Bellon Mill looked worse up close.
From the square it had always just been another dead thing South Mill had gotten used to stepping around. Brick shell. Jammed wheel. Windows cracked or blind with soot. But once Kael crossed the yard with Ash at his heel and Talia behind him, the place stopped being scenery and turned back into a building. A bad one. Leaning walls. Sagging roofline. One side of the upper loft caved in enough that moonlight cut through the rafters in crooked silver bars.
The front doors had long since been taken for firewood.
They went in through the gap where they used to be.
The smell hit first. Wet timber. Flour turned sour in the walls. River damp working up through the stones below. Ash slowed just inside the threshold and lowered his head, not hunting now, just reading the place.
Talia used the butt of her spear to prod aside a drift of old burlap.
You can tell nobody respectable comes here.
Kael glanced at the broken milling stones in the dark. Because it smells like history and piss.
Exactly.
Their footsteps sounded wrong on the planks. Too loud in some spots, swallowed in others. The mill floor had partly rotted through near the west wall where rain came in. They kept to the middle, where the old grain hopper still cast a thick shadow and the boards, ugly as they were, at least answered with solid creaks instead of empty ones.
The panel stirred behind Kael's eyes.
ARCHIVE THREADLOWER LEVEL
He found the cellar hatch under a pile of split slats and a collapsed handcart. Bellon Mill had once stored flour on the dry shelves down there, Joren had said. The hatch itself was iron-banded oak and swollen with years of damp. Talia wedged the spear tip into the seam and leaned until the wood gave with a sour groan.
Cold air climbed out of the dark.
Not fresh-cold. Cellar cold. The kind that lived in the ground and kept old smells on purpose.
Talia peered down. I hate stairs when I can't see the bottom.
You hate most things.
I'm selective.
The steps were stone, slick with mildew near the base, and ended at a narrow landing with black water pooled over half the room. The old shelving on the far wall did sit above the floodline, just like Joren said. Mostly empty now. A few burst sacks slumped there in gray clumps. One broken jar.
Ash moved ahead of them and stopped so suddenly Kael nearly stepped into him.
The hatchling's smoke had gone thin again. He was staring at the left wall where the stone showed darker in one patch than the rest, as if it had been repaired badly a long time ago.
Talia lifted the lantern. The new mortar was visible once she got the light close enough.
There, Kael said.
Talia rapped the stone with the shaft of her spear.
Hollow.
Of course it's hollow.
Kael looked at the black water pooled over the floor. We could leave.
We won't, she said.
Fair.
The loose stones came out easier than expected. Whoever hid them had planned for return, not forever. Behind the false wall sat a shallow cavity lined in pitch-black wax, dry inside despite the cellar damp. Three ledger books. Two bundles of folded paper wrapped in flour cloth. One small iron box no bigger than a brick.
Talia whistled under her breath. Well. Joren was useful.
The first ledger was kitchen stock. Flour in, flour out, names half missing. The second one changed halfway through. Same hand at first. Then a tighter hand taking over, cleaner and more frightened.
Night feed. Yard transfer. Collar replacement. Animal loss.
No. Not animal.
Stock.
The third ledger was the wrong one.
No title on the front. Just a strip of wax under the cover and the hooked-circle mark pressed into it. The pages had been written close, margins full too, as if whoever kept it had known paper might run out before time did.
Talia leaned over his shoulder. That's not bookkeeping. That's confession.
The name on the first full page was Mara Den.
Kael turned the page.
Night intake again. Vey buyers in after bell. Brought two kennel men and one Hall observer who pretended not to see the children's chain marks. Annex Eight still sends broken stock down to us to "test for transfer." The men upstairs call it transfer when a claim starts skipping from beast to beast. When it lands in a handler they call it contamination. When it kills, they call it sickness.
Talia read the last line twice. Children's what.
Kael kept reading.
Master Pell says the line can be tamed if begun young enough, bonded early enough, and starved often enough. They're trying old hunter blood on the new black clutch now. One hatched wrong. Didn't take the first handler. Didn't take the second either. Watched both die. House Vey wants the shells burned. House Merrow wants the whole clutch moved. Hall wants records cut and renamed under municipal stock if any survive.
The lantern hissed softly behind them.
Talia went very still. Black clutch.
Ash stood at Kael's knee with his head tilted toward the book, smoke lifting in one faint ribbon. Through the bond Kael felt no understanding, not exactly. Recognition maybe.
He turned another page.
The writing changed there. Less tidy. Faster.
M. Pell gone. Collar room blood to the drain. They say the stock did it, but the keys were wrong after. I checked. Someone opened cages before the riot and then let us call it riot. I have hidden one egg from the black clutch in Bellon storage under flour wax. If the yard burns, the books go too. If someone finds this later, do not let the houses collar what hatches. The line is not made for service. It keeps score.
Talia let out her breath very slowly. That is a sentence.
Kael read the line again.
Not made for service. It keeps score.
The words fit Ash too well. The way he marked prey. The way he punished hunter beasts. The way he had looked at Davin's second hound without ever touching it.
At the edge of his sight, the panel rose cleanly.
BLACK CLUTCH RECORD FOUNDCLAIM MEMORY STIRRED
He set the ledger down and opened the first flour-wrapped packet.
Loose notes. Names. Dates. A list of yard boys who had disappeared. A list of donor houses sending money into Annex Nine under other names. House Vey was there. So was Merrow. Three others Kael did not know yet.
The second packet held maps.
Old kennel tunnels under Northwatch. Feed lines. Drain routes. A line in red wax from Annex Nine down toward the river cut, then broken off near South Mill with two words in the margin.
Emergency bury.
Talia looked from the map to the black water around their boots. Emergency bury what.
Maybe stock. Maybe records.
Maybe both, Kael said.
The iron box took longer.
There was no key. Talia offered her spear point. Kael offered the short Hall knife. The box gave in with a rusted snap.
Inside lay one strip of black shell wrapped in oilcloth.
Not a whole eggshell. Just a shard. Burnt dark, almost glossy under the lantern, with a faint seam line that made Kael's stomach drop the way it had at the Hall when he first saw the "dead" egg on the tray.
Ash pressed closer.
The bond between them tightened so hard it almost hurt.
Don't, Kael said automatically.
The shard was warm.
Not from his hand. Warm on its own.
The panel flashed so bright he nearly shut his eyes.
CLAIM ECHO PRESENTFIRST CLAIM PATH NEAR
The cellar changed.
Not the room. Him.
A pressure moved through the bond, low and old and hungry in a way Ash had never been. For one sharp instant Kael wasn't looking at the shell in his hand. He was seeing from somewhere lower, closer to the ground, through iron bars and straw and old blood. He felt thirst. Rage. The certainty that whoever held the keys was already prey and simply did not know it yet.
Then it was gone.
Kael hit the shelf hard with one shoulder.
Talia grabbed his arm before he went into the floodwater. Hey.
He swallowed once, twice. Fine.
That didn't look fine.
Ash was bristling now, smoke tearing off him in ragged bands. Not at Kael. At the shell shard.
The hatchling took one step toward it and the whole cellar dropped colder.
Kael heard it then.
A scrape.
Stone on stone, somewhere below the floodline.
Talia heard it too. She straightened at once and lowered the spear. Tell me that was a rat.
Too heavy, Kael said.
The scrape came again.
Then a wet knock from under the floor.
Both of them looked down.
The black water pooled over the cellar stones was trembling in slow circles.
The map, Talia said. Emergency bury.
Yeah.
That wasn't stock, was it.
Kael did not answer because the answer was already climbing through the bond in sharp little warning pulses from Ash.
The panel flickered.
BROKEN CLAIMS BELOWDO NOT OPEN THE FLOOR
Talia stared at his face. I'm starting to think I should hate when you get that look.
You probably should.
The wet knock came a third time, harder now, directly under the stones by the far shelf. The old mortar between the slabs darkened. Something pushed once from below.
Not a beast trying to get out, Kael thought.
Several.
He snatched up the ledgers, maps, notes, and shell shard all at once and shoved the iron box at Talia.
We're leaving.
Finally, she said, and backed for the stairs without argument.
Ash moved last.
He would not turn his back on the floor until Kael did. Only when Kael hit the first step did the hatchling break away and climb after them in two quick, silent bounds.
The black water slapped once against the stones below.
Then something under the cellar floor screamed.
Human once, maybe.
Not now.
They slammed the hatch shut behind them and dragged the broken handcart over it just as the first impact hit from underneath.
The old oak jumped.
Dust sifted down from the rafters.
Talia planted her spear across the hatch and looked at Kael with a grin too sharp for the hour.
Well, she said, at least now we know where Chapter Two of the city's lies went.
Kael stood over the shuddering hatch with Mara Den's ledger under one arm, the black shell shard burning warm through the oilcloth in his fist, and listened to something below Bellon Mill remember it had not finished dying.