They left the Moonforge with the kind of hurry that makes the world feel like it's folding in on itself. The crate with the shard was strapped to the Loom's cart, wrapped in oilcloth and leaded cloth, humming faintly as if the Pale Codex inside remembered a song and could not stop. Lanterns swung on the cart's sides, throwing fractured light across the road; behind them the Moonforge's chimneys belched a last, angry plume and the glass towers glowed like wounded eyes.
Aria rode at the cart's flank, one hand on the reins, the other on the leather of her satchel where the ledger fragment lay. Her hearing still felt off—muffled, as if the world had been turned down a notch—and the edges of things had a soft, uncertain halo. The Mirror Sigil Rip had taken a small, precise thing from her: a name she could not quite place. It was a private theft, but it sat in her like a stone. She had learned to carry stones.
Halv and Rell kept the rear, two shadows that moved with the practiced economy of people who had spent too many nights running. Luna rode beside Aria, her posture a steadying presence. The teacher's eyes were rimmed with fatigue; the lullaby she had given to the Thornkin had left a hollow in her chest that she did not speak of. She hummed under her breath, a thin thread of jasmine and salt that steadied the horses and, Aria suspected, herself.
They had a route planned: a narrow coastal road that hugged the cliffs, a path of gulls and salt and old watchtowers. The Moving Archive had been sighted farther inland; the handlers would not expect a coastal exit. If they could make the Bonebridge by dawn, they could hand the shard to forensics and let the Loom's quieter rooms do the rest. If they were clever, they could slip the ledger's thread into a public packet and force the Council's hand without giving the brokers time to bury the truth.
They were not clever enough.
The first sign that the Moonforge had not forgiven them came as a flare on the horizon: a column of glass and flame that rose and broke like a second sun. Someone—an engineer with a broker's patience—had set a delayed sigil in the Moonforge's outer ring. The blast was not meant to kill; it was meant to make a spectacle. It was meant to be seen.
The coastal road filled with light. Lanterns winked out. Horses reared. A trader's cart ahead of them overturned and spilled its wares—sigil-plates, salted fish, bolts of cloth—across the stones. People screamed. The sound of the sea was swallowed by the market's panic.
"Move!" Aria shouted. Her voice cut through the chaos like a blade. She urged her horse forward, feeling the cart lurch as Halv wrestled it back into line. Rell cursed and drove his mount into the gap, pushing a path through the scattering crowd. The ledger's fragment thudded against Aria's ribs, a small, insistent heartbeat.
They were not the only ones running. Brokers and contractors poured from side streets, faces set in the hard, practiced lines of men who had been paid to make trouble. A flotilla of small skiffs—broker launches—had already pushed off from the harbor, engines coughing, men with glass blades and ledger slates leaning over their rails. The Moonforge's spectacle had been a signal: take to the water, chase the Loom, make the theft public and shame them into silence.
Aria's throat closed. The ledger's thread had always been a map; now it was a target. She felt the old, private fear—of being hunted, of being made an example—and she shoved it down. There was no room for fear when the sea was a corridor and the brokers were on your heels.
They reached the cliff road's hairpin and found the first of the launches waiting below, engines spitting. A broker's flag snapped in the wind, a crooked tree stitched into black cloth. Men with glass blades leaned over the rails, their faces lit by the Moonforge's afterglow. The launches were fast—lighter than the Loom's cart, built for speed and for the kind of violence that made a market forget its morals.
Halv cursed. "They cut the harbor lanes," she said. "We can't go around."
Rell's jaw worked. "We go through," he said. "We take the old slip. There's a tide channel—narrow, but it'll get us to the Bonebridge faster than the road."
Aria looked down at the water, at the narrow channel that threaded between jagged rocks. The sea there was a throat; it could swallow a cart whole. But the ledger's shard was in their hands, and the ledger's thread had to be kept moving. She nodded.
They drove the cart down the slip with a reckless grace. Men on the launches shouted and fired a warning shot that shattered a lantern and sent a spray of glass across the water. The cart hit the surf with a bone-deep jolt. The horses balked, then plunged. The cart's wheels chewed the shallow water and then the keel caught and they were afloat, the cart riding like a stubborn thing on a sea that wanted to take it.
The launches closed fast. Broker men leapt with grappling hooks, trying to snag the cart's rails. Halv swung a pole and knocked one man into the water; another slashed at the cart's side with a glass blade that sang like a bell. Rell fired a sigil-pistol—an ugly, practical thing—and the shot took a launch's engine, sending it coughing and sputtering. The chase became a blur of spray and shouted curses, of lantern light and the Moonforge's distant glow.
Aria clung to the cart's rail, the ledger's fragment warm against her hip. The sea spray tasted of iron and salt and the faint, metallic tang of sigils. She could see the launches' faces—men who had been paid to make a spectacle, to turn a theft into a scandal. She could see the broker's flag snapping like a black tooth. She could see the Bonebridge's silhouette ahead, a low line of stone and collapsed arches that would be a choke point if they could reach it.
They did not reach it unscathed. A launch's grapnel snagged the cart's rear and tore a wheel free. The cart lurched, and Halv cursed as she fought to keep it from capsizing. A broker's blade flashed and nicked Rell's shoulder; he spat blood and kept his grip. Luna's hum rose like a prayer, and for a minute the launches' men faltered as if the sound had put a hand on their throats. The Echo Shield had been used in the market; Luna's voice now was a thin, steadying thing that kept the apprentices from panicking and the horses from bolting.
They hit the Bonebridge's approach with a spray of foam and a chorus of shouts. The bridge's old stones rose like teeth, and the narrow channel funneled the launches into a tight line. Halv drove the cart hard, skimming the bridge's pilings, and the launches had to slow to avoid smashing into the rocks. Rell swung a lantern and signaled the Loom's hidden nets—ropes strung across the bridge's underside that would snag a launch's hull if they were lucky.
The first launch hit a net and went down like a trapped fish, its men thrown into the water with a curse. The second tried to ram and clipped a piling; it spun and took on water. The broker's flag went under. Men cursed and swore and tried to climb back into their boats. The Bonebridge's choke had done its work.
They made the far side with the cart's wheel splintered and the horses breathing hard. The shard thudded against Aria's spine like a small, insistent heart. They had bought themselves a moment—enough to get to the Loom's safehouse and to hand the shard to forensics. Enough, perhaps, to force the ledger's thread into the open.
But the spectacle had not been without consequence. Word traveled faster than they could move. By the time they reached the safehouse, the market's panic had spread like oil. Saltport's docks were a tangle of rumors: the Moonforge had been sabotaged; the Loom had stolen a Pale Codex shard; brokers were calling for a public packet release to prove the Loom's guilt. Traders shuttered stalls and pulled in awnings; a line of carts formed at the harbor's edge, people trying to leave the city before the Council could act.
Inside the safehouse, Halv unwrapped the shard and set it under Luna's lamp. Forensics began with the slow, careful motions of people who knew how to read a thing's memory: brushes, lenses, sigil-tracers that hummed and threw pale nets of light across the shard's surface. Luna's fingers hovered, then touched the oilcloth and the shard's hum answered like a small bell.
Outside, someone had already started a rumor that the Loom had burned a broker's ledger in the market. Another rumor said the Moonforge's blast had been an accident. A third said the Moving Archive had been seen heading for the Bonebridge with a crate of its own. The city's markets are a living ledger; a rumor is a page that writes itself.
Aria watched the forensics work and felt the ledger's pressure like a tide. The shard's marginalia glinted under the lamp: a donor mark, a half-line of script, a notation that matched the treatise's diagrams. Forensics would take hours to parse it; the public would not wait. Brokers were already calling for a packet release—a staged public reading that would frame the Loom as thieves and agitators. If the Council allowed it, the Loom would be forced into a defensive posture, and the ledger's thread would be buried under legalese and spectacle.
"We need to move," Rell said. He had a map spread on the table, routes and safehouses marked in a cramped hand. "If they call a packet, the Council will send guards. If they send guards, the brokers will use it as cover to seize witnesses."
Aria's jaw tightened. The ledger had always been a map of danger; now it was a map of leverage. "We go public on our terms," she said. "We prepare a packet. We show the shard and the treatise. We force the Council to answer in the open."
Halv snorted. "You think the Council will listen? They'll call us criminals and hand the shard to the brokers."
Luna's hand found Aria's. The touch was small and steady. "We have witnesses," she said. "We have forensics. We have the moving archive's handlers who can testify. We can make the packet a field event—bring it to the market where the ledger first surfaced. Make the public see the ledger's margins."
Aria looked at the shard under the lamp, at the pale script that promised to reframe a people's history. She thought of the child at the ferry seam, of the Thornkin's bargain, of the cost that had been paid in lullabies and names. She thought of the market's panic and the Moonforge's damaged chimneys and the launches sunk in the channel.
"We do it at dawn," she said. "We take the market. We show the ledger and the shard. We make the Council answer in public or we make the public answer for them."
Outside, Saltport's night settled into a brittle hush. The city had been shaken; trade would be disrupted for days, perhaps weeks. Ships would be delayed, contracts would be renegotiated, and the brokers would count losses in ledgers that would not show the cost of memory. The Loom had bought a moment with blood and noise and the sea; now they would spend it.
Luna squeezed Aria's hand once, a small, private anchor. "We'll pay the cost," she said. "We always do."
Aria let herself believe it for a breath. The ledger's thread ran through the city like a vein. They had pulled at it and made it bleed. The fallout would be public and ugly and necessary. They would stand in the market at dawn and hold the shard up like a wound and ask the city to remember what had been taken.
For now, they slept in fits and starts, the shard under the lamp like a small, insistent heart. Outside, Saltport's docks creaked and the Moonforge's chimneys smoked. The ledger had been moved; the Pale Codex's marginalia had been found. The city would not be the same in the morning.