CHAPTER 39

Camden Lock at noon smelled like canal water and fried food from the stall by the bridge.

The tourists clustered at the near end where the benches had a view of the locks.

The thief had chosen the far bench, in the shade of a warehouse wall where the water went still and nobody took photographs.

Lisa reached the bench ten minutes early and sat down like she’d been there all morning. I took the bridge, sightlines in both directions and the canal path visible for a hundred metres either way.

One exit sat by the lock gate, another by the tunnel under the railway line. The water was a third option if she was willing to swim. At this point, I wasn’t ruling anything out.

At three minutes past noon, the air beside the bench rippled.

Lisa didn’t flinch. The distortion tightened and the girl stepped out of it, already balanced, already scanning.

She was smaller than the footage had suggested. Five-two at most, crimson red hair pulled back hard enough to hurt.

A bow case sat across her back, and a coat that had been too thin for the weather when it was new was now two winters past that.

Her eyes went to Lisa, then to me on the bridge, then down the towpath. She’d counted every exit before she finished materialising.

I like her already. She walks into a meeting the way you should walk into an ambush. Somebody taught her that, or something did.

Lisa had eight hundred pounds of tailoring on her shoulders, paid for by a stranger. The girl across from her had two winters of cold water in her cuffs.

I watched her notice the difference and price it.

“You’re C-REAL,” she said flatly. She was looking at me, not Lisa.

“Yeah.”

“You’re older than I thought.”

“Everyone says that.”

“Everyone’s right.” She didn’t sit down. “You brought your partner. I said alone.”

“You said if I brought anyone else you’d be gone. I brought my partner. She’s not anyone else.”

The girl gave Lisa her full attention for the first time. Lisa looked back without expression.

“You’re the necromancer,” she said. “The one who wears bones like a coat.”

“Who told you that?”

“No one. I read the Association brief on the Chilterns incident. The public version. Someone blacked out half of it, but they left the good parts.”

She looked back at me. “And you’re the one who put a beam through a tundra bear. The Meridian dispatch. They said you nearly died.”

“I nearly died a lot. It’s becoming a theme.”

Her coat was still too thin. Up close, the fraying at the cuffs was visible, the kind of wear that came from being washed too many times in cold water because the hot had been shut off.

“You looked at the marks before you looked at what I stole. Why?”

“Because a thief who steals first editions and leaves mirror-glass arrows behind her isn’t trying to get rich. She’s leaving a trail. People who leave trails want to be followed.”

“Maybe I just wanted to know if anyone was paying attention.”

“Someone was.”

She looked at me for a long moment. The same assessment she’d given the exits. Cataloguing and weighing. “You’re not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Someone older. Someone who climbed like a machine and talked like one too. You climb like a machine. You don’t talk like one.”

“I’ve had practice at not being what people expect.”

“Yeah.” She almost smiled. It vanished before it reached her mouth. “I know what that’s like.”

She weighed something for a moment.

“Robin. Since we’re apparently doing this. Not my whole name. You don’t get that yet.”

“Noah. It’s the only one I use.”

“I know. It was on the brief.” Her arms crossed tight. “You said the people who hired you’re lying. What are they lying about?”

“What you stole,” Lisa said. “They said you took jewellery and first editions. Small things worth nothing close to the recovery fee. But most of the items you took had personal history. A dead wife’s photograph. A husband’s letter opener he used every morning. Someone gave you a list of things that mattered to specific people.”

Robin’s arms tightened. “If I tell you who, you’ll go after them instead of me.”

“Probably,” I said. “They put a sixteen-year-old in front of a black car full of professionals. I’d rather talk to them than to you.”

“That’s not how it works.” She stepped back toward the bench without sitting on it, keeping the water at her back. “The person who gave me the list is the only reason I’m still alive. I’m not giving them up to a hunter I met four seconds ago in a chat client.”

“Fair,” I said. “Then tell us what you actually stole. Not the list. The thing the list was leading to.”

Robin went still, counting exits and weighing threats.

“There’s a man,” she said slowly. “He’s dead. He died two years ago. Before he died, he wrote some things down. Names, dates, and shipping routes. He worked in port logistics on the civilian side. He noticed a pattern: cargo that didn’t match its manifests, ships that docked at ports that weren’t on any schedule. He started documenting it. Two weeks later, someone killed him.”

“The notes,” Lisa said. “You stole the notes.”

“I stole the book they were hidden in. A first edition, leather-bound. The notes were in the binding, between the leather and the board. Whoever killed him searched his study and took everything that looked like evidence. They didn’t think to take the books.”

“Whose house?”

“A man named Aldridge. Retired Association judge. He was the dead man’s brother-in-law. He kept the book on a shelf for two years without ever opening it.”

“That’s the eighth house,” Lisa said. “The one Quill said was coming.”

“No.” Robin met her eyes. “I was going to hit it tomorrow night. But you found me first.”

“Quill knows about the eighth house,” I said. “He told us she was targeting it. He’s been tracking her longer than we’ve.”

Lisa’s expression didn’t change. “Quill isn’t trying to recover stolen goods. He’s trying to recover the notes before anyone reads them.”

“He works for the people who killed the dead man.”

“Or he’s one of them.”

Robin took another step back. Her heel sat at the edge of the water. “If Quill knows about the eighth house, he knows about the book. He’ll have someone there already. Tonight. He won’t wait.”

“Then we go tonight, before he expects anyone to move.”

“You want to break into a house with me.” She said it flatly. “The hunter who was paid to catch me wants to break into a house with me.”

“The hunter who was paid to catch you is working for the people who want those notes buried. I’d rather read them first.”

She stared at me, looking for the lie.

“I’ve two conditions,” she said.

“Name them.”

“One. The person who gave me the list: you don’t go after them until I say so. They’re not part of this. They were trying to help. They knew about the dead man’s work, but couldn’t retrieve the books themselves.”

“Because someone’s watching them too.”

“Everyone’s being watched.” She said it without irony.

“The whole country’s been bleeding hunters for a decade. Anyone worth their rank leaves for America or Japan. The ones who stay are the ones who can’t leave, or the ones watching the ones who can’t leave. My handler’s one of the watchers. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Your handler. Say her name for me,” Lisa said quietly.

“I didn’t say it was a her.”

“You didn’t have to. Someone who knew which items mattered to which people, and knew the dead man’s work. Someone positioned to watch the Association from inside without being seen. That’s a woman’s network. Men don’t build networks like that. They build hierarchies.”

Robin looked at Lisa with a new expression. Respect, maybe.

“Her name’s Morgana,” Robin said. “She’s old. Older than she looks. She works for someone who works for someone else. I don’t know the whole chain, but she’s been tracking this pattern since before I was born.”

Lisa went very still. “Morgana. I know that name.”

“From where?”

“I’ve her book.” Lisa’s voice had gone quiet. “The Ambrose family has a tradition. When one of us dies, our spellbook returns to the family archive. Morgana Ambrose died three hundred years ago. Her book came back. I inherited it. I’ve held it in my hands.”

She turned the thought over.

“If Morgana is dead, how is someone still operating under her name? How has she been protecting a sixteen-year-old thief? How has she been tracking this conspiracy since before Robin was born?”

A dead woman’s name, worn on purpose. Azazel hadn’t spoken since the bridge. Where I come from, that is either an heir or a threat. Occasionally both.

Robin shifted her bow case. “She said someone would recognise her name eventually. She said when they did, to tell them the tournament’s coming. The big one that only happens every ten years. She said the people who killed the dead man are building toward it.”

“The World Hunter Games,” Lisa said. “This cycle is the tenth. A hundred years since the first one.”

“I don’t know what it’s. I just know Morgana said it matters. She said everything they’ve been doing for the last five years has been preparation for it.”

I looked at Lisa, and she looked back.

“We’ll deal with the Games later,” I said. “Tonight, we deal with Aldridge’s house. The rest of it can wait.”

Robin nodded once. “We meet at the side gate at eleven. It’s unlocked. I’ve been through it twice.”

She checked her bow string. “And if it comes to it, I can carry one of you through a blink. Anyone I’m touching when I jump comes with me. One person. Two makes me sick for an hour, so decide early who’s worth the mark.”

“If Quill’s men are already there, we go in anyway.”