Moonlight exposed her breath in the evening wind. She fumbled for her tools—not the lockpick, we want the... there. The glass cutter. The tiny blade's point settled into her grip and her hands steadied. Scratch of diamond against stained glass. Meticulous work. She ignored the whistling wind, shifted her weight on the window ledge, her footing as relaxed as if she stood in her sister's tea parlor.

  Cheap glasswork, compared to what she had at home. No sense in damaging the craft more than necessary.

  She worked through a panel small enough to roll through, then peered into the darkness beyond. Fae glamours imposed the shape of the room even where moonlight refused to follow. Mahogany desk. Worn velvet chair. Lord Ebenezer's private study.

  And there it was.

  Crossed sabers above a dead fireplace. The left one thrummed with old violence—demon blood, human blood, the Conflicts written into its edge. She respected the confidence of such casual display. Not a dungeon. Not a vault. Almost as if they'd heard rumors of a thief with a penchant for impossible fortresses. Almost as if they'd been thinking about her.

  She stole into the study. Sensed magic. Cast a charm of disarming to dismiss any barriers. Checked over her shoulder. Once. Twice.

  Reached out.

  Torches flared white. A high-pitched whine split the air.

  Francesca stopped.

  The saber. Her hand. The distance between them. Three feet. The window behind her—she spun. Glass intact. Whole. The panel she'd cut had sealed itself, lead and color fused as if she'd never touched it. Ward-magic. Old ward-magic, woven into the restoration, and she'd missed it entirely.

  Lord Ebenezer was more clever than she'd realized.

  The saber. She grabbed it anyway.

  Heavy. Warm. The hilt pulsed against her palm like a second heartbeat, and for a moment the room listed sideways, the weapon's history pressing against her mind—screaming, smoke, a field of bodies arranged in rows—

  She shook it off. Later. The whine meant guards. The torches meant visibility. She needed shadow and she needed it now.

  Bookcase. Left wall. The glamour showed her a seam where the molding didn't quite meet the baseboard. Servant's passage. She crossed the room in four strides, found the catch, pulled.

  The passage exhaled stale air and dust. She slipped through.

  Narrow. Stone. The saber caught on the walls as she ran, its edge scraping sparks from ancient masonry. Down. The passage angled down, which meant—yes. Kitchens. Servants' quarters. Courtyard access.

  She emerged behind a rain barrel, the night air sharp against her face.

  The courtyard spread before her. Forty feet of open cobblestone. The gate beyond. And there he was.

  Lord Ebenezer.

  He stood at the manor's main entrance, a high frock pulled tight to the chin. His mane of white hair was neatly pushed back, even at this wee hour of night. He was gesturing with the calm precision of a man who had planned for this exact moment. Guards assembled around him. Six. Eight. Ten. They fanned out across the courtyard, torches bobbing, cutting the darkness into useless strips of shadow.

  Francesca pressed herself against the barrel. Counted. Ten guards. Two at the gate. Lord Ebenezer directing traffic like a conductor. The saber pulsed warm against her thigh.

  No shadows deep enough to hide her. No glamour strong enough to fool a dozen pairs of eyes at once.

  She looked up.

  The manor's western tower cast a long shadow across the courtyard wall—not the ground, the wall. Torchlight painted the cobblestones orange, but the vertical stone remained dark. And at the base of that tower, a drainage grate caught moonlight in a way that meant depth. A culvert. If she could reach it.

  The guards' torches. Their eyes would follow movement at ground level. Horizontal motion. That was instinct. That was human.

  She pulled a shard of mirror from her belt pouch. Standard equipment. Useful for checking corners. More useful for something else entirely.

  She angled the shard toward the gate, caught the moonlight, and threw a bright slash of reflection across the cobblestones—away from her, toward the eastern wall. One guard turned. Then another. She flicked the mirror again. The light danced like a fleeing figure.

  "There! By the stables!"

  Three guards broke formation. Then two more.

  Francesca moved.

  Not across the courtyard. Up. She scaled the rain barrel, caught the lip of a window frame, pulled herself onto a narrow ledge that ran along the manor's face. The saber's weight threatened to unbalance her. She ignored it. Pressed flat against the stone. Inched along the ledge toward the tower's shadow.

  Below, Lord Ebenezer's voice cut through the commotion. "Not the stables, you fools. She's misdirecting you. Think."

  Clever man. Too clever.

  She reached the tower's shadow. Let herself drop.

  The drainage grate caught her fall with a clang that made her teeth ache. She didn't wait to see if anyone heard. The grate gave way under her fingers—old iron, poorly maintained, thank the saints for aristocratic neglect—and she slid into the culvert below.

  Icy cold gnawed up to her thighs. She winced as she half-floated, half trudged on through the freezing sludge. Finally knee-deep, gasping for breath, but still moving. She let the current carry her toward the outer wall, the saber held above her head, Lord Ebenezer's voice fading behind her into the sounds of confused men searching in the wrong direction.

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  The culvert spat her out beyond the estate grounds. She emerged into a drainage ditch, soaked, shivering, victorious.

  The saber pulsed once against her palm. Almost approving.

  She permitted herself a smile. Then she ran.

  ---

  Twisting, turning, like a tedious argument. She arrived at the nondescript thatched building, the sheer relief of a moment of safety starting to catch up with her. The feeling never got old.

  Of course, the safehouse wasn't hers.

  Francesca dropped through the cellar window and landed in darkness that smelled of mildew and old wine. Her boots hit packed earth. The saber clattered against the stone foundation—too loud, she winced—and she froze, listening.

  Nothing. No pursuit. No voices. Just her breathing and the distant sound of the canal outside.

  She allowed herself three seconds. Counted them. Then moved.

  The cellar branched into storage rooms she'd mapped weeks ago, back when this job was still theoretical, still just notes and questions and what if. Crates of imported fabric. Barrels of something that might have been grain once. A narrow staircase leading up to the ground floor, which she wouldn't take. Not yet.

  Instead: the third alcove on the left, where someone had stacked furniture to rot. She shifted a broken chair aside, found the loose stone in the wall, pulled.

  The cache was exactly as she'd left it. Dry clothes wrapped in oilcloth. A waterskin. Coin. And underneath, the leather satchel she'd prepared for the saber specifically, padded with wool to muffle any residual magical hum.

  She stripped off her wet coat. Her shirt. The cold air bit at her skin and she ignored it, wringing water from the fabric with hands that had started shaking. Adrenaline fade. Delayed fear. Her body's polite way of informing her that she'd nearly been caught.

  "Not caught," she whispered to the darkness. "Almost caught. There's a difference."

  The saber lay beside her, the ornate hilt catching the faint moonlight from the cellar window. Still warm. Still pulsing with a slow, insistent rhythm, like it had a heartbeat of its own. She reached for it carefully, and as she wrapped her pale fingers around the tarnished silver, the world tilted. Hard.

  It was as if someone had dumped her psyche into yawning pit of history. Screaming. Smoke. The taste of copper and ash. Soldiers in armor she didn't recognize, falling in rows, and standing over them was...

  She let go.

  The silver met the grimy cobbles underfoot with a clatter. Her hands were shaking worse now. She pressed them flat against her thighs, breathed deliberately, and focused on what she could feel. Cold stone under her. Wet hair against her neck. The satchel. She needed to get the saber into the satchel.

  She used the dry shirt as a barrier, wrapped the weapon carefully, and sealed it away. The visions stopped immediately. The warmth faded. Good. She could think again.

  Dry clothes. Darker than what she'd worn for the job. Charcoal trousers, a deep blue jacket that would read black in low light, practical boots with quiet soles. She dressed methodically, checking each buckle, each button, making sure nothing would catch or betray her.

  The wet clothes went into a separate sack. She'd burn them later. Or weight them with stones and drop them in the canal. Whichever seemed safer.

  Her hands had steadied. Mostly.

  She shouldered the satchel with the saber, felt its weight settle against her spine, and paused.

  The job was done. She had the piece. Lord Ebenezer's guards would be searching the estate grounds for hours, chasing shadows and mirror-tricks, and by the time they thought to check the canals she'd be long gone. This was the part where she vanished. Melted back into the city. Became nobody.

  Except.

  She pulled a small mirror from her belt—not the shard she'd used for misdirection, a proper one, silvered glass in a worn leather case. Checked her face. Pale. Smudged with something that might have been soot or canal water. Hair escaping its braid in wet tangles. She looked like she'd been running for her life.

  Which was accurate, but not useful.

  She wiped her face with her sleeve, re-braided her hair with stiff fingers, very nearly managed a prim braid, and tucked everything back into place. Better. Not perfect, but better. She could pass for a canal worker finishing a late shift. Maybe a clerk hurrying home. Someone unremarkable.

  The stairs creaked under her weight. She climbed slowly, testing each step, listening for movement above. The ground floor was dark and quiet. Abandoned, like she'd confirmed during reconnaissance. The building's owner had died three months ago and the estate was still tangled in probate. No one would come here.

  Unless Lord Ebenezer was really that clever...

  No. No no, just keep going.

  She crossed to the front window, staying low, and peered through the gap in the shutters.

  The street outside was empty. Cobblestones slick with evening rain. A single lantern burning two buildings down, casting long shadows that moved wrong in the wind. No guards. No one watching.

  She counted to thirty anyway. Watched for movement. Listened for the sound of boots on stone, voices calling signals, the careful holes in the silence, held breath, whispering silks held still, or cold iron sliding out of leather.

  Nothing. The good kind of nothing, running water, the murmur of meandering conversations from faraway passers-by. the texture of tonight's quiet was just right, by her reckoning. And she moved.

  She slipped out the side door into an alley that smelled of rotting fish and human waste. Kept to the shadows. Moved with the easy pace of someone who belonged here, who wasn't running from anything, who had every right to be walking the canal district at this hour.

  Three streets. Then four. She crossed a bridge and doubled back, checking for tails. Took a narrow passage between buildings that forced her to turn sideways, the satchel scraping brick. Emerged near the textile district where night workers would still be active.

  Only then did she let herself think about the next part.

  The saber needed to go to Corbin. That was the agreement. He'd find the buyer, handle the exchange, take his percentage for the contract work he'd done to make this job possible. Clean. Professional. The way they'd worked together for three years now.

  Except the visions. The weight. The way the weapon felt alive against her back.

  She should tell him about that. Should warn him that this wasn't just an artifact, it was something else. Something that wanted to be held, wanted to be used, and she didn't trust things that wanted too much.

  But telling him meant explaining how she knew. Meant admitting she'd touched it, felt it, let it show her things she hadn't asked to see.

  Meant admitting she'd been careless.

  Her feet had carried her toward the Winter Quarter without deciding to go there. Habit, maybe. Or something else. The buildings here were older, leaning into each other like elderly nobles at a ball. The canals ran quieter. Fewer lanterns. More shadows.

  Corbin's workshop was three streets over. She could see the window from here, the faint glow that meant he was still awake, still working.

  She should go to him. Hand over the saber. Collect her payment. Go home.

  She stood in the alley and didn't move.

  The satchel was warm against her spine. Present. Aware.

  "You're a sword," she told it quietly. "You don't get opinions."

  It pulsed once. Almost like disagreement.

  She sighed, adjusted the strap, and started walking toward the light.