Saltport smelled of tar and coin and the small, practiced lies that kept trade moving. The Gray Market folded into the city like a secret within a secret: tarps and lanterns, stalls that traded in favors as much as goods, and men who had learned to speak in flourishes and half‑names. Aria moved through it with the Spiral Log at her hip and Thorne's warded lens tucked into his satchel, a deliberate shadow among traders. Marcus kept the perimeter with the patient readiness of someone who read danger in the way people shifted their weight. Keeper Sera walked with them, Remnants seal heavy in her satchel; Luna's voice threaded through the line, steady and close enough to be a tether.
They had a hinge and a rope. Calder's confession had given them the facilitator shorthand; the Veiled Crossing raid had given them plates and a Pale Codex shard; the Vault had given them a treatise that reframed the Spiral as an heir to an argument. Now they needed hands—people who signed manifests, clerks who looked the other way, fixers who turned favors into invoices. Procedure had been the Spiral's cloak; they would follow the stitches.
Thorne paused at a stall that sold maps and false routes. He fed a plate rubbing through a small warded reader and watched the broker flourish bloom under the lens. The microetch matched the Veiled Crossing variant and the Moonforge plates; a pale codex ghosted the edge. He sketched the match in shorthand and slid the rubbing back into his palm.
"Corin's flourish," he said. "Same family of plates. Someone's been laundering routes through Saltport fences."
A vendor with a scarred knuckle watched them with the practiced politeness of a man who had been paid to be polite. He led them through a maze of booths to a narrow booth where a woman with a ledger like a shield handled metal slates as if they were coins. She let them see a tray of plates—broker flourishes stamped into metal, each one a small, legal lie. Thorne let the rubbing show for a heartbeat; the woman's fingers paused and then moved with the economy of someone who had been paid to look away.
"Corin Vell doesn't sell in public," she said. "He moves plates through fences. If you want him, you follow the slips where private skiffs land at dawn. He uses men like Halv and couriers like Harlan. He pays in favors and keeps his mouth shut."
Aria felt the ledger's rope tighten. "Where do the slips land?"
The woman shrugged. "Near the Glass Lighthouse. Private docks. A dockmaster signs for things and forgets them in the right places. If you want Halv, you find the dockmaster who signs for his slips."
They left the Gray Market with a name and a place: Halv, private slip near the Glass Lighthouse, dawn runs. Thorne tucked a copy of the plate's rubbing into a Remnants packet and sealed it with wax. Keeper Sera's seal would make the plate a legal artifact; it would also make it harder for brokers to claim plausible deniability.
At the Glass Lighthouse the tide moved like a slow, patient beast. Private skiffs slipped into slips that were not on any public map; dockmasters signed manifests with a hand that had learned to forget. Marcus presented a sealed Remnants request and a magistrate's notarization and asked for manifests. The dockmaster's face closed like a door.
"We need a Council subpoena," he said. "Orders from above."
Aria showed the magistrate's witness packet and the Remnants seal. "We ask for manifests under Remnants custody," she said. "We will not take anything without witnesses. We will not expose your town to risk. We only ask to see what was signed for these slips."
The dockmaster hesitated, the ledger's habit of looking away warring with the weight of a Remnants seal. He opened a ledger and thumbed pages until a line of cramped handwriting matched the FACV stub Thorne had shown him. A private slip had been signed for a crate months before; the broker flourish was noted in a margin. The dockmaster's hand trembled as he copied the manifest into a witness sheet and stamped it with his seal.
"That's Harlan's route," he said quietly. "He signs for things and moves on. He's careful. He doesn't ask."
They followed Harlan's route like people who had learned to read a map in the margins. The courier house was a low building with a stoop and a man who kept his head down. He unfolded a manifest with hands that shook and pointed to a line where Harlan's route was listed. He remembered the man who had met the package: a limp, a belllaugh, a man who signed and left. He had not looked at the crate's contents. He had signed because it was his job.
"We ask for a meeting," Marcus said. "Neutral ground. Witnesses. We do not accuse; we present evidence and ask for explanation."
Harlan agreed to a neutral meeting under Remnants witness. The Loom's team prepared a packet: ledger fragments, notarized witness sheets, and a sealed microetch replica that could be demonstrated without letting the Pale Codex shard sing. They would not bring the shard into the meeting; they would show the pattern and ask for answers.
The meeting was a study in small, legal motions. Harlan sat with his hands folded and his eyes on the table. Aria laid out the packet: manifests, FACV stubs, Calder's confession, the Veiled Crossing plates. She spoke plainly and without flourish. "We are not here to punish a courier," she said. "We are here to understand how these manifests moved and who signed for them. If you carried crates for Halv or for Corin Vell, tell us what you remember."
Harlan's voice was a thin thing. "I carried crates," he said. "I signed. I remember a man with a limp. He paid in coin and favors. He told me not to look. I did not know what was inside. I thought it was trade."
The ledger's rope tightened. Harlan's testimony gave them a face in a room where procedure had been the currency. It did not name the patron committee, but it named the mechanism: couriers who signed, dockmasters who looked away, fixers who laundered plates through fences. The Spiral had been a system of small, legal motions that added up to plausible deniability.
They followed the rope further. Thorne's matchers found Rell's ledger code in procurement stubs—an administrative shorthand that opened into rooms where favors were currency. Rell ran a small syndicate of fences who took plates for coin and moved manifests through shell trusts. A warehouse on the edge of town smelled of tar and old rope; inside they found a thin ledger, water‑stained and full of shorthand. Rell's code was there, and beside it a clerk's initial that matched a procurement stub Calder had mentioned.
Marcus moved like a shadow and took two facilitators into the warehouse at night. Thorne and Aria kept the perimeter, ready to seal evidence and call witnesses. On a bench lay a stack of slates—broker plates, some fresh, some worn—and a small pile of manifests with FACV coding. Someone had been laundering routes through a chain of fences and clerks.
A man with clerk's hands looked up when Marcus's shadow fell across the doorway. He was not a hulking enforcer but a clerk who had learned to keep his head down. His ledger code matched the procurement stub. He swallowed and then, with a small, human panic, began to talk.
"I signed for things," he said, voice thin. "I was told they were routine transfers. I didn't look at the contents. I signed because it was my job. Rell paid me in coin and favors. I thought—God, I thought it was just paperwork."
The clerk's confession was a hinge. It gave them a face in a room where procedure had been the currency. It did not name the patron committee, but it named the mechanism: clerks who signed, fences who laundered plates, brokers who moved goods through private slips. The Veil had been a system of small, legal motions that added up to plausible deniability.
They took the ledger and the plates under Remnants custody and left the clerk with a witness packet and a promise of protection. Keeper Sera's scribe recorded the confession in triplicate and sealed it with wax. Thorne fed the plates through the warded lens and found the microetch variants they had been tracing—Veiled Crossing templates, Saltport flourishes, and that pale codex glyph that made his throat tighten. The rope was longer now; the patron committee's face still shadowed, but the path to it was clearer.
Saltport's reaction was not uniform. Some magistrates welcomed the Loom's presence and opened manifests; others bristled at what they called "interference." A merchant's guild issued a cautious statement urging calm and due process; a broker's cartel quietly moved assets offshore. The Hall's hearing loomed like a tide: it would force choices, and choices made in daylight had consequences.
That night, Aria walked the quay alone. The tide moved in and out, carrying with it the smell of tar and fish and the faint, stubborn scent of jasmine that followed her like a promise. She thought of the clerk who had signed without looking, of Harlan's limp and belllaugh, of the apprentice at Moonforge whose eyes had cleared because someone had paid a price. The ledger's rope had grown longer, and the work ahead would be careful and public and costly.
Luna's voice came over the line, soft and steady. We'll hold the net, she said. We'll teach the towns to be noisy. We'll make mapping expensive.
Aria let the words settle like a benediction. The Saltport thread had given them names and routes and a warehouse ledger; it had not yet named the patron committee in full. But it had opened a path: procurement channels, courier routes, and a facilitator shorthand that could be traced into rooms where people preferred procedure to witness. The Loom would follow those seams—through witnesses, sigils, and public packets—until the committee's face could be seen in the light.
Spiral Log — Saltport Thread entry
Findings: Corin Vell flourish matched to Gray Market plates; Harlan courier route confirmed; Rell ledger code and warehouse ledger recovered; clerk confession notarized; private slip activity at Glass Lighthouse documented. Actions: Plates and manifests seized under Remnants custody; clerk and courier witness packets sealed; targeted subpoenas prepared where magistrates allow; increase detector deployment at Glass Lighthouse and two pilot market nodes. Costs & Notes: On‑site plate analysis requires warded reader rotation to avoid operator haze; Remnants custody protocols enforced; public framing to emphasize consent and witness