Gate Three smelled like rain and lamp oil. Two City Watch wagons waited under the arch, shields stacked, lanterns hooded. Pierce stood with a watch captain in a dented breastplate. Cael was already there, quiet kit on his back. Elara jogged up a breath later, hair tied, gloves on. Three other charter holders I only knew by sight rounded the group.

"Short assist," the captain said. "South culvert. Someone's been running the drains like hallways. We found a cut wardline and resin smears on a grate. Could be kids. Could be the same hands as the gates. We need eyes that don't panic."

"Rules," Pierce said, pointing at me and Cael. "No kills. No heroics. You see a human threat, you stop them without making a mess. You see a beast, you pin and call. Charter in sight at all times." He tapped the brass token on my collar. I tapped it back.

We moved out at a trot through the south lane. The city was half-asleep: shutters in, dogs quiet, only the baker's smoke alive. The culvert mouth sat in a mossy cut below a warehouse row, grate lifted and set aside neat—too neat for vagrants. The captain touched the bar with two fingers. "We didn't move it," he said. "That's how we found it."

Liora hadn't come, but her rules had. I kept my kit small. Lantern, Moth, Marrow and Hollow in Shade. The leash hummed steady against my ribs.

"Line," Cael said. He took the front with a watchman. I set second position. Elara third, knives quiet. Two watch behind, then the others. The captain brought up the rear.

Inside was a low stone throat with a shallow runnel down the middle and old chalk marks along the wall—survey, not magic. The air carried iron, mold, and a faint tang I'd learned to hate. Iron-pine resin. Not much. Enough.

I opened the Lantern and let it give a soft, cold light that didn't wake wards. "Keep your lamps hooded," I told the watch. "This won't trip anything."

We moved in short, quiet steps. The culvert turned left, then right. Water gurgled over a lip and made enough noise to hide whispers. Thirty paces in, we hit the first sign: a knotted string pinned under a stone where the runnel split. Three knots, then two, then one. Direction code. Someone was telling friends how to find a way out.

Elara crouched, eyes sharp. "Not thieves' guild," she murmured. "Different knot work. New hands."

Cael touched the wall, palm flat. "Draft pulls to the right. Good air that way. Left smells old."

"Right," I said.

We took the right and found the cut wardline. A thin, brittle scar ran along the mortar seam, chipped clean in three places and packed with dark wax. The kind that muffles a bell. The resin streak ran beside it, neat as a signature.

The captain hissed through his teeth. "They know what they're doing."

"Take the wax," I said to Elara. "Don't scrape the edges."

She slid a blade under the smear and lifted a curl into a paper. "Got it."

I set the Moth on my palm. "Wake." It rose and held steady, tiny wings a whisper. "Search," I said, and pointed it down the seam. It drifted slow, looking for heat, movement, anything wrong. We followed.

Fifty paces later the culvert opened into a junction room: low ceiling, four exits, a broken maintenance bench, an old ladder up to a grate. The grate above wasn't bolted. It sat loose, propped with a wedge. Fresh mud tracked up the ladder. We weren't alone.

I closed my hand. "Shade," I whispered, and the Moth settled, invisible. Marrow came to heel with a thought, quiet as dark. Hollow stayed in reserve. Cael looked at me once. I nodded once back.

Elara pointed to the far exit: faint footprints, small, quick, heading away. The watch captain held up two fingers and then a flat palm. Wait.

A scrape sounded on the ladder above—boot on iron, careful. Then a voice, low and urgent, from the dark beyond the far exit. "Now."

Two shapes moved at once: one on the ladder trying to climb, one from the far exit cutting left to flank. Not kids. Grown. Fast.

"Go," Cael said, and stepped into the first man's space like a door slamming shut. He planted aura through his boots, took the ladder man by the belt and shoulder, and dumped him down without breaking his spine. The man hit stone, rolled, came up with a short blade and a smear of resin on his sleeve. Professional.

The flanker went for me, low and smart, aiming to get past and run. I didn't meet him head-on. I set my heel, pulsed only when his boot hit the floor, and turned his line with my shoulder. His breath left him; his blade missed. Marrow slid between his calves and froze like a brace post. The man tried to step; his shin kissed bone; he stumbled. I had his wrist and the knife was gone.

"Down," I said, calm. He didn't listen.

He cut for my thigh with a second blade. I caught his wrist, turned it, and pinned him to the wall with the sabre's flat—not edge, not point, just metal and weight and my forearm in the right place. "Down," I repeated. Better. He went still.

Behind me, Cael moved like a heavy door. The ladder man slashed at his face. Cael didn't back up; he stepped in, turned his head so the blade scraped harmless on pauldrons he wasn't wearing, and shoulder-checked him into the bench hard enough to end arguments. The watch were there a breath later with shackles.

We had two. The room had one more voice. A third person had stayed quiet and clever in the fourth exit, waiting for us to look busy. I felt him before I saw him: a hair shift in the air, a wrong count in my breath. He slid toward the ladder, hooded, light on his feet.

I didn't have time to run. I had time to mark.