Read Chapter 11: Ashes and Alibis

The night air bit through Elias’s smoke-stained coat as he knocked on Bert’s door, a rhythm of three quick raps he’d used a hundred times when they’d worked late shifts together. The street behind him smelled of wet coal and the distant tang of the river. His knuckles were raw from the heat, and the prototype weighed against his ribs like a second heart.

Bert opened the door with a wrench in his hand, face half-lit by the gas lamp behind him. His eyes went wide, then narrow.

“Elias. You look like you crawled out of a furnace.”

“Close enough.” Elias glanced over his shoulder. Two constables stood at the far corner, their helmets catching the lamplight, though they seemed more interested in a group of drunks than in him. Still, he couldn’t afford the attention. “You going to let me in, or do I bleed on your step?”

Bert stepped aside. The door clicked shut behind them, and Bert threw the bolt with a practiced motion.

The workshop was smaller than Elias’s had been, cramped with spare gears and half-finished clockwork projects. A pot of tea sat cold on the bench, and a threadbare cot in the corner suggested Bert had been sleeping here more than his own room. The smell of oil and solder was familiar, almost comforting. Elias felt his shoulders drop by a fraction.

Bert took him in: the soot streaked across his face, the singed edges of his sleeves, the way he clutched the wrapped bundle to his chest. “What happened?”

“Someone torched my shop. With me inside it.”

Bert’s face went pale. “Jesus, Elias. Who?”

“That’s what I need to figure out.” Elias set the bundle down on the workbench, careful to keep the prototype hidden beneath its canvas. He didn’t unwrap it. “The fire was set. Targeted. Whoever did it knew exactly where my lab was, knew the layout well enough to make sure nothing survived.”

Bert’s jaw worked. He poured the cold tea into a chipped mug and pushed it toward Elias anyway. “You think it was Sinjin’s people?”

“Sinjin wants me alive for another two days. Burning my workshop doesn’t get him paid.” Elias took the mug, more for the warmth than the taste. “Cordelia?”

“That fancy woman from the Bureau?”

“She’s not from the Bureau.” Elias set the mug down. The tea was bitter. “Someone else. Or maybe someone who talks too much.”

Bert’s hand twitched toward the wrench on the bench, then away. “You’re looking at me like I’m the one who talked.”

“Did you?”

The silence stretched between them, thick as smoke. Bert’s face cycled through hurt, then anger, then settled on something tired and honest.

“I told you I don’t ask questions about your work. But I ain’t stupid either, Elias. I saw the panels you were making. I saw the lock on your lab door. I knew you were into something.” He crossed his arms. “But I never told anyone. Not about that. Not about you.”

Elias held his gaze. Bert was a poor liar—always had been. His ears went red when he stretched the truth, and right now they were the color of normal flesh.

“Who did you talk to?” Elias pressed. “Last few days. Think.”

Bert shifted his weight. “I go to the Sprocket and Cog most evenings. You know that. Talk to the lads, have a pint, complain about the foreman.” He scratched his jaw. “There was a man there two nights ago. Asking about you. Said he was an old colleague, wanted to know if you were still working out of the same place.”

Elias’s blood went cold. “What did he look like?”

“Tall. Clean-shaven. Dressed too well for the Cog, if you ask me. Had a way of asking questions that felt like he wasn’t really listening to the answers.” Bert frowned. “I might’ve told him you still kept shop on Merrow Street. Didn’t think nothing of it. He seemed friendly enough.”

Friendly enough. Elias closed his eyes. That was all it took—a casual word in a pub, a name dropped in the wrong ear, and everything he’d built went up in smoke.

“What else did you tell him?”

“Nothing about the panels, if that’s what you’re worried about. I told him you were a good mechanic, bit of a loner, kept to yourself.” Bert’s voice tightened. “I didn’t know he was going to burn your place down, Eli. How could I?”

Elias wanted to be angry. He could feel the heat of it building in his chest, the urge to shout, to blame Bert for his loose tongue and careless trust. But the anger curdled quickly into something hollow. Bert wasn’t the traitor. He was just a man who liked to talk, who didn’t know the stakes of what he’d said.

“It’s not your fault,” Elias heard himself say. “Whoever that man was, he would have found out another way.”

Bert’s shoulders sagged with relief. “I’m sorry, Eli. Truly. You need a place to stay, you’re welcome here. It ain’t much, but it’s got four walls and a roof that don’t leak too bad.”

Elias nodded. The cot in the corner was narrow and the pillow looked stained, but it was better than the streets. He picked up his bundle and moved toward it, then stopped.

“The boy,” he said. “The street urchin who delivered a gear to me yesterday. Dark hair, quick smile. You know him?”

Bert’s face went grim. “Tommy. Little scrap who runs messages for half the workshops on this side of the river.” He paused. “Why?”

“He brought me something. Something that led me to a place I shouldn’t have gone.” Elias thought of the party, of Ashworth’s cold smile, of the preacher’s too-knowing eyes. “I want to make sure he’s all right.”

Bert looked away. That alone told Elias everything he needed to know.

“Bert. Where is he?”

“Found him this morning,” Bert said quietly. “Down by the canal bridge. Throat cut. His pockets were empty, but... it was clean work. Someone wanted it to look like a robbery, but no street kid gets killed that neat by accident.”

The words hit Elias like a physical blow. He leaned against the workbench, the wood groaning under his weight. Tommy had been maybe twelve years old—a scrawny kid with a quick grin and a faster tongue, always underfoot but never unwanted. He’d delivered the gear from the Bureau clerk, the one that had set Elias down the path toward Cordelia Vane. And now he was dead.

Because of Elias. Because he’d touched something he shouldn’t have, asked questions that someone didn’t want answered.

“Who did it?” His voice came out flat, harder than he intended.

“No one knows. Body was already cold when they pulled him out.” Bert hesitated. “Eli, there’s something else. One of the lads at the Cog said he saw a priest hanging around the canal the night before. Tall fellow, real fire-and-brimstone type. Said he was there blessing the water, but the lad thought it was strange for a man of God to be out that late.”

Brother Aldous. The preacher who had come to Elias’s workshop with talk of divine visions and spiritual theft. The man who had promised that fire was coming, and who might very well have carried that fire himself.

“Did the priest have a name?” Elias asked.

“Didn’t catch one. But the lad said he had a scar on his left hand. Like a burn mark, shaped almost like a cross.”

Elias stored the detail away. Aldous had been clean-handed when they’d met, but he could have worn gloves. Or the scar could have been hidden.

He moved to the cot and sat down heavily, the canvas bundle cradled in his lap. The prototype was still there, still safe. But his mind was racing through calculations, adjustments, plans. The erasure device Ashworth had shown him at the party—he’d memorized the schematics, the layout of the focusing crystals, the damping coils that neutralized memory instead of recording it. He’d intended to build his own version, a weapon to turn against Sinjin and Cordelia. But the fire had taken his tools, his materials, his space.

He looked at Bert’s bench. There were gears scattered across it, copper wire coiled in a jar, a small forge against the far wall. It wasn’t much. But it might be enough.

“Bert,” he said slowly. “I need to ask you something.”

Bert raised an eyebrow. “Anything.”

“How much do you trust me?”

Bert’s face flickered with something unreadable, then settled into a crooked grin. “About as far as I can throw you. But that’s further than most.” He picked up the cold tea and drained it. “What do you need?”

Elias unwrapped the bundle. The prototype gleamed in the lamplight—the memory panel he’d built for Sinjin, the one that played back a street performer’s benign daydream. False memory, harmless. But the principles inside could be twisted. Inverted. If he could reconfigure the crystal housing to negate instead of record, if he could channel the energy outward rather than inward...

“I need a forge hot enough to melt copper,” he said. “And I need you to not ask questions about what I’m making.”

Bert looked at the device, then back at Elias. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he walked to the forge and began stoking the coals.

“I ain’t asking,” he said. “But when this is over, you’re buying me a better cot.”

Elias almost smiled. Almost. But behind his eyes, Tommy’s face lingered—a boy with a quick smile and a faster tongue, who’d died because he’d run a message for the wrong man.

Elias would find who did it. He would find the priest, and the false lady, and the crime lord who thought he could own Elias’s gift. He would find them all.

But first, he had to build a weapon.