Jack's senses came back slowly.
The grinding of the mill pressed in first - heavy, constant - vibrating through the bones of the building and into his skull. Rain tapped somewhere behind him, uneven against wood or stone. Distant. Then the smell.
Blood.
Kate.
Her body was still in his arms, too light and too still, and his shoulder throbbed sharply now, dragging him further back into himself as the rest of the room assembled piece by piece around him - the broken boards, the open window, the cold air slipping in through the gap.
And the man in the doorway.
Not the Watch.
Worse. A Hand of Justice.
A man who didn't look for answers. Only truth.
And the truth, in New Calver, gets you hanged.
Jack tried to let go of Kate. His hands didn't move. They were locked around her, as if letting go would make it real.
"I didn't -"
The words barely formed before the end of a staff fixed against him.
"Don't move."
***
Jack almost laughed. The sound rose somewhere in his chest, then died before it reached his throat. Instead he lowered his eyes and went back to smoothing Kate's hair, trying to make her look more like herself.
It didn't work.
How had this happened?
Kate didn't get careless. She didn't let people close unless she chose it. Tully? No, she would have seen him coming, would have felt it before it happened. Finnegan? If he wanted something he sent word first, and this hadn't been that. A robbery? Not the way the room had been turned over, not the way the man had moved. He'd been searching.
Jack's brow tightened slightly. An image of the man, climbing out of the window. The man's arm. There had been something on it. Ink. He tried to bring the image back but it slipped away, distorted by the pounding in his head.
"I couldn't save her," he said quietly. "I was too slow."
He looked up.
The man in the doorway hadn't moved an inch, his gaze fixed on Jack - not harsh, not angry, just steady and measuring.
"Start at the beginning."
Silence stretched between them, not empty but waiting.
"I don't know what you want me to say," Jack said. "I came to visit her. There was a man here. I was too late."
"But you saw him?"
"A glimpse."
"His face?"
"No."
The Hand didn't respond immediately. His gaze shifted - not away, but through the room - taking in the window, the blood, then returning.
"But you caught him with the knife."
"Not enough."
A pause. "Still," the Hand said, "impressive. Considering you slipped on your way in."
Jack's eyes widened, just slightly. The Hand watched him. Noting it.
"Anything unusual about him?"
Jack hesitated. The image flickered back - the man's arm, the mark inked into the skin, clearer now than before.
"No."
The Hand held his gaze and let the silence settle, heavier this time.
"Was she expecting someone?"
Jack shook his head. "Not that I know of."
"No visitors? No messages?"
"I don't know."
The Hand's eyes moved around the room one more time - the drawers, the floor, the broken window, the blood - taking in what was there and what wasn't, before returning to Jack. Another pause, longer than the ones before it, and Jack could feel the weight of it, the sense that something had already been decided and this was just the final step.
He made his decision.
He lowered Kate carefully to the floor - deliberate, controlled, as if she might still feel it - then stood and stepped toward the doorway. For a moment it seemed the man wouldn't move. Then the Hand shifted aside. Just enough.
"If you run," he said, "I'll find you."
Jack paused. Not turning. Not answering. Then he walked straight past him. The air in the corridor hit him immediately - colder, sharper. He didn't look back. Behind him the room remained exactly as it was, unchanged.
He wasn't.
Not the same boy who had come in.
***
He made his way down from the second floor carefully, avoiding the few people still about on the balconies, doors shut against the rain around them. He refused to think about what had happened upstairs. Thinking now would slow him. Slow him and he'd make a mistake.
Next task. Then the next. Nothing else.
A cloak hung from a washing line, half-forgotten in the wet. Jack took it without stopping and pulled it tight over the blood-soaked clothes clinging to his body, pain flaring through his shoulder as he moved - sharp, unwelcome - and kept going. Hood up, he passed through the archway and out onto the street.
The rain had come on harder, flattening the dust and turning the ground slick underfoot. The crowd had thinned but not by much, people still moving through the street in ones and twos with their heads down, going about their business as if nothing had happened. As if nothing had changed.
Jack moved with them - not too fast, not too slow, just another figure in the rain. He went downhill and turned into the first side street he came to, stopping there and leaning against the wall as his breath came uneven, too fast. He didn't know which way he was going. Only that he needed distance from Slope Street.
The clothes had to go. Now. Eyes were everywhere in Stabtown and secrets didn't stay buried long.
He pushed himself off the wall and kept moving. The rain helped. It always did.
He found a narrow alley a short way on, half-covered by a leaning roof that kept most of the water out, the ground beneath dry enough. The blood had already begun to darken. He stripped the outer layer first - the worst of it, the wettest. His shoulder protesting with a sharp pull that ran down his arm as he moved which he ignored it.
There were more important things.
The flint sparked once, twice, caught on the third strike. Damp cloth resisted the way it always did and he fed the flame slowly - strips torn from his undershirt first, then more, then the rest. He crouched there watching it take hold, making sure. No loose scraps. No half-burned cloth. Nothing that could be traced.
Only when it had burned down far enough did he move again. He stood for a moment at the mouth of the alley, listening. Rain. Distant voices. The city carrying on.
No whistles, no boots, no one looking for him.
Good.
He pulled the cloak tighter and stepped back into the street.
***
If you'd asked Jack how he got from the alleyway back to his quarters, he would not have been able to tell you. Through the slums, into the tunnels, past the sleeping guard at the entrance with his head slumped low and unaware.
The darkness helped. It always did. Jack moved through it without thinking, one turn then another, until he was home.
He closed the door behind him and stood there for a moment, not moving, the quiet pressing in around him. His shoulder throbbed again, harder now that he had stopped. He ignored it. Boots off, slowly and carefully. He sat on the edge of the cot and lay back.
He should have fallen asleep immediately - he was tired enough - but sleep didn't come. His thoughts returned whether he wanted them to or not. Kate. Too still. Too light. He pushed the image away and forced it down.
The man. That mattered.
There had been something on his arm. Ink. Jack frowned slightly, trying to bring it back -the shape, the lines - nothing clear yet, but it would come. It always did. And that meant the man could be found.
Jack's eyes closed slowly.
Next time, he wouldn't miss.