Lulune's report gave him two useful facts. First: Belka drank alone on her days off.
Second: she did it at a dockside bar called the Split Oar.
It was way outside the Pleasure Quarter.
Nobody wore gold, nobody cared about Familia ranks, and the beer was cheap and awful. She'd been coming here every week for six years, always alone.
A woman who loved her Familia didn't need a place to hide from them.
Rayleigh walked in out of the rain, ordered the same terrible beer, and slid into the booth across from her.
Belka blinked, taking a second to recognize him outside of his usual setting.
Then she let out a long, tired sigh.
"You've got to be kidding me," she muttered. "This is my one night off, smith. And you somehow found it."
"You hid it well. It took my thief four days to track you down."
"I'll drink to her, then." She downed her cup and slammed it on the table.
She was completely on guard now—something she hadn't been back at his house.
"If Lady Ishtar finds out you sat at this table, we're both going to have a very bad month. Spit it out and leave."
"Nira is doing well," Rayleigh said smoothly. "She's eating properly, learning how to read and on Tuesday, she actually laughed at a cat that fell off the garden wall. I thought you'd want to know."
Belka's expression didn't change at all, which was an answer in itself.
A woman who didn't care would have asked why he was telling her this.
Instead, she stayed dead silent, tracing the rim of her empty cup with her thumb.
"You didn't look at her," Rayleigh pushed. "The entire time you were in my house, you looked at me, the walls, my swords. You dumped that girl on my rug and completely avoided looking at her. People only look away when seeing it hurts."
"Be careful," Belka warned quietly. "Telling a woman what she's thinking is a dangerous game."
"Then tell me I'm wrong."
She didn't. Rain lashed against the tavern windows.
Behind the bar, a leaky keg dripped slowly into a wooden bucket. Belka turned her cup in a slow circle before finally speaking.
"Her mother sold her four years ago to pay off a gambling debt to one of our branch houses. She traded her own daughter and skipped town to Melen." Her voice was completely dead.
"I know because I handled the paperwork. That's my real job when I'm not playing muscle. I carry the papers. And you learn real fast not to look at the new girls. It isn't shame, if that's what you're hoping.
It's just practical.
You look at them, you start remembering their faces. The faces pile up, and one day you just can't do the job anymore. So no, I didn't look at your girl. I stopped looking years ago."
"How many faces did it take before you had to stop?"
Her jaw clenched. "Go home, smith."
"Back at my house, you told me half the city runs on debts people can't pay. And you believed it." Rayleigh leaned back in his seat.
"But you drink alone at the docks once a week. Somewhere nobody from your Familia can find you. You've been doing it for six years. That isn't a woman who actually believes in what she's doing. That's a woman who needs an escape. One night a week where she doesn't have to be the monster holding the papers."
Belka moved blindingly fast for her size. She grabbed the front of his coat and yanked him halfway across the table.
He could smell the stale beer on her breath.
"What do you want from me?" she hissed, her voice shaking with rage. "Spit it out, or I'll smash you through that wall. Men like you always want something. So what is it?"
"I want to know what happens to the girls if Ishtar falls."
That caught her completely off guard.
Her grip loosened. "Falls how?"
"Anyway at all. Let's say she's sent back to the sky tomorrow. What happens to the Pleasure Quarter?"
"Chaos." She let go of his coat and slumped back into her seat.
She answered instantly, like a woman who had played out this exact nightmare in her head a hundred times.
"Phryne takes over the main house because nobody can stop her. And Phryne is worse than Lady Ishtar on her best day. I might secure the east houses and protect whoever i can, but that's a huge maybe. Everyone else scatters."
She picked her cup back up. "And the debts don't just magically disappear, smith. That's what outsiders never get. They get sold. Every girl with paper on her gets traded off within a month to whatever faction is still standing.
And the people left standing will be the most vicious ones. If you want to kill our goddess, get in line behind Freya. But don't you dare call it mercy. The day Ishtar falls will be the worst day of those girls' lives."
"That's exactly what I figured," Rayleigh said. "So I won't let that day happen until the papers can't hurt anyone."
He slid a folded piece of paper across the table. Belka stared at it without touching it.
"That's a list of the branch house ledger locations. At least, the ones my thief could confirm. It's about a third of them. The rest are locked behind magic barriers or moved around on a secret schedule. Only senior members are trusted with that schedule."
He looked her dead in the eye.
"Paper carriers. People like you."
Belka let out a dry, hollow laugh. "You're asking me to burn my own Familia to the ground."
"I'm just asking you to tell me where the papers are. What you do after that is between you and your guilty conscience."
"They'd figure it out in a day. Maybe five of us ever see that rotation, and I'm the idiot who's spent six years drinking at the docks." She shoved the list back toward him.
"You've seen what my Lady does to girls who try to run. What do you think she does to a captain who turns traitor? There are worse things in that house than debts, smith. I've delivered girls to some of them."
"Then don't just turn traitor," Rayleigh said. "Walk away."
He placed a long, cloth-wrapped bundle on the table.
Even through the thick fabric, Belka completely froze.
She had stood next to Ottar at a war council once. She knew exactly what a Zanpakutō looks like.
"That sword isn't made for you. I haven't had my hands anywhere near your soul. It's an Asauchi—a blank slate. What it becomes depends entirely on whoever wakes it up."
He nudged it an inch closer to her.
"But I'll tell you what I felt when you grabbed my coat just now. Feeling souls is my trade. There is a massive wall inside you. Behind that wall is every single face you pretended not to see, and they are all still there. You never stopped looking at them, Belka. You just stopped admitting it."
Belka stared at the wrapped blade.
She looked at it the exact same way Nira had looked at his open front door—like it was a miracle that couldn't possibly be real.
"You're giving me a weapon," she whispered. "Knowing I might walk right back up that hill, hand you over to my Lady, and buy a promotion to captain with your dead body."
"You might. I've been wrong about people before." Rayleigh stood up, leaving the bundle sitting on the table.
"But I don't think I'm wrong about a woman who has spent six years paying penance one night at a time. You know where my forge is. If that blade wakes up for you, come tell me its name."
He tossed enough coins on the table to cover both their drinks.
"And Belka... whatever you decide to do, just remember that Nira laughed at a cat on Tuesday. That happened because one person decided to open one door. Think about what two hundred open doors would look like."
He walked out into the rain and didn't look back.
Behind him, in the dim, miserable light of the Split Oar, Belka sat entirely alone with a wrapped sword and six years' worth of ghosts
. She didn't touch her beer again for the rest of the night.