The accountant sat against the outer wall with his hands still loosely bound, watching the militia move past.

He had kept this cooperative posture from the moment he raised both hands in the storage room, not from conviction, Col judged, but because he was a man who understood which way things were going and had chosen accordingly.

Col crouched in front of him.

"The man responsible for the operation you were keeping books for," he said. "Where is he now."

The accountant looked at the avenue, then back at Col.

"I want it understood that I was an employee," he said.

"I understand it. Where is he."

"There is a building on the south street," the accountant said. "He’s an independent merchant. The name on the door is Bron. He and Ald have known each other since before the roads ran properly through here."

He paused.

"Ald went there this morning when the first checkpoints went down."

Col stood. He looked at Ric. Ric looked back without expression.

"Move," Col said.

The building was smaller than anything else on the document’s list.

It was a simple business, with goods on open racks through the bay window instead of managed stock.

One ground floor. Two visible entry points.

The smell was different here, worked timber and coal dust, the smell of a place with one trade and no intention of pretending otherwise.

A man was sitting on a barrel outside the bay door with nothing in his hands.

He watched them come down the street and did not move.

Col stopped the squad eight feet out.

The man on the barrel was broad, somewhere past fifty, with weathered hands resting on his knees and the kind of calm that came from deciding his position before the other side arrived.

"Who is inside," Col said.

"My people and one guest."

The man replied with a steady voice. "Name is Bron. This is my building and my business."

"Stand aside from the door."

"I’m not going to do that."

He said it the way a man states a fact about himself.

"This is an operation sanctioned by the protectorate seat." Col said.

"I’m well aware."

"Then you have been properly warned."

Bron said. "Come now then. I don’t have all day."

From behind Col, one of the militia said quietly, "Captain."

Just that.

Col nodded once.

Two men took Bron by the arms.

He did not fight them. He stood up from the barrel and let them hold him, and he looked at Col while they did it.

"Can’t do much about it. They have my family."

"We will find them." Col said, and went through the door.

Three men inside.

Two at the near end of the warehouse floor, one standing directly in front of a partition door at the far end.

None of them were in guard positions.

One had a crossbow.

He raised it when the door opened.

"Get out!" he said. "Right now. All of you."

"Lower the weapon," Col said.

"I said get out."

Col fired his first pistol.

The ball struck the crossbowman through the right shoulder and the arm dropped with the crossbow.

The man went to one knee with a sound dragged from him against his will, surprise and pain arriving together, and sat there with his good arm pressed across the wound.

"Move," someone at the back of the formation said, and the squad spread into the space.

The second man came at Col from the left with a short hand axe and no warning.

Ric stepped into him from the right, shoulder first, and they both went down hard.

The axe skidded on stone.

Ric landed on top and the impact sent a sharp complaint through his ribs that he ignored.

He got his knee into the man’s back and his forearm across the man’s neck.

The man was subdued.

Wex put himself between the third defender and the partition door.

His thigh wound had not been properly dressed, and when he planted his feet the leg took the strain badly.

He exhaled once and bit hard.

"Move away from the door," Wex said.

"I’m not armed," the third man said.

He held both hands out to show it.

"I can see that. Move away from the door."

"Okay, okay," the man said. "Don’t shoot."

A militiaman steered him to the wall.

"Over here," the militiaman said. "Keep your hands up."

The crossbowman on the floor was still kneeling with one arm pressed to his shoulder, breathing through his mouth.

"Get a cord on him," Col said, already crossing to the partition door.

The storage room beyond it was small.

One lamp on a shelf, barely lit.

Crates stacked two high along both walls.

Ald was sitting on one of them.

The lamplight caught the metal of a dozen rings. Both hands, every finger bearing at least one.

He looked at Col when the door opened and his expression did not change.

"Harvin Coss," Col said. "Where is he."

"I wouldn’t know," Ald said.

"When did you last speak with him."

Ald considered that with the patience of a man who had already been through enough negotiations to know that rushing gave away leverage.

"Some time ago," he said. "Well before any of this."

Col locked his gaze.

Ald matched it back with the ease of who had nothing left to lose from the outcome.

"Stand up," Col said.

Ald stood.

He straightened his coat first, pulling the front of it flat in a motion he had done ten thousand times and was apparently not going to skip now.

Then he held out his hands.

Col tied them.

When they walked Ald out through the main warehouse floor, Bron was still in the grip of the two militiamen.

He watched Ald come through the partition door.

Ald passed him without stopping and looked at him once, a brief glance carrying no panic, only the mark of two men acknowledging something that did not need to be said.

Bron said to Col, as Col passed him, "Don’t forget what you told me."

Col did not answer that.

Before they reached the avenue, Wex was finally taken off his feet.

He sat against the exterior wall and let a militiaman work the cord and the improvised dressing off his thigh and start over with something that would actually hold.

He said nothing while it was being done except once, when the dressing pulled, and what he said was a swear that even made the militiaman pause.

Ald’s hands were bound in front of Col.

The cord wrapped across the rings.

Every transaction closed, every contract written, every deal that had funded decades of the Badlands underground, all of it still on his hands in metal, and the cord across all of it.

The district was clear behind them.