finished polishing

chapters/book2/ch18-final.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 The soundstone warmed against my collarbone three steps past the warehouse wall, and the first thing I heard was a chair scraping across floorboards.
 
-Then again. Then a third time, accompanied by the kind of breathing that suggested someone was trying very hard to sit still and failing comprehensively.
+Then again. Then a third time, accompanied by breathing that hitched on every exhale — someone trying very hard to sit still and failing comprehensively.
 
 Ledger glanced at me. I held up a hand — *wait* — and pressed two fingers against the stone.
 
@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ The lattice bloomed into my perception like a city seen from above at night —
 
 (*The handshake. The bracelet remembers. Same makers, same era — the key's been in the lock since the tenement.*)
 
-The bracelet warmed against my wrist. Its seal — the one stamped during the drain nine days ago, credentials exchanged like two old colleagues recognising each other's seals — slid into the ledger without resistance. Trusted process. Overuse had loosened the recognition the way a lock wears down after too many keys: the shape was right enough, and the mechanism was too tired to check twice.
+The bracelet warmed against my wrist. Its seal — the one stamped during the drain six days ago, credentials exchanged like two old colleagues recognising each other's seals — slid into the ledger without resistance. Trusted process. Overuse had loosened the recognition the way a lock wears down after too many keys: the shape was right enough, and the mechanism was too tired to check twice.
 
 I was in.
 
@@ -132,7 +132,7 @@ We moved toward the exit. Ledger's tools reappeared — the same practiced quart
 
 The soundstone had gone quiet during the last thirty seconds of the exploit. Not dead — two sets of lungs, one controlled, one ragged. But no more fire. No more impacts. No more screaming.
 
-The night air hit us like cold water. I pulled the jacket tighter — Carter's ore studs pressed against my ribs, warm from the work.
+The night air hit us like cold water. I pulled the jacket tighter — Carter's ore studs pressed against my ribs, still cold. Nothing for them to drink tonight.
 
 Then Kae's voice, and it was a different voice from the one that had charged at Leon's fire. Smaller. Broken open by something the fight hadn't touched.
 

chapters/book2/ch19-final.md

@@ -158,7 +158,9 @@ Kae's eyes moved between us — reading the room the way I read rooms. Street in
 
 Kae closed his mouth. His hand went to the pendant at his throat and held it. Reflex, not performance.
 
-Ledger opened the folder. "The crystal you were using has been neutralised. It won't be used again." No explanation of how. "We have a record of everyone it was used on." No explanation of source. "We know the attacks are connected to a man operating out of Thorngate who supplied you with the crystal, directed your targets, and maintained your dependency."
+Ledger opened the folder. "The crystal you were using has been neutralised. It won't be used again." No explanation of how.
+
+(*Neutralised. Operational lie — it's still live, still inverted, still waiting on the next hand that touches it. Kae doesn't need that detail. He needs the door closed.*) "We have a record of everyone it was used on." No explanation of source. "We know the attacks are connected to a man operating out of Thorngate who supplied you with the crystal, directed your targets, and maintained your dependency."
 
 Each sentence landed like a stone dropped into still water. Kae's expression shifted incrementally — surprise that they knew this much, then something harder underneath. Resignation, maybe. Or relief.
 
@@ -220,13 +222,13 @@ Ledger turned to the second page. Parchment, ink, the formal language of guild d
 
 "Start with the first time he contacted you. We'll work forward."
 
-(*The Floundry evidence wasn't enough. Compact internal politics buried it — filed, acknowledged, no action taken. But this is different. Victim list with timestamps. Crystal chain of custody through three verified transactions. Elara's murder — disbursements, operatives, a silenced witness. Kae's firsthand testimony tying it all to a name and an address in Thorngate. The weight of it is different. Not heavier, exactly. Sharper. The kind of weight that cuts through institutional padding because it has too many edges to smother.*)
+(*The Floundry evidence wasn't enough. Compact internal politics buried it — filed, acknowledged, no action taken. But this is different. Victim list with timestamps. Crystal chain of custody through three verified transactions. Elara's murder — disbursements, operatives, a silenced witness. Kae's firsthand testimony tying it all to a name and an address in Thorngate. The weight of it is different. Not heavier, exactly. Sharper. Weight with too many edges for institutional padding to smother.*)
 
 Kae picked up the pen. His hand was steady — the herbs, or the anger, or the particular clarity that comes from discovering your suffering had an architect.
 
 Leon stood by the door, watching the boy who'd tried to kill him two hours ago put pen to parchment. His expression was unreadable. Taking it in. The aftermath of five words he'd said in a tenement that had changed something he hadn't planned on changing.
 
-Ledger guided Kae through the first entries with professional patience. Dates. Names. Instructions received. Methods of contact. The machinery of testimony — unglamorous, essential, the kind of work that turned chaos into evidence and evidence into consequences.
+Ledger guided Kae through the first entries with professional patience. Dates. Names. Instructions received. Methods of contact. The machinery of testimony — unglamorous, essential, the slow work that turned chaos into evidence and evidence into consequences.
 
 I watched from the side wall. My part in this was done — had been done since the crystal's lattice sealed behind my modifications. I'd built the infrastructure. Ledger was closing the deal. Leon had provided the impossible thing: a human being choosing to stop.
 
@@ -238,4 +240,4 @@ Tomorrow the machinery would start — formal statements, guild channels, the sl
 
 Tonight, a boy who'd been turned into a weapon was writing his own name at the bottom of a page, and three men who had no business working together watched him do it.
 
-The soundstone was cool against my collarbone. The bracelet was cooler still. And the noise, for the second time tonight, had nothing useful to add.
+The soundstone was cool against my collarbone. The bracelet was cooler still. The noise, which had spent the last hour cataloguing exits and signature angles and the precise pressure of Kae's grip on the pen, finally went quiet on the only question that mattered. It didn't have an answer for what we'd just done. Neither did I.

chapters/book2/ch20-final.md

@@ -84,6 +84,8 @@ I wasn't sure the difference mattered to Calla Floundry or Ren Dorren or the stu
 
 "Safehouse, as agreed. Mere's compounds are holding at roughly eighty percent. Dosing schedule is stable, no withdrawal beyond the first thirty-six hours. He's sleeping. Eating. He hasn't asked to leave."
 
+(*Eighty percent. Mere's number, not Ledger's — he's quoting her without saying so. The "hasn't asked to leave" is the part doing the work. A man who could ask hasn't. That's not compliance. That's a boy who finally believes the door isn't the dangerous part of the room.*)
+
 "Custody?"
 
 "Mine." A beat. "Operationally. The guild's on paper."
@@ -210,9 +212,7 @@ The air in the room resettled.
 
 Now the meeting really should have been over.
 
-He didn't stand.
-
-He didn't shuffle papers. He didn't push the first folder toward me with a closing gesture. His hands rested on the desk where they had been resting for the whole of the last half-hour, and he looked at me with the same patient attention he had been using throughout, and I felt — with a precision I couldn't have explained if he'd asked me to — that this second stretch of silence was not the same silence as the first.
+His hands rested on the desk where they had been resting for the whole of the last half-hour. He looked at me with the same patient attention he had been using throughout, and I felt — with a precision I couldn't have explained if he'd asked me to — that this second stretch of silence was not the same silence as the first.
 
 The first pause had been a test. He'd waited to see whether I'd walk into the question he was preparing, and I had walked into it, and he'd let me walk out of it on the terms we had both agreed to.
 

chapters/book2/ch21-final.md

@@ -12,6 +12,8 @@ Leon was already warming up when I came through the back gate. Telessi sleeve pu
 
 I let that sit. Four months ago I'd have filed it as a conversational opener and moved on. That morning I filed it as Leon telling me something without wanting to be asked about it.
 
+*(also not sleeping: the name in the second folder. Vellen. Merrenwood. Filed into a drawer in my head I'm choosing not to open this morning, because the morning has its own shape and the drawer will still be there when I'm ready for it.)*
+
 We started on integration — the drill we'd been running for weeks, sustained fire through a ring-focused weave, held at intensity, clock in my head. Leon counted under his breath because he knew it annoyed me and because counting out loud would have annoyed him more.
 
 Fifteen seconds.
@@ -250,7 +252,7 @@ I walked the long way home because Mere had gone back to Thresholds for the afte
 
 *(nothing scheduled) (the noise has nothing scheduled) (I'm not used to this)*
 
-I tried to count back and couldn't. The last time I had walked an unscheduled hour in Drenwick had been, approximately, a month before Ledger's first knock. Sixteen days ago. It felt like half a year ago.
+I tried to count back and couldn't. The last time I had walked an unscheduled hour in Drenwick had been, approximately, a month before Ledger's first knock. Seventeen days ago. It felt like half a year ago.
 
 The bracelet sat cool on my wrist. The ring was warm but quiet. The bracelet had not asked for anything in two days, and the cooling-down of the thing had started to feel like its own kind of sound.