“The first time,” Sera said, “he was eating a pear.”
Eli looked at the marks on her map. “How does that help?”
“It means I noticed him before I had a reason to.” She moved her pencil to the tram shelter. “Three days ago. He stood here, ate the pear, and watched the clinic door. A tram came. He didn’t get on. Another came, and he crossed the street.”
Eli drew the map toward him. The tram shelter faced the clinic entrance; anyone waiting there could see the people who came and went. The pencil marks formed a pattern he wanted to turn into a name.
“He was checking who entered.”
“He was facing the door.” Sera retrieved her map. “I couldn’t see his eyes.”
Kellan stood beside her, arms folded. The construction worker’s broad shoulders made the narrow counter look smaller, but he had taken care not to block the patients’ route to the back room. “Where were you?”
“In the café opposite. I had a view of the shelter and the corner.”
“What were you doing in the café?” Eli asked.
“Drinking tea.”
He waited. Sera waited too, one eyebrow raised.
“I was also looking for work,” she said. “The café lets people post job notices. One mentioned this clinic. I saw the man again on my way out.”
Tessa sat at the counter, her application folder resting on her lap. “What did he do the second time?”
“He walked past the shop, went around the block and came back to the shelter. I timed one circuit at seven minutes. The next took eleven. I lost sight of him at the delivery alcove.”
“That’s the gap,” Kellan said.
“Yes. Yesterday I watched for an hour. He made four circuits I could see. This morning I saw him twice more.”
Eli traced the marks. “A guard schedule.”
“A route,” Sera said. “It could be a guard schedule. It could be somebody waiting for someone. It could be a man who likes walking around this block and happens to look at doors.”
“He was here after the graffiti.”
“I know.”
“Did you follow him?”
“Once, as far as the corner. A delivery van came between us. When it moved, he was gone.”
Eli wanted a name, an employer and a reason. Pell from Meridian had taken an interest in Darius’s death; someone had painted the accusation about Eli on the clinic wall. Both facts made a watcher plausible. They did not turn Sera’s pencil marks into an answer.
“What do you want for the map?” he asked.
“Training equipment. A place to practice with it.”
“Money?”
“If you’ve got extra, I won’t refuse. But the equipment matters more.”
“What kind?”
“Mana markers, preferably with adjustable output. The registry charges for the practice room, and guilds keep theirs for members.” She glanced at Kellan. “I was told you had access to a residual gate.”
“Who told you?” Eli asked.
“A porter at the registry board. I don’t know his name. He said a construction worker and an F-rank recovery hunter were asking about safe places to train.”
Kellan looked at Eli. “I asked the board clerk yesterday. She may have mentioned it.”
Eli remembered the clerk’s open window and the line of applicants behind him. Their questions had not been private. “What does your talent do?”
“I sense mana currents.”
“Rank?”
“D.”
“Can you tell whether the man has a talent?”
“Not from this map.”
“Can you tell now?”
Sera looked through the window. “I don’t know. He’s not in sight.”
The answer irritated him. She had arrived offering information and seemed determined to take each piece back as soon as he touched it. Yet the map remained on the counter, and each mark included a time. She had given them more than a rumor.
Tessa opened the clinic door and looked along the pavement. The tram shelter was empty. A delivery cart stood in the alley, its handle propped against a wall.
“Could he see patients arriving from there?” she asked.
“Yes,” Sera said. “Anyone in the shelter could.”
“We’ll tell the volunteers someone has been observed repeatedly outside. We won’t tell patients they’re being targeted when we don’t know that.”
Leah, who had been listening from behind the appointment book, wrote a note for the next shift. She asked Sera to describe the man without inventing a distinguishing feature. Sera supplied a dark coat, a limp she had seen on one circuit, and hair that looked brown from across the street. The limp might have come from a loose paving stone; she had not seen it on the other circuits.
“Did he carry a bag?” Leah asked.
“Once. A canvas one. No visible emblem.”
“Age?”
“Adult. I couldn’t narrow it further.”
Leah wrote what could be written. Sera watched her leave the rest blank.
Kellan went outside to inspect the alcove. Eli followed. The space was recessed between Mrs. Ortega’s shop and a warehouse wall. Deliveries for two businesses came through the same narrow opening. Stacked pallets blocked the view of the far end from the street.
“Someone could stand behind those and see the clinic door reflected in that window,” Kellan said.
The window belonged to the shop across the street. Its glass was dark enough to act as a mirror in daylight. Eli moved a step to the left. The clinic entrance appeared in the reflection, interrupted by a passing pedestrian.
“I watched from the tram shelter yesterday,” he said. “I couldn’t see this entrance.”
“That’s because you were watching the shelter.” Sera had joined them. She pointed to the pallets. “I saw a coat there once, but I couldn’t tell whether it was the same man.”
A scrape came from the alley. All three turned. A worker in an orange vest emerged behind the pallets, dragging a handcart piled with flattened cardboard. She stopped when she saw them.
“Am I in your way?”
“No,” Kellan said. “We’re checking the entrance. Does anyone else use the alcove?”
“Deliveries, mostly.” She pulled the cart forward. “People hide from the rain. Yesterday a man stood there for ten minutes on his phone, then moved when I needed the door.”
“What did he look like?” Eli asked.
“Dark coat. Taller than me.” She frowned. “I’m short. Most people are taller than me.”
“Did he say who he was calling?”
“No. He wasn’t talking while I was there.” She looked from one of them to the other. “Is there a problem?”
“Someone’s been spending time near the clinic,” Kellan said. “We don’t know whether it means anything. If anyone blocks your delivery, do what you normally would.”
The worker nodded and pulled the cart into the street. Eli watched it go. Even if the man in the alcove was the same person, he had a dozen ways to explain standing there. Confronting the next person in a dark coat would not make the clinic safer.
Sera moved to the mouth of the alcove and crouched. She held her fingers a few inches above the pavement, palm down. Eli waited for a visible effect. There was none.
“Something passed here,” she said after a moment. “A weak residual current. It goes toward the warehouse door.”
“From the man?”
“I don’t know.”
She followed it to a metal trolley leaning against the wall. A small glass marker was wired to its handle, glowing faintly blue. Eli recognized the type: delivery workers used them to signal that a load had passed through an inspection point.
“This is making it,” Sera said. “The current is stronger near the marker, and it trails along the route the trolley took.”
Kellan touched the trolley’s handle. “It was probably moved out of the way this morning.”
Sera stood and rubbed her hands. “One source is easy. Two close together aren’t. The currents overlap, and I can’t always tell whether the pressure I’m feeling comes from one strong source or two weaker ones.”
“Could you track someone through a gate?” Eli asked.
“Possibly. I wouldn’t promise it if the area had a lot of active signatures.”
“What use is that on a team?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What use is knowing there’s a current moving toward a passage? What use is knowing a marker has been moved? Depends whether you want someone to tell you what they can actually sense or tell you whatever gets them hired.”
Kellan inspected the marker. “How long does the trace last?”
“Depends on the source and the surface. I can show you with a marker and a watch.”
Eli had worked with scouts who announced a clear route and then sent porters first. In his old life he had come to distrust confidence offered too cheaply. Sera’s refusal to promise more should have reassured him. Instead he had asked what use she was, because the rank on her card had already suggested an answer.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was the wrong question.”
“It was a useful one. Now you know what I won’t promise.”
He almost smiled. “Would you take a trial? The residual gate is registered for training. No monsters have been reported there, and the exits are marked.”
“Is it harmless?”
“It’s been assessed as a residual site. We can still check the current notice before entry.”
“Better answer.” She took the map from under his arm and folded it. “What equipment?”
“We can borrow two markers from the training desk. Kellan has rope.”
“And when you decide whether I did well?”
“We tell you.”
“I want to be there when you discuss it. I’ve had people call a job a success to my face and use my mistake to cut the rate afterward.”
Kellan nodded. “Fair.”
Eli said, “All right.”
Sera’s gaze shifted past him. “Dark coat at the shelter.”
The man stood where the map’s first circle had been drawn. He held a paper bag and faced the clinic. When a tram approached, he stepped back from the curb. Eli felt his body tense. Kellan raised a hand slightly, not to stop him physically but to ask for a moment.
A woman came out of the bakery beside the shelter. The man handed her the bag. She opened it, took out a loaf of bread and laughed at something he said. Then they went into the bakery together.
“Is that him?” Eli asked.
“I can’t tell.” Sera shaded her eyes. “Same coat. Wrong distance for the face.”
They waited. The man emerged with a different bag and crossed toward them. He saw the three people in the alcove and slowed. Eli stepped out before he could rethink it.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Do you work around here?”
The man looked at the clinic sign, then at Eli. “At the bakery.”
“Have you seen anyone watching the shop?”
“I watch the shop. My sister owns it.” He lifted the bag. “I bring the morning order from the kitchen.”
Sera came forward. “Have you been at the tram shelter the last few days?”
“Every day. My bus gets in early.”
“Did you eat a pear there?”
He stared at her. “On Tuesday. Is there a rule against fruit?”
“No,” Sera said. “I was checking whether you’re the person I saw.”
The man’s gaze moved toward the clinic. “People have been talking about the paint on the wall. My sister asked me to keep an eye out in case anyone came back with a can.”
“Did you see anyone?” Eli asked.
“No. And I’m not standing there all day.” He shifted the bag to his other hand. “If you want me to stop looking, tell her. I thought she was trying to help.”
“We appreciate it,” Tessa said from the doorway. She had come out while they spoke. “If you notice damage, please tell the shop owner or the volunteers. You don’t need to approach anyone.”
The man nodded and continued down the street. Eli watched him turn into the bakery’s side entrance.
“That could explain the circuits,” he said.
“It explains the person at the shelter today,” Sera said. “I still don’t know where the person I saw went during the gaps. They could be the same.”
Kellan looked at the map again. “The delivery worker saw someone in the alcove. Could have been him waiting for the order.”
“Could have.” Sera folded the paper and gave it to Tessa. “I don’t have enough to say more.”
Leah came to the door with a patient who needed help finding the bus stop. The patient saw the group and hesitated. Tessa introduced them, explained that they were checking the entrance after the vandalism, and asked whether the patient wanted someone to walk with her. She accepted Kellan’s offer.
He returned a few minutes later with an update: the bus shelter bench had been removed for repairs, leaving nowhere to sit. Leah added the information to the patient travel notes, alongside the clinic’s limited transport fund. It was a problem they could verify and act on, even if the man in the coat remained only a possibility.
Eli asked Sera when she was free for the trial.
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
“The assessment site has a residual gate open until five,” Kellan said. “I can bring the rope after my morning job.”
Sera held out her hand. Eli shook it. Her grip was dry and firm, and she released his hand before he could make the gesture into a commitment neither of them had offered.
“One trial,” she said. “You provide the markers. I get to hear the evaluation.”
“One trial,” Eli agreed.
She left toward the tram shelter, passing the bakery without looking inside. Eli watched her cross the road, then turned back to the clinic. Tessa was taping Leah’s note beside the volunteer schedule. It described a repeated observer, the limited identification and the request to report damage or direct approaches. It did not tell anyone that a guild had sent him.
“We could still ask the bakery owner’s brother whether he was in the alcove,” Eli said.
“We can,” Tessa replied. “Tomorrow. Today he’s carried his bread home.”
The clinic needed closing, and Mrs. Bell’s visit needed confirmation. Eli picked up the delivery cart and moved it clear of the alley. The wheels left a faint trail through the dust, visible even to someone without Sera’s talent. By evening it would probably be gone.