Seraphine Goldcrest reached the small market before the blood had dried. Two men lay between overturned fruit crates, one in bronze cuffs, one in silver braid. She had spent three months walking every Order to the same table, promising each of them an equal voice, and now she stood over the first bodies of the war she had sworn to prevent. Her golden staff felt heavier than it had that morning. The compass rose on its head pointed, as always, toward the people not yet at the table. Today it pointed at the dead. Elias Brasspin waited by a clockwork repair stall, apron still streaked with oil. He had seen the first strike. He told her the silver man drew first, then corrected himself, then went quiet. Seraphine crouched by the bronze body and searched the coat until her fingers closed on a broken token. She turned it over. The crest was silver, but the metal underneath was wrong, too pale, too light, the edge freshly filed. A counterfeit, planted to name a killer that had not swung the first blade. Someone wanted the Row on fire, and had chosen bronze and silver as the kindling. She pocketed the token and stood. Elias watched her the way people watch a physician deciding whether to lie about a wound. She told him the truth. He nodded once and went back to his stall. She walked to the public kiosk at the edge of the market and climbed the step at its base. The brass beacon above her caught the afternoon light, and a crowd gathered as she pinned her notice to the board. She spoke plainly. A brawl in the small market had killed two men. The token found on the bronze body was a forgery. Neither Order had started this. Someone wanted them to believe otherwise. She would meet both Masters at the great hall by sundown, and any citizen who wished to witness could come. She did not raise her voice. She did not need to. She had learned, from a woman who died before the Row ever agreed to sit down, that showing up was the whole trick. By sundown she stood beneath the monumental clock of the great hall, staff planted on the tile. The bronze delegation came in from one arch. The silver came in from the other. Both Masters carried the counterfeit's weight in their faces. She set the broken token on the stone between them and asked one question. Who profits if you kill each other tonight. Neither answered. That was answer enough. They agreed to a seven-day truce, witnessed, written, and posted at the kiosk before dawn. Seraphine watched them leave through separate arches. The truce would hold for a week. The forger was still on the Row, and the Iron Order, silent for a month now, had sent no one to watch the meeting at all.