I pulled on the worker’s coat Mirae had left for me. It was heavy, stained at the cuffs, and crudely patched at the elbows. I rubbed soot into the side of my cheek and pulled a cap low over my hair. If you looked like you belonged to a workshop, people stopped noticing you. If you looked too clean, they remembered you.
I stepped into the common room and found everyone already awake, sitting around with cups of dark tea. Elias had the city map folded open beside him.
Tamsin sat on the edge of a chair, boots laced, hair tied back, knife hidden under her coat the way Mirae had insisted. She looked like she’d slept, which meant she’d probably snoozed four hours and spent the rest of the night thinking. That was as close to rest as she allowed herself to get.
Her eyes flicked to me as I entered.
“Going out?” she asked quietly.
“Just going for a walk,” I said.
“Be careful,” she replied.
I nodded once. “Always am.”
She hesitated, then added softly, “Don’t do anything reckless.”
“Right,” I said, and made my voice light because if I didn’t, I’d give myself away. “I’ll bring you back something useful. Like a rumor. Or maybe a tasty pastry.”
Her lips quirked. “Make it an apple tart.”
“So demanding,” I replied with a wink.
I slipped out the back door.
London at this hour belonged to workers. There were men pushing handcarts loaded with brass fittings, women hauling bundles of cloth, and apprentices wandering the streets with ink or grease-stained fingers and tired eyes. Steam curled around ankles. A bell rang somewhere overhead, marking shift changes for factories that didn’t want to waste daylight.
I walked with the flow, hands in my pockets, shoulders slouched like I had nowhere important to be. If you moved like you were late, someone noticed. If you moved like you were bored, you disappeared into the crowd.
The machine shop district was two streets over. Men shouted over clanging presses. Sparks flared behind grimy windows. Above, a narrow catwalk linked two buildings, a worker crossing it with a coil of cable over his shoulder.
I paused just long enough to let the crowd pass, then crossed the street and drifted into the shadow of a brick archway.
From here, I could see the main road that cut toward the administrative quarter.
I was looking for Ashcroft.
That was where he’d be.
The first day I’d been here, I’d watched the road and learned nothing except that London moved like an organism. The second day, I’d started to recognize who belonged to which part of it. The third, I’d begun to see the ones who didn’t belong anywhere except in the service of someone else.
They didn’t wear uniforms. They didn’t have obvious weapons. They moved in pairs, always half a step behind the important people, eyes constantly scanning but never meeting anyone’s gaze. They had the posture of men who had permission to hurt you and weren’t afraid to do it.
A cluster of them appeared now, drifting down the road in a slow, controlled formation. That made my focus home right in.
I’d found him.
Marcus Ashcroft wore a long dark coat with a high collar and gloves that were too clean to have ever known actual work. His hair was silver, neatly combed, and his face was calm in that way that suggested he had never been truly afraid of anything. He walked at an unhurried pace, not because he lacked urgency, but because he expected the world to make room for him.
And it did.
People stepped aside without being told. A vendor lowered his eyes. A worker paused mid-stride as though he’d forgotten what he was doing.
Ashcroft stopped once to speak to a clerk holding a ledger. The clerk’s hands shook as he presented a stamped paper. Ashcroft glanced at it for barely a second before handing it back, already moving on.
I didn’t follow him directly. That was amateur work.
Instead, I watched the space around him, the way his escort rotated at intersections, the way one man always moved ahead to clear a path through tighter crowds, the way Ashcroft never once looked over his shoulder.
