The northern district smelled of wet rope and coal smoke. Lira moved through the back lanes with Sera and the boy, the lens secured against her ribs, the spiral scars hidden under a high collar. The workshop hands had remained behind to keep the street door open and the ordinary work visible for as long as possible. Their presence would not stop the stewards at nightfall, but it might slow the narrative the Archive preferred to write.
The heavy grief she had tracked for days led them to a narrow house beside a secondary canal lock. The shutters were closed. No smoke rose from the chimney. When Lira knocked, the door opened on a man in his middle years whose face carried the exact exhausted clarity of someone who had already lived through the return of everything he once sealed.
“I know w
