May knelt on the unfinished floor of her shop, needle in hand, when the door scraped open behind her. She turned. A man stood in the frame, one hand pressed against the wood, the other clutched to his side where blood soaked through his shirt. He tried to speak but his knees buckled. She caught him before he hit the ground. His weight pulled them both down. She lowered him to the boards and pressed her palm against the wound. Hot blood welled between her fingers. The man's hand fell away from his chest and she saw what he'd been protecting. A leather binder, strapped across his ribs with a cord. She pulled it free. The cover was thick and bound with brass clasps that hadn't come loose despite the fall. His lips moved but no sound came out. She set the binder aside and tore a strip from her apron. The fabric was clean but the wound was deep. She folded the cloth and pressed hard. His breathing slowed. She looked at his face and saw recognition in his eyes, though she'd never seen him before. He reached toward the binder with one shaking finger, then his hand dropped. His chest went still. May sat back on her heels. Blood soaked through her apron and stained the unfinished boards beneath him. Outside the open door, a silver locket lay in the dirt where he'd fallen, its sapphire catching the morning light. She looked at the leather binder beside her knee. Someone had sent him here. Someone knew where to find her before the shop had even opened. She picked up the binder and turned it over in her hands. The network she'd planned to build alone had found her first.

May wiped her hands on what was left of her apron and stood. The body would need to be moved, but not yet. She stepped over the blood and walked to the open door. The locket lay where she'd seen it, half-buried in the dirt just beyond the threshold. She crouched and pulled it free. The chain was broken, the clasp torn. She turned it over in her palm. On the back, carved into the silver in letters she'd traced with her own fingers three years ago, were two initials beneath a shallow rose. May's breath stopped. She'd made this locket herself, soldered the setting for the sapphire, filed the edges smooth. She'd given it to a woman whose name she'd promised never to speak, whose face she still saw when she closed her eyes at night. The woman who'd had nowhere to go when her husband's men came looking. May stood and scanned the street. A wooden post stood ten feet from her door, a bird perched on the weathered sign that hung from it. The sign read nothing, its paint long faded, but beneath it in the dirt were fresh bootprints. Small ones. A woman's stride. The prints led from the post to where the locket had fallen, then back toward the far end of the street. May looked at the locket again, then at the dead man inside her shop. Someone had followed him here. Someone had been close enough to lose this. She closed her fist around the locket and stepped back inside. The leather binder sat beside the body, its brass clasps gleaming. She picked it up and tucked it under her arm, then grabbed the dead man's shoulders and dragged him toward the back room. The woman she'd built this shop to protect had been here, had seen this, and had run. May locked the door behind her and set the binder on her worktable. The shop would open in three weeks, but the network had already found her. And now she knew it had found the woman too.

May locked the back room and returned to the front window. She kept her body hidden behind the frame and watched the street. A figure stood across from her shop, still as a post. They had not moved in two hours. May counted the minutes by the slow drag of shadow across the dirt. Whoever they were, they were waiting for someone to come next. And May had to decide if that someone would be her, or the woman with the broken locket. She studied the spot where the watcher stood. The base of an iron lamp post had been worn smooth by the heels of their boots. Wax had dripped from the lantern above and pooled in a circle at their feet. Behind them rose a crumbling house, vines climbing its broken windows, its door hanging loose on a single hinge. No one had lived there in years. It was the perfect place to wait. May understood then that the watcher was not hiding. They wanted her to see them. May tied her hair back and pulled a plain shawl over her shoulders. She slipped out the side door and circled wide through the alley. She came up behind the watcher slow, one hand closed around a small blade in her pocket. The watcher faced her shop, eyes fixed on a tall carved wooden post planted near her door. The post had drawn their gaze for two hours. May stepped close and pressed the blade to the small of the watcher's back. "Walk," she said. "Into the empty house. Now." The watcher obeyed. Inside the crumbling abode, May closed the broken door behind them and turned the figure around. It was a girl, no older than fifteen, mouth trembling. She held out a folded square of paper with shaking hands. May took it. The note had three words. "She is alive." May lowered the blade. The girl bolted past her and ran. May stood alone in the dust and read the words again. The watcher was gone. But now she knew the woman was still breathing, and someone wanted her to come find her.