Night arrived like a slammed ledger cover. The warehouse smelled of oil and rain, the rain‑colored cloth folded tight over the ledger at Derrigan's elbow. Outside, the pier's usual geometry—lamps, ropes, the slow bob of boats—felt wrong, as if someone had shifted the margins. The courier's handwriting had promised a meeting; the guild's interest had sharpened; now other hands moved in the dark with the appetite of men who read names for profit.
Seo‑yeon paced the back room, boots whisper‑quiet on the boards, manifest clenched in one hand. Her watch schedule was economy and law; tonight it was also a map of points to defend. "They'll try to clear the gate first," she said, low and flat. "If they cut access, they can claim a rescue as their own and file it into a different ledger. Keep the ledger hidden. Keep the children away from windows."
Derrigan nodded. Oliphym was the shape he took when the city required quiet violence. He had learned to move without announcing himself and to read the sound of an alley like a ledger reads a margin. He checked the paper‑knife ward Hana had set and felt the loop of silver in his satchel like a promise. "Hana?" he asked.
Hana leaned by the workbench, eyes half on the ledger's raincloth, half on the knot of shadow outside. "I'll anchor the wards at the back and watch the seams," she said. "If anyone tries to read the margin with coin or calculation, the paper‑knife will flare and make it messy for them. I can make noise that sounds like a dockhand fight—draw attention that way. But if they bring blades…" Her fingers tightened around a small horn. "Then we need to be ready."
They set positions like players arranging pieces. Seo‑yeon would hold the front gate and the manifest—her lists were weapons of procedure; she used them to bluff and to file. Hana would sit in the mezzanine with a shallow bowl of salt and the horn, ready to scrabble a runic flare if the paper‑knife ward was tested. Derrigan would move between them, ledger on his person though he tried not to let it show, watching the dark for the shapes that did not belong.
The first contact came just after midnight: a shadow smoothing the pier like a hand over paper. Two men in well‑made coats tested the gate with polite knocks. Their emblem was not the guild's but a different mark—sharp as teeth—men who acted as brokers between guild and market, collectors by trade. They called out, voices cultivated to sound casual. "Keeper of accounts? An exchange. We bring witnesses for a civil inspection."
Seo‑yeon opened the gate a crack and let their words in a measured draught. Her posture said: clerk, not combatant. She slid a paper tray across the threshold—forms, receipts, a showing of paperwork that would make any inspector pause. "We're mid‑manifest," she said with a clipped calm. "If you have official verification, present it. Otherwise, wait for the board."
One of the men tried to push past her shoulder; the other reached for the ledger's raincloth where it lay hidden on a high shelf. That reach was an error. Seo‑yeon's body answered before thought. She stepped low, using the man's momentum to twist him off balance, a practiced, economic motion—ankle, hip—turning aggression into stumbling. Her other hand snatched the reaching man's wrist and twisted, a nonlethal torque that sent the man to the floor with a breath‑out grunt.
Derrigan moved like a shadow finding its own shadow. He stepped through the half‑open gate and into the fringe of lamplight, voice low. "We're closed for inventory." It was not a bluff. He had already counted the exits in his head and knew which window would be used next.
The second man recovered faster and lunged. Derrigan caught his sleeve, used the man's forward momentum to duck under and trip him against the crate—an old salvageman's throw learned in years of heavy lifting. The man hit wood and the ledger's rain‑colored cloth shifted in Derrigan's satchel as if settling. The fight was not graceful. It was necessary.
A second wave came from the pier: three figures with the gait of those who expect violence to pay. They came up fast, blades flashing in the weak light. Hana reacted first—the horn in her hand clicked, a high note that made the paper‑knife ward hum. It was an irritant to those who read ledgers as commodity; to the attackers it felt like a static in the head, a confusion that made their steps miss their aim by inches.
Seo‑yeon met the closest with a heavy board she'd prepared as a shield. It was not noble, but it bought seconds. She pushed, parried, and pushed again, her motions practical and harsh: elbow to jaw, foot to shin. Each movement revealed her skill—the logistics woman who had learned to move a body as if it were a package to be rearranged.
Derrigan kept to the edges of the scuffle, pulling and redirecting, using cramped spaces to make the attackers' numbers feel larger than they were. He was not fast in the flashy way, but he read openings and closed them with tools—rope loops, a spool of wire, the edge of a salvaged pipe used as a hook to catch a coat and send a man swinging into a stack of crates.
One assailant reached for the mezzanine ladder. Hana hissed and flung a coil of light salt that scattered over his boots; his balance lost traction on the rope's dust and he slid, cursing, out of the fight. The paper‑knife ward flared along the ledger's edge like a small ember; one of the attackers staggered backward, clutching his head, as if the book itself had spilled a sound into his skull.
In the chaos Minji slept on, a thin blanket piled over him, the fever finally broken. Haeun stayed close to the sill, small fists white around the wooden horse. Derrigan's chest tightened with a feral protectiveness. He used that tightness like a lens—direct, without theatrics. When a man tried to circle and barge past Seo‑yeon toward the sleeping cot, Derrigan intercepted with a low, precise strike that knocked the wind out of the attacker and left him dazed on the planks.
The fight lasted long enough to be exhausting and short enough that the city's quiet did not fully wake. When the last man on the pier heard the keening of a distant trawler horn and judged the balance shifted, they slunk back to the shadow and melted away like ink in rain. The warehouse smelled of sweat and oil and a thin, coppery tang that made Derrigan think of the ledger's cedar and coin notes.
They gathered quickly. Seo‑yeon counted heads and inventory—three assailants down, two routed, ledger accounted for, children unharmed. Hana checked the ward: the paper‑knife had held where it mattered; the silver loop warmed in Derrigan's satchel like a satisfied heart. Derrigan sat heavily on a crate and unwrapped the rain‑colored cloth, fingers trembling only a little as he set the ledger on his knees.
The margins were quiet, but the five sigils pulsed faintly, like nerves that had been tested and found intact. Derrigan traced the straight‑rule mark and found it steadier than before, as if the ledger had learned a small new law: hands that reached for what it kept would meet resistance. He made a short entry, pen moving with deliberate, guarded strokes: Midnight attack repelled; ledger secure; ward held; recommend increased watch and discreet allies.
Seo‑yeon cleaned a shallow cut on her knuckle with a practiced hand and offered a brisk, humorless grin. "Next time they bring better coin or longer lists." Her voice held both warning and a small, tired pride. "We did what needed to be done."
Hana packed her tools into the satchel, her face thoughtful. "They were probing for ownership," she said. "Not mere curiosity. The ledger draws types. You should expect recruiters and men who think binding is tidy work."
Derrigan rested his palm on the ledger as if offering thanks and protection in the same motion. The book answered with a faint warmth, the kind that had comforted him when he first learned it could answer at all. Outside, the harbor slept with a new caution; inside, the household breathed as one small, battered ledger of its own.
They set new measures for the night: two watches, the manifest doubled, an extra false trail for any courier who might come sniffing. Seo‑yeon locked the front gate and slid a false bill between boards where only she knew to find it. Hana taught Derrigan a simple warding knot to tie at the ledger's binding—no binding of ownership, she emphasized, only a marker to make the book less legible to certain eyes.
Before they finally leaned back against the quiet, Derrigan wrote one more line in the margin, smaller than the others but sharp as an edge: We keep. We answer. We do not sell. The sigils in the margin brightened like small endorsements, and for the first time since the book had begun to answer, Derrigan felt less alone in what he guarded.
Beyond the warehouse wall someone was already making notes—an emissary, a recipient of rumors, or a broker filing away names for later. The ledger's math had been tested and held, but the numbers had shifted. The fight cleared the gate tonight; the city had taken notice. The ledger, with its five quiet voices, had answered by keeping, and the keepers had proved they would fight to preserve what it contained. The accounting had changed, and so had the cost of keeping it.