The Villain Who Seeks Joy-Chapter 75: Dock Three

We closed the reception clean. Lamps down. Tools back in their cases. Pierce thanked the last donors at the door. Halvern left with Seraphine at his elbow. Liora waited until the hall was empty.

"Coats," she said. "Light kits. No uniforms."

Cael and I grabbed our plain cloaks. Mira took her notebook and a small bag of tags. Dorian checked the laces on his boots and nothing else. Pierce locked the hall and came with us.

We took the south gate out of the academy and cut through back streets. The city was damp and cool. You could smell the river. You could smell smoke. The farther we walked, the sharper the smoke got.

North Quarter watched us without staring. A few doors were half-closed. A Watch bell clanged twice, then once. We turned down a lane with stacked crates and followed the smoke to the docks.

Dock Three burned low, not high. The worst of the fire was over. A row of long warehouses sat black at the roofline. The one in the middle had a hole where the roof had given up. Water pooled along the cobbles. Men with buckets moved in lines that had grown tired. A Watch cordon held a crowd back. No one pushed. Fire teaches respect.

A Watch captain in a scarred breastplate saw us and lifted a hand. "Closed area," he said. He didn’t raise his voice.

Liora showed the tube with the seal we had received. "Not to interfere," she said. "To note."

He read the seal, looked at her face, and nodded. "In and out," he said. "If a beam shifts, you are out even if you hate me for it."

"I won’t," Liora said.

We stepped past the rope. Heat still lived in the air near the broken doors. The smell was oil, wet wood, and something sharp. Cael and I took the right wall out of habit. Dorian went left. Liora stood in the middle with the captain and watched everything. Mira opened her bag and set out a small tray and three clean vials.

"Lantern," I said.

"Short," Liora said.

I clicked the bone Lantern and held it low. The light was cold and tight. No shadows jumped. We walked the open floor.

The front of the warehouse looked like normal stock. Rope coils. Tarps. Two broken barrels of pitch. The back rows were different. The ash lay in a pattern, not a scatter. There were five bare rectangles on the floor where crates had burned hotter and faster than the rest.

"Fuel," Cael said.

"Placed," I said.

Mira crouched and tapped the edge of a rectangle with the back of her nail. "Poured line ran from here," she said. "See the streak?"

I saw it. A faint dark track that ended at a drain. The drain cover had been levered up and dropped back. The scrape mark was fresh.

"Open it," Pierce said.

Dorian lifted the grate with two fingers and set it aside. The stone lip under it was black. The liquid in the drain smelled like pine and iron.

"Iron-pine," I said.

Mira held a vial under the lip and let a few drops fall in. She sealed it, wrote "Dock 3 drain lip" on a tag, and tied the tag to the neck. She did not add any guesses.

"Vendor mark?" Pierce asked.

"Not here," Mira said. "We can match the cut later if we find a cork or a broken spout."

I swept the Lantern along the base of the wall. A stack of charred ledgers had fallen from a shelf and fused into a lump. One corner had a bit of leather still intact. The leather was stamped with a small ampersand that leaned too far left.

"Here," I said.

Mira took a knife and pried the leather free. The stamp was clear enough. The crooked ampersand.

"Kellen & Sons," she said. "Same maker mark as the North Quarter list."

Liora did not smile. "Bag it," she said.

A beam cracked overhead. The Watch captain raised his hand. "Two minutes," he said.

We moved quicker. Dorian scanned the door frame. "Pry marks," he said. "Not from the fire brigade."

"Inside or out?" Pierce asked.

"Out," Dorian said. "Someone forced it after the fire was set. Not to get in. To make it look like a forced entry."

I checked the hinges. The pins had been tapped up and set back down. Sloppy work.

"Someone wanted the story to read as vandalism," I said.

"Yes," Dorian said.

Cael knelt by a row of ash that looked like rope ends. "This is odd," he said. "The burn pattern goes against the draft from that broken pane. That means the flame had help."

"Oil lines," I said.

Mira pointed to a char bubble with a soot skin. "And this is a burst. Trapped liquid under something thin. Fast hot. Not random."

The Lantern’s light caught a metal stub near the wall. I reached into the ash and pulled it up with two fingers. It was half of a stamp plate. The edge was sharp. The face wore a mirror image of the same crooked ampersand.

"Plate," I said.

Mira held a cloth. I set the plate on it. She packed it. "We can match strike flaws," she said. "If a ledger page and this plate share a burr, it’s strong."

The Watch captain stepped closer. "Names?" he asked.

"Not here," Liora said. "We bring you paper before words."

He nodded. "Fair."

A small noise came from the alley behind the warehouse. Not a crack. A heel slid and caught on grit. Dorian turned his head. Cael stood without looking like he stood. I turned the Lantern off.

We walked toward the back door. The alley was narrow and wet. A shadow moved at the far bend. Not big. Fast.

"Stop," Pierce called, level.

The shadow did not stop. A bolt snapped past the door frame and sparked off stone. Cael moved before the sound finished and set a foot like a wedge. The second bolt hit his braced forearm guard and skittered away. He didn’t chase. He watched the angle of the streetlamp reflection and smiled without humor. "Roof line," he said.

"Watch," Liora said. "No sprint."

We stepped into the alley. The runner had already gone up the crate stack to the roof and disappeared across a gap. Dorian reached the stack and checked the top board. It was damp. No fresh boot marks. "He had a board ready," Dorian said. "He planned a run."

Pierce kept his voice even. "We will not catch a ghost in stacked roofs tonight."

"No," Liora said. "Mark the path. That is enough."

I looked down at the wet alley floor. Tracks showed where a small hand left a smear on the wall at knee height. Resin, not blood. I took a scrap of clean cloth and touched the smear. "Same stuff," I said.

Mira tagged the cloth and set it in a second vial bag. She wrote "Alley smear" and tied the knot.

The Watch captain met us at the back door. "I can give you an hour tomorrow with the ledger clerk," he said. "Not more."

"Enough," Liora said. "Thank you."

He grunted. "I don’t like fires I didn’t call."

"Neither do we," Pierce said.

We left the cordon and walked to a quiet street. Liora stopped under a lamp and turned to us.

"Next steps," she said. "Mira, you will copy your notes to two sets. One to the Crown Auditor. One to the Watch. Keep the originals in our lockbox. Pierce, you will write the formal request for vendor records under the academy seal. Dorian, you will map the alley run and mark access points for tomorrow’s patrol. Cael, Armand—no hunting. Escort only, if asked."

"Understood," Cael said.

"Understood," I said.

Liora looked at me a moment longer. "You will sleep," she added. "Your hands shake when tired. The leash listens to that."

"I will sleep," I said.

We split there. Pierce and Dorian went back toward the academy by the quick route. Mira and Liora took the longer street to the Auditor’s office to file the midnight notice. Cael and I walked the river. No talk. The lamp light on the water made short lines. The smoke smell thinned.

At the south gate, a runner waited on the bench with a small sealed note. "For Armand Valcrey," he said. He was ten, maybe eleven. He did not meet my eyes.

"Who sent it?" I asked.

"Man in a dark coat," he said. "Paid me to wait."

I gave him a coin anyway. He ran.

I broke the seal. Inside was a plain card and a pressed wax chip. The chip held a crooked ampersand. The card had four words in a neat hand.

Leave the doors closed.

I showed it to Cael. He read it and handed it back. "They’re nervous," he said.

"Good," I said. "They should be."

"Sleep," he said.

"After I put this in the box," I said.