Morning tastes like metal and boiled tea. The yard is awake in the small formal way of places that have learned to keep secrets together: Corin whistling a tune he pretends not to like, Jeong polishing tools with nervous ceremony, Hae‑In turning pages like a priest checking an alphabet of sins. The ledger sits between us on the table, its margins full of the blunt commands that have kept us alive: No trades. Protect nodes. Find gardener.
System: Suggested task — Coordinate coalition members for node patrol. Reward: 700 XP.
The System frames everything as procedures. I frame it as people who will stand up when called.
We meet with the vault keepers and Sook from the shelter to form a small coalition—keepers, engineers, and people who have more reasons than money to keep names where they belong. Min draws a rough patrol schedule and Amira suggests rotating couriers to avoid patterns. Corin insists on contingency plans and Jeong volunteers for midnight runs with an enthusiasm that looks like bravery and homework mixed.
"The market's a nervous animal," Corin says. "We keep it fed with decoys and truth. Mariel's out there sniffing for weak seams. She'll test us."
Hae‑In maps out the nodes we have confirmed and the ones we suspect. The gardener's tags form a loose net across public places that hold meaning: depots, greenhouses, clinics, a tram stop with a plaque some people still touch for luck. Whoever planted those tags thought about where memory naturally gravitates. Whoever hunts them knows that, too. Whoever trades them has the stomach to make a market of grief.
We split into three teams to check two nodes each and to keep the city too busy to think about the ledger. My team takes a tram stop where commuters leave hurried notes in chipped mailboxes and a small public garden where an old woman feeds pigeons like payments. There's a human logic to these spots—busy enough to hide small things, visible enough that people notice if someone tampers.
At the tram stop Echo Sight shows a faint afterimage of hands sliding something into a hollow under the bench: a practiced motion. The gardener must have been careful; the placement is easy to find if you know where to look and impossible to sell without someone noticing. I trace the bench's seam and find another tag tucked deep in a groove. The gardener's symbol is stamped half‑gone, worn like a coin handled by many.
When I lift the tag a small cloud of dust rises and with it a memory tread: laughter in a voice I half recognize and the smell of rain on warm stone. The sensation knocks at the edge of me—there's a name there that wants to reassemble. My chest clenches. I push it back into the tag like a plate you don't want to break.
On the way back to the yard a youngster I sometimes see at the market—thin as a promise and sharper as a coin edge—runs up and hands me a folded paper. "Saw you checking the bench," he says, breathless. "Thought you might like this." Inside is a quick scrawl: WATCH YOUR LEFT SIDE WHEN YOU WALK PAST THE EAST GATE. Simple, anonymous, useful.
Someone watches us. Maybe Mariel. Maybe someone else. The city's kindness shows up as notes sometimes and as knives other times. We treat the warning like a courtesy and adjust routes. Paranoia makes bad partners but good planning.
That night as we rotate patrols, Hae‑In shares a transcription she's been working on—a series of short logs in the gardener's hand that were folded into a pocket and hidden in a seed packet. They're not technical so much as moral; she reads one aloud: They deserve rooms, not labels. The gardener's voice is careful and angry in a way that makes me proud to be following breadcrumbs.
We decide to send a quiet message to Mariel—no threats, no invitations—just a simple line: We don't trade names. If you want to talk, we will listen. It's a coin flipped to show we know how to be reasonable, not soft. The note goes through a channel that smells like old favors and unfinished debts.
Two nights later a small, clean envelope arrives on the yard gate with no flourish. Inside is a single sentence written in a hand that doesn't bother to be coy: GOOD. MEET ME MIDNIGHT, EAST BRIDGE. NO ARMS.
Hae‑In studies the paper like a woman reading the weather. She folds it and tucks it into her pocket without comment. Corin says nothing because Corin is good with plans and bad with lies. I go because I want answers and because leaving questions to rot is how people start making the wrong bargains.
Midnight at the east bridge smells like river and old promises. The bridge is a narrow span with a rusted railing and a light that flickers when the wind remembers how to be cruel. I stand with hands empty and the ledger wrapped in a satchel at my feet. Hae‑In stays back in the shadows; Corin is not with me because he refuses to be someone's bargaining chip.
A figure arrives—small, hooded, face shaded but not unnerving. Mariel steps into the light with the measured confidence of someone used to walking edges. She has no weapons visible, only a purse and a patience that doubles as armor.
"You're making enemies," she says without preamble. It's an observation, not an accusation.
"We're keeping names," I say. It's blunt. It's true.
She looks at me for a long moment and then laughs very softly. "You're the sort who gets noble before realizing the ledger's cost. Admirable. Dangerous."
"Are you here to make a price?" I ask.
"No," she says. "Not tonight." She hesitates. "I trade in information more than names. I deal in how to find things, not necessarily how to sell them. You've made enemies. You've also made friends. That complicates the market."
"Who sent the brokers?" Hae‑In calls from the shadows. She steps forward now—no theatrics, just presence.
Mariel meets her eyes. "Not all brokers answer to the same hand. Some work for profit, some for revenge, some for power. The man with the suit you saw is a collector; the man with the clean face answers to someone with more teeth." She pauses like she's considering what to spill. "You're in the center of something that could pay out or burn down. You should know which."
"Then tell us," I say. The ledger is a weight at my feet and the city hums like an animal with a secret.
Mariel exhales and gives a small, precise shrug. "There are investors. They like provenance. They like stories. There are groups who want control over who remembers what. There's a name you should worry about hearing: THE TRUST. They give legitimacy to memory markets. If the ledger reaches their desks, you'll get offers and threats in equal measure."
The Trust. The word sits like a coin under a shoe—important and dangerous. Hae‑In swallows. The gardener's notes never used that name, which means the gardener either didn't know or refused to acknowledge structures by their titles.
"Why help us?" I ask. "Why not sell the ledger page and be done?"
Mariel watches me like a man reading an unreadable map. "Because not everyone in my line of work wants to sell people's lives," she says. "Some of us like keeping our hands clean enough that we can sleep. Also—" she tilts her head—"because your ledger makes bad actors nervous. That has value."
It's the market's strange sympathy: protect what undermines bigger profits. She leaves with no handshake, only a last look that is equal parts warning and counsel.
We walk back to the yard in the hard gray of near dawn. The ledger feels heavier now because names like The Trust are not crumbs you follow without gloves. They are bridges that lead to places with doors and men in suits who like to be paid in compliance.
I write in the ledger in large, certain letters: Watch the Trust. Build alliances. Keep gardener secret.
The city is a collection of compromises and small mercies. Tonight we gained a name to fear and a reason to tighten our circle. Tomorrow we will check more nodes and teach more couriers. For now, the ledger is a map and a defiant promise: we keep names with names, and we will not let markets turn people into currency.