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"Move." Calder's clawed hand clamped around my wrist and yanked me sideways into the gap between two buildings.
"Don't—"
"Shut up and crouch."
I didn't have a choice. The cuff dragged me down with him, my knees hitting wet stone. His wing folded over both of us, blocking the mouth of the alley, and I bit down on a string of threats because footsteps were pounding past. Heavy boots. At least six.
"Voss went south," someone shouted.
"Check the canals," another voice answered.
Calder didn't move. His wing pressed tighter, and I could feel the ridges of damaged membrane against my shoulder. The stone of his skin was cold even through my coat. I counted my breaths. Ten. Fifteen. The boots faded.
"They're looking for me," I whispered.
"They're looking for us." He pulled the wing back and straightened, hauling me up with him. "You're not just the auditor anymore. You're the idiot who cuffed herself to the monster."
"I didn't cuff myself. You—"
"You activated the bind. That makes you complicit." He turned his head, listening, then tugged me deeper into the alley. "We need to move before the next sweep."
I dug my heels in. "No. We're going back to the ward vault. I need to see the scene."
"The scene's been scrubbed by now."
"Then I need to see what they scrubbed."
He stopped and looked at me. His central eye narrowed. "You want proof I didn't do it."
"I want proof someone else did."
"Same thing."
"It's not." I stepped closer, which pulled the chain taut between us. "You've lied three times since I grabbed you. I don't trust your word. I trust evidence."
"Evidence gets people killed."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He didn't answer. He turned his head again, nostrils flaring, and I saw his jaw tighten. "We don't have time for this."
"Make time. You want me to believe you're innocent? Give me something."
"I gave you the route out. I gave you the warning about the hounds. That's not enough?"
"That's survival. That's not proof."
He made a sound low in his throat, somewhere between a growl and a laugh. "You're going to get us both killed."
"Then start talking."
For a moment I thought he'd bolt. The chain would stop him, but he looked like he wanted to try anyway. Instead he reached into the torn pocket of his coat and pulled something out. He held it in his palm, claws curled loosely around it, and didn't offer it to me.
"What is that?"
"You want proof. Here."
I leaned in. The light in the alley was bad, but I could make out the shape: a half-circle of tarnished brass, stamp-marked on one side, sheared cleanly down the middle. I knew the mark. I'd seen it on my father's desk a hundred times.
My throat closed up.
"That's an audit coin," I said.
"Half of one."
"Where did you get it?"
He closed his claws. "Does it matter?"
"Yes." I grabbed his wrist, the one that wasn't cuffed, and tried to pry his fingers open. His stone skin didn't budge. "That's my father's mark. Where the hell did you get it?"
"He gave it to me."
I froze. "When?"
"Three years ago. Right before he disappeared."
The air went out of me. I let go of his wrist and stepped back, or tried to. The cuff pulled me up short. "You're lying."
"I'm not."
"You didn't know him. You couldn't have—"
"I knew him." Calder's voice was flat. "He came to me with questions about the ward vault. He wanted to know who had access, who could crack it, who'd want to. I told him to drop it. He didn't."
"Why didn't you say this before?"
"Because the people who killed him are the same ones who framed me. And if you go poking around the vault, they'll do the same to you."
I stared at him. My pulse was hammering in my ears. "You've been holding this the whole time."
"Yes."
"You let me think—"
"I let you think I was guilty because that was safer for both of us. Now you know. Happy?"
I wasn't happy. I was furious and sick and something else I didn't have a name for. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to demand every detail. I wanted to scream.
Instead I said, "Give me the coin."
"No."
"It's evidence."
"It's a target. You carry it, you're marked."
"I'm already marked. I'm cuffed to you."
He bared his teeth. It wasn't a smile. "Fine. Take it." He opened his claws and dropped the half-coin into my palm. The brass was still warm from his hand. I closed my fingers around it and shoved it into my pocket.
"Where's the other half?" I asked.
"I don't know."
"Who has it?"
"I don't know."
"What did my father find?"
"I don't—"
"Don't say you don't know." I stepped in close, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to look him in the eye. "You knew him. You talked to him. You took his coin. What did he find?"
Calder didn't step back. He should have. The alley was narrow, and I was inside his wingspan now, close enough to feel the faint heat radiating off the stone of his chest. His eye locked on mine.
"He found the same thing I did," he said quietly. "That someone's been bleeding the ward-core for years. Small draws. Controlled. Whoever's doing it has keys, clearance, and enough pull to rewrite the logs."
"Seraphine."
"Maybe. Maybe someone above her. Your father was close. Too close. Then he vanished, and the case got buried, and anyone who asked questions ended up reassigned or worse."
"And you didn't."
"I stopped asking. I kept my head down. I stayed alive." His voice turned bitter. "Until two nights ago, when someone decided I'd make a good scapegoat."
I wanted to believe him. I wanted it so badly it scared me. I pulled back, putting a few inches of space between us, and tried to think.
"If you're telling the truth," I said, "then we need the real logs. The ones before they were scrubbed."
"They're gone."
"Logs don't vanish. They get archived, overwritten, copied. There's always a backup."
"Not if the Relic Office doesn't want there to be."
"Then we go around them. My father had contacts. People he trusted. If he knew he was in danger, he would've left something."
Calder tilted his head. "Where?"
"I don't know yet. But I'll find it."
"You've got eight hours."
I looked down at the cuff. The glow had dimmed since the alley fight, but the seal was still there, faint and pulsing. My father's mark. I didn't know why it had activated. I didn't know what it meant. But it was counting down, and when it hit zero, one of us was going to die.
Above us, the city bells started ringing.
Calder went still. "That's not the hour."
"No." I knew that sequence. Three tolls, pause, three more. It was the old garrison code. Priority alert. City-wide.
A new voice crackled through the air, amplified by spell-cast relays, cold and clipped and familiar.
"Attention, Brassgate. By order of Senior Relic Officer Seraphine Vale, the fugitive Calder Quill is to be apprehended on sight. The auditor Mara Voss is now classified as an accomplice and is wanted for obstruction, harboring a suspect, and theft of relic property. Both are to be taken alive. A bounty of five thousand crescents is posted for information leading to capture."
Calder swore under his breath.
I didn't move. I couldn't. Five thousand crescents. Half the city would be hunting us by nightfall.
The voice continued. "Voss is considered armed and cooperative with the suspect. Do not approach without backup. Report sightings to the Relic Office or any ward station. Further resistance will be met with lethal force."
The bells tolled again. Then silence.
I looked up at Calder. His wings were half-spread, tensed, and his eye was fixed on the mouth of the alley.
"They just painted a target on both of us," I said.
"Yeah." He didn't look at me. "Seraphine doesn't want you to turn me in anymore. She wants you gone."
"Why?"
"Because you found the coin. Because you're asking the right questions. Because—"
Footsteps. Close. Coming fast.
Calder grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the back of the alley. There was a drainage grate set into the wall, rusted and narrow. He hooked his claws under the edge and wrenched it free.
"Get in."
"That's a sewer."
"It's cover. Move."
I dropped to my knees and crawled through. The smell hit me immediately—rust, rot, and something sharper. Calder followed, dragging the grate back into place behind us. The footsteps pounded past overhead.
We crouched in the dark, breathing hard, the cuff glowing faint between us.
"Where do we go now?" I whispered.
Calder's eye gleamed in the faint light. "Somewhere Seraphine can't follow."
"Where's that?"
"The monster blocks."
I stared at him. "You're joking."
"I'm not. You want to stay alive? You want to find your father's trail? That's where we start." He shifted forward, testing the tunnel. "And we need to move now, because in about ten minutes, every hunter in the city's going to be scanning for your trail."
Above us, another set of boots stopped. A voice called out. "Check the grates."
Calder looked at me. I looked back.
"Go," I said.
He went.