I look at the open back door and feel the irritation rise before the worry does.

Oliver isn’t the type to vanish in the middle of a purchase. Least of all right after Rahul Sharma happens to walk into the same shop where we just closed a deal far too large to look innocent.

If he left, I understand why. Sharma is still a sore subject for him; the man hired assassins to kill him once. Oliver had the sense to pull his own face out of the window before Sharma started thinking of him as an unfinished problem and decided to collect on the investment. Fair enough.

But he should have answered when I called.

"Simon," I say, already moving toward the door, "did he go this way?"

The drowned glances at the gap, then at me, his face still too pale from Sharma. He probably thinks the disappearance is somehow the man’s doing.

"He did. And before you ask, no, I didn’t see who came in after him. I was a little busy trying not to breathe too loudly near that creature."

"Fair. What else could you have done?"

"It delights me how casually you customers say that." The sarcasm was back, so I played along.

"Welcome to my average Tuesday."

I really do like Simon.

I step past him, out the back, and into the alley behind Third Breath. The smell of the field hospital district hits first: medicinal herbs, wet stone, blood washed away, and unburned OXI leaking out of old pipes. The alley is narrow, walled high, the windows set too small for anyone to use as a comfortable escape. You could mistake the hospital for a prison.

Hospitals in Thirstfall are purely military things. There are no biological diseases here, only wounds, intoxications, curses, and things that are difficult to put into words at all. We have to see them to understand it.

The thought brings Oliver’s habits to mind. He didn’t go into the hospital, because Oliver doesn’t try to be discreet the way Rhayne does. He would have warned me, or at least left a trail.

I look down, and there it is. The fine sand on the ground showed me his weight spelled out. A boot scrape near a drain, dust dragged through a turn, a deep mark where he probably changed direction too fast.

I follow it through two corners.

Then I hear his voice.

"I already told you, sir. I don’t have a patron."

Whoever answers sounds cheerful, almost delighted.

"And I already told you that denial is a common reaction in subjects anchored by external manifestation. There’s no need to be embarrassed. You probably don’t even know what it is."

I round the corner.

Oliver stands near a side passage, hands open and low, trying to look as non-aggressive as a man his size can manage. It’s a mere calculation. He knows that against someone two Ranks above him, any sudden gesture becomes the excuse for a "preventive" restraint.

The other man is thin and tall, wrapped in a dark-green coat riddled with pockets, lenses on chains, small runic plates stitched into the sleeve. Three discs of pale stone turn slowly near his left wrist. They don’t glow hard, but enough to say they’re ready. A long cloth hat caricatures him into a wizard out of a children’s story, and the spectacles perched on his nose look like two tiny telescopes lashed together with a rubber strap.

I feel his energy. Rank B. A Mage-type class.

’Wonderful. Exactly the kind of problem the morning was missing.’

"Oliver."

He looks at me and lets out a heavy breath.

"Boss. Finally. Tell this lunatic I don’t summon any ancient elves."

The man turns his face toward me, and his interest changes targets with an offensive speed.

"Uncle Den..." He adjusts the telescope-spectacles, twisting the lenses. "I expected to run into you eventually. Just not in such an honest little alley."

"Honest alleys usually hide dishonest people."

"Merrow Haxley. Rank B, Order A. Runic Theorist." He gives a small bow, far too formal for the setting. "An independent researcher of rare manifestations, deviant classes, and events the institutions would rather pretend are coincidence."

"You followed my partner."

"I followed a historic and magnificent possibility!"

"Same thing, with more vanity."

Oliver points at him without raising his hand much.

"He came out of the crowd behind me. I left the shop to dodge Sharma, turned the corner, and this one was already going on about needing to confirm my connection to the patron."

Haxley looks genuinely wounded.

"I asked politely."

"You said you could immobilize me with no permanent damage."

"That was also said politely."

I study the runic discs. Containment, reading, suppression. It isn’t a formation built to kill; it’s built to hold someone long enough to measure them, cut samples, and call the whole thing a procedure.

"You saw Oliver’s fight at the Oathring," I say.

Haxley’s eyes light up.

"I saw the impossible step into a ring for three seconds." He slides a hand into his coat and draws out a slim folder packed with crystal. Inside it, an old page, sealed between two transparent plates. The ink has nearly faded, but the figure is still sharp: a tall elf, pale armor, a longbow, white fire rising off the shoulders.

"This dropped from a humanoid archivist monster in Stone Vault Creek. A fragment about an elven order that predates the modern records. I spent months trying to prove it wasn’t just funerary iconography. Then your friend nearly dies, and an identical figure appears behind him."

Oliver looks at the page. He doesn’t follow all of it but follows enough to stay quiet.

I get more than I should. A humanoid monster dropping something tied to Duvilin’s race? I have to ask.

"Did any Echo Fragment drop with it, by chance?"

"Don’t be absurd. That never happens."

’So am I the only one who sees the corrupted souls, because of my class?’

Haxley tucks the fragment away with religious care and keeps talking.

"Either he has a patron of Order S or above, or he served as an anchor for something even worse. In every scenario, I can’t simply walk away."

"You can. Just move your legs in the opposite direction."

He smiles.

"I like your insolence. I also saw your fight against Cassio. A Rank D defeating a Rank C, surviving the Royal Sailfish, forcing a public healing with money and social pressure... you’re an excellent object of study yourself."

"I have a personal policy against becoming a lab rat."

"Everyone does. Until they understand the importance... or die in the process."

I take a step to the side, putting myself between him and Oliver without making the move an open challenge.

"You’re making two mistakes, Haxley. The first is thinking Oliver controls what you saw."

"And the second?"

"Thinking it would enjoy being called."

The rotation of the discs slows a little.

Good.

I let the line work on its own. Duvilin appeared because I wished it, or because something in my contract with him answered. Haxley doesn’t know that. To him, ignorance is a dark room, and all I have to do is convince him there are teeth inside it.

"You speak as if you know its name. Maybe more than that."

"I speak as someone who’s still in one piece. Those who search too much die young".

His smile loses a layer of humor.

"An interview, then. Nothing more. One question for your partner, one controlled attempt at reproduction, perhaps a residue reading. I can pay."

"No."

"Information?"

"No."

"Protection?"

"From you?"

Oliver almost laughs and swallows it. I thank him for it silently in my mind.

Haxley sighs, and the plates around his wrist brighten a touch more, throwing pale lines across the damp wall.

’Safe Harbor was born today and has already learned to refuse scientific collaboration. What a shame.’

My hand doesn’t go to Eventide. A Rank B doesn’t need me to hand him an excuse to make a bad situation worse.

"You’re clever, and a studious man should learn fast."

"Naturally."

"Then learn this: Oliver is not your lab rat."

Haxley tilts his head, still smiling.

"Then give me something else to study, Uncle Den. Because I am not leaving this alley empty-handed."