The Basin of Low-Khorat lay six deep-water lengths beneath the river level, trapped between the dripping granite embankments of the Grand Siphon and the soot-caked arches of the Coal Viaduct.
Here, in the district known as the Drowned Ledger, the air was always thick with the reek of boiling fish glue, sulfur spirits. The sharp, vinegar bite of strong etching acid used to test questionable bullion. Gas lamps hissed within copper-wire cages, their emerald flames sputtering whenever a pulse of high-pressure marsh-gas rolled through the town mains. Wooden narrow high walkways connected the second-story doors of narrow pawnshops, their timber greasy with decades of river silt and animal fat grease.
Ren Vale kept his head down, the hood of his wool coat pulled low over his brow.
His lambskin apron was tucked away inside his satchel, but his hands betrayed him. Even under the flickering green gaslight, the violet stains of iron gall on his thumb and forefinger were visible to any constable with half an eye. Beside him walked Vane, though the merchant had been forced to compromise his sartorial pride. Over his midnight-blue velvet coat, Vane wore a frayed greaser’s oilcloth smock he had bargained off a sleeping bargehand for two dry pine logs and a promise of immunity from future tax liens.
“An monster,” Vane muttered as they crossed a swaying timber gangway over an open drainage water gate. “The stonework alone is a serious tort. Who builds a commercial arcade over an open cesspool? The surrounding humidity is eighty-five percent. Any bond parchment stored in these premises will suffer fungal bloom within three fiscal quarters.”
“Keep your voice down,” Ren hissed, his hand resting on the carved ivory awl inside his coat. “The pawnbrokers down here don’t care about fungal bloom. Half of them are fence-men for the canal gangs. If they hear your accent, they’ll skin you for your boot leather before we reach the archway.”
“My accent,” Vane snapped back, sniffed delicately through a scented linen handkerchief, “is the standard dialect of the High Admiralty Exchange. If these crushed-star river-rats can’t appreciate proper vowel modulation, that’s an educational deficit, not a tactical flaw.”
They stopped before a crooked timber storefront bearing a painted tin sign. Harker’s Assay & Reclaimed Scrip. Mortgages Bought, Salvage Approved.
In the window, behind a grid of heavy wrought-iron bars, lay an assortment of forfeited misery. Brass sextants with scratched lenses, silver thimbles, pawned wedding bands with the initials filed out, and three cracked inkhorns carved from boiled ox horn. But Ren’s eyes were fixed on the lower shelf. There, a stack of unbound parchment folios lay tied with tarred twine.
“There,” Ren whispered, pointing with his chin. “Spirit-grade calf thick parchment. Look at the grain. It’s thirty years old, scraped from spring calves before the Great Murrain. The connective tissue thickness is twice that of modern paper.”
“And more importantly,” Vane noted, his eyes narrowing as the golden grid of Audit-Sight shone across his pupils, “the bottom folio carries the blind-stamped watermark of the High Court of High court: the three open books beneath the broken crown. Harker bought it as dead estate salvage from a bankrupt conveyancer. He thinks it’s ordinary scrap for butcher’s wrapping.”
Ren pushed open the iron-studded door. A brass bell clattered overhead, flat and dull in the damp air.
Behind a counter topped with hammered sheet zinc sat Barnaby Harker. A man as wide as a pork barrel, with greasy grey mutton chops, small piggish eyes behind brass-rimmed glasses. A leather apron stiff with acid burns. In his fat right hand, he held a spring-loaded balance scale. In his left, a bone needle-point arrow he was using to clean dirt from beneath his thumbnails.
“We’re closing,” Harker grunted without looking up. “No more coal scrip tonight. If you’ve got silver, the rate is twelve coppers to the silver coin, take it or throw it in the canal.”
“We’re not here for coal scrip, Master Harker,” Vane said. He stepped forward with his walking cane held level across his hips. The oilcloth smock did nothing to disguise the haughty, easy rhythm of his voice. “We need four folios of the High court-stamped calf thick parchment currently rotting in your front display, two drachms of powdered lapis lazuli, and four ounces of distilled spirit-alcohol.”
Harker stopped cleaning his nail. He slowly lifted his head, his glasses catching the greenish glare of the gas jet overhead. His small eyes flicked over Vane’s oilcloth smock, stayed on the gold metal ring of his cane. Then snapped onto Ren’s ink-stained fingers.
“High court thick parchment,” Harker rasped, a slow, yellow-toothed grin spreading across his jowls. “That’s high-judge stock. Unlicensed possession carries three years on the lime barges. What’s a gutter-scribe and a broken gentleman doing with court parchment at two in the morning?”
“Master Harker,” Vane said softly. He leaned over the zinc counter until his face was six inches from the pawnbroker’s glasses. “Three weeks ago, you accepted fourteen bundles of raw antimony metal bars from the crew of the canal barge Vigilant. You entered them in your purchase daybook as scrap iron salvage at four pennies the stone.”
Harker’s grin vanished. His fat fingers twitched toward a sawed-off blunderbuss resting on a shelf beneath the counter.
“Don’t touch the iron, Harker,” Vane warned, his voice smooth as cold oil. “The Vigilant wasn’t carrying salvage. She was carrying crown munitions stock consigned to the Imperial Foundry at Vulcan-Khorat. The antimony carries the inverted broad-arrow mark stamped into the underside of each pig. If Guard Corvus Thorne’s inspectors search your cellar tonight, they won’t charge you with receiving stolen goods. They will charge you with high treason against the Sovereign Ordnance Board.”
Clack.
Vane flicked a single brass bead on his pocket counting frame beneath his oilcloth smock.
The invisible thread of Audit-Sight snapped taut. Harker’s fat throat hitched. A bead of greasy sweat broke across his forehead, rolling down his cheek into his grey mutton chops.
“Who are you?” Harker whispered, his voice trembling with genuine terror. “Who told you about the Vigilant?”
“I’m the clerk who designed the manifest numbering system you tried to scratch off with your needle-point arrow,” Vane said, resting both hands on his cane. “Now, you’ll take the High court thick parchment from the window. You’ll wrap it in dry oiled silk so the canal fog doesn’t compromise the sizing. You’ll add the lapis powder, the alcohol, and three sticks of red sealing wax. In exchange, I’ll refrain from dropping a stamped notice into the High court complaint hopper before dawn.”
Harker stared at Vane for five painful seconds. The pawnbroker’s chest heaved like a bellows, his glasses fogging with rapid breath. Then, with a muffled curse, he turned to the window.
His fat hands were shaking as he cut the tarred twine binding the folios. He selected the four cleanest sheets of High court thick parchment, wrapped them carefully in a sheet of waxed sheepskin. Then he placed them on the zinc counter alongside a screw-top glass vial of brilliant blue lapis powder and a stone bottle of spirit-alcohol.
“Take it,” Harker spat, his voice shaking with poisonous hatred. “Take it and rot in the river, the pair of you.”
Ren stepped forward, scooped the parcels into his leather satchel. Then he checked the seal on the lapis vial. Pure, pure stone blue—the exact pigment needed to recreate the sovereign seal of the High Court.
“Thank you for your civic cooperation, Master Harker,” Vane said, tipping the brim of his imaginary hat. “A pleasure doing business with an institution that values legal rule-following.”
They backed out through the door, the brass bell clattering once more as they plunged back into the damp sulfuric darkness of the narrow high walkways.
As they hurried toward the southern stairs, Ren looked at the older man.
“How did you know about the antimony?” Ren asked. “The Vigilant didn’t dock in my timeline.”
“She docked,” Vane said, his breath coming in short, tight gasps as the physical hard effort began to tell on his borrowed stamina. “In my timeline, I bought the antimony from Harker for twenty silver marks and sold it back to the Foundry for eighty. A seventy-five percent gross margin. The man is a predictable petty crook, Ren. A ledger doesn’t change its character simply because you turned left instead of right.”
Vane stumbled, his boot catching on a warped narrow high walkway plank. Ren grabbed his arm, steadying him before he could tumble over the low railing into the black water of the drainage canal below.
Through the heavy wool of the oilcloth smock, Vane’s arm felt shockingly thin. It was as if the muscle beneath the velvet coat had already begun to waste away, burned up by the burning fire of Ren’s own empty blood.
“Steady,” Ren whispered, feeling his own ribs ache in sympathetic deep ring.
“I’m... Quite steady,” Vane gasped, pulling his arm away with an indignant jerk, though his face was grey beneath the gaslight. “Conserve your sympathy for the next appointment. Harker was the easy part. Gang Boss Moros doesn’t care about treason. He only understands blood and interest rates.”