Seven days could pass like a blade sliding slowly from a sheath.

  Not loud. Not dramatic. Just inevitable.

  Ravenwatch didn’t pause for anyone, not for frightened bankers, not for angry crowds, not for a bruised city nursing pride after the Corwin breach. Life kept moving because life always moved. The markets still opened. The dock bells still rang. The taverns still filled with men who swore they knew the truth and women who knew better than to argue with drunk certainty.

  Cael lived those seven days like a man standing at the edge of a roof with a jump coming.

  He didn’t spend them staring at the calendar like a child waiting for a festival. He spent them sharpening.

  Some of it looked normal.

  They walked the city again, not as hunters, not as shadows, just as three travelers learning the streets the way a lock learns a key. Cael mapped alley mouths and guard routes without meaning to. Lyra watched faces and noted which corners carried gossip like smoke. Riven collected rumors the way other men collected coins, grabbing a piece here, polishing it with his mouth, then tossing it into the air to see what it became.

  The Corwins still echoed through conversation, though not with the fevered intensity of those first days. The breach had shifted from disaster to story, and stories always softened at the edges. People argued about what happened the way they argued about weather. Some mocked. Some raged. Some claimed the gods were punishing greed. Some claimed the thieves were folk heroes. Some, quieter, stared at the banking branches and decided they didn’t like how fragile “safe” really was.

  Cael listened without looking like he listened.

  He watched the Corwin lines at the banks thin, then swell, then settle. He watched clerks with tired eyes soothe angry customers with practiced phrases and careful smiles. He watched city guards act more alert than before, then start to slacken as days passed and nothing exploded.

  Most of all, he watched the city try to heal without admitting it had been hurt.

  That was the surface.

  Under it, the three of them kept working.

  Lyra gathered small pieces of information the way she gathered kindling, patient and silent, never making a scene. She learned which taverns paid their watchmen to stand near the door. She learned which alleys stayed dark even at midday. She learned which street vendors sold “herbs” that were really code for other things.

  Riven talked.

  He talked to bakers and bookmen, to dockhands and drunks. He made people laugh, made them relax, made them forget to guard their tongues. He was reckless on the outside and razor-precise underneath it, which was exactly why he was useful.

  Cael did what Cael always did.

  He hunted patterns.

  One of those patterns became the uniforms.

  It started as an afterthought the way most good ideas did, not born from brilliance, but from noticing what other people didn’t. Stonehall Registry wasn’t only a building. It was a machine. Machines had moving parts. Moving parts wore uniforms.

  Cael noticed them on the second day, when they passed Stonehall at midmorning like ordinary citizens.

  A man stepped out through a side door carrying a flat crate of rolled papers, his posture weary, his hands stained with dust and ink. He wore a simple work coat in dull slate-gray, reinforced at the elbows, with a stitched emblem near the inner seam rather than displayed proudly on the chest.

  Privileged clerks, Cael realized.

  Not the common clerks. Not the door guards. The ones who handled the deeper shelves and the stored plans. The ones who moved through restricted corridors without being stopped every ten steps.

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  Cael didn’t point. He didn’t slow. He simply filed it away.

  And later, when the city shifted into afternoon bustle, he returned alone and watched again, from farther out, disguised not by clothing, but by posture. He stayed where he could see the side door, where he could watch the flow of workers, where he could pick a target who looked careless enough to have a careless life.

  He found one.

  The man wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t foolish. He was simply tired in the way honest work made you tired. He walked home with the distracted gaze of someone already thinking of dinner. He lived in a modest building in a lane that held too many families and too little space, the sort of place where privacy existed only when everyone agreed not to look.

  Cael didn’t break a lock. He didn’t cut a window. He waited until the man entered, until light moved behind thin curtains, until the building settled into the sound of people living.

  Then Cael climbed.

  Not with magic. Not with spells. Just with hands that remembered rooftops from a first life where the sky was often the safest road.

  A back window on the upper floor had a latch that didn’t quite catch. He slipped inside like a thought, moved across a narrow corridor where the floorboards creaked in predictable places, and found what he’d hoped to find.

  A spare uniform coat hung on a hook near a washing basin, drying from the day’s sweat. Another lay folded on a chair, repaired at the seam with clumsy thread.

  The man kept extra pairs.

  He kept them carelessly, in the way people did when they couldn’t imagine a stranger caring about their coat.

  Cael took one, left the rest untouched, and slipped out without disturbing a single cup.

  When he returned to the rented house, Riven was halfway through a story about a butcher who claimed the Corwins were cursed. Lyra was kneading dough, sleeves rolled, expression composed.

  Cael placed the coat on the table.

  Riven blinked. “What is that?”

  Cael’s voice was calm. “Stonehall.”

  Lyra’s hands paused. Her gaze sharpened. She reached for the coat, flipped it, inspected the stitching near the inner seam.

  “Registry workwear,” she murmured.

  Riven leaned closer. “Did you rob a clerk?”

  “I borrowed a coat,” Cael said. “He won’t miss it for long. He has more.”

  Riven’s grin spread. “This is becoming a hobby.”

  Lyra looked up at Cael. “You want a disguise.”

  “Insurance,” Cael corrected. “If something goes wrong.”

  Riven laughed quietly. “We’ll look official while we’re committing crime. I love it.”

  Lyra studied the coat a moment longer, then nodded to herself. “We don’t need to find a tailor.”

  Riven paused mid-grin. “What?”

  Lyra’s voice stayed flat. “I can make two more.”

  Cael’s brows lifted slightly. “You can?”

  Lyra returned to kneading as if she’d said she could boil water. “If I have the right material.”

  Riven stared at her like she’d just revealed she could breathe fire. “Since when are you a seamstress?”

  Lyra didn’t look up. “Since survival required it.”

  Riven opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. “So you cook, you fight, you plan, you threaten to use me as furniture, and now you also sew.”

  Lyra finally glanced at him. “Do you have a skill besides talking?”

  Riven pressed a hand to his chest, wounded. “Cruel.”

  Lyra’s gaze slid to Cael. “He can fetch materials. As punishment.”

  Riven’s head snapped toward Cael, pleading. “Tell her no.”

  Cael’s mouth twitched, almost amused. He didn’t save him. “Go.”

  Riven sighed like a martyr. “Fine. Escort me, at least. If I’m going to be abused, I want an audience.”

  Cael escorted him, not because Riven needed protection, but because moving in pairs drew less attention than moving alone with purpose. They found a cloth seller near the mid-market who dealt in sturdy work fabric. They bought dull slate-gray wool, reinforced linen strips, heavy thread, and a tiny set of needle tools. They paid in coin that had once been “extracted for operations,” and the thought made Cael almost smile.

  Money that had started as stolen suffering was now funding its own undoing.

  When they returned, Lyra took the fabric like it belonged to her.

  She worked through the evening and deep into the night.

  Cael and Riven watched at first, curious. Lyra’s hands moved with the same precision she used when checking a blade edge. She measured, cut, pinned, stitched. She examined the original coat’s emblem placement, the odd little seam pattern meant to deter simple copying. Then she copied it anyway.

  Riven eventually got bored and wandered off to pester the stew pot. Cael stayed longer, fascinated in spite of himself. Lyra didn’t rush. She didn’t accept “close enough.” Every line had to match. Every fold had to fall the same way. The coats needed to look real in lantern light, in moonlight, in the half-glance of a guard who wasn’t expecting betrayal.

  Hours passed.

  At some point, Cael slept a little, sitting upright with his head against the wall, waking when the house creaked and realizing Lyra still hadn’t stopped.

  When morning came, she laid two finished coats on the table beside the original.

  They looked identical.

  No, Cael realized as he leaned closer.

  They looked better.

  The stitchwork was cleaner. The emblem seam was more precise. The fit was slightly smarter. Lyra had replicated the design, then refined it the way a predator refined a kill.

  Riven stared, then let out a low whistle. “That’s illegal.”

  Lyra’s expression didn’t change. “It’s cloth.”

  Riven poked one sleeve, then looked at Cael, eyes wide. “We’re living with a monster.”

  Cael didn’t joke. He simply nodded once. “Good.”

  The uniforms became a silent part of the plan after that. Not because Cael believed they would save them if everything collapsed, not because he trusted guards to accept a coat as proof of innocence, but because plans were layered. A disguise was a layer. A layer could buy time. Time could become survival.

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