Lin Su's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

The Dowager Empress's clockwork nightingale had five days to reappear before the summit collapsed, and Lin Su had spent three of them chasing a thief no one would name. She spread her file across her desk at the agency. The police had closed the case. She had not. Under her clockwork magnifying glass, the display case showed one thing the officers missed: fine scratches on the lock, made by a tool only a High Table thief could afford. Someone protected by the Thieves' High Table had taken the bird. And every outsider who asked about the High Table turned up dead in a canal. She needed a way inside their world. She had none. So she went to the two people who might. Aurelia Corvus arrived first, in her spymaster's black, the decoder pendant cold at her throat. She read the file without touching it. "You want a name from inside the High Table," she said. "Ask and you drown." "I know," Lin Su said. "That's why I'm not asking loudly. I'm asking you." Aurelia's eyes moved once across the scratches. "I log secrets. I don't sell them cheap." The door opened again. Batinah El-Amin stepped in, a file marked Confidential under one arm. She was Lin Su's friend, an archivist who had tracked stolen records for years and knew where hidden names went. She set the file down without a word. "You keep the records the city hides," Lin Su said. "I need the ledger the High Table uses to protect its own." Batinah studied the scratches, then Lin Su's face. "Such a ledger exists," she said. "I found a copy three years ago, before it vanished from my archive. I let someone watch me search for it. I have not made that mistake since." "Do you still have it?" Batinah opened the Confidential file. Inside lay a single page, water-stained and old. "One page survived. A list of protected thieves and their marks." She traced a line. "Your lock scratches match a tool signed here. A forger the High Table shields." Lin Su's chest tightened. She had a name at last. Aurelia leaned in and read it too. Her jaw set. "That's a dangerous name," Aurelia said. "The last woman to speak it was Vasilisa. The High Table already knows she's coming for him." "Then I'm not the first knock at his door," Lin Su said. "Good. He'll be watching her, not me." Batinah slid the page across the desk. "Take it. But understand what you carry now. This page names the thief. It also names me as the one who kept it hidden." She met Lin Su's eyes. "You wanted a way inside their world. You have it. The question is whether their world now has a way inside yours." Lin Su folded the page into her file and closed the clasp. She had her thief. And by taking the page, she had made herself the next name the canal was waiting for.