The fingers were too long to belong to any person Leon had ever wanted to meet.
White skin. Wrong joints. Slow movement. They felt along the broken wood as if the thing outside had all the time in the world.
Sera moved first.
Her knife flashed once.
One finger hit the flooded floor and twitched in the dark water.
Leon stepped back. "Good. So we agree it's rude."
The door burst inward.
The thing that ducked through the broken frame was tall and thin, with bare white skin and no visible hair. Brass tags hung from hooks driven into its chest, shoulders, and arms, and each step made them ring softly against one another. Its face was mostly smooth. No proper mouth. Only a narrow seam below a flat nose, as if the city had designed a collector and stopped when it had done enough.
Its head turned toward Leon.
Not Sera.
Him.
The page under his coat felt hot.
"That," Leon said, "is new."
Sera grabbed his sleeve. "Run."
They bolted through a side passage just as the creature lunged.
It hit the doorway behind them hard enough to crack stone.
Leon splashed through black water, turned twice, nearly lost his footing on a broken stair, and managed to stay upright only because panic had made his body unexpectedly cooperative. Sera stayed ahead of him, moving without wasted effort, one hand on the lantern, the other on the knife.
Behind them, the soft chiming of brass tags followed at a steady pace.
Not fast.
Just constant.
"What is that?" Leon asked.
"A Bailiff."
"That explains nothing."
"It collects what the city is owed."
"Well, I object."
They climbed a narrow maintenance stair and came out behind the outer city wall. The corridor there was built into the stone itself, half open to the storm through narrow arches. Rain blew in sideways. Through the openings, Leon could see the city stretching below them in dark roofs, wet lanes, and running black water. The bell tower stood ahead, close enough now that he could see the pale light burning inside its upper windows.
Sera shoved an iron rod through the brackets behind them, blocking the stair.
For a moment, they had silence except for the rain.
Leon bent forward, hands on his knees. "Talk."
Sera looked over the wall toward the tower. "The city keeps account of every debt."
"Yes, I'd noticed the metal obsession."
"It also keeps account of mercy."
He straightened slowly. "That seems like a terrible idea."
"It wasn't supposed to be hidden," she said. "Not at first. Mercies were recorded so they could be witnessed. So no one could say a life meant nothing. Then the ledger changed hands, laws changed, and mercy became… inconvenient."
Leon watched her face as she said it.
This mattered to her too much to be politics.
"The Seventh Page records the mercies that were denied, delayed, or buried," she said. "Lives that should've been spared. Petitions that should've been granted. Debts that should've ended."
"And your interest in it?"
A pause.
"My brother's name was on it."
Was.
Leon caught that instantly.
"He's dead."
She looked away.
"Yes."
That explained enough.
Not everything. Not close. But enough.
Behind them, something hit the blocked stair once.
Then again.
The iron rod bent slightly.
Leon glanced back, then at Sera. "We should continue this conversation while moving."
She nodded, and they started toward the tower.
The corridor wrapped around the outer wall, then narrowed into an exposed stair with no cover from the rain. The city dropped away below them. Guards were spreading through the lower lanes, lanterns cutting narrow paths through the downpour.
Leon's coat clung to his skin. His shoulder ached from where the hook had torn it. The page under his clothes felt heavier with every step.
"So," he said, climbing, "you pulled me from the alley because the page needed the condemned courier."
"Yes."
"You might've led with that."
"You were running."
"I was about to be executed. It felt like the bigger issue."
The rod behind them snapped.
The brass tags chimed again.
Leon looked down.
A group of armed city collectors had entered the lane below and were searching the wall passages. One of them pointed upward.
They had been seen.
Perfect.
Then the Bailiff stepped out onto the stair behind them, white and steady in the rain.
That was less perfect.
The collectors below started climbing.
The Bailiff above started climbing.
Leon stopped for half a second and looked at the space between them.
The rain. The stair. The distance. Sera's expression. The collectors' formation. The creature's pace.
A choice problem.
He smiled despite himself.
Sera saw it and looked worried. "What are you doing?"
"Helping."
He snatched a folded petition slip from the pouch at her belt before she could stop him and threw it down at the collectors. It struck the lead man in the chest.
Everyone looked up.
Leon pointed at Sera and shouted, "She stole the Seventh Page!"
Sera spun toward him in shock, then understood what he was doing almost instantly.
"The page is with him!" she shouted back.
Good.
She learned fast.
Below them, the collectors hesitated. That hesitation was all Leon needed. Their eyes moved from Sera to him, then to the Bailiff climbing behind them, then back again. The lane of action that had been simple a second ago was suddenly split into three bad options.
The moment broke open.
Some collectors kept coming up.
One backed down.
Another tried to aim a crossbow while shouting orders no one was ready to follow.
Leon grabbed Sera's wrist and ran upward.
They hit the tower door at full speed. Sera shoved it open, and both of them stumbled into the interior.
The space inside was tall and wet and full of machinery. Gears larger than wagon wheels turned slowly in the walls. Chains hung from the central shaft. Pale light rose from below and painted everything in a thin, sick brightness.
At the far side of the chamber, slumped against one of the gear housings, sat the magistrate.
Alive.
Bleeding badly.
A knife was buried under his ribs.
He lifted his head and looked at Sera first.
Then at Leon.
Recognition passed over his face, followed by something worse.
Approval.
"You came," he said to Sera, his voice wet and weak.
Sera's face hardened in a way Leon hadn't seen before.
The tower door below slammed shut.
Collectors were entering the stair.
The quiet ring of brass tags echoed up from below.
The magistrate laughed softly and winced at the pain.
"Foreign name," he murmured, looking at Leon. "Good. It accepted you."
Leon was getting tired of people talking about him as if he'd been chosen for a role in a play he had never agreed to join.
Sera stepped between him and the magistrate.
"Give me the page," she said.
Leon did not move.
"You used me from the start."
"Yes."
That answer hit harder because it came clean and fast.
"If I give it to you," he asked, "what happens?"
Sera held his eyes. "The page can be read at the tower before the seventh bell. One life is named. One life is collected. The withheld mercies are cleared."
Leon looked at her for a long second.
Then at the magistrate.
Then back at her.
"One life," he said. "Whose?"
The magistrate answered for her.
"The condemned life," he said, smiling through blood. "Yours."
Below them, boots pounded on the inner stair.
Behind the door, something heavier climbed slowly.
Sera raised the knife.
"I'm sorry," she said. "But it has to be you."
Leon believed she meant it.
That didn't make it better.
It made it worse.