Drenmire awoke to the third day under lockdown with a false sense of calm. The guards had doubled, checkpoints cropped up like iron mushrooms at every street crossing, and merchant caravans had been turned into makeshift barricades. People were still breathing, but the city no longer exhaled.
Fornos stood inside a rented corner room on the third floor of the Starshade Teahouse—a location deliberately mundane, its scent of boiled herbs and sticky rice acting as an invisible cloak. Park returned just before midday, slipping through the back stairwell like water through cracks.
He laid two scrolls on the table. One, sealed in courier wax. The other—a ledger bound in old vellum, its edges stained with ink and sweat.
Fornos scanned both in silence.
The wax-sealed scroll listed twenty-three names: courier guild owners, relay tower stakeholders, mid-tier aristocrats who dabbled in message trafficking and old ink routes. The ledger, by contrast, was more raw. It contained log entries—some encoded, others half-destroyed—retrieved from messenger outposts. Dates, symbols, and phrases like:
"Package never arrived"
"Winged route broken"
"Feather-burned before landing"
Park signed slowly.
The courier web knew what was happening. They just didn't scream loud enough for anyone to care.
Fornos tapped a name twice: Ciran Rell, a minor noble and former financier of the old Skyword Courier League—a defunct organization that once experimented with golem-harnessed message relays.
"He used to work with Hal and Varn," Fornos murmured. "Funded the relay beacons across southern trade routes. Disappeared after the war ended."
Park tapped once, signing:
He's still here. Eastern quarter. Lives under a trade name—'Ravel and Sons.' Furniture exports.
Fornos smiled.
"Let's drop in."
Eastern Quarter, Drenmire – Warehouse #17, "Ravel and Sons"
It was the kind of shop no one looked at twice. A dusty facade of redwood planks, the scent of lacquer and varnish faint in the wind. Inside, men carried crates too light to hold furniture and spoke too softly for traders.
Brassheart knocked only once before forcing the door open with a quiet, hydraulic thunk.
Fornos and Park stepped inside like accountants entering a crime scene.
Ciran Rell was seated behind a polished desk, surrounded by two guards and a room full of lies. His hair was neatly parted, his smile genuine, but his eyes—his eyes flinched at the sight of Park's empty gaze.
"You're Dag's boy," Rell said after a pause. "From the auction."
"I'm the one who didn't panic when the lights went out," Fornos replied, arms folded.
"Didn't have to. You had that mute shadow of yours gutting his way through the confusion."
Fornos's grin was cold. "If Park had been the one gutting, there wouldn't have been screams. Just silence. Now, let's stop pretending you're clean. You were one of the five signatories to the failed Skyword Relay bid. And your funds were linked to the warehouse where Hal built the prototype. So you tell me, Rell… why did you stay behind?"
"I didn't steal it."
"Didn't ask if you did."
Rell tensed.
Fornos continued, voice even: "You stayed behind because you were waiting to see who would come out alive—and who could be bargained with. Smart. Vile. Predictable. So now that I'm here and Hal's dead, I'll ask the real question."
Fornos leaned in.
"Who paid you to pull funding a year ago? Who wanted Hal to be vulnerable and unprotected?"
That did it.
Rell's smile shattered.
"…There were four buyers," Rell muttered. "All interested in the blueprint. I backed out when Hal refused to split access. Said it had to be 'given, not sold.' So I stopped paying. One of them… one of them didn't take kindly to that."
"Name."
"Master Drellin. Of the Inkfeather Syndicate."
Park's eyes narrowed.
Fornos tilted his head. "I thought they died out during the Northern Reforms."
"They did. Publicly. But some factions stayed in shadow—collecting blueprints, controlling guilds from the inside."
"And now they're back," Fornos whispered. "Because this device doesn't just shift communication—it shifts control."
Rell nodded. "They wanted it off the table. They feared what a 'free line of thought' could do. So instead of owning it, they burned it. Or tried to."
Fornos straightened. "They failed."
Later that night – Back at Starshade Teahouse
Park signed:
We're getting closer. But they're ahead. They planned this.
"I know," Fornos said, pouring tea absently. "But they made one mistake."
What?
"They killed the wrong person."
Park raised an eyebrow.
"They killed Hal. Not me."
Park grunted in amusement. Fornos cracked a small grin. The boy—man, truly—had a way of sounding arrogant and accurate at the same time.
Just then, a faint knock sounded at the door.
Brassheart opened it, revealing a courier. A child, no more than twelve, carrying a lead-sealed canister.
"Message for… uh… 'the one who wanted the auction back.'"
Fornos stood, took the canister, and twisted it open.
Inside: a fragment of the missing blueprint. The first three codex layers. With it, a single feather—black-dyed. Inkfeather's signature.
A challenge. Or an invitation.
Park stepped forward, mouth flat.
"Message received," Fornos muttered. "Let's answer."