He had been carrying the number for three days.
Eleven. Eight months. The way Maren had said it in the corridor — not as confession, not as apology, just as a number that had stopped sounding neutral when spoken aloud. He had held it the way he held most things that were too large for the moment — at a distance, managed, set aside for later processing.
Later had arrived. It arrived most nights, in the specific hours between two and four in the morning when the building he was sleeping in went quiet and there was nothing left to do but hold the things he'd been setting aside.
Lira had been fourteen when he'd last seen her. She would be fifteen now, or close to it. He had a clear image of her — not a recent one, the image had frozen at the last moment he'd had it, the way images did when the person stopped being present and became instead a thing you carried. She had their mother's way of going still when she was thinking. She had his habit of talking to herself when she worked through a problem, low and continuous, like a held note.
He didn't know if she was still doing either of those things.
He didn't know where she was.
He knew she had been on a list. He knew the list had passed through a dead drop in a paper stall in the western quarter. He knew a boy named Seb had carried it to a man in Marked administration colours who had pocketed it in eleven seconds and gone inside.
He knew the network had at least one more node above that.
He knew Shiloh could perceive things he couldn't, and that what she perceived kept leading them one step further than he could have gone alone, and that eventually she would perceive something that told them where the information went after the civic records office.
Eventually.
He had been calculating eventually for three days and it kept producing the same answer. Too long. Every day that passed without knowing where Lira was, was a day something could happen to her that he arrived too late for. He had arrived too late before. He knew what that felt like. He was not willing to feel it again.
He lay in the dark and ran the mathematics and arrived, as he had been arriving for three days, at Maren.
He found her in the morning.
She had a route through the quarter — he had mapped it in the first week, before he'd known about the dead drop, when all he'd had was a name in a network and the need to find where the network touched the ground. She moved through the western quarter every second day, different times but the same sequence of stops. Creature of habit underneath the forgettable surface. Most people were.
He fell into step beside her on the lane that ran behind the textile remnant stalls.
She clocked him immediately. Didn't break her stride.
"You're making a mistake," she said.
"I haven't said anything yet."
"You don't need to." She kept walking. Her voice was level. "I know what you want and I know what you're about to offer and I'm telling you it's a mistake before you waste both our time."
"My sister's name was on your list."
A pause in her stride. Small. Recovered immediately.
"I told you. I don't retain—"
"You retain enough." He kept his voice even. He had practised this. "You've been running that drop for eight months. Eleven names. You know the ones that flagged differently than the others. The ones that got a different response from above." He paused. "A fourteen year old girl with an unusual Resonance. That would have flagged differently."
Maren was quiet. Walking. The lane moved around them — a man with a cart, two women in conversation, the ordinary traffic of a quarter morning that had no interest in the two of them.
"What do you want," she said.
"Someone higher up. Above the civic contact. Someone who would know where the information goes after the records office and what happens to the people on the list after that."
"And in exchange."
"What I have on the investigation. What we've found." He kept his voice level. "All of it."
Maren stopped walking.
She turned to look at him. The unremarkable face, the forgettable presentation. Underneath it — he didn't have Shiloh's ability, he couldn't perceive the gap — but he had spent enough time watching people make decisions to recognise the shape of one being made.
"The girl," she said. "Shiloh."
"What about her."
"She's part of what you have. Her ability. Her connections. Her investigation." Maren looked at him steadily. "You know that. You're not offering me information about the dead drop. You're offering me her."
The lane was quiet around them.
He had known this. He had known it for three days, in the specific hours between two and four in the morning. He had run every version of the mathematics that didn't arrive here, and none of them had produced a number he could live with.
"I want a name," he said. "Someone who can tell me where Lira is."
Maren looked at him for a long moment.
"The person you want," she said carefully, "doesn't give out that kind of information out of generosity. They'll want to know why you're looking. They'll want to know what you are to the girl whose name was on the list. And once they know that—"
"I know," he said.
"You become a variable they need to account for."
"I know."
"And the girl. Once they have everything you're offering—"
"I know," he said, and something in his voice closed the sentence in a way that stopped her finishing it.
The lane moved around them. Somewhere nearby someone was cooking something, the smell of it drifting over the textile remnants and the damp stone.
He thought about Shiloh. The way she went still when her Resonance fired — that slight unfocus Ren had noticed and mentioned and she had filed without reacting to. The way she moved through the quarter like someone who had mapped it in the dark, which she had. The particular quality of her silences, which were never empty. The way she'd said she came up the stairs in the corridor when it was the only honest thing available and she had offered it anyway.
He thought about Lira. Fifteen years old or close to it. Somewhere he couldn't find without help. On a list that had eleven names and was connected to a network that reached from the Underground to the Marked district and above. Waiting, or not waiting, or something worse than either.
He had been making this calculation for three days.
"Yes," he said.
Maren looked at him. Something moved in her face that he couldn't read and didn't try to. She turned and kept walking.
"Tonight," she said. "Come back to the building. I'll have a name."
He walked in the opposite direction. He didn't think about the expression on Maren's face. He thought about Lira instead — the frozen image of her, their mother's stillness and his habit of talking to himself — and he held it with the particular grip of someone who had decided what they were paying and was not going to look at the price again until the thing was done.
Maren kept her word. She always kept her word — that was the thing about people who had agreed to things they didn't examine. They were reliable in the specific ways that cost other people.
The name she gave him that evening was not a person in the Underground.
It was a woman. Middle-aged. She moved through the border streets between the Underground and the Marked district, not belonging cleanly to either. She had a particular location where she could be found on certain mornings if you knew to look.
"She'll ask you what you have," Maren said. "Tell her everything. She already knows most of it. The only thing you have that she doesn't is the detail." A pause. "She knows about the girl. She's been watching her for longer than you have."
He absorbed this without letting it show.
"Will she help me find Lira," he said.
Maren looked at him with the unremarkable face and the forgettable presentation and something underneath both that he couldn't name.
"She'll tell you what she knows," she said. "Whether that helps you is a different question."
He left.
He did not go back to the building where he'd been sleeping. He did not send word to Shiloh. He walked through the western quarter in the evening dark, past the Lantern Market setting up its stalls and past the eastern entrance where the ordinary life of the Underground moved through its ordinary rhythms, and he thought about eleven seconds and eleven names and fifteen years old or close to it.
He thought about what Shiloh would say if she could see his gap right now.
He thought she would see that he had already made the decision. That he had made it three days ago in the hours between two and four in the morning. That everything since had been the aftermath of a choice that was already done.
He thought she would probably have seen it sooner than he wanted her to.
That was the thing about someone who could read the distance between surface and interior. You could manage the surface. You couldn't manage what was underneath it. The distance between what he was presenting and what he had decided was enormous, and it had been enormous for three days, and the only reason she hadn't seen it was that he had stayed just far enough away from her that her Resonance hadn't had cause to look at him directly.
He had been careful about that.
He had been careful about a lot of things.
He walked through the Underground and held the frozen image of his sister and did not look at the price of what he had paid for the name in his pocket.
Not yet.
Later, in the hours between two and four, he would look at it.
He was certain of that much.