Chapter 385: Pressure from All Sides II
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"Every woman hired by me from the contract market in the last few days. Every one of them." Her face tightened very slightly, which for Mira was the closest she came to showing anger in public.
She continued, "I do not want a visible guard line around them. No public shadowing. That only spreads fear faster and tells Iron House exactly which of my people we value most. It needs to be a quiet watch. If any of them are approached, followed, bribed, frightened, or offered a better contract, I want to know before night falls."
Her eyes hardened. "And if you find the hand reaching toward them, you do not wait for me. You handle the problem immediately."
Raka nodded once. "Done."
Mira did not stop there.
"Split the watches. No repeated faces. If the same man keeps appearing, the girls will notice and start thinking they are already marked. Use people who know how to look like drunks, porters, gamblers, buyers, useless men leaning against walls with nowhere to go. I want their eyes on every route between the worker quarters, the market lanes, and the side halls of the auction house."
Raka’s expression did not change, but he listened properly now, not as a subordinate being assigned a simple errand, but as someone receiving a line of battle.
Mira pointed once at the covered corpse on the table.
"This is not about one dead contract worker. This is a message. Someone was bought, frightened, or broken, then used to teach the rest what happens when they stand too near us. I am not letting them repeat that lesson with my new hires."
Raka’s gaze lowered briefly to the body, then lifted back to her face.
"If any of them disappear..." Mira said.
"They won’t."
That answer came out so fast and hard that she looked at him more carefully.
Raka met her eyes and held them.
Not a challenge.
Not wounded pride.
A promise.
He was learning to think like someone who had truly been trusted with a line of the war. Not only muscle. Not only fear. Responsibility.
Mira studied him for one more breath, then stepped back from the table. "Then get to it."
Raka did not waste time with more words. He turned immediately, signaled two of his men with a short curl of his fingers, and left to begin placing watchers across the lower district. One of them headed for the contract market streets. The other went for the sleeping alleys near the rented worker yards. Raka himself would spread the net through the center, where gossip moved fastest and bribes traveled easiest.
The body stayed.
The room grew quieter after the others left. The cloth still covered most of the dead man, but enough remained visible to keep the truth close. Mira stood with him for a moment longer after the room emptied.
Not because she cared for this man personally. She barely knew him.
Not because she was sentimental enough to build sorrow from every corpse that crossed a Dawn table.
Because she understood exactly what his death meant.
Stage one was not merely broken wagons and rumor. It was the teaching of examples. Buy a man. Take a man. Kill a man. Then leave the body where it can be found just late enough to hurt and just early enough to spread whispers. Let the others think their contracts are weaker than the fear waiting outside them. Let them decide that survival means stepping away before the knife turns toward them too.
No.
Not this time.
Mira looked at the dead man and saw not only what Iron House had done, but what they intended to do next. If fear spread through the new workers, then new workers would hesitate. If they hesitated, merchants would notice. If merchants noticed, suppliers would pull back harder. Pressure would become self-feeding.
She placed one hand lightly on the edge of the table, not in mourning, but in oath.
"You will be the last easy lesson they get," she said quietly.
Then she left.
By evening, the reports converged.
Mira returned to Dawn House with three rolled lists under one arm, one half-finished map in the other hand, and the look of a woman who had not stopped moving since sunrise. Dust marked the hem of her dress. Ink stained one finger. Her face remained controlled, but the speed in her eyes had sharpened into something almost blade-like. The Crimson Gorgon under her skin had not made her reckless. It had made her colder.
Raka came not long after through the lower route with mud still on his boots and the expression of someone bringing prey rather than merely information.
Sekhmet took both of them to the strategy room.
Elena was there too, standing at the side like the quiet spine of the house itself. Kess remained farther back with notes in hand, saying nothing unless directly required. The twins were absent only physically; their influence was everywhere now in the sharpened atmosphere of the room, in the checked doors, the ready weapons, the disciplined servants outside the hall. Bat Bat had somehow been permitted to remain as long as she promised not to interrupt unless she had a thought of "genuine strategic brilliance."
No one trusted that promise.
Mira laid the reports down first, flattening them against the table with both palms before speaking.
"Three more material withdrawals," she said. "Two transport pauses. One old weapon buyer came to return spears. I kept the spears and denied the refund."
A very small shift moved through Elena’s face.
Approval.
It showed.
Mira continued, her tone steady and clipped with exhaustion held tightly under control. "Food order disruption on the kitchen-worker line, but house reserves covered it. Worker panic is controlled for now. Not erased. Controlled. The lower workers still joke when pushed properly, but the newer contracts are watching everything too closely."
"New hires?" Sekhmet said.
"They are being watched now by Rakas man," Mira replied. "Every female contract hired from the last several days. Quiet shadowing. I placed special attention on the ones with prior debt, weak family ties, or history of unstable contracts. If Iron House tries to do anything again, we will know faster."
Then Raka stepped forward.
He put one broad hand on the map and tapped a point outside the tighter market lines.
"I found the biggest warehouse location of Iron House."
The room sharpened.
Not visibly.
Internally.
Attention gathered around the map like drawn steel.
Raka continued. "Not the fake fronts. Not the smaller stores. The real stack point."
He tapped again, harder this time. "Yesterday, after morning pressure started, things began moving. Cart after cart. Crates. Ledgers. Reserve stock. Even some of their side-business goods. They shifted almost everything important to one larger warehouse."
Kess spoke before he meant to. "Consolidation."
Raka looked at him.
Kess realized at once that he had entered a room he did not technically own and corrected his tone without losing the point. "If they expect retaliation, they gather where defense is easier. Fewer points to watch. Fewer places to lose."
Interesting.
Useful.
Raka nodded once. "Exactly."
Mira leaned over the map, bracing one hand against the table while she studied the marked roads leading toward the warehouse location. "Who guards it."
"More than before," Raka said. "Not soldiers. Thugs bought muscle, warehouse men turned rough because money reached them before courage did. Enough to matter. Enough that anyone hitting it openly would pay for the lesson."
He looked up at Sekhmet then.
"Also worth hitting."
Bat Bat, to everyone’s surprise, kept her mouth shut.
Auri, who had entered quietly sometime during the report and now stood in the darker edge of the room near the shutters, looked from the map to Sekhmet with calm interest. Her silence meant she agreed enough not to waste words dressing it up.
Mira straightened. "If that is where they moved the business, then that is where they think they are safe."
Raka smiled without humor. "Good. Safer people bleed louder when surprised."
Sekhmet looked at the map.
Western side.
Large enough for movement.
Consolidated goods.
Guards.
Confidence.
Mihos’s game had begun formally in the morning, Iron House had already started teaching pressure by dawn. That meant there was no reason to keep honoring a schedule their side had already dirtied.
He lifted his head.
"We hunt tonight."
The room held still.
Mira’s eyes sharpened instantly.
Raka’s expression turned pleased in the ugly way predators enjoyed being told their instincts had been correct.
Bat Bat forgot all restraint and whispered, "Excellent."
Elena did not object immediately.
That mattered.
Sekhmet continued, his voice calm and decisive. "Not alone. Not in pieces. All of us who matter."
His gaze moved through the room as he named them, not aloud one by one, but clearly enough that each person understood.
Lily.
Mira.
The twins.
Bat Bat.
Auri.
Raka would support by route and watch lines. The house itself would hold under Elena.
The first answer to Iron House would not be a speech.
It would be teeth in the dark.