The safehouse smelled of ink and boiled coffee and the faint, stubborn tang of sigil-metal. Lamps burned low on the long table where forensics had set up their instruments: a sigil-tracer that hummed like a trapped insect, a lens that made the shard's marginalia look like a constellation, and a shallow basin of water where Luna rinsed small things with the care of someone handling a relic. The room felt like the inside of a ledger—pages spread, margins exposed, secrets waiting to be read.
Aria stood at the table with her hands folded, the ledger fragment heavy in her pack like a small, patient animal. The market's panic had settled into a brittle hum outside; Saltport's docks were a tangle of rumors and shuttered stalls. Inside, the Loom worked with the slow, deliberate focus of people who had learned to make truth into a thing that could be held.
Rell fed a thin filament of light across the shard. The tracer's lattice crawled over the pale script and the marginalia answered with a faint, resonant tone that made the lamplight tremble. Forensics was not just about reading ink; it was about listening to the way a hand had pressed a pen, the heat of a palm that had held a page, the residue of a song hummed over a line. The tracer translated those things into patterns and Rell read them like a man reading a map.
"Donor mark here," he said, voice low. He tapped a tiny sigil at the shard's edge—an almost invisible spiral with a dot at its center. "Matches the treatise's notation. And—" he squinted, then smiled with the small, private triumph of someone who had found a seam—"there's a ledger stamp beneath the ink. A patron seal."
Aria felt the room tilt. "Which house?"
Rell's finger hovered. "Virelle."
The name landed like a stone. House Virelle had been a rumor in the margins for months—donor trusts, quiet patronage, a name that appeared and then was smudged out of public records. To see it stamped on the shard was to see a hand reach into the ledger and point.
Luna's breath left her in a small, sharp sound. She had been at Aria's shoulder when the tracer first hummed; now she stepped closer, fingers hovering over the shard as if she could feel the donor's presence through the oilcloth. "Virelle," she repeated, tasting the syllables like a bitter herb. "They've been in the margins for a long time."
Forensics moved like a tide. Apprentices took notes, a young woman with ink on her knuckles cross-referencing manifests, another apprentice running a sigil-cleanse on a scrap of oilcloth that had been found in the Gray Market. The scrap's ink had bled, but the tracer teased out a faint ledger impression: a courier route, a time, a broker's mark. The pieces were small and stubborn, but they fit together like teeth.
"We need witnesses," Aria said. "We need someone who can say they saw the plate move, who can place Virelle's sigil in a hand that wasn't theirs."
Rell nodded. "We have a handler who saw a transfer at the Gray Market. He's hiding in a warehouse near the Bonebridge. He'll talk if he thinks he won't be killed for it."
"Then we get him out," Aria said. "We bring him here. Luna, can you hold him?"
Luna's eyes were steady. "I can hold him for a minute," she said. "Long enough for forensics to anchor his testimony. But it will cost me."
Aria had watched Luna pay costs before—small, private things that left the teacher with a thin fog at the edges of her mind. The Echo Shield had been used in the market; the nolisten had left ringing in Luna's ears; the Thornkin bargain had taken a lullaby. Each time Luna paid, she did it without complaint, as if the ledger's arithmetic were a thing she had agreed to carry. Aria's chest tightened at the thought of the ledger's tally.
"We'll make it worth you," Aria said. "We'll anchor the testimony so you don't have to hold it alone."
Luna's mouth quirked. "You always say that."
They moved before dawn. The warehouse was a low, salt-stained building that smelled of rope and old fish. A handler—thin, jittery, a man named Jor—had been hiding there, his hands raw from work and his eyes full of ledger-sickness: the look of someone who had been paid to forget and had been paid again to remember. He flinched when Aria stepped into the dim light, as if expecting a blade.
"You're the Loom," he said, voice small. "You'll make me pay."
"You'll be safe," Aria said. "We'll get you out. We need you to tell us who took the plate and who bought it."
Jor's laugh was a dry thing. "You think I don't know how this ends? Brokers don't like loose tongues."
Luna stepped forward and laid a hand on his shoulder. Her touch was steady, a teacher's anchor. She hummed a small cadence that smelled faintly of jasmine and salt. The hum wrapped around Jor like a net; his shoulders eased as if someone had taken a weight from them.
"Tell us what you know," Luna said, voice low.
Jor's story came in fits and starts: a buyer with a private stall, a transfer at the hour after the tide shift, a broker's launch that left with a crate wrapped in oilcloth. He named names—small things, courier routes, a man called Halven who handled private sales for a patron house. He spoke of a ledger plate that had been traded for coin and a favor, and of a donor mark that had been stamped into a manifest before the ink had dried.
When he said Virelle, his voice went thin. "They don't show their face," he said. "They use intermediaries. But the seal—sometimes it's on the manifest. Sometimes it's on the plate. They pay well."
They brought Jor back to the safehouse under a cloak of apprentices and false manifests. Forensics set him under the tracer and Luna prepared the Echo Shield. The shield was not a thing to be used lightly; it was a teacher's ward that could hold a witness's memory steady for a minute while forensics anchored the testimony. The cost was immediate and visible: a small memory haze that would blur a private thing for a day or three.
Luna's hands moved with the practiced economy of someone who had done this before. She set the shield and let it bloom like a small, shimmering net. Jor's eyes went distant as the shield took hold; his breath slowed. For a minute he was a vessel of memory, and forensics poured light across his recollections, tracing the route of the plate, the time of the transfer, the broker's launch number.
Rell read the tracer's output and his face went taut. "Launch three," he said. "Broker cell—Black Keel. They ran a private route to a patron house on the Salted Bastion. The manifest shows a donor mark that matches Virelle's spiral."
Aria felt the ledger's thread tighten. The pieces were falling into place: the shard's marginalia, the Gray Market's handler, the broker launches. House Virelle's name was no longer a rumor in the margins; it was a stamp on a manifest, a donor mark on a plate, a thread that led to a patron.
Luna's hands trembled as the shield collapsed. The cost landed like a small stone: her eyes clouded for a breath, a phrase she had used to steady apprentices slipped from her mouth and came back thin. She blinked and the world snapped into focus, but Aria saw the small, private loss in the way Luna's fingers flexed.
"You okay?" Aria asked, voice soft.
Luna gave a small, tired smile. "I'm fine," she said. "It's a small thing. It will come back."
Forensics had more to say. The shard's marginalia contained a donor trust notation—an account number, a ledger line that matched a registry kept in the Silver Vault. The registry was supposed to be sealed, but the tracer had teased out a faint imprint: a donor name, a date, a notation that read like a promise. Rell's fingers flew over the tracer's readout.
"House Virelle," he said again. "They're listed as a donor on a trust that funded field grafting rigs in the borderlands. The registry shows transfers to a forger's account in the Moonforge and to a private vault on the Salted Bastion."
Aria's breath hitched. The Salted Bastion was a ruined fortress that had been repurposed as a patron house's safehold; it was a place where the wealthy hid things they did not want the Council to see. If Virelle had a private vault there, then the ledger's thread led to a place that would not answer to public packet releases.
"We have to move fast," Aria said. "If Virelle knows we have the shard, they'll bury the trail."
Rell nodded. "We can trace the launch's manifest to a dock on the Bastion. We can get a name for the patron's agent."
Halv's voice came from the doorway. "There's more," she said. "A broker cell leader—one of the men who coordinated the launches—was seen leaving Saltport last night. He slipped through a broker's back channel. He's gone."
Aria's jaw tightened. "He won't get far," she said. "We'll find his trail."
They worked through the day and into the night. Forensics cataloged the shard's marginalia, cross-referenced donor marks, and pulled manifests from the Gray Market's hidden ledgers. Jor's testimony gave them a launch number and a time; the tracer gave them a donor registry imprint; Halv's contacts on the docks gave them a name for a patron's agent who had been seen on the Salted Bastion. The net tightened.
At dusk, when the safehouse's lamps threw long shadows across the table, Rell laid out a map. A line ran from the Gray Market to the Bonebridge to the Salted Bastion, and at the Bastion's edge a small circle marked a private vault. Beside it, in a cramped hand, Rell had written: House Virelle.
Aria felt the ledger's weight settle into her bones. The path forward was clear and dangerous: a patron house that had funded grafting rigs, a private vault on a ruined bastion, a broker cell leader on the run. The Loom had the shard and the testimony; they had forensics that tied the marginalia to a donor trust. They had the lead they needed.
Luna sat across from Aria, hands folded, eyes tired but bright. "You did well," she said, and the words were small and fierce.
Aria's laugh was a short, sharp thing. "We did it together."
They had paid costs—Luna's lullaby, Aria's missing name, the apprentices' ringing ears—and they had taken losses. But the ledger's thread had been pulled taut and a new line had been revealed. House Virelle was no longer a whisper in the margins; it was a destination.
Outside, Saltport's night settled into a brittle hush. The market would be restless in the morning; brokers would count losses and whisper about packet releases. Inside the safehouse, the Loom packed the shard into a lead-lined case and sealed Jor's testimony with a teacher's knot. They would move at first light: a small team to the Salted Bastion, a plan to find the patron's agent and to force a ledger's truth into the open.
Aria stood and stretched, feeling the ledger's pressure like a tide under her ribs. She looked at Luna and saw the teacher's small, private exhaustion and the fierce steadiness beneath it. She thought of the child at the ferry seam, of the Thornkin's bargain, of the prototype's stolen echo. The ledger had taken pieces of them and given them a map in return.
"We go at dawn," she said.
Luna nodded. "We go together."
They left the shard under the lamp's pale light and stepped into the night. The city's docks creaked and the harbor breathed. The ledger's margins had yielded a name, and with that name came a path forward—dangerous, necessary, and finally visible.