Chapter 4 — His Name Beneath the Order

I set Tessa's list on the table before my fingers could crush it.

"You locked the gates."

Adrian sat very still beneath the examination lamp.

"Yes."

Behind me, my sister pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders. The movement hurt more than his answer.

"You knew people lived there."

"I knew."

"Then tell me something I don't already know."

He looked at Tessa before answering. "There had been attacks on collection wagons. I ordered the street sealed while the patrol searched the buildings. Seventy-two hours."

Tessa gave a short, empty laugh.

"They searched the bakery first. Took the baker when he asked for a receipt."

Adrian lowered his eyes.

I wanted him to explain it away. That was the worst part. Some shameful piece of me still wanted the man who had stepped between us and a silver blade to be innocent.

"I want the order," I said. "The original."

"It's in my study."

"Then we'll go there."

Celia moved to block his attempt to stand. "After I finish this dressing. You can answer questions sitting down."

For once, Adrian obeyed someone without argument.

I stayed beside Tessa. She caught the bandaged finger I had cut in the registry and turned my hand over, looking for other injuries.

"I'm all right," I whispered.

"You always say that when you aren't."

I couldn't meet her eyes.

She reached for the water beside her bed and missed the handle. I moved to help, then stopped when she shook her head. She steadied the cup with both hands and drank.

I waited until she had set it down before asking what she needed.

"For you to come back," she said. "Whatever you find in that house."

"I will."

When Celia released him, Gideon drove us back to Rook House. Tessa remained at the clinic with the other survivor. I told her where I was going and promised to return before noon.

Adrian traveled with one hand pressed to his left side. I watched the window.

In the study, he unlocked a shallow iron drawer and laid a folded order on the desk.

The paper had yellowed along the folds. Its watermark belonged to the Council's old mill contract. The ink at the signature had aged with the text.

I knew his handwriting now.

R-72. Briar Street. Temporary closure.

His name beneath it.

"You have your proof," he said.

"Don't tell me what I have."

I read the document to the end.

No resident was permitted to leave. The closure expired after seventy-two hours unless a fresh order was issued by the Council. There was no authority to transfer residents into Revenue custody.

"Who told you they were dead?"

"Revenue sent the report. Lenora Saye's office. They said a warehouse fire had spread through the closed section."

"Did you go?"

He didn't answer quickly enough.

"Did you look for bodies?"

"I sent a request for the casualty assessment. They returned the certificates."

"And you accepted them."

"Yes."

I pressed my palms against the desk. Three years of searching, and he had stopped at a stack of paper.

"The freight discrepancies began arriving on my desk last month," he said. "That was when I started asking again."

"You knew which street I was looking for on the first night."

His silence answered that too.

"You watched me read her name. You gave me a bedroom. You let me think—"

I stopped. I wouldn't tell him what I had begun to think.

"I should have told you," he said.

"You had several opportunities."

"I did."

He stood on the other side of the desk, close enough that I could see the strain beneath his eyes. I had touched him less than an hour ago. Helped hold him upright. Offered him my blood.

Now I folded the order away from him.

"This comes with me."

"All right."

"So do the register and the dispatch sheet."

He took them from the drawer and placed them beside my hand.

Upstairs, I packed my reference book and the few things I had brought from my stall. I left the brass key on the washstand.

Adrian was waiting at the foot of the stairs.

"The protection remains in force," he said. "Where you sleep doesn't change it."

"Don't send someone to watch me."

"I won't."

I walked past him and let myself out.

At the clinic, Tessa was asleep. I sat beside her until morning brightened the courtyard, listening to each breath.

When she woke, we spread the papers between us.

Her list contained transfers made months after the seventy-two-hour order expired. Each used the same authorization number, with an added mark she had copied from the ward clipboard.

"Continuing custody," Celia said. "That's what that mark means."

Someone had kept his temporary closure alive on paper for years.

I copied the discrepancy. Then I slept in a chair until the clinic bell woke me on the fourth evening.

A boy stood outside with a folded notice.

Celia read it once. Her mouth tightened.

"Compulsory screening. Revenue's inspecting every patient transferred from an unlicensed facility. They're coming at nine."

I took the notice.

The authorization bore yesterday's date.

"We didn't arrive until after midnight," I said.

"They could have issued a general order."

"It names your back room."

Celia read the line again.

Whatever story Revenue planned to tell, they had prepared the paperwork before they could officially have known who was here.

"We leave now," I said.

"I have patients who can't run."

"Then we don't make them run."

Tessa named an old printworks beside the disused tram depot. Its presses had been sold, but the caretaker still let displaced printers store their tools there.

Celia called him while I arranged a laundry cart from the neighboring boardinghouse. We moved the patients through the shared yard in blankets, with medicine packed beneath folded sheets.

It took forty minutes.

The caretaker opened the printworks side door. Tessa directed the bedding upstairs; I returned with Celia for the last medicine case.

Revenue officers were already sealing the clinic entrance.

We stopped in the shadow of the opposite alley.

One officer brushed paste over a notice and smoothed it onto the wall.

My name appeared in letters large enough to read across the street.

MARA VENN.

Wanted for falsification of death records and unlawful removal of Revenue personnel.

Below it, a smaller line invited the Council to revoke my protection.

Celia touched my sleeve.

I watched the officer press the corners flat.

The woman who had spent three years searching for a false death was now the woman accused of inventing it.