They argued the merits of secrecy and speed the way men argue over bread types—loudly and with a thin thread of stubbornness. Emberfall's hedges lay behind them like a small, stitched town in a well-worn quilt; ahead, the road to Grayhaven unrolled in a line of dusty trade. Dalen had grunted when Kael told him they would go—part warning, part resignation. "Take a watch," he had said, "and speak little. Cities smell of coin and curiosity; both can be dangerous." Kael had nodded. He had learned that the council's cautions were not shackles but sensible cords.
Grayhaven was a city that wore its age in layers: a ring of new stone around older walls, banners flapping with guild symbols, and streets that remembered the feet of strangers. Merchants shouted in many tongues; the air tasted of sea and tar and cooking oils. Liora moved through it like someone who'd always known maps by heart—eyes catching the way awnings bent, where shadow pooled between stalls, where men with ledgers liked to watch the comings and goings.
They sought Merrin Voss because Kess had given a name and because names in markets are like threads—follow one and you might find a loom. Merrin's shop sat down a crooked alley that smelled of ink and old leather. A narrow wooden sign hung over the door: MERRIN — CARTOGRAPHER & REMNANT-READER. The window was crowded with rolled parchments and compass shadows; inside, the place smelled of dust and the precise geometry of plans.
Merrin himself was all small bones and long hands—an old, quick man who looked as if his fingers had been sharpened on fringes of maps. His hair was a silver that did not so much grow as collect around an otherwise plain skull. He did not ask for names. He asked instead how many roads they had crossed that day and whether their boots had mud from river reeds or from the city moat. He listened as if counting things in his head.
When Liora laid the coin-plate on his table and slid the scale across the wood, he did not widen his eyes so much as the room. He ran a long nail along the plate's edge and hummed—a tiny, surprised sound that meant more than a spoken word in Grayhaven. Merrin's fingers read runes like a man reads knots, hands moving with the certainty of someone who had learned to trust the language of things.
"You boys tread a path not many in Emberfall have the appetite to walk," he said finally. His voice was dry as old paper. "Gates are not curiosities. They are business. They are danger. They are debts."
"Who uses them?" Arin asked bluntly, the city making him more forward than he'd ever been at home.
Merrin's eyes flicked to Kael and then to the shadow that lay at the seam of Kael's sleeve where the braid showed through like a darker stitch. He did not comment on the shadow itself—professional men rarely remark where there is nothing to profit from—but he did mark it with a look that meant: things that listen to night are worth watching.
"There are gatewrights once, and wardwrights later," Merrin said. "Factions set up around doors—laborers of the seam and those who want to close what should be sealed. In the old days, kings hired mapmakers to keep track of the doors they owned. Now? Now, merchants, cults, and thieves with better knives than souls look for anything that promises a shortcut to what's valuable."
He set the coin-plate beneath a candle and, with a shaky hand, traced the runes in the candlelight. Liora's bead at her belt mimicked the motion and flared faintly, as if two readers compared notes. Merrin tapped one rune and sighed. "This mark is a binding more than a gate-key. Someone used this plate to secure passage—or to mark a lock that should not be forgotten."
"You can read it?" Liora asked, breath thin with something like hope.
"I can read its family," Merrin corrected. "I can tell you what kind of latch it belongs to, what weight it expected, what cadence of light will answer it. But a full translation—that needs books that sleep in vaults and the patience of a man who does not mind dust in his teeth." He pushed aside a stack of scrolls and produced a map so old its edges had been softened by many hands. The ink in the border sketched archways that leaned into other maps. "There's a registry. The city kept one. If these plates are breadcrumbs, the registry is, perhaps, the baker's ledger that lists where crumbs were dropped and why."
Kael felt a small tightening in his chest. Registry. Ledger. Words he understood—a list that could be read, counted, argued over. Merrin saw the look and smiled something like a fox. "I can help you find that registry," he said, "but it will cost you." He did not name money first. "I want—" he paused and considered—"a favor to be called due when I choose. I am old. I am curious. I once lost a map that had a note on it: 'To the Gate of Glass, keep the light small.' I would pay now—if a boy had a hand steady enough to fetch it from the ruins beyond the north road."
Liora bristled and then softened; favors in Grayhaven were bargains dressed in softer words. "What do you ask?" she said.
"A trip," Merrin said. "A hand to fetch my lost sketch from a ruined estate off the north trade. I cannot go—my knees do the wrong angles now. You three can." He tapped the coin-plate. "Bring me the map and I open the registry for you. I will show you which plates belong to which doors, where the old wards were placed, and perhaps how to close them if need be. I will also warn you who walks the city with eyes on plates."
Kael felt the ledger of his life shift: a new line, a favor owed, a doorway to knowledge. He thought of the pool and the token and of the creature that had left the scale. Knowledge cost. He looked at Arin—whose grin had settled into a steady jaw—and at Liora, whose eyes glittered with the clean hunger of problem-solving.
"We will fetch it," Arin said before Kael could force the thought into careful speech. He liked the adventure in the way a knife likes an edge.
Kael said nothing for a long moment. He thought of Dalen's warning about unnecessary displays and of Kess's advice to keep friends who can read light. Merrin Voss offered them maps and warnings and a price that tied them to someone who could open doors to ledgers. It was practical. It was dangerous.
"Agreed," Kael said at last, and the word felt like a weight and like a key at once.
Merrin smiled, small and pleased. "Good," he said. "I will prepare copies and give you a list: supplies, a knife for cutting vines, a lamp that will not eat a man's sight, and—" He glanced at Kael's sleeve and the way the shadow hummed—"—and a warning: do not let strangers know you carry plates. Keep them beneath linens or within the bead's dark pocket. There are ears in Grayhaven that will trade a boy for a map."
They left Merrin's shop with a booted list and a new ledger entry. On their way out, Kess caught their sleeves and pressed a small, folded scrap into Liora's hand: a crude sketch of a caravan route and a name—North Hollow Ruins—scribbled in hurried ink. "If you go," he said, "Merrin will teach you maps. But learn what it is to trust a city man's favor. Ask him more than he gives until he earns it."
Kael cradled the coin-plate under his cloak as if it were an animal; the scale lay in Liora's palm like a dark, patient gem. The road back to Emberfall felt longer than the road to Grayhaven had been, full of new facts and new debts. He thought of the pool and the creature across it, of the registry Merrin had promised, and of the favor they now owed.
Knowledge, he had discovered, was rarely free. It was the kind of debt that asks for pieces of you in return: time, blood, courage, errands. Kael did not yet know how much of himself he would trade for a ledger that told where doors were kept. He only knew that the mapmaker's promise opened a corridor of choices—some that might help him guard Emberfall, others that might drag the city's hunger to their hedges.
When night fell and Emberfall's lamps blinked like small, careful eyes, Kael sat with his notebook and wrote, under the day's entry, a single line: Merrin Voss — registry lead. Fetch map from North Hollow. Favor due. Keep plates hidden. He underlined the last line until the pencil line darkened to black.
The shadow at his wrist thrummed once—as if acknowledging the weight of debts and the taste of maps—and Kael put his staff by the door and tried to sleep with the feeling that the world had grown a little wider, and that the seams they had found had already begun to draw other hands toward them.