The first proof was acquired.
The ghost had a history. Catherine now had to pull on this thread, all while managing her most powerful pawn and directing her agent in the field. The game was deepening.
The image of the wax seal burned in Catherine's mind, an impression not only on an old parchment but on her own consciousness. It was the key.
A thirty-year-old crime, so perfectly executed and erased that it had become a mere footnote in the city's history, a "tragic accident." But accidents did not leave secret seals. Accidents did not create empires.
She spent the day meditating, letting the implications of this discovery infuse her.
The Rook was not a simple underworld king who had climbed the ranks. He was a cunning manipulator. He had razed a part of the city to build his invisible fortress.
The dock fire was not just a crime. It was the founding act of his reign.
To investigate a secret so old, she needed more than Mathieu's access to the archives.
She needed context, the living memory of the city, and that memory, however biased, resided in the minds of men like Valerius.
When the Magistrate returned that evening, he was in a jovial mood. He had won a small victory at the council and expected to celebrate with his "Oracle," his new source of power and pleasure. He brought her a sapphire necklace, a gift as heavy with possession as it was with value.
Catherine accepted the jewel with a distant grace, letting him fasten it around her neck himself. Her skin tingled at his touch, but her mind was leagues away.
She played her part, listening to him boast of his own merits, flattering him with her attentive silence.
Then, at the opportune moment, as they sat by the fire, a glass of wine in hand, she launched her offensive.
"I had another vision, Magistrate," she said, her voice taking on that distant, ethereal quality he found so intoxicating.
"A vision of the city itself. I saw it as a living body, covered in scars."
"Scars?" he asked, intrigued.
"Most are old and faded. But there is one, on the city's flank, near the water, that is deep and still festers in the foundations.
A wound caused by fire. A great fire, a long time ago."
Valerius looked at her, his interest piqued.
"The Great Dock Fire? That was well before my time. A terrible tragedy. What does that have to do with us?"
"Everything," Catherine whispered.
"I saw merchant towers fall in the smoke... and another, darker Tower rise from the ashes. I believe, Magistrate, that the chains that bind your financier may have been forged in that ancient fire. To understand his power today, we must understand how it was born."
She had played it perfectly. By linking this old story to Silas, Valerius's immediate enemy, she had made her obsession his own.
Valerius did not see that she was investigating The Rook; he thought they were looking for a weapon against Silas.
"Fascinating," he said, leaning forward, his calculating mind racing.
"It's an old story. Most of the great merchant families of the time were ruined. The Van Der Meers, the Solari… They controlled the entire spice trade. After the fire, new families, new guilds took control. People like Silas's father. That's where he began to build his fortune."
He rubbed his chin, searching his memory.
"Most of the families were completely wiped out. The Harbor Master of the time, for example. A good, respected man. His line was extinguished that night. His entire family perished in the flames."
Valerius took a sip of wine, lost in thought. He added, as an afterthought, in an almost jocular tone:
"It's strange to think about. He was a good man. A certain Elmer. No relation, I suppose?"
Catherine's world stopped.
The fire in the hearth seemed to die. The sound of a distant guard's laughter in the courtyard vanished. All that remained was the deafening beat of her own heart in her ears.
Elmer.
His name.
The name of her father, a man of whom she had only fragmented memories, a man she had been told died of the plague when she was a child.
She, a prostitute from the slums. He, the Harbor Master.
It was impossible. And yet… The forbidden knowledge that had poured into her, those visions of another time, another life…
Her Oracle mask, so perfectly maintained, threatened to shatter.
A wave of emotions so violent washed over her that she had to grip the arms of her chair to keep from fainting. This was no longer about power. This was no longer a game of conquest. It was personal.
She might have dismissed it, thought that this Elmer had nothing to do with her father. But the fact that Valerius himself mentioned the name changed everything.
The city's scar was also hers. The Rook hadn't just built an empire on ashes; he had built it on the ashes of her family.
Valerius, too absorbed in his own strategic thoughts, noticed nothing. But Catherine had just changed.
The cold, calculating predator had just found a new motivation, far more searing and far more dangerous than ambition.
Vengeance.
But her mistrust of Valerius had grown.
What else, exactly, did he know about her? Besides the rumors from the slums.
Her gaze was lost in the flames, but it was no longer the embers she saw. It was a city on fire, and at the top of a tower of smoke and secrets, a scarred man whose heart she would, one day, tear out.