The new copies stacked high beside the press. Words and melody together now, four hundred sheets that could teach the song to any eye. But they sat trapped underground. Sable had memorized the vault's single stair. It climbed to a grate that opened onto the street. If she surfaced carrying the sheets, enforcers would take the pages and her voice. She needed a way up that no one watched. The rat woman spoke of two people who could help. One knew every locked door in the city. One knew every patrol route. Sable sent word through the vent tunnels and waited. The old engineer came first. He stooped through the low door, a battered tube under his arm. He did not greet her. He set the tube on the press and unrolled a yellowed schematic. His finger tapped a thin corridor near the east gate. "Section seven," he said. "Maintenance run. I built the walls. I know their weak points." He looked at the drawing, not at her. "I signed off this joint knowing the numbers were short. Never walked it since." "Does it reach the surface?" Sable asked. "It reaches past the checkpoint. No cameras. No sweep." He rolled the tube shut. "I can open the seal. That's all I'll do." The silver-haired runner arrived through the tunnel, her stolen uniform hanging loose on lean shoulders. A laminated pass swung from her collar. She glanced at the stacked sheets, then at Sable. "That's a lot of paper to lose," she said. "You carry that up a stair, you're finished before the second step." "Then how?" Sable said. Jade tapped the pass at her throat. "I run packages through locked sectors. Guards wave me past. Split the load into ration crates. I take them out one delivery at a time, past the checkpoints, into the quarters." She looked at the engineer's schematic. "That corridor gets me the first hundred. The rest go on my normal routes." Sable weighed it. The pages would leave the vault in Jade's crates, not on Sable's back. Her voice stayed hidden. The song would still travel. They worked fast. Kael pried the section-seven seal loose with a wrench, his hands shaking on the metal. The panel groaned open onto dead air and dust. "Short numbers," he muttered, stepping through first. "Held after all." Jade loaded the first crate, sheets pressed flat under a false floor of dried beans. Sable helped stack the last hundred. Jade shouldered the crate and clipped the pass straight. "First drop's at a repair stall," she said. "Woman there trades to half the quarter. She'll spread them faster than any of us." The crate went up through the corridor. The seal shut behind it. Sable stood in the quiet vault, the stacks now shrinking. The song was moving. But it was leaving her hands, into strangers she could not follow, and she no longer controlled where it landed.

The sheets were moving through the city now, but Sable could not follow them. She had drawn the melody by hand. She had cranked the press. Still she did not know if a single stranger could read her marks. The notation meant nothing without a mind to unlock it. She needed proof. So she left the vault through Kael's corridor and went to find the woman whose stall had taken the first drop. The repair stall stood under a striped awning, blue and green, its shelves neat with jars and tools. A heavyset woman in a grease-stained apron looked up from a broken scanner. Grapes sat on a plate beside her hand. This was the trader Jade had named, the one who fed half the quarter. Her eyes moved over Sable's patched grey coat, then to the ink on her fingers. She knew at once who had come. "You're the archivist," the woman said. She did not smile. "You want to know if your paper works." "I need to know," Sable said. The woman wiped her hands and called past the awning. Two children came running. Twins, near ten, dressed alike. One wore a long braid; the other's hair fell past the chin. The braided one held a wooden flute. Both carried satchels stuffed with paper. "They took a copy three days back," the woman said. "Never heard the tune in their lives. The state scrubbed it before they were born." She folded her arms. "Show her." The braided child, Cora, pulled a sheet from her satchel. Sable's breath caught. It was her own printing, the colored notes she had drawn from the pins of the music box. Cora raised the flute and set her eyes on the page. Her brother Kevin leaned close to read along. The first notes came thin and careful. Cora's fingers found the holes. The melody climbed, then bent low, exactly as Sable held it in her skull. It was right. Every phrase was right. Then Kevin opened his mouth and sang the words above his sister's playing. Sable stood frozen. The song she had guarded alone now poured from two children she had never taught. They had learned it from paper. From her marks and nothing else. Her hands shook. For years the melody had lived in one mind. Now it lived in three, and she had said not a word. Cora lowered the flute. "Did we play it right?" "Yes," Sable said. Her voice broke on the word. "Exactly right." The trader picked a grape and ate it. "Then your paper teaches. Four hundred sheets. Four hundred more mouths, if they're brave." She leaned in. "But two children just sang a banned song in an open stall. Sound like that carries. If they can learn it that fast, so can someone who reports to enforcers." Sable looked at the open awning, at the street beyond. The proof she wanted was also a danger she had loosed. The song could teach itself now. She could no longer control who heard it or learned it. A man walked past and began humming a few bars of the song, almost absentmindedly. The song was spreading. Cora and Kevin promised to teach it to the children at their school during recess.

The enforcers had seen her face at the stall. Sable knew it the moment the door burst behind Petra. She and Petra split in the dark. Sable ran alone. Now every street lay open to her, but her patched grey coat marked her like a flag. Two enforcers had looked straight at her. They would remember the coat. They would call it out to every patrol. She pressed into a doorway and looked down at herself. Grey wool, worn thin, sewn with mismatched patches. She had worn it for years. It was the first thing anyone would name. She could not cross to the maintenance corridor while she wore it. She needed to stop being the woman in the grey coat. A flute trilled nearby. Sable's head snapped up. Cora and Kevin Keld sat on a low step, the ten-year-old twins who had played her banned melody without any lesson. Cora held her flute. Kevin sang under his breath. A boot heel struck stone at the far end of the street. "They're looking for grey," Sable whispered, crouching to them. "I can't move." Cora lowered the flute. Kevin was already shrugging off his shoulder bag. Inside sat wrapped ration blocks in bright colors, blueberry and pumpkin and chai, and folded sheets of music beneath them. He pulled out a delivery smock, brown and shapeless, the kind runners wore. "Trade," Kevin said. "Nobody looks at a kid's runner." Sable shed the grey coat. Her hands shook. That coat held years of her. She stuffed it deep in Kevin's bag under the ration blocks. She pulled the brown smock over her shoulders. It hung loose and plain. Cora tugged a scarf up over Sable's red hair. "Walk with us," Cora said. "Slow. Eat one." She pressed a blueberry block into Sable's hand. Boots came closer. Kaine Sevente rounded the corner. His black uniform caught the low light. A whip hung coiled at his hip, a shock stick at the other. He stopped and swept the street with flat eyes. Sable's throat closed. She bit into the ration block and chewed. Kaine's gaze passed over three figures. A woman in a brown smock, chewing. Two children with a flute. He looked for grey and found none. "Curfew soon," he said. Short. Cold. "Move." "Yes, sir," Cora said, sweet as anything. They walked. Sable kept her steps even. She did not look back. When they turned the next corner, her legs almost gave out. The coat was gone now, and with it the woman the enforcers hunted. But Kaine Sevente had seen the twins' faces up close. He had marked the flute and the bag of sheets. Sable could move freely again. Cora and Kevin could not. She had traded her danger to two children, and they carried it now down every street they walked.