The door swung inward, and Lewin was through the opening before it had fully cleared.

The lamp caught him from the left, from the low table, and he mapped the room before anything else moved. The half-risen man was the immediate problem.

Lewin aimed low and fired.

The bolt struck the upper thigh, and the man’s rise turned into a different motion entirely. The sound when he hit the floorboards was heavy and involuntary, not something he chose to make.

Cul came through a beat behind, already aimed at the man on the right side of the table, whose hand was closing on a weapon.

The blade was leaving the sheath, the arm already moving through its arc, and Cul’s bolt hit the forearm. It did not stop the motion. The arm had too much momentum.

The blade still came across and caught Cul on the shoulder before the arm dropped.

Cul pulled in a short, hard breath but stayed on his feet. He stepped forward into the man’s reach and drove his elbow into the jaw.

The man slid sideways off his chair and came to rest against the table leg. He did not move again.

The third man had both hands full of papers and was pulling them toward the lamp with complete focus, as if the documents were the only thing in the room that mattered.

Tad came through the window, which Orm had unlatched earlier by working one pin loose at a time, and struck the man across the shoulders, hauling him down and back.

One page was already touching the lamp glass.

Orm followed through the same window and pressed both palms onto the page, covering the lamp with his chest. The corner blackened and still glowed.

Orm rubbed it against his sleeve until it went dark.

Then he lifted the remaining fragment toward the lamp and studied it without speaking. That was enough.

Three men down or secured. The room was under control.

Cul had his right hand pressed flat to his shoulder. Blood pushed through his fingers and ran down to his wrist.

Not a killing wound, but enough to matter. It would need stitching before morning.

"How are you," Lewin asked.

Cul checked himself the way a man takes honest stock of what remains.

"Still standing," he said.

That was enough.

Lewin placed Tad behind him and moved to the back passage. One door at the end.

He worked the latch from the side and let the door swing open.

The man inside was already on his feet.

He stood beside a low pallet with his hands at his sides, empty.

He had the stance of someone who knew when to resist and when to yield. He had been yielding long enough that it looked natural.

Coss’s men usually faced people who relied on aggression to survive. Those men needed to be met head-on.

This man was doing something else.

When he saw Lewin’s sword and Tad behind him, he raised both hands, palms out, and held them steady. The gesture looked practiced.

"I am not with these people," he said.

His accent marked him as an outsider to Dunvarre, the vowels shaped by the western ports. He matched Lewin’s gaze without challenge, just steady attention.

Lewin watched him.

At midnight, in a slum house, Lewin did not need to decide what to do.

"You come with us," he said.

The man lowered his hands and waited. He understood this was not the moment for talk, or maybe he simply didn’t care.

They bound him with cord, hands in front. His cooperation earned him that much.

They brought him into the main room, where Orm and Siv were finishing with the others.

Siv had wrapped cloth around Cul’s shoulder and was pulling it tight. Cul stood with his face stiff, his focus somewhere distant.

Lewin crouched beside the man who had tried to burn the papers.

He turned the man’s face toward the lamp and looked at it.

He knew that face. From thirty feet away on a drill ground. From the warehouse district, where the man had left a building at speed, been followed through.

From the drill ground to this floor.

The papers he had tried to destroy were now in Lewin’s coat.

Whatever he had been sending out was finished.

Lewin stood and moved to the table.

The documents were short. Written for action, not fancy reading.

Each one named a location in the slums by landmark, not street name. The slums barely had streets names to begin with.

Beside each location was an task. A fire at a target. A fight at an road. Two messages listed both.

One message had information about militia patrol rotations, with the time clearly marked. Times when the southern streets were lightly guarded. Times when response would be slow.

Lewin read them once.

Then he read them again.

The cells were spread across the entire district. More than he had expected.

If they had all acted on the same night, the response would have broken apart before it could gather. You cannot hold a wall and fight fires in multiple places at once in a city like this.

Beorn’s forces were already stretched thin across the divided city.

The last message had a burned corner.

What remained showed the start, then a blackened part, then nothing.

The start instructions were gone.

Lewin held the fragment to the lamp and read the remaining words until he was certain.

Then he unfolded a blank page and began to write.

Locations and assigned actions.

Patrol details copied in full.

The burned section described. The surviving words noted. The missing parts acknowledged.

He folded the page and placed it in his coat with the originals.

Orm approached from across the room.

"The man at Ern’s exit tried to leave through the side building when he heard the noise," Orm said.

"Ern caught him against the far wall of the next building. He’s alive. Ern’s fine."

"He comes with the rest," Lewin said.

Orm nodded and went to collect him.

When they were done, Lewin counted five prisoners.

The four outer guards were dead in the alleys where they had been placed.

The operation had cost Cul a shoulder wound that needed stitching, and one failed escape attempt through a side building.

The documents were secured.

The foreign man stood against the wall, waiting with patience. He had chosen to see how this would play out.

Lewin planned the return.

They would take the passages behind the third row leading toward the south gate. The ones that wound between the drainage and opened near the entrance.

He had used them since he was twelve.

The ground was uneven in two places he still remembered clearly.

Five bound men moving through Ashmark at this hour would not be seen by anyone who was not already there.

He considered what waited at the citadel.

Even at this time, Beorn would be in his office, writing, working on what the next day required. That was how his nights worked.

Aestrith would be on the couch with her eyes closed.

Lewin knew the difference between someone asleep and someone watching everything while pretending not to.

She would be watching.

That was enough. No need to think further.

Lewin turned to his men.

"We move," he said.