The third address was another counting house, older than the last. It sat tucked behind a row of shuttered warehouses on a side street that smelled of damp stone and old rope.
Atlas checked the corners once more before they went in. Clara did the same from the opposite angle. Lara kept pace at his shoulder. Eli walked half a step behind, eyes moving across the empty windows above.
The baron waited inside with two retainers. The men left the moment the four of them crossed the threshold. This time the baron was not alone.
His wife stood near the half-drawn shutters. She was younger than him by more than a decade.
She wore the restrained cut the empire preferred—dark fabric, clean lines, no excess—but the way the cloth sat on her shoulders and the way she held her weight made the restraint look chosen rather than required.
Her gaze moved across the four of them without hurry. It paused on Eli with polite recognition, then settled on Atlas and stayed there.
