Hob's hands stayed on the rope, but he did not pull. His eyes moved over Kell's bruises, then to Morven, then back again.
"Heard you got yourself near killed."
Kell gave him a thin smile. "I've done that before. People only care this time because Pike made noise about it."
Hob's eyes lingered on his split mouth. "Heard Pike did that."
Kell's expression thinned. "Pike did plenty."
"Also heard you went up to the house before him."
A couple of nearby workers stopped pretending to work. One man lowered a sack too slowly. Another looked toward the warehouse doors, then back at Kell.
Kell's smile faded.
Morven stepped half a pace forward. He knew Hob well enough to know when the man was only asking and when he was asking for the men around him.
"Back to the rope, Hob."
Hob glanced at him. "I was only asking."
"No," Morven said. "You know exactly what you're doing."
Hob's jaw moved under his wet beard. For a moment, the rain and the creak of the rope were the only sounds between them.
Morven did not raise his voice. "If you've got business with Mr. Vale, bring it properly. If you've got business with Kell, choose a drier day and a quieter corner. Right now, pull."
Hob held his stare for another second, then looked away and hauled the line over his shoulder.
"Aye," he muttered. "Pulling."
The other workers found their hands again. The sack went up. The rope tightened. Someone coughed and looked very interested in the mud near his boots.
Kell started walking again, but the ease had gone out of his shoulders.
Morven fell in beside him. "Hob always did like asking questions with a crowd around."
"He likes seeing who turns their head," Kell said.
"A few did."
"Aye. I noticed."
They moved past the warehouse corner, where the clean estate gravel had already turned into thick mud mixed with coal dust. Rainwater ran along the broken paving in dark streams, carrying bits of straw, grit, and old paper toward the lower gutters.
Kell kept his collar high, though it did nothing to hide his face now that Hob had drawn eyes to it. His mouth worked once as if he wanted to joke again, then he seemed to decide against it.
Morven noticed. "That question bothered you."
"It was meant to."
"Hob's not Pike's man."
"Hob is Hob's man." Kell glanced back once, then faced the road again.
"He'll pull rope for whoever pays, drink with whoever buys, and repeat whatever makes him sound like he knows more than the next man. By supper, that question becomes, 'Kell ran to the house before Pike.' By tomorrow, it becomes, 'Kell sold Pike to Mr. Vale.' Give it another day and I'll have held Pike down myself while Mr. Vale sharpened a kitchen knife."
Morven's expression darkened. "No one who knows Pike would believe you held him down."
"Thank you for your confidence in my poor strength."
"That wasn't praise."
"I'll take what I can get."
Morven looked ahead, scanning the upper windows and the mouths of alleys. "You were right not to go back into the Anchor alone."
Kell gave him a quick look. "Was that painful to admit?"
"A little."
"Good. I'd hate for kindness to come easy to you."
Morven ignored that. "Hob was testing whether the street has permission to treat you as fair game. If he's asking it here, men inside the Anchor are asking it louder."
"Aye." Kell's voice dropped. "That's what I've been trying to say. Down here, a man doesn't need a judge to be marked. He just needs enough people agreeing he's safe to hit."
"And now you're under Mr. Vale's roof."
Kell let out a short breath. "Under it, near it, somewhere around the gutter beneath it. I'm not sure the house has decided where to put me yet."
Morven kept his eyes on the road. "Mr. Vale sent me down for you."
Kell looked at him, then looked away again. "For Finch."
"For you first," Morven said. "Finch was the reason. You were the man he sent me to find."
Kell's mouth tightened around whatever answer came to him first. After a moment, he gave a small shrug that pulled at his ribs. "That's not nothing."
They walked a few steps through the rain before Kell spoke again.
"Pike would've sent someone too."
Morven glanced at him. "To check if you had coin left in your pockets."
Kell gave a short, painful laugh. "Pike would've checked my boots first. He always thought I hid money like a smarter man."
Morven waited until they were past the corner of the nearby building before speaking again. "You should've stayed at the house."
Kell gave a short laugh and kept his eyes on the road. "In one of those clean rooms? Sitting on a chair I'm scared to bleed on while Mrs. Bell pretends she isn't counting the stains?"
Morven looked at him from the side.
Kell's mouth twitched. "I know. I should've stayed. But sitting there made it worse. Every sound in the hall, every footstep, every servant looking at me and then looking away like I was something dragged in with the rain. At least down here, when a man thinks I'm filth, he says it properly."
Morven stepped over a plank half-sunk in mud. "You think this place is more honest?"
"No," Kell said. "I think it's familiar."
Morven did not reply at once.
The rain beat against the road, flattening the mud where their boots had already broken it. Kell walked with one arm held too close to his ribs, trying to make the limp look smaller than it was.
Morven slowed a little.
Kell noticed and gave him a tired look. "Don't start treating me like glass. I'll get embarrassed, and then we'll both suffer."
Kell noticed anyway and gave him a tired look. "Don't start doing that."
"Doing what?"
"Walking like you're afraid I'll fall apart."
"You're limping."
Kell let out a breath through his nose and looked away toward the warehouse walls. "You always this pleasant when you're helping a man?"
"No."
"Good. I'd hate to think I was getting special treatment."
Morven's gaze stayed on the road, but his voice changed slightly. "You were limping the first time I saw you too."
Kell glanced at him. "Was I?"
"Old Mr. Vale sent us to the south warehouse. Missing crates from a late shipment. Pike, Weller, Noll, you, and me."
Kell was quiet for a second. Then his mouth pulled into a strained smile. "I remember the mud."
"You lost a boot in it."
"That boot died doing honest work."
"It had a hole in it."
"It was my hole."
Morven's mouth moved slightly, not quite a smile. "You argued for two soli all the way back."
"I was owed two soli."
"You were paid extra already."
"Not for the boot."
Morven shook his head. "Pike told you to shut up three times."
"And I did."
"After the third time."
"I'm a man who respects patterns."
Morven almost smiled. "You were quieter after that."
Kell's own smile faded first. Rain ran down his bruised cheek and gathered at the edge of his jaw.
"Everyone was quieter after Pike said something the third time."
Morven looked at him then.
Kell kept his eyes on the road. "I wasn't a fool. Not about that."
"You remember how he looked at people?" Kell asked. His voice had gone lower. "Like he was already deciding which part of them would hurt most."
Morven did remember. He remembered Pike at the warehouse door, broad and still, letting other men fill the silence for him. He remembered Kell younger and thinner, mud up to one knee, mouth pressed shut around ten things he wanted badly to say.
"You still talked," Morven said.
"Not near him." Kell touched his split lip without thinking, winced, then lowered his hand. "I talked around him. There's a skill to that. You learn which men can be teased, which men can be flattered, and which men you leave alone unless you want your teeth counted on the floor."
"Pike was the last kind."
Morven looked toward the lower street. "And the Anchor was one of his rooms."
"Aye." Kell swallowed, then gave a small, humorless laugh. "That place went quiet for him. He'd sit down, and men would start choosing their words before they even knew what they wanted to say."
"And Mr. Vale made him look small there."
Kell nodded. "In front of the men who used to hold their breath for him.
"That's another reason why Finch walking in there with clean money is bad. Now Pike's dead, and the Anchor is where men are deciding what that means."
Morven's jaw tightened. "So Finch shows up with money, and the story ties itself to Mr. Vale."
"Aye. Nobody needs to understand the whole thing. They only need to say Finch had Vale money, or Finch ran from Vale, or Finch knew why Pike went up the hill. Once men start drinking with that, the truth has to fight its way through every version."
The road narrowed between brick buildings streaked with rain. Gutters overflowed. Coal smoke pressed low beneath the weather, and the harbor wind shoved it back into the streets until every breath tasted bitter.
They crossed a stretch where the paving dipped and water came over their boots. Kell hissed when a misstep jarred his ribs. Morven turned a little.
"You need to stop?"
"No."
Kell's jaw clenched. "If I stop too long, I start thinking about going back. So keep walking."
Morven looked at him more carefully then.
The rain had flattened Kell's hair to his forehead. Dried blood marked the edge of his split lip, and the bruising along his jaw made one side of his face look heavier than the other.
His mouth kept moving, but his eyes were doing the real work, checking windows, doorways, loose groups of men, and every place a hand could disappear before a knife came out.
Morven had seen him like that before. Years ago, Pike had made a man kneel in a warehouse doorway over a missed payment, and Kell had stood near the back with a pale face and too many words ready on his tongue. He had swallowed most of them after Pike looked over.
At the time, Morven had thought him weak.
Later, after enough years on the lower road, he had learned that Kell's fear came with a sharp sense for where the next blow might fall. He talked too much, backed away too quickly, and survived rooms that buried quieter men.
Now that same fear was on him again. Even so, he had gone to the Anchor, bought what he could from Mara and the potboy, and waited in the rain until help came.
Morven faced the road again. "Fine. Keep walking."
They reached the street that ran toward the Anchor. The tavern sat wedged between a closed ship chandlery and a boarded sailcloth shop, its signboard swinging hard enough to knock against the iron bracket.
Dirty yellow light showed through the windows. Even through the rain, the noise inside carried into the street, rough voices piled over one another, chair legs scraping, someone laughing too loudly near the front.
Kell slowed.
Morven noticed but did not turn at once.
Kell took another step, then stopped anyway. His eyes stayed on the tavern. "Give me a moment."
Morven looked at him.
Kell wiped rain from his mouth with his sleeve. "If Ashford has men inside, they'll see me as soon as I step in."
"They'll see me too."
"That won't matter to everyone."
"It'll matter to enough."
Kell's jaw tightened. He looked through the wet glass, where shapes moved behind the yellow light. "Pike went up the hill. Pike died. I came back down with his marks on my face and Vale House at my back. Men in there won't call that luck."
"Then don't give them another word to build on."
Kell gave a short nod, though his eyes did not leave the door. "Easy to say from your side of the room."
Morven stepped closer and lowered his voice. "Listen to me. We go through the front. We don't slip in by the side, and we don't let the room think we came afraid. I'll ask under Mr. Vale's name."
"And me?"
"You point. Mara, the potboy, the men Finch paid, anyone who watched him leave. If someone speaks to you, look at me first."
Kell finally glanced at him. "Even if they say they know where Finch went?"
"Especially then."
"If they won't say it in front of you?"
"Then they wanted you away from me."
Kell breathed out slowly and looked back at the door. The noise inside rose for a moment, then settled again. "Right."
"You don't answer anyone calling you traitor. You don't argue with Hob's cousins. You don't follow anyone to the back."
Kell's mouth twitched. "There goes my plan to be murdered somewhere cramped and inconvenient."
"Kell."
"I heard you." His smile faded, and he nodded once. "I stay where you can reach me."
"That's right."
For a moment, they stood under the rain with the tavern waiting in front of them.
Morven said, "Mr. Vale's name first. Keep it clean. His business, his man, his answer if anyone lies."
Kell swallowed. "Mr. Vale's business. Finch. The blue coat. Names."
Morven nodded. "Good."
Kell drew in a careful breath, stopped halfway, and pressed one hand against his ribs.
Morven did not ask again. He reached for the door.
"Stay close," he said.
Kell nodded once, his eyes fixed on the wet wood and iron latch. "I will."
Morven pushed the heavy wooden door open with one hand.
Warm air rolled out, thick with stale beer, wet wool, cheap pipe smoke, and old stew. The room inside was warmer than the street, but no easier to breathe in. Rough men sat at scarred wooden tables with mugs in their hands and cards between their fingers.
One by one, faces turned.
The low hum of conversation thinned as Morven filled the doorway and Kell stood half a step behind him with Pike's bruises still plain on his face.