Fennel reached the clerk's counter with two sealed letters in his coat pocket — one from the mill owner in Greenest, one from the magistrate who owed him a debt. He'd spent three days getting those signatures. Three days that had cost him sleep and coin and the kind of careful persuasion that left him wrung out. But the clerk didn't look up when Fennel approached. She was reviewing a stack of documents already on her desk, nodding to a well-dressed woman standing opposite him. The woman's coat was clean wool, her boots polished. She slid a folded parchment across the counter with ringed fingers. The clerk broke the wax seal and scanned the contents, then lifted her stamp. Fennel's throat tightened. He saw the names before the ink dried — Rye, Saffron, Juniper — all three listed under a petition for emergency custody filed by someone he'd never met. The woman turned as she collected her receipt. She looked him over once, briefly, then walked past him toward the door. The clerk finally met his eyes. She said nothing. Fennel pulled the letters from his pocket, but his hands had already gone cold. He set the letters on the counter anyway. The clerk glanced at them and shook her head. The claim had been filed first, she said. His petition was now a counter-claim. It would require a hearing. That would take weeks to schedule, maybe months. Fennel asked how someone could file for his siblings without his knowledge. The clerk tapped the scroll in front of her. The woman had provided a sworn affidavit of prior care and a witness signature from a boarding house owner in the Outer City. She met the criteria. Fennel's letters were character references, not proof of relationship or residence. He could contest it, but the children would remain in city custody until the matter was resolved. The clerk slid his letters back across the counter. Outside, through the shed's single window, Fennel watched the woman climb into a hired carriage. He didn't recognize her face. But he knew exactly who had sent her. Fennel walked out of the clerk's office and stood on the steps of the courthouse across the square. The stone columns rose above him, moss creeping up their faces like the building itself was sinking into the mud. He looked at the letters in his hand. They meant nothing now. Someone had beaten him to the filing, someone with better documentation and cleaner hands. His siblings would spend the next few months in a city holding house while lawyers argued over paperwork. He thought about Rye's cough, the one that got worse every winter in the damp. He thought about Saffron's nightmares and Juniper's silence. The deadline he'd been racing against was gone. The race itself had changed. He folded the letters and put them back in his coat. Then he turned toward the Lower City, where the boarding houses kept their records and witnesses could be found if you knew where to look.