The staging yard wasn’t a yard at all, but a long, sloping expanse of quarried stone pressed up against the cliffside, where the city’s lower tiers gave way to the docks. Salt-flecked platforms jutted over tide channels, and creaking derricks dangled cargo nets heavy with dried fish, spice crates, and clay vessels marked in dozens of dialects. The air was alive with calls — gulls, dockhands, coin-hungry vendors.

  The Vermillion Troupe rolled in under the watchful eyes of tide clerks and idling stevedores. Most didn’t look twice. A caravan this size wasn’t unheard of — especially one flying Red Fox heraldry — but it still drew the occasional sideways glance from sailors with broken teeth and old grudges.

  ProlixalParagon helped guide Lyra’s vardo into position, ensuring the wheels rested clear of cracked stone and that no ropes or winch cables lay underfoot. Nearby, Kaelthari was already inspecting the oxen, brushing salt from their hides with short, efficient strokes. Marx stood guard near the main stairwell into the tiered docks, a squat pipe clamped in his mouth and his single hazel eye constantly sweeping the crowd.

  Ralyria stood still, her metal form oddly regal in the glinting light, spear held upright. Children clustered near her feet like ducklings, pointing at the vast, foam-laced sea below.

  Lyra stepped down from her vardo, silver fur stirring in the salt breeze. She smoothed her crescent-patterned robe and tapped her staff twice against the stone.

  “I’ll speak to the captains,” she said. “One of them’s been promised coin and passage notice. But don’t expect miracles. Sailors wait for nothing, and this city is bound to a dozen winds.”

  “Need someone to go with you?” ProlixalParagon asked.

  Lyra shook her head. “They’ll see a caravan elder. A crew might balk at a Tinkerer with dust in his ears.”

  ProlixalParagon offered a dry smile. “Fair.”

  “We’ll likely wait days before boarding,” Lyra added. “Possibly longer. They’ll need to prep ballast, tidecharts, ration loads. BaiGai isn’t a simple hop across a stream.”

  She turned to the rest of the Troupe. “Settle light. Don’t unpack more than you need. We might be gone in a whisper.”

  With that, Lyra strode toward the dockmaster’s pergola, staff clicking rhythmically against the stone.

  ProlixalParagon stood for a long moment, watching her retreat. The sound of the sea echoed below like breath pulled through a thousand unseen mouths. Sern Ka’Torr was too big to take in all at once — a labyrinth of airways and saltsteps, of hanging lanterns and sliding shutters.

  He needed motion. Focus.

  He patted the side of his toolkit pouch and turned to the others. “I’ll scout the city. Maybe barter for parts, see if anything calls for repair.”

  Marx arched a brow. “You just want to go digging through antique scrap stalls.”

  “Not just that,” Prolix said, with mock offense.

  Kaelthari snorted. “Stay off the high walkways. Rain’ll slick them like oil.”

  ProlixalParagon nodded, adjusted the strap of his satchel, and slipped into the tide-tier streets.

  The city unfolded like kelp under current.

  He wound through narrow passages that smelled of crushed mint and seaweed-soaked linen. Vendors hawked glass-bottled fish sauces and tiny porcelain dolls with charm-stitched eyes. One alley hosted a fight between two songbirds wearing miniature armor, cheered on by gamblers shaking pouches of shell-chits. Another revealed a public bath chiseled into coral-veined stone, its waters steaming faintly with mana heat and perfumed salts.

  He passed a tiered library with open balconies — tomes hanging on weighted chains — and a windcaller’s tower where children clutched silken scarves in their fists, letting them tug wildly in the current.

  Prolix paused at a bridge strung with amber lanterns. Below, the sea stretched out in shifting silver and green, dotted with skimmer boats and long-finned barges. The wind was thick with the scent of possibility — and something beneath that, like unspoken promises crusted with salt.

  He moved on, drawn to the clatter of hammers.

  He found it in a shop tucked under a vault of weeping stone: Churnhook’s Salvage & Tinker, the name carved in weathered copper nailed crookedly above the lintel.

  Inside, the air buzzed with latent mana. Gears, wind-down clocks, shattered automatons, and half-rebuilt spyglasses littered every surface. A squat Soohan dwarf in welder’s goggles looked up from her desk.

  “You break it, I sell you three more,” she grunted.

  “I fix it,” ProlixalParagon said, “and you let me see what’s in your scrap vault.”

  She blinked once, then tilted her head.

  “Now that’s a wager.”

  An hour later, he had grease on his sleeves, a new compass-sprocket in his pouch, and permission to return at will.

  He stepped back out into the city, the light shifting orange as the day began to wane. The wind had changed — coming in from the northeast now, stronger, smelling faintly of storms not yet visible.

  He looked up at the sails strung between buildings, at banners tugging and snapping like restless birds.

  The ocean was waiting.

  But so was something else.

  ProlixalParagon’s ears twitched. Somewhere below, from the harbor’s under-tier, a strange mechanical whir echoed — like clockwork gears straining against waterlogged time.

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  He turned toward the sound without thinking.

  Just to take a look.

  Just for a moment.

  ProlixalParagon followed the strange, rhythmic whir toward the lower tier — a wide crescent of layered arches and brine-stained walkways where the sound of the sea struck the city like a heartbeat. The noise led him past a glassblower’s stall, past an incense shop carved into the bones of a shipwreck, until he stood before a gated stairwell marked Authorized Port Engineers Only.

  He crouched, ears twitching. The sound — gearclacks woven with a pulsing resonance — came from somewhere beyond the stairwell, echoing from below the city itself. Not menacing. Not even magical. But out of place. Curious.

  “Odd,” he murmured. “That’s a resonance coil pattern. Low-frequency. Tuned wrong.”

  He leaned forward, considering—

  “Stop there, thief.”

  The voice rang with polished steel and noble disdain.

  ProlixalParagon froze. Slowly, he turned.

  A group of city guards in sea-bleached armor was already advancing. Three elves, tall and angular, bearing the crest of the Starlit Channel — a merchant branch of Soohan’s old nobility. Their captain’s pale braid gleamed beneath her tide-blue helm, her glaive held low but ready.

  Behind them strode a Cataphractan noble. Mulberry scales slicked with oil sheen, his silken robes strung with gold cord and sunburst charms. His horns curled back in sharp, deliberate spirals inlaid with lapis.

  He pointed a clawed finger directly at ProlixalParagon.

  “That’s him. That’s the wretch who trespassed on my estate three nights past — broke into the west hall and stole two flux-tuned lanterns and a ceremonial wine key gifted by the Tidecourt.”

  Prolix’s ears flattened. “What?”

  “You dare deny it?” the noble snarled, striding forward. “Your kind are rare enough in the city, and rarer still with whorls like that. Don’t play the fool, fox.”

  “I’ve only just arrived,” Prolix said, raising his hands slowly. “I came with the Vermillion Troupe. We only crossed the Saltline two days ago. I haven’t been anywhere near your estate.”

  The elf captain stepped forward. “Your name.”

  “ProlixalParagon. Tinkerer, registered with the Red Fox Caravan. Ask at the staging tiers — we’re docked under sponsorship.”

  The Cataphractan scoffed. “Convenient story. Perhaps you slipped through days ago, then joined the caravan to mask your escape.”

  “I haven’t stolen anything,” ProlixalParagon said, voice sharp now. “And if you think a Tinkerer would waste time on a ceremonial wine key, you don’t know anything about us.”

  The Cataphractan hissed through his teeth. “You have some nerve, rodent.”

  The captain raised a hand. “That’s enough, Lord Yosthar. The trial will decide the matter.”

  ProlixalParagon’s stomach turned cold.

  “Trial?”

  “Standard procedure,” she said, with the detachment of someone used to routine injustice. “The accused will be taken to the Tier Tribunal. Evidence will be presented at dusk tomorrow. Until then, you’ll be held under warded custody.”

  He looked around. No one was stepping in. No curious faces, no caravan folk — just the guards closing in, and the Cataphractan noble’s smug satisfaction.

  “This is a mistake,” Prolix said, but his voice was already falling beneath the clatter of footsteps and the tight click of manacles latching around his wrists.

  They didn’t take him far — a tiered magistrate’s hall built into the cliffside, its interior hollowed from salt-veined stone. The walls pulsed faintly with mana warding, runes etched in coral script along every beam.

  They placed him in a circular chamber under a shifting skylight that reflected the sea’s surface above. Runes shimmered along the perimeter, suppressing mana use and likely more. There was a faint pulse of static under his fur, like the air before a thunderclap.

  “You’ll be called tomorrow evening,” the guard captain said. “You may request a representative from your sponsor’s guild, if one arrives in time.”

  Then she left.

  The door closed with a heavy finality.

  ProlixalParagon sat on the cold stone bench, back against the wall. He pressed his head back and exhaled through his teeth.

  Accused. Confined. Cut off from the Troupe.

  And worst of all, someone in Sern Ka’Torr was walking around with his face — or something close enough to it.

  “Perfect,” he muttered, staring up at the glimmering light above.

  The trial chamber was a tall, fan-shaped hall cut into the cliffside itself, its ceiling open to the sky, filtered by sails and sea glass. Water dripped in one slow rhythm from a broken condensation pipe somewhere overhead. Sunlight spilled down in fractured bands, casting the room in uneasy gold.

  ProlixalParagon stood at the center of a circular platform surrounded by three judges — two elves and a halfling woman, all robed in ocean-hued silk and seated in high chairs carved from driftwood. The Cataphractan noble, Lord Yosthar, loomed at the periphery, his tail twitching with controlled indignation, surrounded by guards.

  “Theft, trespass, and the misuse of flux-imbued artifacts,” the elder elf judge recited, her voice like salt grinding against polished glass. “These are the charges brought forth by Lord Yosthar, in accordance with the Seaborne Tier Codex.”

  “I’ve done none of those things,” ProlixalParagon said firmly, his arms held behind him, wrists still bound with runed twine. “I’ve been in the city for less than a day. I arrived with the Vermillion Troupe. We’re docked under Red Fox sponsorship. If you check the entry logs—”

  “We have,” interrupted the halfling judge, leafing through a stack of parchment with dry fingers. “Your troupe was logged at midday yesterday. But the break-in Lord Yosthar describes occurred three nights ago. That timing does not favor your claim.”

  “I wasn’t here,” Prolix repeated. “I couldn’t have been.”

  “You share a distinct set of visual markers,” the second elf said, gesturing to a mana-etched sketch floating beside him. “Fur pattern, height, eye color. The resemblance is considerable.”

  Prolix’s ears flattened. “So because I look like someone, I must be the thief?”

  “This is a city where appearance often is evidence,” Lord Yosthar said with a sneer. “We must protect what civility remains.”

  The judges conferred in low tones.

  It wasn’t going well.

  ProlixalParagon stood still, heart drumming behind his ribs like a trapped bird. He thought of Lyra, of Marx’s gruff steadiness, of the kits back at the wagon — waiting, perhaps even worried by now. He thought of everything he’d survived just to get this far.

  And then—

  The door to the chamber creaked open.

  A hush swept the room as a figure entered: Fennician, tall, with soot-gray fur streaked with charcoal-black stripes that curved like crescent moons. His clothing was simple — a rough traveler’s tunic, a scarf wound around his neck, and his eyes sharp as broken obsidian.

  “Stop this,” the stranger said, voice carrying with an authority that didn’t come from rank — but from certainty.

  The guards moved to intercept him, but one of the judges raised a hand.

  “And who are you to interrupt an active trial?” the halfling asked, narrowing her eyes.

  The Fennician stepped into the light of the chamber.

  “My name is Haidrien. I’m a trader, a clockwork handler, and the Fennician who was actually near Lord Yosthar’s estate the night of the supposed theft.”

  ProlixalParagon’s ears lifted in disbelief.

  Lord Yosthar’s tail flicked sharply. “You—”

  Haidrien’s eyes pinned him. “Yes. Me. And no, I didn’t break into your manor either. But your guards chased me through three alleys and two gardens that night because I happened to be walking near your outer wall — which, by the way, isn’t properly warded. Anyone with a flux signature could have slipped past the threshold lines.”

  “You expect us to believe—” the elder elf began.

  “I expect you to listen,” Haidrien snapped. “Because the truth is simple. Neither of us did it. I left your guards in the canal district. I haven’t returned to this tier since. I’ve got three merchant stamps to prove it. Ask the noodle vendor on Coral Row.”

  He nodded toward ProlixalParagon.

  “But this one? He’s innocent. He’s not me. And accusing him without due investigation—because our markings resemble each other—is a failure of your civic duty. And your eyesight.”

  The chamber rippled with murmurs.

  One of the judges reached for the court scrying bowl, tracing a symbol in the water with a stylus of coral bone. “His claim checks,” the elf murmured after a moment. “This ‘Haidrien’ has trade logs and vendor marks from Coral Row and Driftmarket that match the night of the incident. No overlapping signatures with the theft site.”

  “And what of this one?” the halfling judge asked, gesturing toward Prolix.

  “He’s telling the truth,” Haidrien said. “He wasn’t even in the city.”

  Lord Yosthar looked ready to boil over. “You expect me to simply accept that two identical foxes with the same face and voice and gait—”

  “We’re not identical,” Haidrien said, stepping closer. “But we are both tired of people assuming our blood makes us interchangeable.”

  A beat of silence.

  Then the judges spoke as one:

  “The evidence is insufficient to uphold the charge. The accused shall be released. Both parties may file civil grievance if further proof arises. Until then, this case is closed.”

  The runes on ProlixalParagon’s restraints shimmered and released. He exhaled sharply, rubbing his wrists.

  “Thank you,” he said to Haidrien.

  Haidrien shrugged. “Figured someone should stop the city from eating its own tail. Walk with me?”

  Prolix nodded and followed him out of the chamber, past stunned guards and a noble choking on his own indignation.

  Outside, the sea wind met them like a blessing. The tide was rising. The sails above the city flared like wings.

  “So,” Prolix said, glancing sideways, “do you always crash trials, or is this a special occasion?”

  Haidrien smirked. “Only when they mistake me for someone interesting.”