clean up edits and chapter 15 done, 16 in draft

chapters/book2/ch05-final.md

@@ -56,19 +56,19 @@ I sat. Ledger opened the case folder — the thicker one, the active case, not t
 
 "Your identification of the pre-Compact architecture was particularly precise. The irregular node spacing, the biological routing methodology, the extraction pathway orientation." He said these things the way someone reads back a report — except he was reading back my work with a level of technical specificity that went beyond management oversight. "How did you determine the architecture was pre-Compact? Specifically."
 
-(*Too precise. The question isn't 'tell me what you found' — it's 'tell me how you found it.' That's not a debrief question. That's a methodology question. He wants to know the mechanism, not the result.*)
+(*Too specific. The question isn't 'tell me what you found' — it's 'tell me how you found it.' That's not a debrief question. That's a methodology question. He wants to know the mechanism, not the result.*)
 
 "Comparison to documented standards," I said. Which was true. Also incomplete. The actual answer involved Flaw Sight showing me the structural age of the working the way tree rings show age — visible, intuitive, and impossible to explain without explaining everything. "Current Compact framework uses geometric node grids. What I saw at the sites used irregular placement. Historical references confirm that predates standardisation."
 
-"And the biological routing? That's a fairly specialised observation."
+"And the biological routing? That's a fairly specialised identification."
 
 "Leon identified the routing methodology. Mallory crystals route through biological channels rather than geometric ones — it's the primary identifier for their construction. He recognised it from recovery work."
 
-Ledger made a note. The pen moved once, precisely. He'd gotten what he wanted — the attribution to Leon — and the question he'd actually been asking sat underneath the one I'd answered, filed but not pushed.
+Ledger made a note. The pen moved once, precisely. He'd gotten what he wanted — the attribution to Leon — and the question he'd actually been asking sat underneath the one I'd answered, noted but not pushed.
 
 "The name Kae. I've had my people narrow the territory," Ledger said. 
 
-He pulled a second sheet — not from the case folder, from a separate pile on his desk. A hand-drawn section of Drenwick's warrens, annotated with the same careful precision as his office map. Specific streets marked, two intersections circled, a perimeter sketched in pencil.
+He pulled a second sheet — not from the case folder, from a separate pile on his desk. A hand-drawn section of Drenwick's warrens, annotated with the same meticulous care as his office map. Specific streets marked, two intersections circled, a perimeter sketched in pencil.
 
 "He's been seen in this zone over the last month. Multiple sightings, different times. Not a fixed address — he moves — but the pattern clusters here." He tapped the marked area. "Southwest warrens, between Brewer's Alley and the old tannery district. If his contacts are protecting him, they're doing it within this territory."
 
@@ -80,11 +80,11 @@ The zone was tight — six blocks, maybe eight. Residential, mixed commercial. W
 
 "Your sources" — I said it flat, not a question, not quite a statement. The space between the two where Ledger would decide how much to share.
 
-"Guild contacts," he said. Which told me nothing except that his network reached into the southwest warrens with the kind of granularity that a desk analyst shouldn't have. I filed it next to the worn folder and the personal investment and the precise technical questions, and the collection of things I'd filed about Ledger got a little heavier.
+"Guild contacts," he said. Which told me nothing except that his network reached into the southwest warrens with a granularity that a desk analyst shouldn't have. I filed it next to the worn folder and the personal investment and the pointed technical questions, and the weight of what I didn't understand about Ledger got a little heavier.
 
 "One more thing," Ledger said. "The woman I mentioned yesterday — the one connected to Kae. My sources confirm she was involved in Compact-adjacent work before she died. The details are still incomplete, but the connection between her death and Kae's current state may be significant." A pause that was a decision. "I'd prefer you focus on finding Kae. The woman's history is a thread I'm still pulling."
 
-Translation: he was holding back. Still. The dead woman mattered to him in a way he wasn't sharing, and his instructions to focus on Kae were simultaneously useful direction and deliberate misdirection — pointing me at the urgent problem while he protected whatever sat underneath it.
+Translation: he was holding back. Still. The dead woman mattered to him in a way he wasn't sharing, and his instructions to focus on Kae were simultaneously useful direction and deliberate misdirection — pointing me at the urgent problem while he kept whatever sat underneath it out of my reach.
 
 I didn't push. Not today. Today I needed the territory map, and he'd given me that.
 
@@ -100,7 +100,7 @@ I took the territory map and left.
 
 * * *
 
-The warrens in daylight had a different quality than the warrens at night. At night, the narrow streets and tall buildings created a maze of shadows and noise, every corner a potential encounter, every doorway a calculation. In daylight, the warrens were just poor. Washing strung between buildings. Children too young for school playing in the street. Old women sitting on stoops with the focused blankness of people who'd been watching the same street for forty years and had long since stopped expecting it to surprise them.
+The warrens in daylight had a different quality than the warrens at night. At night, the narrow streets and tall buildings created a maze of shadows and noise, every corner a potential encounter, every doorway a decision. In daylight, the warrens were just poor. Washing strung between buildings. Children too young for school playing in the street. Old women sitting on stoops with the focused blankness of people who'd been watching the same street for forty years and had long since stopped expecting it to surprise them.
 
 I entered from the canal side, following the boundary of Ledger's marked zone. The streets narrowed as I moved southwest, the buildings pressing closer together, the ward-stones in the pavement cracked or missing entirely. Whatever magical infrastructure Drenwick's civic planners had installed down here had been poorly maintained for years, which meant the ambient suppression field that kept the arcane district clean and regulated didn't reach this far. Magic down here was either personal or absent.
 
@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@ The man's face did something interesting. Not a flinch — more controlled than
 
 "Don't know that name," he said.
 
-He was lying. The lie had a specific texture — not hostile, not frightened. Protective. His eyes didn't shift to check if anyone was watching. His posture didn't tighten with the coiled energy of someone preparing for trouble. He just closed, the way you close a cupboard that has something in it you don't want a stranger to see.
+He was lying. The lie had a specific texture — not hostile, not frightened. Sheltering. His eyes didn't shift to check if anyone was watching. His posture didn't tighten with the coiled energy of someone preparing for trouble. He just closed, the way you close a cupboard that has something in it you don't want a stranger to see.
 
 (*He knows Kae. He's not afraid of Kae — if he were, the lie would be sharper, more urgent. He's not afraid of me, either. He's protecting someone. The protectiveness is casual, practiced — he's been asked before and given the same answer before. This is a routine, not a reaction.*)
 
@@ -126,17 +126,17 @@ The second person was a woman hanging washing from a line strung between her win
 
 "I'm looking for a man called Kae. I'm told he's in this area."
 
-Her hands stopped on the washing line. Her eyes — brown, sharp, tired — flicked to a street behind me. The movement lasted less than a second, involuntary, the kind of micro-expression that most people wouldn't catch.
+Her hands stopped on the washing line. Her eyes — brown, sharp, tired — flicked to a street behind me. The movement lasted less than a second, involuntary, a micro-expression that most people wouldn't catch.
 
 Southwest. The street behind me ran southwest. She knew not just that Kae existed but where he was — or where he went. The eye movement was directional, not evasive. She'd looked where she'd last seen him, or where she expected him to be.
 
-"Never heard of him," she said. Her voice had the same texture as the nut seller's — not a lie built to deceive, a lie built to shelter. "Are you a healer?"
+"Never heard of him," she said. Her voice carried the same weight as the nut seller's — not a lie built to deceive, a lie built to shelter. "Are you a healer?"
 
 The question threw me. "No. Why?"
 
-She looked at me for a moment, evaluating. Whatever she saw didn't pass the test. "No reason." She went back to the washing. "You should try the docks if you're looking for people. The warrens aren't where you find anyone — it's where people go to not be found."
+Her eyes stayed on me a moment longer than the deflection required. Whatever she saw didn't pass the test. "No reason." She went back to the washing. "You should try the docks if you're looking for people. The warrens aren't where you find anyone — it's where people go to not be found."
 
-Clean deflection. But the question — *are you a healer?* — was data. She'd associated a search for Kae with medical need. That was new data — Ledger hadn't mentioned anything about a medical condition. He'd given me a name and a territory. The woman with the washing had just given me something Ledger hadn't: whatever was wrong with Kae, the warrens knew about it, and it was the kind of wrong that made people think of healers.
+Clean deflection. But the question — *are you a healer?* — was data. She'd associated a search for Kae with medical need. That was new — Ledger hadn't mentioned anything about a medical condition. He'd given me a name and a territory. The woman with the washing had just given me something Ledger hadn't: whatever was wrong with Kae, the warrens knew about it, and it was the kind of wrong that made people think of healers.
 
 Third conversation. An older man sitting outside a workshop door with a pipe and the unhurried posture of someone between jobs. The workshop behind him smelled like solder and hot metal.
 
@@ -156,7 +156,7 @@ That stopped me. "The third?"
 
 "What can you tell me about Kae that you wouldn't tell them?"
 
-The pipe smoker looked at me. The evaluation was longer than the woman's, more deliberate. He was older, more patient, and the calculus was different — not just *should I protect Kae?* but *from whom?*
+The pipe smoker studied me. Longer than the woman had, more deliberate. He was older, more patient, and the arithmetic was different — not just *should I shield Kae?* but *from whom?*
 
 "He's a good man," the pipe smoker said finally. "Or he was. Something's wrong with him — been wrong with him since he was born, from what I hear. Pain. Bad pain, the kind that doesn't stop." A draw on the pipe. Exhale. "Used to be quieter. Kept to himself, had a woman looking after him — Elara, I think her name was. She helped. Whatever she did for him, it helped."