Dawn came cold and sharp. The lamps along the north bridge still held their last glow when I arrived. Mist hung over the canal like a slow breath. I tugged my hood down and waited against a stone pillar, watching faces pass by. My palms were empty but for the faint hum of the slate against my ribs and the cloth that hid Kuraihane. Both felt heavier than they should.
Alen appeared like someone part of the morning, not someone who had to cut his hours to see it. He moved without hurry, but there was an economy to his step that said he had measured this city in risk and reward. He nodded once when he saw me.
"You kept your word and your face," he said. "That is worth more than coin sometimes."
"You run a crew?" I asked. My voice had a question in it that was both cautious and hopeful.
"A hand of five when I am generous," he said. "We do escorts, retrievals, routes that refuse guild scrutiny. We take jobs guilds consider messy or impossible. You understand a blade and a dark path. You want in or you want out?"
"I want in," I said. Saying it made my chest colder and steadier both.
He looked me over. "You know the rule. No relics in plain sight. No grand claims. Secrets are a tax we all pay. You got any scars I should know about aside from the usual?"
I touched the scar on my thumb. He grunted. "Good. That means you can bleed and keep walking."
We walked together to a narrow courtyard behind a spice merchant. There the crew gathered like a small court of practical people. A broad woman wiped her hands on a strip of cloth and introduced herself as Mira. Her eyes were quick and assessing. A lanky kid with a thrown-together harness checked a bundle of ropes and said his name was Jori. A short man with a laugh like broken bells tuned a crossbow, he introduced himself as Halven. There was also an older man, quiet and kind of raw, who kept to the shadows and nodded at me once.
Alen put a hand to his chin. "We are taking a run to a small caravan route outside the middle ring. A merchant wagon lost its way through a sink of quickglass and is stuck. The goods are not priceless but they pay and they are not riddled with guild strings. Move fast, move clean, take what we can carry, leave the rest. Pay up front from the crew purse and the rest split. You do not talk and you do what you are told. You okay with that?"
I said yes. Yes is a small word for the way my stomach clenched and my hands forgot to tremble.
We left before the sun climbed. The city sighed behind us. The road out was a narrow ribbon of packed stone between low hedges and the occasional sentinel tower. The crew moved like a single animal. Mira kept one side. Halven stayed back with the crossbow. Jori hummed and looped ropes. Alen was all eyes.
The sink of quickglass sat like a scar across a stretch of flatland. The merchant wagon had sunk to its axles in a pit of polished, sparkling quartz that sucked at the wood. Two horses stood with their heads low, frightened and trembling. Around the pit a handful of scavengers lurked, cheap knives and bad teeth. They eyed us as a meal and a promise.
Alen whispered a plan. Mira and I would move close for the horses. Jori would flank and try to pry the shafts with the ropes. Halven covered our backs. If anyone tried to cut us off we moved.
I kept my hand away from Kuraihane. The sword sat wrapped and patient, a heartbeat under cloth. I did not want to draw eyes or questions. I had learned enough to know the world judged risk before reason. I also knew that if things went wrong my blade could do what it had done before. That was a dangerous comfort.
We stepped closer.
The scavengers lunged with venom in their arms. Mira met them with a shove and a clean, practiced strike that took the nearest wind out of his ribs. I moved with Mira, not because I trusted our plan but because I trusted the rhythm of fight she offered. I drove my shoulder between a scavenger and the horses, then twisted and planted my foot. A blade came at my side and I blocked with the flat of my blade and felt a pain that was more annoyance than injury.
Halven's crossbow barked and two of the scavengers folded. Jori's ropes found the wagon shafts and he and Mira hauled while I cut down a man who tried to climb our flank. The fight was close and loud and stupid. I tasted iron. My cloak snagged on a splintered barb and tore.
When the scavengers realized the crew was not an easy meal they broke like dogs and vanished into the scrub. The horses trembled but did not bolt. We worked as fast as we could, greasing the axle with an emergency resin and heaving on ropes. The wagon groaned and shifted. The merchant, a thin man with a face like weathered paper, kept muttering thanks in a language I did not know.
We loaded what we could salvage. The merchant's goods were mundane but clean. Barrels of salted fish, crates of pottery, bolts of rough cloth. Not glamour, but honest work with honest pay. We strapped things to the wagon and to our backs and set a watch for the trip back.
On the return the road was quieter. The sun pushed up like a fist and forced away the morning cool. Halven joked, Mira rolled her eyes, Jori whistled a little tune that had no place worrying the job. Alen kept glancing at me like he was keeping a score in his mind.
At the market that afternoon we slid the merchant into a stall and exchanged goods for coin. The split was decent enough. My share was a number that felt real and not imaginary. Veilmarks for honest work. Not the windfall of a hydra core but steadier and easier to hide from eyes that sniffed for relics.
We split the earnings in the shade of a tavern wall. The crew counted and joked and argued like family. Alen handed me my piece.
"Not bad for a morning," he said. "You moved well. You kept your head. You did not brag."
"That is my only skill so far," I said. The coins were cold in my palm.
Mira leaned in, her grin easy now. "You fight like you have something to prove. Not many keep their edge and their patience at the same time. That was good."
"Why do you do this," I asked Alen as we walked away. "Why risk it for work like this? Why not join the guild?"
Alen's boots kicked a pebble. He thought for a moment. "Guilds bind and tax and watch. We cut out a piece of life they do not want to handle. There is money in it. There is also freedom, and that is a currency you will only understand the longer you keep it."
We walked until the shadows lengthened and the smell of stew floated from a dozen doorways. The crew dispersed to their corners. Alen stopped at the span of a small bridge and turned to me.
"If you want to stay with us you will train and run and we will expect things of you. We will also keep your secrets if you can keep ours. You will be useful but not comfortable. That is the price."
"I will stay," I said. It felt truer than it had before.
We arranged a small payment up front from the purse. It was not grand but it meant food and a room and a chance to sleep without weighing my blade on my ribs like a confession. For the first time since the sword had chosen me, I bought something that did not smell like urgency.
That night at the Emberlight Rest they set a bowl in front of me as if nothing remarkable had happened. The stew steamed and the bread was warm. I ate until my hands were steady and my breath was even. The room smelled of clean linen and candle wax. I lay down on a bed that did not sag and did not whisper of thieves.
I slept long and hard and dreamed of maps that were not cages, of a crew that did not ask what lay beneath my cloak, and of a floor in the Spire where I did not have to hide to be brave. When morning came I woke with the taste of hope like metal on my tongue and a name that did not taste like shame.