CHAPTER 195: PLATINUM SHELF

They opened late on purpose. Not by much—just enough to bleed off the impatient morning line that now formed whether the shutters were up or not. Maddy fielded the first knocks with a grin and two paper cones of "potato ends" for the smallest noses pressed to the glass. Riko chalked the board in neat, proud letters and added beneath the menu: BACK AFTER LUNCH — GUILD BUSINESS.

"Two hours," Lyra told them, bow slung, hair braided high. "Three at most. Brine stays cold."

"We’ll keep the oil honest," Maddy promised, clacking a lid on the fryer like a salute.

They cut the plaza at a trot, drawing scattered applause that Lyra ignored and Inigo answered with two fingers off his cap, the closest he came to a bow. Inside the guildhall, din parted around them. Elise saw them from behind the desk, lifted one finger—one minute—finished a sentence that made a courier pale, then beckoned.

"Not the public boards," she said, already moving. She led them past a curtain of leather strips into a short hall that smelled faintly of old wax. A door with no sign gave to her palm on an iron ring.

Inside was a long table, a rack of sealed scroll tubes, and pigeonholes labeled in a clerk’s careful hand. The air felt cooler. Even whispers seemed too loud here.

"Platinum Shelf," Elise said. "Color codes, short briefs, plausible deniability." Her mouth tilted. "Also terrible coffee."

Lyra’s gaze skimmed the rack: seals in black, red, blue, green, amber.

"Black is clandestine," Elise said. "Red martial, blue diplomacy, green recovery, amber...problems that won’t pick a lane. You read in-room. Break a seal and you either take the job or swear to shut your mouth. Ready?"

Inigo nodded. "Show us the ones that won’t keep the fryer lonely."

Elise tapped four tubes into a neat row. "Pre-pulled for your sins. Time windows, politics, travel. One"—black wax—"Ledger Thread. Dockward, tonight. A ledger that ties Vane’s road game to three noble factors is leaving Warehouse Three for the river. False-bottom chest. We want the book and, if you can, the cipher ring the factor carries. Quiet. No city watch."

"Owner?" Inigo asked.

"Mardel. Old family, new friends. Answers to Lord Rendal Aram in daylight, to no one proven after dark."

Elise nudged a red-sealed tube. "Two: Southmoor Pair. Wyverns on the aqueduct piers. Two days out, one back. Clean kill, easy write-up, no politics."

Lyra’s eyes warmed, then cooled as Elise set a blue wax job beside it. "Envoy to the Ashwood. Babysit a water-rights parley so a baron doesn’t talk the forest into war. Boredom with a chance of knives."

"And amber?" Inigo asked.

"Lace Market Mint. Counterfeit coppers bleeding the food stalls. Likely an artificer shaving coins for a guild offshoot. Lots of law. Less justice." Elise returned to the black tube. "The ledger’s a window—tonight only. The barge Swift Eel casts off at second bell. If it leaves, winter will swallow it."

Lyra picked up the black tube and weighed it. "Smells like Vane."

"Exactly," Elise said. "Quiet angle: Dock Nine, broken crane shadow. Friendly dockwarden is Ilen—two dips of the lamp buys you sixty heartbeats of his inattention. Under-dock access through pilings. Roof has a bored man who eats with his mouth open. Mardel keeps his ring by the inkwell when he signs."

Inigo cracked the black seal. "We’ll take tonight."

Elise slid over a leather roll: two nonlethal smokes, a wax impression kit, and a pinch bottle. "Seal-break powder for ribbon ties you can’t cut clean. Don’t overuse. Leaves a scent like old apples." She pointed at a map. "Under-dock guide named Tamsin—short, fast, smarter than the river. Pay her double and she won’t invent extra exits. If it goes loud, alley right twice; cooper’s shop with a green smear under the lintel hates Mardel. Use that."

Lyra looped the roll to her belt. "JLTV?"

"Bean Street only," Elise said. "Hide it behind grain stacks. If you need an engine at the dock, the job started wrong."

They signed the in-room oath—five dull words—and ghosted back through the hall. On the way to the plaza they detoured by the stall. Maddy was fending off three scribes with a ladle. Riko practiced throwing a potato and catching it in a basket until Lyra said, "Stop flirting with physics," and his ears went pink.

Inigo wrote on the prep slate: OIL x2, BUNS 1.5 MIDDAY, CLOSE EARLY—SUPPLIES. He pressed petty cash into Maddy’s hand. "If the crowd sours when you close, toss a free fries at the loudest mouth. Chewing is diplomacy."

They ate standing—half a burger each and the last unsalted handful of fries—and crossed to Bean Street, where the JLTV tucked behind a heap of staves and a stalled wagon like a secret that had learned to crouch. Inigo killed the engine. The river changed the city’s sound: chain hiss, gull cackle, wood on wood.

Tamsin found them by a coil of tarred rope: a pair of clever eyes and elbows sharper than ethics. "You’re late," she said, though they weren’t. "Tide eats patience."

Lyra flicked her a copper. "We feed it well."

"Follow," Tamsin breathed, and vanished through a gap that wasn’t a gap until you decided to be thinner than pride. Down a slick ladder into a low, wet cathedral of pilings. "Warehouse Three. Left room, office above. Two men river-door, one roof chewer, and a crew who think spice makes them invisible."

Lyra looked up, measuring roofline jumps with her eyes. "I’ll take top."

Inigo’s palm settled on the leather roll. "I’ll take the ink."

They split. Lyra climbed rings and nailheads like rungs only she could see. The roof sighed under her and then held. A guard’s boots scuffed. Teeth clicked wood. Bored. Overconfident.

Inigo slid a panel up from the quay’s underbelly and stepped into a dark that smelled like pepper and damp ledgers. Up an inside stair, past sacks that read as cumin in his nose and as cover in his head. Leftmost shelf. Third from bottom. Push and lift. The backboard shifted. The book sat there like a secret that had stopped trying to hide. He wrapped it in Elise’s roll and tucked it inside his vest.

Mardel’s office was glass-walled and high, shutters half-drawn to wring river light thin. On the desk: a seal press, a bowl of lemon peels, an ink-shine with a gold fleck. The ring lay by the quill, fat with confidence.

Inigo didn’t touch it. He softened a cake of wax against his palm, pressed, rolled, lifted: one clean impression; then a second, because kitchens teach redundancy; a third for luck he wouldn’t count. The air sweetened—old apples, exactly as promised. He fanned the wafers until they stiffened and slid them into the roll with the ledger.

A footstep. The latch breathed. Inigo stepped left. The door opened. Mardel filled it—expensive shirt, cheap surprise.

"Your lamp’s leaking," Inigo said pleasantly.

"What—" Mardel began.

A soft tap at the window: Lyra’s arrowhead, just a kiss. Mardel’s head turned by instinct. Inigo was gone by design—down the stair into spice and shadow.

On the dock, a lamp dipped twice. Ilen’s minute started now.

Tamsin’s grin flashed under the planks; she led them back through the rib-work of the quay quick as thought. No alarm. No shout. Only river, rope, and the patience of tide.

They walked out normal, the hardest trick of all. Bean Street swallowed them. The JLTV greeted with its patient metal, and Inigo stowed the roll beneath the seat. Lyra scanned street ends, the upward roofs, the habitual dangers. Nothing leapt. They drove.

Elise was waiting on the steps as if she’d been woven there. Thorne stood inside, sleeves rolled, eyes knife-clear. The ledger thumped onto his desk. Elise had the roll open before Inigo finished saying, "Old apples." She inhaled and grinned, sharp and clean.

"Impressions?" Thorne asked.

Lyra tapped the wafers. "Three. Crisp."

Thorne didn’t smile; his relief took the shape of a breath held less tightly. "Whatever this book says, the city tilts again."

"Then brace the shelves," Inigo said. "We’ll keep cooking."

"Cut nets when we must," Lyra added.

"Platinum prerogative," Thorne said, and that was both benediction and burden.

They made it back to the stall by mid-afternoon. The line had found them anyway. Maddy waved with a ladle; Riko tried not to look like he’d been watching the corner all hour. Inigo washed his hands, tied his apron, and coaxed the fryer flame to its steady, trustworthy shimmer. Lyra tapped salt twice over the first basket—no more, no less.

"Welcome to Mcronald’s!" Riko bellowed at the doorway, and the crowd cheered as if they’d slain another monster.

In a way, they had. Only this one bled ink instead of ichor.

They worked until the lamps outside went soft and gold. Somewhere beyond the plaza, clerks would be leaning over the ledger, old-apple wafers pressed into soft wax, names rising like bruises under a practiced hand. Here, physics told the truth and hunger made peace with it for the price of a coin.

When the last tray slid across the counter, Lyra leaned a hip into the pass and let out a held breath she hadn’t admitted she was holding. "We took the right job."

"We took the job the city could taste," Inigo said.

"Same thing," she said, almost smiling.

They flipped the sign to CLOSED. The street murmured thanks as it thinned. Inigo scrubbed the flat iron until it shone like an honest mirror. Lyra checked the back latch twice and the window once. Riko practiced his greeting to the empty room and nailed the last word.

Outside, Elandra breathed like a beast nearly tamed. Inside, the fryer ticked as it cooled. Between those two sounds lay a city turning, a shelf of jobs waiting, and a pair of Platinums who had decided, at least for another night, that the best way to hold the world steady was to salt it evenly and serve it hot.