Alfonso arrived at my shoulder, moving like a man who had news and knew where to put it.

He did not speak.

He didn’t have to.

I felt the bond tug a second before Audrey’s head turned toward the hall.

“Inside,” she said softly.

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We dismissed the square with warmth. Not pomp. Not a king’s wave. A woman’s hand, a man’s nod, the promise of tables to be set before the sun dropped. People spilled into their lives with relief and talk. Spies wrote down the wrong details with admirable industry.

In the hall, we found what we knew was waiting.

The salt–hand man slumped on a bench, a nket around his shoulders, rope burns bright against skin that had not been meant for this kind of work.

He looked up and flinched when he saw Francesco. Not fear for himself. Fear for having made my mate look at him.

“Tell us again,” Audrey said, gentle. “The words. Not just the coin.”

He swallowed nervously While watching us all.

His voice came out hoarse. “He said…” He stopped, eyes sliding to me in apology. “He said to give the children thest egg if I could not… if I could not.”

Lira’s mouth went knife–thin. “Of course.”

“And the stirring,” Audrey prompted.

“Ten,” he whispered. “Ten circles. And hum. So it wouldn’t… so it would hide.”

“Hide from what?” Marlow asked fast in curious.

“From the house,” the man said, blink–earnest. “He said this house remembers prayers.”

God, what is it now?

I closed my eyes for the space of two breaths.

Whoever he was–the man who paid, the voice that hummed for him–he had been here before in some other life.

Or he knew the houses.

Or he knew the wolves.

“And the voice?” Audrey said. “Say again how it felt.”

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He turn his gaze back at her before he speak. “It’s like two men in one,” he exined. “Like one was wearing the other, and the one inside had his teeth clenched.”

My skin prickled.

I didn’t look at Francesco; I didn’t have to.

The bond moved like a hand over a map, finding the shape without our mouths admitting it–a voice wearing

a voice.

Dorian’s hand, yes.

But another hand inside it. Or behind it. Or beneath.

“Who else spoke to you?” Marlow asked softly. “Who gave you times and doors? You did not find those with salt and rope.”

The man stared at his hands as if they might have learned to sign when he wasn’t looking.

We wait until he speak in patiently.

“A woman,” he whispered finally. “But I never saw her face. She left messages where only the stable boys read.”

A woman….

“Where?” Francesco asked, all quiet.

“In the bucket under the third stall,” he told him. “Wrapped in twine and oilcloth. Always dry when it shouldn’t be.”

Oilcloth…

Salt…

A hum…

A woman without a face leaving dry parcels where water should have had its way.

“Inside,” Audrey said, her voice no longer soft. “They’re closer than I like.”

Alfonso closed his ledger. “We’ll watch the stalls without making them feel watched.”

Marlow’s eyes had gone a little distant–the way they do when he is listening for the one note in a song that does not belong. “We follow the rope. We follow the sugar. We follow the egg.”

“Egg?” Lira asked, suspicious.

“Men who hide things in things getzy,” Marlow told her. “They repeat themselves. The pattern shaker ja own hand. We’ll find where else thest thing is always a little too easy”

I felt the tired in my bones then, not of body, but of the part of me that holds the day so others don’t have to.

Francesco must have felt it, too, his arm slid around my waist, anchoring, without iming

The salt–hand man looked up then, sudden, fear and shame and ia /ilittle courage crossing his face like clouds. “I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I didn’t know. I swear by the water I didn’t knowi” /i

I sighed and give him a small smile. “I know,” I said. It surprised me that my voice didn’t shake. “You will make it right by telling us everything you remember, and then by carrying wood for the ward buntil /bMonical says your back is enough.”

He blinked In surprise. “Not… In prison?”

“Prison is for men who n,” I exin tiredly. “You were used. Your debt is to the women who have had to learn to sleep with one eye open. You will pay it with blisters.”

He started to cry the way grown men do when they have held too much for too long–quiet, offended by its own existence.

Marlow handed him a cloth without making a production of it.

Audrey looked away to give him a dignity she would never name.

We dismissed him.

Alfonso took him to a pallet in the corner with a cup and a promise of a job.

Monica said the word good in a way that made the air less sharp.

When the hall was ours again, Francesco spoke to the rafters more than to us. “There is a voice inside a voice?”

“Yes,” I breathe.

“And a hand inside a hand,” Audrey added.

“And a woman who knows roofs,” Marlow said. “Because oilcloth is a craft for rain, not for kitchens.”

So it means….

“We’re being watched,” Alfonso said. “From a ce that knows how we move when we think no one is looking.”

“Now, we knew that,” I finished them. “Now we know which stall to start with.”

“Not just stalls,” Lira said, suddenly join our conversation. “The well. The bucket under the third stall, always dry, when the ground is wet–she is keeping her messages above the waterline. She is not a stable hand. She is a river woman.”

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“Camargue,” Alfonso agreed.

“Or an apprentice thereof.” Lira nodded. “A woman who has been near reeds long enough to think like one.”

Francesco’s fingers tightened just once at my hip. “Tomorrow,” he said quietly. “We gather the elders and the children. We speak the story out loud before someone else sells it to us with a spice we don’t want. And we open the stalls after, and the wells, and the cupboards. With bread, not des. Until we need des.” fn99e4 For more chapters visit Find1Novel/fn99e4

“Dorian will send men to interrupt,” Marlow said, almost cheerful. “He cannot bear a story that does not belong to him.”

“Well.. He can stand at the back,” I said. “He will learn that the back is where the sound is better.”

Francesco turned me toward him with two fingers under my chin.

The hall fell away until it was only us and the hum we had turned into harmony.

“You will stand with me,” he said, not as a question.

I give him a warm smile “Always,” I said, not as a vow but as a reminder to myself of the life I had chosen.

We left the hall.

The day leaned into evening.

The house loosened its shoulders and decided to hold a little longer.

Outside, in the blue hour whennterns be the only stars you can touch, someone stood in the shadow of the arch and watched us passb. /b

A woman, perhaps.

Or the idea of one.

The air around her felt attentive.

She did not move.

She did not need to.

Somewhere beyond the roofs, beyond the fields, beyond thest ce our maps have ink for, the fen turned its face toward us and whispered through someone else’s mouth.

We would answer in ours.

We would do it in daylight.

And when we asked for names, we would not settle for a voice inside a voice.

We would take the hand inside the hand, and we would hold it up to the square until the story had to tell the truth or go hungry.

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