Dawn came thin and patient, like a line of ink drying across a page. Derrigan woke to the small sounds of the warehouse: the smaller child breathing in even, regular rhythms; Seo‑yeon moving in the kitchen, the clink of spoons; a seagull complaining somewhere beyond the rooftops. He lay still for a moment with the ledger at his elbow and let the quiet settle like dust into the corners of the room.
There were errands to run. The ward board's follow‑up in three days sat like a small calendar entry in his mind, a deadline that made every choice a slow calculation. He dressed and found Seo‑yeon already awake, tea steaming in a chipped mug. She handed him a folded manifest: lists of names, a sketch of the sigil cleaned up, a note about the union man's emblem circled in red.
"I called a contact at the harbor office," she said. "They'll keep an eye out for any official inquiries. The verifier's sympathetic, but sympathy doesn't stop inspectors."
He took the tea and tasted the heat like a bracing promise. "We'll be ready," he said, though he felt the ledger's weight tighten at his wrist, a tension he couldn't name.
They moved through the morning with small, efficient choreography. Seo‑yeon took the larger child to the market to barter for cloth; Derrigan patched the smaller one's cap and walked the perimeter for signs that anyone had watched them during the night. The city offered small kindnesses in return—an anonymous loaf left at the door, a seamstress's knot still warm where someone had tied it from the outside.
Back at the workbench he opened the ledger and read the entries from the past three days. The handwriting that wasn't his threaded through pages: someone's weather notes in a precise hand; a joke in a cramped, slanted script; the stern admonition—Bind with care; ledgers keep more than names—stamped in an older ink that made him wonder who had owned the book before him. He ran his thumb along the spine and paused at the margin where the ash‑marked child's name lay. The arrow that had formed the night before no longer pointed down the page; it had broken into five faint sigils, each different in shape—one like a slow comma, one like a sharp notch, one like a small spiral, one like a straight rule, and one like a drop. They were so faint he might have missed them if he had not been looking for surprises.
He frowned. The ledger had been doing small, polite things—rearranging a word, warming under his palm—but this was new: five impressions in a line, arranged like a sentence that waited for the right reader. He touched them lightly. They answered him with nothing he could name, only a sense, like five people in a room breathing at once, each with its own rhythm. Derrigan closed the book and set it on the table as if not to wake them.
A knock came at the door. A courier this time, younger than the last, with a satchel and a face that tried to look unremarkable. He handed over a sealed envelope with no return, only a single line penned on the outside: For the keeper of accounts — from interested parties.
Derrigan slit it open. Inside was a small card and three coins clipped into a neat row. The card bore a single sentence in deliberate script: There are ledgers that answer. There are also hands that claim them. A discreet offer of purchase followed, polite and clinical: two weeks' wages and safe passage for the wards.
He looked at the three coins. They were new, a merchant mint he recognized—good enough to buy silence in many places. Seo‑yeon leaned in, eyes sharp. "They want to buy you out," she said flatly. "Or rent you."
"Neither," he said. He felt the ledger at his side like a patient animal. "People aren't inventory."
The courier's shoulders twitched as if hearing an unspoken rule. He shrugged and left with the same careful steps he'd used to arrive. Derrigan closed his hand around the coins out of habit, then let them rest on the table untouched. Offers were the city's way of testing resolve.
Seo‑yeon made a face. "We'll file a refusal notice. And we'll log this in the ledger." She pushed a fresh sheet toward him. "Transparency is a kind of shield."
He wrote the entry cleanly: Offer received; three coins attached; declined. Names of courier and description recorded. He added the warehouse's address and the time. The ledger accepted the entry and, for the first time since the five sigils had shown, one of them deepened—not visibly, but as if under his skin he could feel a single heartbeat matching it. It was the smallest of sensations, a thread tugged. The sigil that answered was the one that had looked like a straight rule.
"You felt that?" Seo‑yeon asked.
He nodded. "Like someone asserting a boundary."
She tapped the margin with a nail. "Whoever left that note knows how to talk without shouting. That's dangerous."
They spent the afternoon shoring things up. Derrigan made lists and contingency plans in the ledger—who to call if inspectors arrive; where to hide the ledger if necessary; who could be trusted to deliver food without asking questions. Seo‑yeon set up small alarms—strings and cans patched to trip at a doorway—and taught the larger child how to hold still and make small, quiet noises that meant danger without panic.
As dusk pulled itself over the harbor, the ward board's verifier sent a message: The documents were in order; a temporary guardianship had been provisionally granted pending a home‑visit and a background check. For a breath Derrigan let relief wash over him. Then he remembered the guild man's words—Names have value—and the courier's polite offer. Official recognition bought time, but it also put a label on the children that others might find useful.
That night, after the children slept and the warehouse hummed with low, careful breathing, Derrigan opened the ledger one more time. The five sigils were there in the margin, clearer now that he looked, each pressed like a stamp onto the edge of the page. He ran his finger over the first—the straight rule. It felt like a hand laying down law. He touched the spiral and felt something else: a small, private laugh, like a memory of a joke he had not yet heard.
He did not try to name what they were. He only set the book down and folded the raincloth over it. The ledger was doing more than answer; it was beginning to speak in voices that were not his—a line of company he had not invited but could not disown.
Before he slept he wrote one more thing in the margin, smaller than the rest: Do not sell; protect and account. It was a vow he made aloud, soft and strict at once. The ledger warmed beneath his palm, and for a moment he imagined the five sigils arranging themselves around the phrase like five guardians circling a fire.
Outside, on the pier, a figure moved with the slow certainty of someone who watches ledgers for a living. In a pocket, a different coin marker gleamed—an emblem that matched no guild Derrigan knew, but which would be recognized later by those who read trade marks and old loyalties. The city, which kept its own accounts, had noticed the ledger's balance slipping toward a new column. Something answered the tilt, and the tilt answered back. The math of it was only beginning.