The faint smile disappeared from the man’s face almost as quickly as it had appeared.
He turned back toward the package, and Cain had the distinct impression that the conversation had given him everything he wanted for the moment. Whatever judgment he was forming had been set aside unfinished, stored somewhere behind those unreadable eyes while the more immediate problem reclaimed his attention.
Rain rattled softly against the roof overhead.
The sound had changed since Cain entered the warehouse. The storm had drifted farther out over the canal, turning the steady downpour into uneven bursts that swept across the building in waves. Every few moments, the wind pushed another curtain of rain against the outer wall, and the entire structure responded with a low groan from somewhere deep in the timber framework.
The man untied the remaining bindings around the oilcloth bundle.
Nobody spoke.
Cain watched the room instead.
The woman with the crossbow hadn’t relaxed after lowering the weapon. Her attention kept drifting toward the package before returning to the newcomer’s face. Each time she caught herself doing it, her fingers tightened slightly around the stock, as if some part of her still wanted to raise the weapon again despite knowing exactly how useless that would be.
The wounded mercenary looked tired enough to fall asleep sitting upright. Pain had settled into his expression and refused to leave, carving deep lines around his mouth and eyes. Every now and then, his hand drifted unconsciously toward the bandages wrapped around his ribs, checking for blood that he already knew was there.
Of everyone in the room, the accountant seemed the least capable of ignoring the package.
He kept his body angled away from the table, but his eyes betrayed him. They slipped toward the records, then toward the man unfolding them, then toward the rain-dark windows, then back again. The movement repeated often enough that Cain stopped watching the man and started watching the pattern.
The package hadn’t reached its final destination.
Yet the newcomer folded back the oilcloth and began reading.
Pages shifted beneath his hands. Paper rasped softly against paper, almost lost beneath the weather and the groan of old wood. Somewhere below them, water dripped steadily into one of the flooded sections of the warehouse floor, the sound blending with the rain until it became difficult to tell where the storm ended and the building began.
The accountant tried to wait him out.
At first, he managed it. He remained seated beside the desk, his hands folded loosely together, his eyes focused somewhere near the floorboards. Then one finger tapped against his knuckle. A few seconds later, his attention found its way back to the table. By the third glance, even he seemed aware that patience was slipping away from him.
“Those records were supposed to go to Lila.”
The words entered the room carefully, as though he had rehearsed them several times in his head and still hadn’t decided whether saying them aloud would make the situation better or worse.
Cain watched the woman with the crossbow turn her head slightly toward him. The wounded mercenary opened one eye from where he sat against the wall.
The newcomer took another few moments to finish reading the page in front of him before setting it aside.
“I know.”
The accountant waited.
Rain whispered briefly against the boarded windows as another gust rolled in from the canal. The newcomer reached for a second page and began reading without offering anything further.
A tired laugh escaped the wounded mercenary, only lasting for a moment before pain pulled across his face and forced his hand back against his ribs.
“Helpful,” he spat out.
The newcomer looked over.
The mercenary gestured vaguely between the package and the records spread across the table. “I’m trying to figure out whether we spent half the night bleeding for something important.”
For the first time in several minutes, the man stopped reading.
His gaze moved across the room in a slow pass that took in the accountant, the woman, the mercenary, Cain, and finally the documents spread out beneath his hands.
“That depends on who else knows they exist.”
The answer sat in the room with the rain and the smell of blood.
The mercenary’s brow creased. “People are already looking for them.”
“Yes.”
“That’s usually what ‘important’ means.”
“Usually.”
The man returned to the records, though Cain noticed that his attention had sharpened in a subtle way. His eyes no longer moved across the pages as if he were reading their contents in order. They skipped instead. Cain couldn’t see the details from where he stood, but he could see the rhythm of his search change.
The accountant noticed as well.
His fingers tightened against the edge of his chair.
“What exactly are you looking for?”
The man continued comparing two pages for another few seconds before answering. “A reason these copies exist.”
The accountant frowned. “We kept copies because people keep copies.”
The newcomer’s eyes remained on the papers. “People keep copies when they expect betrayal, audits, negotiations, succession disputes, or legal inconveniences. They keep different copies depending on which problem they fear most.”
The accountant opened his mouth, then closed it again.
That was the first answer the man had given that felt less like evasion and more like a glimpse of the machinery behind the face. He wasn’t studying the records as evidence. Evidence was for courts, churches, guildmasters, and people who wanted public decisions to look clean.
This man was studying the habits around the evidence.
The package mattered because of the hands that touched it.
The records mattered because someone had decided, months ago, that the information inside them needed to survive.
The newcomer drew one page from the stack and placed it beside the package. A second followed after a longer pause.
The accountant leaned forward despite himself. “Those pages?”
The man rested two fingers lightly against the first. “When were these copied?”
“Three months ago.”
“And who authorized it?”
“A supervisor.”
The answer came quickly enough that Cain looked toward him.
The accountant’s shoulders had gone slightly stiff.
“What was his name?”
“Dennet.”
The wounded mercenary shifted against the wall. “Does that matter?”
The man did not answer him immediately. His eyes moved to the second page, tracing something near the lower margin before returning to the first.
“When did Dennet die?”
The accountant’s expression tightened.
“How did you know he died?”
“Answer the question.”
“…Two months ago.”
The woman with the crossbow looked between them. “He died of old age during transfer. Everyone knows that.”
“Where?”
“Arbourten. They say that Lady Vanis herself gave him his last rights.”
The newcomer’s gaze remained on the papers. “Is that so.”
The words were mild.
A gust pushed rain against the roof hard enough to drown the room for several seconds. The old warehouse seemed to breathe with it, boards flexing, walls groaning, water sliding through cracks and pattering onto hidden surfaces below. Cain listened through the noise, his attention split between the table and the stairwell.
The tripwire downstairs had been crude.
The safehouse extraction had gone wrong.
The lookouts were missing.
The man in front of him had followed Cain here without making any effort to hide his arrival once he chose to enter.
The newcomer selected another document.
This one he did not set aside immediately.
He read it once, then again, then angled it slightly toward the lanternlight.
Cain shifted his weight.
The floorboard beneath his boot creaked, softer than the rain but loud enough in the stillness that the woman’s eyes flicked toward him.
The man’s gaze dropped briefly to Cain’s feet.
“You don’t seem to have learned to step properly.”
Cain stared at him.
The man continued studying the page.
A few seconds passed before Cain realized that no further explanation was coming.
“Is that a professional opinion?”
“An old one.”
Cain looked down at his stance, then back at him.
The floor sloped slightly toward the outer wall where years of rain had warped the structure. He had adjusted without thinking, settling into a posture that kept his balance centered despite the angle. The man had noticed it.
That detail found a place in Cain’s mind and stayed there.
The newcomer placed a third page beside the other two.
The accountant looked increasingly uncomfortable now. His gaze moved from one selected page to the next, as if the documents had become more dangerous after being separated.
“Dennet wasn’t important,” he said.
The newcomer looked up.
“People often say that after someone dies.”
“He was a supervisor,” the accountant insisted. “He approved shipments, checked storage numbers, signed payment confirmations. He wasn’t—” He stopped himself, his jaw tightening as though the rest of the sentence had nearly escaped before he could catch it.
The newcomer waited.
Rain tickled the windows.
The accountant swallowed. “He wasn’t someone who made decisions.”
The man’s gaze drifted back to the pages.
“Then someone used his hand.”
The woman with the crossbow shifted slightly, the motion pulling at the wound on her shoulder. She ignored the pain.
“What does that mean?”
The man gathered the three separated pages and aligned their edges with careful taps against the table. “It means the person who wanted these copies preserved either lacked direct authority or preferred not to use it.”
The accountant stared at him.
The wounded mercenary rubbed at his face again, leaving a faint smear of blood near his jaw. “Can somebody explain why any of that matters? I’m bleeding out over here and none of you seem to care.”
A faint trace of amusement passed through the newcomer’s eyes, though his mouth barely moved.
“It means you were useful.”
The mercenary groaned. “I hate when people say that.”
“You should. It’s rarely a compliment.”
That earned a short, breathless laugh from the woman with the crossbow before she caught herself. The sound faded quickly, swallowed by rain.
Cain kept watching the newcomer’s hands.
They were clean despite the warehouse, the rain, and the bodies of the lookouts he had supposedly dealt with. His long fingers showed no sign of tremors or impatience. He was confidently touching records that belonged to someone else in a room full of people who clearly wished he wouldn’t.
The package had been Lila’s objective.
Cain had done his part in delivering it.
And yet the moment this man entered the room, the mission changed shape without anyone officially admitting it.
He crossed the room slowly, careful with the warped floorboards, and stopped on the opposite side of the table.
The man did not look up.
Cain rested one hand lightly on the edge of the oilcloth.
“I was told to recover this.”
“I assumed as much.”
“It wasn’t meant for you.”
“That much was obvious.”
The accountant went very still.
The woman with the crossbow watched Cain now.
The wounded mercenary lowered his hand from his ribs, his expression caught somewhere between exhaustion and the weary anticipation of a man who could sense another disaster approaching.
Cain let the silence breathe for a moment.
The rain caressed it gently.
“You seem comfortable with other people’s property.”
The newcomer looked up then.
His eyes were calm.
“Property is usually a matter of paperwork.”
Cain glanced down at the records spread between them. “Convenient thing to say while reading stolen documents.”
“Yes,” the man said. “You get the idea.”
The answer should have annoyed him more than it did.
Instead, Cain found himself studying the man’s expression, searching for the edge beneath the politeness. Most dangerous people carried their threats somewhere visible, like holding their hands near weapons or having their eyes fixed on a future nobody else could see.
Even sitting at a table in a rotting warehouse, with rain bleeding through the ceiling and blood soaking a blanket near his feet, he seemed faintly inconvenienced by the world rather than threatened by it.
Cain tightened his fingers once against the oilcloth.
The newcomer noticed.
His gaze moved to Cain’s hand.
Then back to his face.
After several seconds, he slid the main stack of records back toward him, leaving only the three separated pages near his own elbow.
“I have no particular interest in preventing Lila from receiving what she requested.”
The accountant exhaled quietly, though he stopped himself halfway through the breath.
Cain did not move his hand. “But?”
“I’m interested in why copies of the records exist. Lila is capable, but this was arranged above her reach.”
“By who?”
The man’s gaze drifted back toward the three separated pages.
“That is what I intend to learn.”
The accountant’s eyes snapped toward the three pages near the newcomer’s elbow.
“You’re keeping those?”
The question came out too quickly, and the moment it left his mouth, he seemed to regret drawing attention to it. His fingers curled against the edge of the desk. The woman with the crossbow glanced from him to the papers, then back again, weighing whatever was happening against whatever she knew about the man across from Cain.
The newcomer stared at the papers.
Rain slid across the outside of the warehouse in a long, whispering sweep. The sound filled the space between them while he adjusted the three pages, aligning their corners with a degree of care that felt mildly absurd given the state of the building around them.
Cain watched his hands.
The man’s fingers moved with the same economy as the rest of him. No fidgeting or wasted movements. He gathered the three pages, then turned them around and slid them across the table toward Cain.
“I have a better memory than most people give me credit for.”
The accountant’s shoulders lowered a fraction before he caught himself.
Cain kept one hand resting against the oilcloth. “You’re giving them back.”
“I said I had no interest in preventing Lila from receiving what she requested.”
“You also said someone arranged this above her reach.”
“I did.”
The man tapped the first page lightly. “This is the authorization that should have been routine.” His finger moved to the second. “This is the shipment ledger that reveals the pattern.” Then the third. “And this is the piece that makes the pattern inconvenient.”
The accountant leaned forward despite himself, his eyes narrowing as though the records might reveal some hidden mark now that they had been arranged in a different order.
Cain looked down at them.
He didn’t recognize any of the names. It was a list of numbers, dates, transfer codes, signatures… all of it had the same dry, administrative ugliness. Yet arranged together…
Perhaps Lila would see the significance.
And perhaps that was the point.
His fingers tightened against the oilcloth. “You organized it for her.”
The man’s gaze rose to meet his. “She would have found it eventually.”
“Then why help?”
“Because ‘eventually’ is a dangerous word when too many people are already moving.”
The answer carried a strange weight.
The wounded mercenary gave a quiet, humorless breath through his nose. “I’ve heard that sort of thing before my superiors send me somewhere unpleasant.”
“You should probably see a healer before anyone sends you anywhere.”
“I’ve been trying to make that point for a while.”
The woman with the crossbow focused her attention on his wound. The blood had spread farther beneath his hand, darkening the cloth in a slow crescent that looked progressively worse with every passing minute.
The newcomer followed her gaze.
“Your people are alive,” he said.
She looked back at him sharply.
“The lookouts?”
“Yes.”
The answer struck her hard. Her mouth parted slightly, and whatever response she had prepared seemed to disappear before it reached her tongue.
The newcomer gently pulled the oilcloth from under Cain’s hand and began folding it back over the documents as if the matter had already been handled. “They are wet, angry, and unlikely to trust canal barges for some time. They should recover from the experience.”
The wounded mercenary stared at him. “You tied them to a barge?”
“They were following me.”
“You could have told us that earlier.”
“Nobody asked directly.”
The mercenary looked as though he wanted to argue, but the effort of breathing seemed to claim priority. He settled back against the wall with a grimace and muttered something that sounded unkind enough to stay private.
The man finished wrapping the records and pushed the bundle fully toward Cain. The motion was smooth, unhurried, and somehow more unsettling than if he had refused to hand it over. Cain had expected resistance, bargaining, or perhaps some demand dressed up as a suggestion.
Instead, the package came back cleaner than before.
And possibly worse than before.
It was useful in a way it had not been when Cain carried it through the rain.
“What do you want from her?” he asked.
The man looked toward the boarded windows. Rainwater continued to gather along the lower edge of one plank, trembling there before falling in thin streams down the inside wall.
A faint trace of amusement moved through his expression, gentle enough that it could have been mistaken for politeness. “At the moment, very little. She is talented, ambitious, and impressively willing to set fires beside powder stores when the alternative is allowing someone else to own the match.”
The woman with the crossbow frowned.
The accountant looked like he very much wished to contradict the man’s characterization of his boss.
Cain studied the man’s face. “That sounds almost complimentary.”
“It was.”
“Almost.”
The man’s eyes returned to him. “I prefer careful people. Careful people leave cleaner trails.”
Cain felt something cold and faintly amused move through him, though he kept it from reaching his face. “And careless people?”
“They are easier to find.”
Rain struck the roof again, harder this time. The burst rolled over them like a curtain being dragged across the warehouse. For several seconds, the world shrank to water, old wood, lanternlight, and the wrapped package between Cain’s hand and the stranger’s.
When the sound eased, the newcomer had shifted his attention back to the three arranged pages visible beneath the last fold of oilcloth.
“Tell Lila to look at the dates before she looks at the names.”
The accountant blinked. “Why would she—”
“She’ll understand.”
The accountant closed his mouth.
Cain picked up the package.
It felt heavier now, although nothing had been added to it. The weight had changed in a less convenient way. Before it had been something Lila wanted and Cain could use to buy protection for the people hidden inside his wardrobe.
Now it also carried a question from a man who should not have been here.
Cain tucked the package beneath his coat. “And what should I tell her about you?”
The man reached for his gloves.
The question seemed to please him, though not enough to make him smile again. He pulled the first glove over his fingers, smoothing the leather into place while considering the answer with far more care than Cain expected.
“Tell her the weather delayed you.”
Cain stared at him.
The man fitted the second glove. “It has the virtue of being true in the least useful way possible.”
The mercenary gave another breathless laugh and immediately regretted it.
“That’s what you want me to tell her?” Cain asked.
“That’s what I recommend you tell her.”
“And if I tell her exactly what happened?”
The man flexed his gloved fingers once, then rested his hand against the table.
“Then you will learn what she does when she discovers someone reached a thing she wanted before she did.” His voice remained even. “That may be valuable information. It may also be expensive.”
Rain continued to crawl through the warehouse, finding every weakness the building had and making each one audible. The city beyond the boarded windows felt distant, but Cain knew it was still moving.
And this man…
“What are you?” Cain asked.
The accountant inhaled sharply.
The woman’s fingers tightened around the crossbow again.
The man’s gaze remained on Cain.
For a moment, the rain seemed louder.
Then the man smiled with the faint courtesy of someone declining an invitation.
“Better company under friendlier circumstances.”
The man stepped back from the table, leaving the package entirely in Cain’s possession. “Deliver the records. Watch which part of them bothers her first. If it is the names, she is chasing leverage. If it is the dates, she understands the problem. If it is me, then she is more distracted than I hoped.”
“And if she asks how I know all that?”
The man turned toward the staircase.
“Tell her I remain difficult to impress.”
He took two steps before pausing near the broken section of flooring. His eyes drifted once more toward Cain’s feet, then to the slight slope of the boards beneath him.
“One more thing.”
Cain waited.
“When you step, stop thinking about where your foot lands.” The man looked back over his shoulder. “Think about where your weight will be when the world tries to move beneath you.”
The words rang oddly.
Cain had heard stranger advice from Torvald and Shinhwa, but those two were far outside the norm.
Before he could ask what that meant, the newcomer descended the stairs.
His footsteps faded into the rain-soaked lower floor, unhurried and measured, until even Cain could no longer separate them from the sound of water dripping through the bones of the building.
The room remained silent after he left.
The accountant looked at Cain.
The woman looked at the package.
The wounded mercenary closed his eyes and let his head rest against the wall. “I’m going to need more than one healer.”
Then he died.
Cain looked down at the oilcloth bundle beneath his arm.
The records were still there.
The mission was still intact.
Yet the entire thing felt rearranged.
Outside, the storm began to calm, having washed the streets clean enough for people to pretend they had never been dirty in the first place.
Project Knightfall 