Turn 6 of 7

Ask him to name his contact in the records room before you show him anything

You lean against the vault door. The iron is cold against your shoulder blade, or it should be — there is a warmth bleeding through the metal from the shelf inside that you do not want to think about. You cross your arms and look at Ferris the way you look at a client whose terms are buried in the fine print.

"You want me to open my vault. You want me to show you an unmarked oath-token that I have not logged, that I have not reported, and that — if the Wardens knew I was holding it — would be enough to suspend my charter. You have given me a story about nine years ago and a broker who ran. That is a good story. It may even be true. But you are asking me to trust a man who showed up at my back door before sunrise, so before I turn that dial, you give me something I can verify. Name your contact."

Ferris's hands go still on the gloves. Not the stillness of a man caught — the stillness of a man recalculating the exchange rate. His jaw works once, the muscle tightening and releasing, and he looks at the shuttered counter window. Whatever he calculates about Della behind it, he decides it does not change the math. He looks back at you.

"Her name is Sable Wick. She has been in the records room for six years, since the last round of Warden appointments. She does not work for me — she works for the archive. I pay her for filings cross-references, same as half the brokers in this city pay their contacts. She is the one who told me about the sealed file. She is the one who told me the token disappeared from evidence lockup. She has not seen the token itself, and she does not know it is in your vault. I kept that part close."

You note the name. Sable Wick. Six years in the records room, which means she was there when the token disappeared from lockup eighteen months after Voss surrendered it. She would have been present, or at least adjacent, when the evidence went missing. Ferris is either being careless with the name or he is being deliberate — handing you a thread he knows you will pull, because whatever you find when you pull it will either confirm his story or hang him. That is the kind of bet Ferris makes. It looks like honesty because it is — but it is also leverage, because now you know something about his operation that he cannot take back.

"Sable Wick," you repeat. You let the name sit in the room the way you let a contract sit on the desk before signing — long enough for the other party to wonder what you see in it. Ferris's eyes are steady. His gloves are on. His coat has silver buttons he does not usually wear. He dressed for this meeting the way a man dresses for court, and that tells you something he has not said: he expected to be seen. Not by you — by whoever might be watching his front door this morning. He came here through the back because someone is watching the front. That is a detail he has not offered, and you file it alongside the name.