The Bone City did not greet us. It inspected us.
A construct on the outer hook turned as the living ship came in, paused on Feng Lan's bandaged hands, paused on the Phoenix clerk kneeling under Vale's fist, then swung aside as if a count had been satisfied. Lady Sable was on the quay with Mei and a captain I did not know. The inner stone was still occupied. The run-boat still sat in the reach. The city had not spent our absence on sleep.
Sable looked at the clerk first.
"That is a house face."
"It was," Elizabeth said. "Now it is a list."
We took him to the windowless room. Seris came because she could tell when a Ledger phrase was being used as a lie. Feng Lan came because her hands were ruined and she still wanted to hear if any child-copy had been named. The rest of the circle filtered in by ones and twos as word reached the compound. No hall. No performance. Just a man with ink on his fingers and nothing left to sell but names.
He tried dignity once. Vale removed it.
