses, and the table was covered in food.

Fish. Several varieties, prepared several ways — fried, baked, smoked, one preparation I couldn't identify that involved a crust of something orange. Bread. Cheese. Pickled vegetables. A barrel of beer at one end, bottles of wine at the other. Around the table, on benches and stools and one chair that looked like it had been borrowed from a more civilised establishment, sat roughly twenty people.

Families. Tradespeople. A few children running between the legs of adults. An old woman with a pipe who was either Drannick's wife or his sister — the family resemblance was in the jaw. The apprentice boy from my last visit, eating fish with the focused determination of a twelve-year-old who'd been told dinner was a competitive event.

Carson was at the head of the table — or rather, Carson was everywhere at the table, because a man his size didn't sit at the head of things so much as gravitationally anchor them. He had a cup of beer in one enormous hand and a piece of fried fish in the other, and he was telling a story that involved a forge, a donkey, and what appeared to be a theological dispute. The audience was laughing. The laughter was real — not polite, not performative, the laughter of people who'd heard Carson's stories before and came back because the telling was better than the punchline.

(*This is what the Church of the Ahole looks like in practice. Not the theology — the theology is a framework for selfishness with a tax-exempt fishbone. But the practice is twenty people in a workshop eating together and calling it religion. The practice is warmer than the philosophy deserves. Carson's genius is that he built a community around the principle of self-interest and the community became the thing people were self-interested in attending. The means justified the ends by becoming the ends.*)

"Locksmith!" Carson spotted me from across the room with the radar of a man who tracked every person in his space the way I tracked magical signatures. "You came. I told you that you wouldn't."

"You were wrong."

"First time for everything. Grab a plate."

I grabbed a plate. The fish was good — better than good, prepared with the unhurried competence of people who'd been frying fish for community gatherings since before it had a theological justification. I found a seat on the end of a bench that was, predictably, overbuilt. A woman I didn't know passed me the bread without asking. I took it. The beer was cold.

For twenty minutes, I ate and watched. The fish fry operated on its own rhythm — conversations overlapping, children being redirected, Carson arbitrating a debate about whether Ahole's position on lending tools to neighbours constituted doctrine or suggestion. The apprentice delivered a "So said the Right Reverend Carson!" that drew a cheer. Someone's child knocked over a cup and was forgiven immediately by everyone within radius.

It was community. Simple, functional, undecorated community. Something I normally observed from the outside with the clinical interest of a naturalist watching a species he'd read about but never joined.

I found Carson after the meal had shifted from eating to drinking. He was leaning against the forge — still cold, Godsday was a day off even for a man who considered work and life to be the same activity — with a cup that had been refilled more than once.

"Kae," I said.

Carson's face shifted. The Godsday warmth didn't leave — it settled, like sediment, and something heavier rose to the surface.

"Saw him," Carson said. "Two days ago. He came by the workshop — not the fish fry, just the workshop. Wanted to talk." He rubbed his jaw with one heavy hand. "He looked worse, Locksmith. Whatever's eating him is eating faster. Eyes wrong. Hands shaking. He sat where you sat last time and talked for maybe twenty minutes and I don't think he heard half of what I said back."

"What did he talk about?"

"Same things he always talks about. The pain. How tired he is. How nothing works the way it should." Carson paused. "And the questions. He used to bring me hypothetical things — moral puzzles, like a philosopher who hadn't read any of the books but was trying to work it out from first principles."

Something in my chest went still.

"What kind of hypotheticals?"

"Things like—" Carson frowned, remembering. "What would you do if someone offered you something that helped, but it hurt other people?" He said it in the cadence of recollection — not his words, Kae's, retrieved from memory with the fidelity of a man who paid attention to the people he collected. "Or — 'What if the only way to stop hurting was to take something from someone else?' He'd phrase them like thought experiments. Abstract. Like he was writing a philosophy paper, not living through it."

"What did you tell him?"

"What I tell everyone." Carson's voice was steady, open, without a trace of self-doubt. Why would there be? He'd answered a broken man's questions with his best philosophy, the same philosophy he offered everyone who sat on his bench and drank his coffee. "I told him: do what's best for you. That's all any of us can do. Ahole's first principle — you can't take care of anyone else if you don't take care of yourself first. Whatever's hurting you, find what stops the hurting and hold onto it."

(*He said it the way you say a prayer — automatic, sincere, complete. Do what's best for you. The same words on the shrine, the same words in the liturgy, the same words he's been saying for years to anyone who asks. And Kae asked. Kae sat on this bench with his chronic agony and his crystal and his knowledge — knowledge he had, knowledge Carson didn't — that the crystal was killing people, and he asked the one man whose entire belief system guaranteed the answer he needed to hear. Not a sociopath. A sociopath doesn't seek permission, doesn't bring hypothetical dilemmas to a philosopher and wait for justification. Kae knew what the crystal was doing, and the guilt was eating him alongside the addiction, and he went looking for someone who would tell him it was acceptable. And he found Carson — the one man whose philosophy was built on the principle that self-interest is justified, who would say "do what's best for you" without qualification, without asking what that might cost someone else. Carson's advice was good. Sincere, consistent, offered in good faith. And Kae heard it as permission. Not to be selfish. To keep killing.*)

The noise was loud now. The realization had the quality of a lock opening — not forced, not picked, just the right key in the right ward, turning with the inevitability of a mechanism doing what it was designed to do.

Kae was not a monster — or so I thought, standing there with Carson's warmth at my elbow and the pattern clicking into place. He was a man in agony who needed someone to tell him it was okay, and he found the one person whose belief system guaranteed that answer.

"He stopped bringing the questions recently," Carson said. "The last couple visits, he just… sat. Didn't talk much. Looked through the wall." He took a drink of his beer. "I'm worried about him, Locksmith. Really worried."

I looked at Carson — open, concerned, trying to help a broken man with the best tools he had — and felt the specific weight of knowing something a good person didn't know yet. Carson's advice had been weaponised by circumstance. The guilt was coming, and it would hit a man who processed guilt quietly, privately, in the still hours after the workshop was empty. But not yet. Not tonight. Tonight his concern for Kae was pure, and I was not going to be the one who contaminated it.

"I'll find him," I said.

"I know you will." Carson looked at me with that patient evaluation — the same look he'd given me in the workshop, the assessment of a man who read people differently than I did but read them just as well. "You're not the type who stops."

"No."

"Be careful when you do. Whatever's wrong with him — it's not all his fault. Some of it is. But not all."

(*More right than he knows. And less right than he'll need to be.*)

"Carson. One more thing. The two men who were asking about Kae — the polite ones, trained to be polite."

"Your Compact friends."

"They came back?"

"Two days ago. Same day Kae came by, actually — different time, he was gone by then. They came in the afternoon. More pointed this time." Carson's expression hardened slightly — not anger, assessment. "Last time they asked if I knew him. This time they wanted to know where he was staying, who he talks to, whether he keeps a regular schedule. Specific. Tactical. Like they were narrowing a search."

"Did you tell them anything?"

"Couldn't have if I'd wanted to. I don't know where he sleeps — he moves, you know that. But the fact they're asking *those* questions means they're getting closer to finding him. Or they think they are."

I filed it. The Compact's search — or whoever's search those men represented — was tightening. More focused, more specific, moving from general inquiry to active location tracking. Combined with Ledger's financial thread pointing at institutional money behind the crystal purchase, two independent signals were converging on the same conclusion: someone with Compact-level resources was behind all of this, and their agents were closing in on Kae from one direction while I closed in from another.

If they reached him before I did, Kae would disappear — and whatever answers he carried would disappear with him.

"Thank you, Carson."

"Come back for fish fry," he said. "Bring your—" He stopped, read my face, and grinned. "Never mind. The offer stands."

I left the fish fry as the evening settled over the warrens. Behind me, laughter and the clink of cups and the apprentice's voice delivering another "So said the Right Reverend Carson!" to a cheer. Ahead of me, the walk home through streets that were getting darker earlier as winter held its grip.

The noise worked the whole way back.

(*A permission slip. That's what it was. Written in good faith by a man who didn't know what he was signing, presented to a man too desperate to read the terms. No one involved understood what they were writing.*)

The bracelet pulsed amber when I reached Chandler's Row. Mere was in the sitting room. Sniff raised his head, decided I wasn't carrying food, and lowered it again.

A man behind the monster. That was what I'd found. And someone behind the man — someone who'd removed every option until only the crystal remained, then handed it over and watched the weapon build itself.

Find him. Before the Compact's agents did. Before the crystal took another life. Before the man disappeared entirely into what he'd been built to do.

I pulled the leash. The noise resisted, then settled.

The quiet at Chandler's Row was waiting, and I went inside.
