polishing, getting ready for export

chapters/book1/ch13-final.md

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 # Chapter 13: Three Threads
 
-The guild's front office at 14 Greystone Lane had the particular hush of a Saturday morning — quieter traffic on the street outside, the receptionist reading something behind her desk instead of performing her usual eight-week-waiting-list theatre. She looked up when I walked in, nodded once, and went back to her book.
+The guild's front office at 14 Greystone Lane had the settled hush of a Saturday morning — quieter traffic on the street outside, the receptionist reading something behind her desk instead of performing her usual eight-week-waiting-list theatre. She looked up when I walked in, nodded once, and went back to her book.
 
 "Ledger left something for you," she said, without looking up again. "On his desk. He said you'd know what it meant."
 
@@ -162,9 +162,9 @@ Neither of them mentioned anything personal. The expedition was the boundary, an
 
 * * *
 
-Carter's shop was closed for regular business Saturday afternoons, the sign in the window turned to the side that said *By Appointment* — but the door was unlocked. Carter had the kind of relationship with Saturdays where they existed primarily as uninterrupted workshop time.
+Carter's shop was closed for regular business Saturday afternoons, the sign in the window turned to the side that said *By Appointment* — but the door was unlocked. Carter treated Saturdays as uninterrupted workshop time.
 
-I found him at his inscription workstation in the back room, hunched over something small and metallic, a magnifying loupe fitted over his right eye. The forge wasn't running — this was fine detail work, the inscription stage that came after the metalwork was finished. The air smelled like polishing compound and the particular burnt-metal scent of fresh channelling.
+I found him at his inscription workstation in the back room, hunched over something small and metallic, a magnifying loupe fitted over his right eye. The forge wasn't running — this was fine detail work, the inscription stage that came after the metalwork was finished. The air smelled like polishing compound and the sharp burnt-metal scent of fresh channelling.
 
 "Supply run," I said from the doorway. "Mine expedition. Three people, one day, underground."
 
@@ -212,7 +212,7 @@ I slid it onto my right index finger. The fit was exact.
 
 "Fire it," Carter said. "Small. Just a thread."
 
-I pulled a whisper of fire magic — the smallest weave I could manage, the kind of thing I'd practiced a thousand times as a teenager. A thin line of heat extending from my hand, controlled, directional.
+I pulled a whisper of fire magic — the smallest weave I could manage, something I'd practiced a thousand times as a teenager. A thin line of heat extending from my hand, controlled, directional.
 
 The ring caught it.
 
@@ -260,20 +260,16 @@ It was the closest Carter came to saying the thing he actually meant, which was
 
 * * *
 
-The walk home took fifteen minutes. The streets were quiet — Saturday afternoon, the kind of hour when Drenwick settled into its weekend rhythm and the foot traffic thinned to people running errands and children too restless to stay indoors.
+I set the pack by the shack door and sat at the table. The ring sat on my right index finger — new weight, twelve silvers lighter in the lockbox. The metal was warm against my skin, adjusting to a temperature it would hold from now on.
 
-I carried the mine supplies in Carter's pack and wore the ring on my right index finger. New weight. Twelve silvers lighter in the lockbox. The metal was warm against my skin — not from magic, just from body heat, the band adjusting to a temperature it would hold from now on.
+The house plans were still pinned to the wall. Same kitchen facing east in every version.
 
 (*Three threads, none resolved. The bribe — twenty-five gold, two thousand five hundred silvers, the house and Mere's freedom and everything I've been counting toward since the first week, and I said no. The number is still sitting there. It's going to sit there for a while. Mere and Devod — in the same room for the first time in twelve years, working the same problem, separated by a table and a lie that only I know is a lie. She's punishing him for a crime he didn't commit, and he's accepting the punishment because the alternative is telling her the truth about her mother, and neither of them is ready for that conversation. And tomorrow — the mine. Three people going underground, one of whom hates another, to find a rare moss that might save a dying man from a curse someone paid twenty-five gold to keep unbreakable.*)
 
-The ring sat on my finger. New capability. Different man than the one who'd started this job with twelve coppers and a shaved half-silver and a dream about a house that faced east. That man saved. This man spent twelve silvers on survival and said no to twenty-five gold on principle, and both decisions made sense and neither of them brought the house closer.
-
-I reached the shack. Set the pack by the door. Sat at the table and looked at the house plans pinned to the wall — the same plans that had looked different after Devod's revelation, the same kitchen facing east in every version.
+Different man than the one who'd started this job with twelve coppers and a shaved half-silver and a dream about a house that faced east. That man saved. This man spent twelve silvers on survival and said no to twenty-five gold on principle, and both decisions made sense and neither of them brought the house closer.
 
 More moving pieces than I was comfortable with. The Compact's institutional pressure, calibrated and professional and backed by someone with budget authority. Mere and Devod, orbiting each other in a room full of things unsaid, with me carrying the one piece of information that could change everything and no clear idea when or how to use it. The mine, tomorrow, with its flooded lower levels and its decayed magical residue and whatever had been living in there for fifteen years adapting to an environment saturated with broken magic.
 
 And the one that bothered me most wasn't the curse.
 
 I would've liked an hour with Leon. He'd have caught something I was missing — he always did, some throwaway comment that wouldn't mean anything until it connected with something else three hours later. But it was late, fifth bell came early, and a man going underground on too little sleep was a man who stayed underground.
-
-The noise ran. I let it.