The gates were taller up close.
Aarav looked through the iron bars at the garden beyond. Flower beds arranged in precise geometric patterns, each variety planted in clean separate blocks, not a single stray stem out of place. Topiaries trimmed into perfect spheres stood at even intervals along the path. The gravel had been raked into parallel lines. A stone fountain sat at the centre, water running in a smooth continuous arc.
This man has more money than sense, Aarav thought.
A guard in a clean uniform looked them over from inside.
"We're here for the cleaning work," Aarav said. "Mr. Faulkner's tenants."
The guard held the look a moment, then gestured to someone inside. A servant appeared from a side door and opened the gate. Middle-aged, grey at the temples, straight-backed. He looked at the three of them and turned toward the manor.
"Follow me," he said.
Walking up the path, the manor filled more of the sky with every step. Three storeys of pale dressed stone, the facade perfectly symmetrical, every window evenly proportioned. The front steps were broad and swept clean. The door was dark wood with brass fittings polished to a mirror finish.
The servant opened it. Aarav entered.
He was not told to sit.
The servant disappeared to inform Mr. Faulkner and the three of them stood in the entrance hall. Aarav looked around.
The ceiling was high, with a large brass and crystal chandelier hanging at its centre. The floor was dark wood polished to a deep shine. A wide staircase rose at the far end, its banister carved in a continuous repeating pattern from bottom to top. Along the walls, oil paintings in heavy gilt frames. A landscape with dark hills. A harbour with tall masted ships. A formal portrait of a woman in an elaborate dress. And at the far end above a side table holding fresh flowers, a battle scene. Dark churning sky, soldiers in armour, and in the background a city burning orange.
That painting alone probably costs more than everything I have ever owned, Aarav thought. Everything I have ever owned combined, multiplied, and still probably not enough.
He was still looking at it when he heard footsteps on the stairs.
---
Jamie Faulkner came down in wool trousers, a white shirt and a dark fitted waistcoat. Perhaps forty, broad shouldered, unhurried. He greeted them with efficiency. Names used correctly, handshakes brief and firm.
"Let me show you what we're working with," he said. "Easier than explaining without seeing it."
The tour took twenty minutes. Three floors, fourteen rooms by Aarav's count. Jamie spoke as they walked. His daughter Elizabeth was turning eighteen and her coming of age celebration was in four to five days. The guest list included the newly appointed Tax Collector, the Mayor, members of the merchant council. Everything needed to be in order before they arrived.
Every room they passed through had something in it worth stopping for. A side table with legs carved into animal feet. Curtains with real silver threading running through the fabric. A mirror in the drawing room with a frame so ornate it made the mirror itself look like an afterthought.
He must bathe in imported wine, Aarav thought. Probably heated.
On the second floor landing they came across Mrs. Faulkner, well dressed and composed, who greeted them with polite courtesy and excused herself. Elizabeth was in the corridor just beyond, in a plain day dress, watching them with open curiosity she made no effort to hide.
"These are the tenants helping with the cleaning," Jamie said.
"I know," Elizabeth said. "You told me at breakfast."
Jamie moved on without comment.
Veer, walking just behind Aarav, looked at Elizabeth in awe and said nothing. But Aarav noticed the precise moment. He then stopped looking at the corridor ceiling and started looking somewhere else entirely.
Near the top of the main staircase hung the grandfather's portrait. A large man painted in the formal style of a previous generation, straight backed, one hand resting on the arm of his chair, his expression settled and certain. Below the portrait, mounted in a glass case on the wall, was a cane. Dark wood aged to a deep brown, the grain visible from decades of handling. The handle was solid gold. Actual gold, not gilded, not gold coloured. Gold, with a pattern inlaid into it that Aarav couldn't identify clearly from where he stood.
The man had a gold handled cane, Aarav thought. An actual gold handled cane. I wonder if his toilet was also gold. Probably. Why not.
"My grandfather," Jamie said. "He built this manor. The cane was his. He carried it every day of his adult life."
"He had good taste," Aarav said.
Jamie looked at him briefly, seemed satisfied with this, and moved on.
---
They started on the upper floor at eleven in the morning.
Jamie's staff joined them with the energy of people who had been told to help and interpreted that instruction as generously as possible in their own favour. They moved when asked. They did not move otherwise. Aarav noted this and said nothing.
The upper floor had four bedrooms and a long corridor with three window alcoves, each with a cushioned bench and heavy curtains. Rajan took the corridor. Veer took two of the smaller bedrooms. Aarav and the maid, a young woman who worked with quiet competence, took the larger rooms.
Move furniture, clean beneath it, return it. Take down curtains, carry them to the rear courtyard, beat them until the dust stopped coming. Wipe surfaces, polish wood, clean glass. Straightforward work, just a great deal of it.
Veer, in the second smaller bedroom, found a decorative vase on a high shelf reachable only by standing on a footstool that proved unstable at the worst possible moment. The sound he made was not a word. Rajan appeared in the doorway, looked at Veer balanced on one foot with the vase held at arm's length, the face of a man holding something whose value he had absolutely no measure of, and simply stood there. Veer got down safely. He put the vase back without cleaning it and moved to the window. Rajan returned to the corridor without a word.
By noon the upper floor was done.
---
Lunch was in the servants' hall. Bread, rice, thick vegetable soup and hard cheese. Aarav ate and thought.
If this cleaning job had been given to professional workers, it would have cost five hundred to six hundred Drel total. A full manor, three floors, fourteen rooms, curtains and chandeliers and polished hardwood and glass, done to the standard required for government officials and nobility.
He had been scammed. Cleanly, without a single lie. Jamie had spotted an arrangement that suited him and used it with the ease of a man who did that kind of thinking without effort.
But then. No other landlord in this city would have given them a room without advance payment. And Jamie clearly had connections to people in power that Aarav hadn't yet fully mapped. Making an enemy over five hundred Drel of unpaid labour would be the kind of decision that felt satisfying for about ten minutes.
He finished his rice and said nothing.
---
The middle floor after lunch. The drawing room, the dining room, a small music room, the library with floor to ceiling shelves and a brass rolling ladder. Jamie supervised, moving between rooms with occasional quiet corrections.
They were in the dining room, Aarav working along the sideboard and Rajan handling the chairs, when the butler appeared at the door.
"Sir," he said. "Two government officials are here. They have a letter."
Jamie excused himself and followed the butler out. A door closed somewhere in the direction of the front of the house.
Aarav kept working. Government officials, a formal letter. He already suspected Jamie had connections but having officials arrive at your door in the early afternoon with correspondence suggested something more structured than casual acquaintance. He filed it and moved to the next section of the sideboard.
---
Elizabeth appeared in the dining room doorway not long after. She leaned against the frame and looked at Aarav with the same direct curiosity as before.
"You're from Silva," she said.
"Yes," Aarav said, not stopping work.
"Was the crossing difficult? I've heard stories."
Aarav considered for a moment what a refugee from Silva, arriving penniless in a foreign city, would say to a nobleman's daughter asking this question.
"One of our companions didn't make it," he said. "We went days without food at one point. Arrived here with nothing to our names."
Every word of it was a lie. Their crossing had been uncomfortable and uncertain but nobody had died and they had not starved. But Elizabeth didn't know that, and her expression shifted exactly as he had expected it to. The sharpness softened. Her chin dropped slightly.
"I'm sorry," she said, and meant it.
"Many refugees move to other cities once they arrive," she added after a moment. "For work mostly."
"So I've heard."
She asked a few more questions. How long the journey took, what they had seen along the way. Aarav answered each one with just enough detail to keep the story consistent, continuing to work as he talked. When Jamie returned she straightened, gave Aarav a small nod, and left.
Rajan, from across the room, glanced at Aarav with the expression of a man who had heard every word and had thoughts about it.
Aarav did not look back at him.
---
By late afternoon nearly the entire middle floor was finished. Jamie came through the rooms slowly, looking everything over, and his expression showed genuine satisfaction.
"Good progress," he said. "Ground floor and the hall tomorrow. Same time."
They collected their things and left through the front.
---
Outside, Aarav noticed the police immediately. Two officers stood at the corner of Calloway Street. Another pair was visible further along the main avenue. More than the South Borough's ordinary evenings called for.
They had gone a hundred paces when two officers stepped into their path.
"You three. What's your business in the South Borough?"
"Cleaning work at Mr. Jamie Faulkner's manor on Calloway Street," Rajan said pleasantly. "We're his tenants. Been there since this morning."
The officer looked at all three of them, then at his colleague. "On your way."
They walked on. The increased police presence was recent, Aarav was certain of it. Something had shifted in the city's attention and the South Borough was where it was being directed. He didn't know why yet. He filed it alongside everything else and kept walking.
The bridge put the Padvani beneath them, grey and moving. A shared carriage on the other side, the fare paid, the bench welcome after a full day on his feet. The other passengers were tired workers going home. Aarav looked out at the passing streets and said nothing.
---
The West Borough in the evening was quieter than the morning. Aarav asked two people for the Cathedral and got directions that agreed.
Then the building came into view.
Pale old stone, a facade of tall arched windows, carved figures in niches worn smooth by weather. A bell tower at one end against the darkening sky. The main doors were open and warm light fell through them onto the stone steps. Ordinary people moved in and out. Working people, families, old men and women. Nobody performing anything.
The three of them climbed the steps.
Aarav crossed the threshold.
Strange murmurs hit him all at once. Not voices, but the shape of voices, the texture of speech with no words attached, pressing in from every direction and filling the space behind his eyes with something that had no single source. The pain followed immediately. Sudden and total as if his head would explode. His hands went to his head. His knees hit the stone floor. The candlelight of the Cathedral interior blurred at the edges of his vision, the warm light spreading into shapes that wouldn't hold.
He heard Rajan say his name. He heard Veer move to his left. A stranger's voice nearby asked something he couldn't process.
Then the murmurs stopped.
Aarav stayed on his knees. The stone was cold beneath him. The light swam. Rajan's voice came again, closer, saying his name like a question.
Aarav said nothing. He stared at the Cathedral floor and breathed.