Chapter 15 · Three Stolen Days

Kade's shop mark was in the ledger. Three days before the ward fell.

He could still see the ink, rust-brown and spidery, scratched into the margin next to a delivery note. His own stamp. The one he used to clock work orders at the old copyist stall, back when he thought showing up on time mattered.

Mira was quiet. She'd pulled them out of the forge undercroft an hour ago, past the last twitching hound and up through a maintenance shaft that dumped them into the grain district. Now they were sitting in a boarded-up mill office, dust thick enough to taste, and she hadn't said a word since he'd told her what the mark meant.

She was cleaning the burn on her shoulder. The fire-hound had clipped her when she shoved him out of the way. The fabric of her guard coat was scorched black, the skin underneath blistered and raw. She worked the salve in with two fingers, her jaw set, her eyes somewhere else.

"Say it," Kade said.

She didn't look up. "Say what."

"That I'm lying. That I faked the ledger. That I'm exactly what the tower says I am.