The fountain in Merchant's Cross was not made for beauty. It was a practical thing, a stone basin where horses drank and carters washed grit from their hands. The statue at its center was featureless from weather, a nameless saint or forgotten hero eroded into a vague human shape. Water trickled from a crack in its side, a slow, constant weeping into the pool below.
Ryn arrived early. He stood in the deep shadow of a cloth merchant's shuttered stall, watching the square empty as dusk hardened into night. His hand rested on the journal inside his coat. The leather was smooth against his fingers. He had not opened it. Some things required quiet to read, and the city had not given him any.
Lysandra came from the east, a dark silhouette against the fading bruise of the sky. She moved without hurry, her stride even, her gaze sweeping the square not like a hunted thing, but like a surveyor assessing land. She stopped at the fountain's edge, dipped her fingers in the water, and shook them once.
A signal. Or a habit. With her, it was hard to tell.
Ryn stepped out of the shadows.
She did not turn. "You opened it."
It was not a question.
"No," he said.
"Why not?"
"You said think on it. I'm thinking."
A faint sound escaped her. Not quite a laugh. An acknowledgement. "Fair."
She turned then, and in the pale light of the rising moon, he saw she had changed again. The fine dress was gone. She wore dark trousers, a plain tunic, a long coat that could belong to a merchant or a minor clerk. Her hair was hidden under a wrapped scarf. A woman built for disappearing into crowds.
"Elric leaves the tax office by the west door," she said, her voice low. "He takes the alley behind the chandlery. He walks alone. He carries a ledger case. He is afraid of dogs."
Ryn processed the information. "You've watched him."
"I've had him watched. There is a difference." She began walking, not waiting to see if he followed. "His brother, the illustrator, lives above a print shop in the Inkwell District. He has not left his rooms in two days. The windows are shuttered. His neighbors say he is sick."
They moved into a narrow lane, the sounds of the main square fading behind them. "You think he's dead," Ryn said.
"I think The Scribe tidies up after himself." Lysandra's tone was matter of fact. "A man who can draw a likeness that accurate is a liability. He knows faces. He remembers details. People like that are dangerous to those who trade in secrets."
"So we're chasing a ghost."
"We're chasing a signature." She glanced at him. "Every hand has a weight. A pressure. A way of ending a line. The sketch of you was good, but it was rushed. The artist was working from memory, not life. And he was afraid."
"How can you tell?"
"The lines are tense. They bite into the paper. When a man is calm, his lines flow. When he is afraid, they stab." She paused at a crossroads, looking both ways. "Fear leaves a mark. Just like ink."
They came to a wider street, where the tall, narrow buildings of the Inkwell District leaned together like gossips. The smell here was distinct. Not fish or rot, but paper, oil, and the sharp, metallic tang of ink. Even at night, the air tasted like something waiting to be written.
Lysandra stopped before a nondescript door wedged between a bookbinder and a shop selling sealing wax. A wooden sign, faded, showed a quill crossed with a brush.
"The brother's shop," she murmured. "The ground floor is his studio. He lives above."
The door was locked. The windows were dark.
Ryn looked at her. "We break in."
"We ask to be let in." She produced a key from her coat. It was old, iron, unremarkable. "His landlord is behind on his taxes. He was amenable to a temporary arrangement."
She slid the key into the lock. It turned with a soft, oiled click.
The studio inside was a landscape of ordered chaos. Drawings pinned to every wall. Shelves of pigments in jars. Brushes standing in cups like skeletal flowers. A large drafting table dominated the center, covered in sheets of parchment weighted at the corners with smooth black stones.
Ryn moved to the table. The topmost sheet was a half finished illustration for what looked like a royal proclamation. Horses, banners, a king's face rendered in careful, flattering lines. The work was competent. Soulless.
"This is not the hand that drew you," Lysandra said, looking over his shoulder. "This is work for pay. Careful, precise, and utterly without risk."
She began opening drawers. They slid soundlessly on well made runners. She found what she was looking for in the third one down. A portfolio of heavier paper, tied with a black ribbon.
She laid it on the table and untied the ribbon.
Inside were sketches of a different kind. Not kings or proclamations. Faces caught in the street. A beggar sleeping in a doorway. A fishmonger arguing with a customer. A guard yawning at his post. The lines here were quick, alive, hungry. They captured not just features, but the weariness in a slope of shoulders, the tension in a set of jaw.
And there, near the bottom, was Ryn.
Not the sketch from the notice board. An earlier study. He was looking away, his profile outlined against the fog of the docks. The artist had caught the exact angle of his head, the way his hair fell against his neck. It was intimate in a way that felt invasive.
"He saw me," Ryn said, his voice flat.
"He saw everyone." Lysandra pointed to other sketches. A priest Lysandra had spoken to three days ago. A dock foreman who had disappeared yesterday. A baker from the street where Ryn had bought bread. "He was The Scribe's eyes. A recorder of faces."
She flipped to the last page. It was blank except for a small mark in the bottom corner. Not a signature. A symbol. Three vertical lines, crossed by a single horizontal stroke. Simple. Deliberate.
"The brother's mark," she said. "His signature when the work was his own."
Ryn studied it. "And the sketch of me?"
"Had no mark. It was commissioned work. Someone told him what to draw, gave him a description, maybe showed him a previous sketch." She closed the portfolio. "The brother is not our way to The Scribe. He was a tool. A sharp one, but disposable."
"Then why are we here?"
"To confirm he is gone. And to learn what he saw." She moved to a small desk in the corner, opened a ledger. "He kept records. Clients, payments, dates."
She ran a finger down a page, stopped. "Here. Three days ago. A payment from a 'C.R.' for 'special commission.' No description. The amount was triple his usual rate."
"C.R.," Ryn repeated.
"Could be anyone. Could be nothing." She closed the ledger. "But it is a thread. And right now, threads are all we have."
A floorboard creaked overhead.
They both froze. The sound was faint, but unmistakable. A shift of weight. Then silence.
Lysandra's hand went to her coat. Ryn's to his knife.
Another creak. Closer. Someone was on the stairs.
Lysandra shook her head sharply, pointing to the back of the studio. There was a narrow door, half hidden behind a rack of drying paper. She moved toward it, silent as the shadows around her.
Ryn followed, his eyes on the staircase. A figure appeared in the doorway above, silhouetted against a faint light from the room behind. A man, holding something that glinted dully. A bottle. Or a blade.
The man descended slowly, each step deliberate. He reached the bottom, stood for a moment looking at the empty studio, then walked to the drafting table. He set the bottle down with a soft thump. It was wine, half full.
He was young, with ink stained fingers and eyes red from lack of sleep or too much drink. He looked at the portfolio, still open on the table, at the sketch of Ryn. His shoulders slumped.
"I told him it was a bad idea," he muttered to the empty room. "I told him money like that always has strings."
Ryn stepped out of the shadows.
The man jumped, his hand flying to the bottle. "Who are you? How did you get in here?"
"We are friends of your brother's," Lysandra said, emerging from behind the paper rack. Her voice was calm, neutral. "We are worried about him."
The man, Elric the illustrator, stared at them. Fear flashed in his eyes, then was replaced by a weary resignation. "You're not friends. Friends don't break in. You're the reason he's gone."
"We did not take him," Lysandra said. "We are looking for him. As you are."
Elric sank into the chair by the drafting table. He looked at the sketch of Ryn again, then up at Ryn's face. Recognition dawned, slow and sick. "You're the one. From the notice."
"Yes," Ryn said.
"He didn't want to draw you. He said it felt wrong. Like drawing a target." Elric picked up the wine bottle, took a swig. "But the money was good. And the man who paid him… he was persuasive."
"Describe him," Lysandra said.
"Quiet. Well dressed. Not noble, but… official. He had hands that never dirtied. He spoke like he was reading from a ledger." Elric shuddered. "He knew things about my brother. Things he shouldn't have known. Where he bought his pigments. Who his first lover was. It was a demonstration."
"A threat," Ryn said.
"A promise." Elric met his eyes. "He said my brother had a gift for seeing truth. That such a gift was valuable. And that value came with obligations."
Lysandra placed a silver coin on the table. It was worth more than a week of Elric's commissions. "Did this man have a name?"
Elric looked at the coin, then at her. "He called himself Corvin. Just Corvin. No title. No house."
Corvin. C.R.
"Where is your brother now?" Lysandra asked, though her tone suggested she already knew.
Elric's face crumpled. "They found him this morning. In the river. His hands were cut off. So he could never draw again." He looked at his own ink stained fingers, as if seeing them severed. "They left the rest of him intact. A message, the guard said. About knowing your place."
The studio was very quiet. The only sound was the drip of a leaking inkwell somewhere in the dark.
Lysandra placed another coin beside the first. "Leave Valenport. Tonight. Go somewhere they don't know your name or your brother's hand."
Elric stared at the coins. "Where?"
"Anywhere that doesn't smell like ink." She turned to go. "And burn these sketches. All of them."
Ryn took one last look at the drawing of his own face. The quiet, observant lines. The unseen subject, caught unawares. Then he followed Lysandra out into the night.
The door clicked shut behind them. The street was empty, the moon now high and cold.
"Corvin," Ryn said.
"A name," Lysandra replied, starting to walk. "Or an alias. But it is more than we had an hour ago."
"The brother is dead because he drew me."
"The brother is dead because he was weak." Her words were harsh, but her voice was tired. "The Scribe uses weakness. He finds the cracks in people and pours his poison in. Your face was just the occasion. The cause was a man who could be bought."
They walked in silence for a block. The sound of their footsteps was swallowed by the thick night air.
"What now?" Ryn asked.
"Now we see if Corvin is watching his own handiwork." She glanced at him. "And you open that journal. Kael did not die because he was weak. He died because he understood the game. It is time you learned the rules."
Ahead, the lights of a tavern spilled yellow onto the cobblestones. Laughter spilled out with it, loud and temporary.
Ryn felt the weight of the journal against his chest. A dead man's thoughts. A murderer's name. A brother's severed hands.
The quiet he wanted felt farther away than ever. But for the first time, he could see the path to it. And it was not a path of hiding.
It was a path of knowing.
And tonight, he knew one thing more.
He had a name to learn.