The first day tried to look like building.
Constructs left on Isolde's triangle route before the harbor haze burned off. Twin Petal wards went with them. Rhea's grey watchers were already gone, which meant the only thing the rest of us could do was make the Bone City harder to buy. Feng Lan drilled listener-breaks into formation masters who hated being treated like students. Lydia pulled three of the core off wall duty because their hands still shook when they thought no one was looking. Seraphina reset the harbor clocks again after a clerk "found" a gap that opened at the same hour every night. The clerk found himself in a room with Vale after that. He talked. The gap had been sold, not invented.
That was how the proclamation entered the city. Not as a fleet. As coin.
Elizabeth took the name the clerk gave her and did not raise her voice.
"Dock factor. Third warehouse. He sells rotas."
