Turn 5 of 7

Ask him what he means — seen one before, where, when

You do not move from where you stand, between Ferris and the vault. The positioning is deliberate and you want him to notice it.

"You have seen an unmarked token before. Where. When. And whose vault was it in when you saw it."

Ferris's smile fades. Not quickly — it retreats the way a tide retreats, leaving the shape of what was underneath. He picks up his gloves from the desk and puts them on, one finger at a time, which is what he does when he is buying himself three seconds to decide how much to spend.

"Nine years ago," he says. "Before the Blockhouse trade split. I was working the south side under Corradan Voss — you remember Voss, he retired to the coast after the canal company fiasco. We had a brokerage on Keel Street, smaller than this one. A woman came in with a token she wanted held. No mark, no stamp, no paired discharge. Warm. Heavier than it had any right to be."

He stops. His hands are still, gloved now, resting on the back of the chair. The canal smell has settled into the room and mixed with the brass polish you use on the scale. Behind the shutters, Della's pen has not moved. The silence from the front room is the silence of someone writing down every word.

"Voss took it. Held it for three weeks. Then the Wardens came and asked him to surrender it as evidence in an oath-crime — assault, serious bodily harm, the specifics were sealed. He complied. Six weeks later he closed the brokerage and left Threefall. He did not retire to the coast. He ran."

Ferris meets your eyes and his are flat, careful, the eyes of a man telling you something that costs him to tell.

"The woman who brought it in was never identified. The oath itself was never discharged. The Wardens filed it and buried the file, and my contact in the records room says the file is still sealed — which means someone with authority wants it to stay sealed. I am telling you this because I need you to understand what you are holding. This is not a stray token. It is a pattern. And if it happened once and the broker who touched it ran, then whoever is making these has done it before and will do it again."

You let that sit in the air. Nine years ago. A woman. An unmarked oath. A broker who ran and a file that is still sealed. The token in your vault is warm through three inches of iron, and you can feel it the way you feel a cracked tooth with your tongue — you cannot stop touching the edges of the problem.

"What happened to the oath?"

"Disappeared from evidence lockup. Eighteen months after Voss handed it over. My contact does not know how. She knows it is gone."

Ferris pulls at one glove, adjusting the fit. A small, fidgeting gesture that does not match the stillness of his face.

"So you see my problem. If whoever swore that oath nine years ago is the same person who put one in your satchel this morning, they have been operating for nearly a decade and no one has caught them. And if the Wardens could not hold the last one, I do not trust them to hold this one. But I also do not trust you to hold it alone — no offense — because Voss held it and Voss ran."

The light through the slats has reached the vault door. The office is getting warmer. Somewhere on the lowest shelf, the token sits in a bar of sunlight that has moved to meet it, and you wonder if that is coincidence or if the thing has some gravity that pulls the world toward it. You wonder if Voss wondered the same thing, three weeks before he ran.

"What do you want, Ferris?"

"I want to see it. I want to feel the weight. If it is the same as the one Voss held, then we are not dealing with a copy — we are dealing with the same hand. And if it is different, then someone is imitating, which is worse, because it means the knowledge is spreading. Either way, I need you to open that vault."

He says it plainly, without leverage, without threat. But his eyes are on the vault door and they do not leave it.