The shop was hidden beneath a chandler's workshop, behind a wall of tallow candles that smelled of fat and old smoke.
Leximus had found it through rumor—the kind of rumor that traveled through the Drown in whispers, passed between people who didn't want to be heard. A dealer. A trader in things that couldn't be named. A man who could find anything, for the right price.
The entrance was a door behind the candle rack, painted black, unlocked. Leximus pushed it open and descended a narrow staircase, the steps creaking under his weight. The walls were close, the ceiling low, and the air grew colder as he went down—not his cold, but the cold of disuse, of spaces that had been sealed too long.
The basement was larger than he expected.
Shelves lined the walls, floor to ceiling, each one filled with glass jars. The jars held things—Characteristics, mostly, but also stranger objects. Teeth. Bones. A length of preserved skin, tattooed with symbols that seemed to move when he wasn't looking directly at them. The light came from a single gas lamp on the desk in the center of the room, its flame low, casting long shadows that stretched across the floor.
Behind the desk sat a man.
He was thin, his face gaunt, his eyes hollow in a way that had nothing to do with age. His hands rested on the desk, palms down, the fingers long and pale. When he moved, it was with a slow, deliberate economy—the kind of movement that came from years of practice, years of knowing exactly how much energy to spend.
"Sorin," Leximus said.
The man didn't react. His eyes didn't move. His breathing didn't change.
"You're the Cold Man," Sorin said. His voice was flat, affectless.
"I need information."
"Everyone needs information. The question is what you have to trade for it."
He didn't have coin. He didn't have Characteristics. He didn't have favors he could call in. But he had something else—something Sorin had never seen before.
He looked at the lock on one of the glass jars. He focused on the concept of secured, on the mechanism that held the lid in place, on the metal's resistance to opening. Then he un-wrote it.
The lock clicked. The lid loosened.
Sorin's eyes narrowed.
"That's not a normal power," he said.
"I'm not a normal Avatar."
Sorin was quiet for a long moment. His hands didn't move from the desk. His breathing didn't change. But something in his posture shifted—a tension, a wariness that hadn't been there before.
"What do you want to know?" he asked.
Leximus sat in the chair across from the desk. The wood creaked under his weight. The gas lamp flickered, and for a moment, the shadows on the walls seemed to reach for him.
"The Annunciation Banquet," Leximus said. "I need to know about the security. The guards. The gaps."
Sorin's face didn't change. "That's dangerous information."
"I know."
"The people who ask for that kind of information tend to disappear."
"I know that too."
Sorin studied him. The hollow eyes, the gaunt cheeks, the pale skin that seemed to glow in the lamplight. Whatever he was looking for, he seemed to find it.
"There's a window," Sorin said. "Six hours, from midnight to dawn. The elite guards—the Sunwardens—they pray at midnight. Their replacements are regular soldiers, slow, untrained. They don't know what to look for."
"Where's the gap?"
Sorin reached for a piece of paper, a charcoal stick. He sketched quickly—a map of the palace, the corridors, the entrances. His hand moved with the confidence of someone who had drawn this before, many times.
"Here." He tapped the eastern wing. "The servants' entrance. It's unguarded during the prayer shift. The nobles don't use it, so the King doesn't care about it."
"How do you know this?"
Sorin looked up. His eyes were empty.
"Because I used to work for the Audit. Before they killed my wife."
The silence stretched.
Leximus didn't ask what happened. He didn't need to. The hollow eyes, the gaunt cheeks, the way Sorin's hands rested on the desk like they were holding something down—it was all there, in the spaces between his words.
"Your wife," Leximus said.
"She was an Adept. Water. She got sick—the Rot, they call it. Too much exposure, too little rest." Sorin's voice was flat, as if he were reciting facts. "The Audit said they could cure her. They said they had a treatment. All she had to do was work for them. Track down unregistered children. Bring them in for 're-education.'"
"And?"
"And she did it. For six months. She brought them in, one after another, children who had never hurt anyone, children who were just trying to survive." Sorin's hands tightened on the desk. "Then the Rot got worse. The Audit said they couldn't help her anymore. They said she was too far gone."
"What happened to her?"
Sorin didn't answer for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was softer.
"She tried an Echo-Rite. Used her own mentor's Memory-Crystal. She thought it would save her. It didn't." He looked at the jars on the shelves, at the Characteristics floating in their preserving fluid. "Now she's here. One of those. An Eye that seemed to never stop crying. The only thing left of her."
Leximus looked at the jars. He didn't know which one held Sorin's wife. He didn't ask.
"Why do you stay here?" he asked. "In this place. With these... things."
"Because someone has to remember them." Sorin's eyes were empty, but his voice had weight. "The Audit takes children. The Church takes heretics. The King takes whatever he wants. Someone has to remember the ones who disappear."
He pushed the map across the desk.
"Take it. Use it." He paused. "That's the only way any of this matters."
Leximus folded the map and put it in his coat.
"I don't have anything to pay you with," he said.
Sorin shook his head. "You already paid. You showed me what you are. That's worth more than coin."
"What am I?"
Sorin looked at him—really looked, the way Marta looked, the way Eugene looked, as if he were seeing something behind Leximus's face.
"You're a question," Sorin said. "The kind of question that doesn't have an answer. The kind that changes the people who hear it."
He stood. The chair scraped against the stone floor.
"Go. Before I change my mind about helping you."
Leximus stood. He walked to the staircase, his footsteps silent, the cold inside him steady and watchful.
At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped.
"Sorin."
The man turned.
"If the Audit comes for you—if they find out you helped me—"
"They won't."
"How do you know?"
Sorin smiled. It was a thin expression, more grimace than grin.
"Because I've been dead for years. They just haven't noticed yet."
The alley behind the chandler's workshop was dark, the fog thick.
Leximus stood in the shadows, the map in his coat, Sorin's words still echoing in his head.
You're a question. The kind that doesn't have an answer.
He thought of the woman in the fight club, the one who had forgotten her own name. He thought of the children the Audit had taken, the ones Sorin's wife had brought in. He thought of Marta, the old woman with the empty eye socket, who had been in the Drown longer than anyone.
He thought of Sheila.
The cold inside him pulsed—not pain, just presence. A reminder.
He walked back to the tannery, the fog swallowing his footsteps, the gaslights flickering as he passed.