The morning after the Saltmarket scrape felt like the city had been rearranged by a careful, vengeful hand. Lamps that used to swing lazily now hung like watchful eyes; alleys that had once been convenient shortcuts had become lines on a map someone else read. Kaito woke with the taste of oil and crushed spice in his mouth and the small, useless thought that nothing good comes from being noticed too loudly.
Rein was already up, as usual, making lists on whatever paper he could find. "Maris did well," he said without looking up. "She leaked enough to spook the smaller buyers. The Guilds are poking. The Collector networks are cleaning house — reallocating shard-nodes, tightening runs. They'll be smarter tonight."
Mira poured tea for them all and set a cup in front of Kaito like a warm hand. "Smarter doesn't mean invincible," she said. "We made noise. Noise wakes allies."
Toma, who had finally slept like a man who'd been given back his breath, tucked his feet under him and chewed slowly. Rin — the courier girl — turned a scrap of cloth in her hands like a charm and smiled at him the way people smile when they've been forgiven by a stranger.
They met Maris in the backroom of the tea-seller's shop where shadows kept their promises and the owner pretended not to notice the comings and goings. The clerk was a thin woman with hair always pulled into a tight knot and a laugh like a dropped coin.
"You stirred the pond well," she said. She laid a small stack of folded papers between them. "Some guilds will squawk. Some buyers will hide. Marionette is angry — and smart. He's pulled his inner circle tighter and is setting new nodes under the Lower Night-Ferries. If they move the ledger through those, the Registry's patrols won't see a thing."
Kaito felt a cold knot unfold in his gut. "Can we stop it?" he asked. His voice had the small, sharp quality it got when he tried not to sound scared.
Maris tapped the papers. "Not with muscle. With information and timing. The collectors use shards to sync channels — little glass bells. If you cut the bells or make them sing false, you can blind a route for a tide. But you'll need someone who knows the nodes by ear."
"Someone like who?" Rein asked.
Maris's eyes softened in a way Kaito hadn't seen in her before. "Old Sy. He ran binder paths before the Registry made his kind illegal. He keeps a teahouse by the Saltbridge and tells stories to fishermen. He owes me a favor. He hates Marionette with the quiet kind of hate that collects details."
They found Old Sy exactly where Maris had said: a squat place smelling of warm barley and old paper, with low benches and a map carved into a wooden plate at the center of the floor. The man who tended it was small and gnarled, a person with the face of someone who'd learned to read a room by its sighs. His hands were thin as string, but the plate under his palms bore etched channels that looked for all the world like veins.
"You want to stop a bind?" he said, as if greeting a guest was the same as greeting a cat. "You young folks wedge yourself into the gears and then ask me to find grease."
Kaito stepped forward. "We need to know where Marionette plans to move the ledger," he said. "We need to blind them."
Old Sy watched him a long moment. Then he smiled, showing teeth that had been counted by salt. "You have a ledger in your hands," he said, nodding toward the safe-room. "And you have men who'll burn the city for a coin. Good reasons. I'll help if you barter properly."
They swapped stories and plans like small, dangerous items: Rein left a stack of notes; Mira offered a braided thread; Kaito gave him a scrap of the lullaby hummed with sincerity. Old Sy listened to the lullaby and hummed it back as if tasting an old recipe. When he rose and ran a finger along the carved plate, the lines glowed faint blue under his touch.
"Lower Night-Ferries," he muttered. "They're shifting nodes to move with tides. Marionette learned to dance with the water. If you want to blind a line, you'll have to replace a shard at the node with a cooled-forge echo. It takes two hands and a soft ribbon. Not many know how."
"Can you show us?" Mira asked.
"I can teach," Old Sy said. "But you'll learn on wet wood and in the dark. This trade is not for the faint-stomached."
They left Old Sy with a map burned into their heads and a plan that smelled of salt and risk. The teahouse's steam clung to Kaito's cloak like a promise that might break. On the walk back, Haru met them at the low bridge outside the city wall. He had been to the Registry that morning; his face had a new line across it like a ledger's crease.
"You shouldn't be the one leading these nights," Haru said. His voice was quiet but it held the soft steel of warning. "You're the host. They'll try to make you a bell."
Kaito's jaw tightened. "I know."
Haru's hand brushed his shoulder then, a small, human touch that made Kaito's chest fold. "Then be careful. Don't let the lullaby be a beacon. Use it as a cord."
They practiced with Old Sy's instructions until the light thinned. Rein made precise anchors like stitches; Mira braided a 'false-ring' of thread to tuck around the shard-node; Kaito learned to cradle a cooled-forge echo so it did not sing to the wrong ears. Toma watched and tried the knots until his fingers bled with new patience. Rin ran messages like a bright, nervous bird.
That night they moved with old wood under their feet and the city's breath held. The Lower Night-Ferries were quiet, a place where boats slipped like shadows and men with good money kept better mouths. The node was hidden beneath a broken lantern hung on the pier — the kind of place only someone who loved maps would think to check.
Rein's anchor hummed first, a soft beacon that told them the channel lines where Marionette's shards had linked. Mira's thread wove beneath the boards like a snake. Kaito's hands trembled when he lifted the shard to exchange it, the little sliver of glass still warm with someone else's fingers. He hummed a line of the lullaby as he set the cooled-forge echo in its place; the shard's hum faltered and then steadied into a harmless murmur.
For a breath, everything felt like a small victory: the channel blind, the tide's route confused. The collectors' signal would misfire tonight; their binding attempt might fail.
Then the watch-thread at Kaito's wrist tugged — not with the network's ripple but with a single, private note. It was the kind of pull that meant someone had touched his name specifically. He felt it like a needle at the base of his throat.
"Host," a voice breathed into the night from the shadow of a nearby boat. Kaito's head snapped around. A scrap of paper fluttered to his feet, wet from the canal and ink blurred by salt. He picked it up with fingers that suddenly felt too large and read three words that made the marrow in his bones chill:
COME ALONE. MIDNIGHT. PIER THREE.
Haru was beside him in a single motion, the old man's face an unreadable map. "Do not go alone," he said.
Kaito's mouth opened and closed. He wanted to spit the scrap into the water. He wanted to fold it into his pocket and walk away. Instead he looked down at the paper, at the blurred ink, and then at Haru — at Mira's steady hand touching her thread, at Rein's jaw set like a drawn seal, at Toma's small hopeful face.
"Don't worry," Kaito said, a lie meant to steady others more than himself. "I won't go alone."
He folded the scrap and tucked it into his shirt, close to his chest where the lullaby thumped. The city breathed around them, and somewhere far above a shard winked twice like a distant star.
They had blinded one line tonight. The collector's map would tremble and rearrange. Marionette would not be pleased. The ledger's song would grow louder. But whatever came next, Kaito felt the shape of his people at his back. He had Haru's sacrifice, Rein's maps, Mira's steady hands, and friends who would not let him walk into a dark alone.
Midnight felt nearer than it had any right to be.