The plaza felt smaller once the screaming stopped.
The bell rope hung slack against the tower, swaying a little in the wet wind. The crowd that had packed the terraces was already breaking apart into clumps of people suddenly finding somewhere else to be. Workers in rough tunics picked their way toward the scaffold with buckets and stiff brushes, faces turned away from the darkest stains. A few guards stayed in formation long enough to shove lingering gawkers toward the exits.
The iron of the Crown rail was still cold under Silas's gloved hands.
Kessa let out a short breath through her nose. "Enough spectacle for one day," she said, not looking at him. "On your feet, Arlen. Walk."
She peeled away from the rail without checking if he followed. Silas released the bar, flexed fingers that felt too tight, and fell in half a stride behind her. He used her shoulders as a moving shield as they cut through the loosened knot of staff and aides.
As they angled toward the nearest stairs, he let his gaze flick upward once.
On a high terrace, under a red-and-gold canopy, a small knot of figures was already turning away. Varis Calder was only a shape at this distance—broad shoulders in a dark coat, one hand resting on the stone rail as if weighing whether the show had been worth the effort. Aide silhouettes hovered close, then hurried after him as he stepped back into shadow.
Silas filed the walk and the posture away. Then Calder was gone.
Kessa's pace never changed. She took the steps at the edge of the plaza at a steady march, boots ringing on wet stone. When they reached the lower level, two guards in Crown colors nodded to her and glanced at the Crown crest on Silas's damp cloak. No one asked if he was all right. No one asked anything at all.
They passed under a wide stone arch that coughed them out onto an outer ring of street. The air here was cooler, the noise lower. Cart wheels rattled over uneven cobbles. People moved in clumps, talking too quietly and staring at nothing in particular.
Two stillstone wagons sat backed against a loading platform, wheels chocked, grey dust clinging to the tarps.
"This," Kessa said, hooking a thumb at the wagons, "is where the day goes to shit if something jams. Don't stand here longer than you have to when the pits are running hot. You'll just be in the way."
Silas kept half a step behind, matching her stride. He watched how workers' eyes skimmed over her Crown ring and then off his face, never landing for long. A woman with a child on her hip pressed herself against a wall to let them pass; the child stared at Silas's boots until she turned the small face away.
At the far end of the street, two guards pretended to fuss over a hitching post while tracking Kessa with the corners of their eyes. As Silas and Kessa drew level, he caught a scrap of their low mutter.
"Tahr," one said. "They say she's got Calder blood."
"If that were true, she'd be on a terrace, not herding auditors past wagon shit," the other replied. "Shut up before she hears you."
Kessa didn't react. If she heard them, she buried it deep. Her shoulders stayed loose, her footsteps steady.
She gestured down the curve of the road. "Plaza's behind us, the pit roads run out the city that way. Clerks stay on this loop unless they've got a guard escort or orders that say otherwise. You go wandering off-pattern, some sergeant decides you're drunk, and then I get to fill out forms about why my auditor is missing teeth. I don't like paperwork that isn't mine."
There was the faintest edge of humor at the end, but she didn't smile.
Silas nodded as if this were all new. He counted doors without moving his lips, checked where alleys pinched tight and where a stalled wagon would block the street. It wasn't a map, not yet—just lines between points.
Veins, he thought. If she does have Calder blood, the family's happy to spend her on the ground instead of keeping her on a terrace.
They climbed a shallow rise that gave them a view in both directions. From the crest, Silas could see back over the rooftops to the bell tower above the Guillotine Plaza, its dark mouth a notch against the clouds. In the opposite direction, a faint smear of darker smoke marked where the stillstone pits chewed into the land outside the city.
Below that, pressed into the slope on one side, a block of cheap stacked housing leaned against itself. Narrow windows. Patched roofs. Laundry lines drooping like tired arms between buildings.
Kessa rapped her knuckles lightly on the stone balustrade. "There," she said, nodding toward the smoke. "That's where your numbers come from. And back there"—she jerked her chin at the bell tower—"is where the Regent reminds everyone what happens when stillstone quotas slip."
She traced the rest in a few quick lines. Ore came up from the pits along the lower roads, past the choke-point they had just walked. Clerks logged tallies at the Crown complex. Decrees and punishments flowed back down the same paths when someone decided the charts looked wrong.
No street names. No sermon. Just a triangle of pits, plaza, and Crown building drawn in words.
Her gaze flicked toward the cheap stacked housing. "You don't go down there without a squad or a good reason," she added. "Rent's cheap. Tempers aren't. When trouble starts in a city like this, it usually starts on streets that look like that."
Then she turned away.
Silas let his eyes move between smoke, stone, and sagging roofs. Three points. Two main routes. One obvious tinderbox. He noted which stretches would trap a fleeing crowd, which corners would hide someone watching the plaza.
Simple is dangerous, he thought. Simple means someone built it to work a certain way. The triangle in his head felt less like a map and more like a snare. Pits feed plaza. Plaza feeds fear. Fear feeds the Crown. Break one point, the others shudder.
He filed the idea beside the mission timer he refused to drag back up. If I'm going to move this city, it'll be through streets like that, he thought. Not through speeches. Through routes.
From the rise, Kessa led him down a narrower lane that hugged the slope. The noise of wagons dropped away; stone walls pressed closer, windows cut thin and high. After a short walk, she stopped at an arched doorway set into a broader facade.
A brass plate beside the door carried the Crown crest. A doorman in a plain tabard nodded to Kessa, glanced at the Crown crest on Silas's cloak sleeve, and unlatched the door without a word. Ink, paper, and boiled grain drifted out.
"Here," Kessa said. "Records hall's through there. Clerk rooms are up the back stair, second and third floors. Mess hall in the middle." She tapped each point off on her fingers. "You're on the books as Arlen Mora, Crown Belt auditor."
She held up her hand, thumb and first two fingers extended. "Tomorrow at first bell, you can either come down with me for field rounds or park yourself in a chair and drown in paper until your hands stop shaking. I don't care which, as long as you don't waste my time."
Her eyes settled fully on his face for the first time since they left the rail.
She didn't ask if he was all right. "You going to be a problem?" she asked instead, as if she were checking whether a tool was cracked before she leaned on it.
Silas met her gaze just long enough. "No," he said. "I'll be here at first bell."
He didn't specify which option he'd take.
If I say yes, I'm done, he thought. If I say no and fold later, she'll leave me where I fall. The idea of starting in the field sat heavy in his stomach; the thought of hiding at a desk felt worse. I don't have time to be broken in slowly.
He noticed the way Kessa stood in the doorway—one foot inside, one foot out, always ready to move. The rumor about Calder blood circled back. If the family really did give her a ring...
Kessa jerked her chin toward the interior. "Mess hall'll serve hot food till late. Find an empty room, don't steal anyone's bunk, and don't wander off the complex after dark without a guard unless you're trying to die or impress someone stupid," she said. "You're off the hook until morning. Use it."
With that, she turned away and headed back down the lane, already thinking about something else.
Silas watched her go for a moment, then stepped just inside the doorway. The corridor beyond was plain stone, lit by a few wall lamps. Pens scratched somewhere deeper in the hall. Footsteps thudded overhead. A stairwell curled up on his right, promising narrow rooms and thin mattresses.
His stomach rolled, not sure if it wanted to empty or be filled. The smell of boiled grain from the mess hall didn't help.
He let the door swing almost closed, then slipped back out before it latched. The sun had dropped behind the rooftops, leaving the lane in cool shadow.
The worker lane beside the complex was tighter than the outer street but busier. Men and women in dust-stained clothes drifted between a handful of stalls tucked under overhanging balconies. Oil spat in shallow pans. Someone argued over the price of root stew. The air was thick with frying fat and cheap spice.
Silas followed his nose without thinking until a familiar scent cut through the rest.
Peppered eel. Sharp and oily.
The stall was little more than a plank on barrels and a pot over a low flame. A woman stood behind it, turning skewers with a pair of tongs. From behind, the set of her shoulders and the loose fall of her hair under the kerchief made something in his memory twitch.
He drifted a little to the side, catching her profile as she leaned over the pot. Same jawline. Same tired, watchful eyes. Same careless way she moved in crowds that could crush her. It wasn't proof, but it was close enough for his gut.
For a heartbeat, he wondered if she'd bolt.
Instead she looked up, eyes elsewhere for a moment, and offered a tired vendor's smile.
"You look like you could use something hot," she said. "One stick or two?"
"One," Silas said, stepping close enough to feel the heat from the coals. "I've had a long morning."
She snorted. "You and half the city." She handed him a skewer, fingers steady, eyes giving nothing away.
People brushed past on either side, more interested in their own food than one more quiet Crown man.
Silas bit into the eel. Too salty, edges flirting with burnt, pepper hitting the back of his throat. It dropped into his stomach like an anchor instead of a stone. The memory of hot blood on stone and the smell of torch pitch sat under the taste; the spice tried to burn it out.
"First time at the rail?" the woman asked. Her voice was casual, just loud enough for him to hear.
"First time in Stoneveil," he said. "I'm here to count rocks, not heads."
"Rocks roll downhill just the same," she said. "Careful you don't trip over the wrong one."
Her tone stayed light, like she'd said nothing more than mind your step.
He finished the skewer and slid two Scrip tokens onto the plank. He'd watched two other customers pay the same on his way over; the woman's eyes flicked to the tokens, then away again, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
He'd already heard a clerk joke that Gilds were for people who never queued for street food, Marks were for bribes, and Scrip was for everyone else. The rough stamped paper felt flimsy in his hand, more like a promise than a coin.
She didn't thank him. He didn't linger. They both held the shape of an ordinary transaction between them and pretended it fit.
She's calmer here than half the guards were up there, he thought. The normality of the exchange tightened something in his chest more than the guillotine had. If she can hand me food after walking that close to a condemned man and walking away calm, this city's been training her for years.
Her parting line sat in his head like a second skewer. Careful you don't trip over the wrong one. He filed the stall's location in the same place he kept those cheap streets and the pit roads. If I ever need to walk through a door the Crown can't see, it'll probably smell like eel.
Back inside the Crown complex, he climbed the stairs until he found an empty room on the second floor. Narrow rectangle, single bed built into the wall, small desk and stool, slit window looking out over the slope. A thin mattress. A scratchy blanket. Someone's old initials half-sanded off the desk edge.
Silas sat on the bed and let his boots hit the floor one at a time. For a moment he just listened.
Footsteps in the corridor. A door closing somewhere down the hall. A cough. No bells. No blade.
He drew a slow breath and reached towards the sigil on his forearm.
[Menu]
[Personal Information]
[Missions]
[Storage Space]
[Skills]
[Equipment]
The familiar dark field bloomed behind his eyes, icons hanging in ordered rows only he could see in his [Storage Space]. A folded bill from Evan Royce's now-dead guard, still tagged as hush money. A thin pale card marked [Dagger Mastery]. A dim seed-icon labelled [Toxin Mastery], its description locked behind a greyed-out line. The [Shipwright's Shank] he'd taken from Jed.
Silas fixed on the seed first, letting its blurred text hover at the edge of his awareness. What do you want? Blood, ash, something tidy I don't have yet? Whatever the catalyst was, he didn't have room to experiment with poisons in a city he barely understood.
His focus slid to the Dagger card. That, at least, was simple. Steel. Angles. Muscle memory. In a place where heads fell in public to reassure the crowd the books were balanced, walking around without a sharpened edge felt less like caution and more like volunteering to be a name on the next execution scroll.
Room. Routes. Time, he thought. That's more than I had this morning. The bed under him was the first stable surface since the ship. If I lie down and pretend I'm just a clerk, I might even sleep.
[Mission – Stoneveil Regicide]
[Time Remaining: 5 days 6 hours]
The numbers sat in the corner of his vision like a stone on his chest.
The memory of the guillotine's drop and the hawk-crest sword cutting the rebel mid-word answered that. The plaza smell. The head landing near his boots.
I don't get to be just a clerk here, he told himself. Not if I want to leave on my feet.
He mentally pulled the [Dagger Mastery] card from Storage. It materialized in his palm—thin, cool, edges sharp enough to nick skin. His fingers closed around it.
Use it now and you might actually live long enough to regret it, he thought. Wait, and you stay soft in a city that cuts soft things first.