The office door was barred from inside. Süke could hear something through the wood, not movement exactly, more the sound of someone trying not to make sound, breathing in an uneven rhythm, not the slow empty breathing of an unoccupied room.

Yasa came up behind him.

"Someone’s in there," Süke said.

"I can hear it."

Yasa looked at the door for a moment. "What kind of man stays in an office when the whole town’s burning?"

"A man who’s got something he doesn’t want to leave behind."

One of the other arban companions added that they’d probably find him hiding under the desk.

Yasa said that was almost certainly right. Süke had already decided the door opened inward and one good hit would handle it.

"You think it’s more than one?"

"One man, trying very hard not to breathe."

Yasa gave a short laugh. "At least he’s putting in the effort."

Süke kicked the door open.

The clerk came at him immediately. He was a heavy man, middle-aged, and had a short-handled wood axe in both hands. He swung it the moment the door moved, he’d been standing right behind it, waiting.

The axe hit the door on the backswing and threw his weight forward, and Süke was already inside the room before the man had recovered his footing. Then they were close enough that the axe didn’t matter because there wasn’t space to swing it again.

The clerk tried to use his elbow to push Süke back. He was bigger than Süke but his feet weren’t firm and his arms were shaking, and Süke got his blade into the man’s side below the ribs. He had to lean his whole body into it to push through the padded coat.

When the blade went in the clerk made a sound like all the air had been forced out of him at once, a short hard noise, and he sat down on the floor still holding the axe.

He sat there looking at Süke pulling the blade back out, and his face went from terrified to confused, watching blood come out the wound without end. He tried to push himself up with one hand and the arm buckled, he went sideways against the desk leg and his shoulder hit the floor. His breathing was loud in the small room, ragged, then short, then not there anymore.

Yasa came in behind Süke and looked at the man on the floor. "Brave," he said.

"Stupid," Süke said.

He wiped the blade on the back of the dead man’s coat, blood had gotten onto his hand and he cleaned it on his own sleeve without thinking about it. There was more of it spreading from under the body across the floorboards, dark and slow, and Süke stepped around it to reach the strongbox in the corner.

Iron, padlocked. He picked up the dead man’s axe and hit the padlock until it gave, which took four swings and a lot of noise. Inside the box was a leather pouch of coin, a smaller cloth bag with something hard and lumpy in it, and a ledger.

He opened the leather pouch. Silver coin, not much of it. The cloth bag had rough amber pieces, unworked. The ledger he dropped on the floor.

"That’s it?" Yasa said from where he’d been watching over Süke’s shoulder.

"That’s what’s in the box," Süke said.

"Fuck, this whole mess for forty coins and some amber."

"Forty-three coins," Süke said.

He put the pouch and the cloth bag inside his coat. "Stop complaining and find me a merchant house."

"I found you this building," Yasa said.

"Shut up, you found me a stupid clerk with an axe," Süke said.

"He barely touched you," Yasa said. "I thought it was going to be more exciting."

"Get out of the office," Süke said.

The grain warehouse was fully ablaze now. Fire had caught from the far end where one of the arban had put a torch, and the smoke coming out the loading dock doors was black and heavy. Heat pressed against Süke’s back when he stood on the street between the warehouse and the building to its east. He kept moving toward a storage building.

The structure was two stories, timber, door unlatched. Yasa came alongside as Süke looked at it.

"Unlocked means either nothing inside or someone knew better than to bar it," Yasa snorted.

"Or it’s a trap," Süke said.

"Then we look and we know," Yasa said.

They went in. The ground floor was crates and sacks stacked to the ceiling in two rows, the passage between them narrow. Past the first row, a door stood open to the back room. He could see shadows in the low light, people against the far wall, four or five of them, very still.

One of them stepped forward. Not young, a man, holding a carrying pole across his body, the long wooden kind used on the dock for moving goods. He was shaking but he stepped forward anyway and put himself between the riders and whoever was pressed against the wall behind him.

Süke went in close.

The man swung the pole too wide, the way someone swung when they’d never done it at a person before. It went past Süke’s shoulder and hit the crates behind him, and Süke was already inside the range with the blade moving.

He opened the man across the stomach with the first cut and then across the throat when the man bent forward from it. The man dropped the pole and grabbed Süke’s arm with both hands, the grip surprisingly strong and then not strong at all, and he went to the floor and pulled Süke partway down with him until Süke got his arm free.

The room got loud after that. A woman was screaming, the kind of screaming that didn’t stop between breaths, and the others were shoved into the corner behind her. The second man had his back flat against the wall, arms out to each side, pressing himself into the timber like he could go through it.

The screaming filled the small room, which smelled of grain and now of blood, and the man on the floor was making a noise that was not quite breathing.

Yasa and the third arban companion came in behind Süke. What happened after that in the room, Süke didn’t watch closely. He was looking through the stacked goods for anything that had real weight to it, a box, a chest, a wrapped bundle, coin or silver or worked metal.

He found a coat hanging on a peg near the door and reached into the inner pocket and found a small leather purse, heavier than it looked. More coin than the office had given him, proper silver.

At some point, the screams became cries of pain, and then dying grunts, and then it stopped altogether.

Süke went out to the street without looking at what was on the floor behind him.

Yasa and the companion came out after. The fire had crossed the main road somewhere north and two buildings on the eastern side were going now, and the smoke at the street was thin but present and tasted of burning thatch. The heat came from two directions at once.

"Better," Süke said, weighing the purse from the coat pocket in his hand.

"That’s more like it."

Yasa nodded. "See, that’s what I’m talking about. The office was a lesson in disappointment, but that was a real find."

"Seems like these fellows prefer to hide their silver with then rather than a strongbox."

"That’s useful information," Yasa said. "For next time."

"Always check the coat pockets," Süke said.

A man from the arban appeared from the side street to the north, the one who’d gone a different direction earlier. He had a bundle under one arm and a look on his face like he’d found something worth reporting.

"There’s a workshop two streets north."

He started to speak excitedly, "Door barred, but it’s wood, not iron. These business keep coin on hand, from the cloth contracts all season."

Süke looked at him. A workshop, contracts and payment in silver going in and out every market day. A barred door meant someone was inside or the owner had barred it when he ran, and either way the coin was probably still there.

"What were you doing checking doors on a different street?" Yasa said.

"Same thing you were doing," the man said.

"I was checking doors for Süke."

"So was I," the man said. "Just on a different street."

Süke was already moving north toward the workshop. Yasa fell in alongside him, and the other two came behind.