Chapter 24: False Trail!
Vaela found the first informant by watching who did not look scared enough. The dead road widened after the toll arch, splitting into three corpse lanes and one narrow service shelf cut into the left wall. Workers moved with their heads low, pushing the cart through grooves worn by old body wheels. Violet lanterns clicked overhead. The air pressed wet against skin.
The false trail did not hide by looking safe. It hid by looking worth following, which was more dangerous to people with no safer route left.
THUD!
False trail kept its ugliness half-covered. A clean groove here, a dry patch there, one lantern too steady above mud that should have steamed.
DRIP!
It settled into Kael’s posture as a blunt promise: anything reaching for his people would have to survive his arm’s length first. The bone dent showed where the room wanted bodies to fail next.
Everyone smelled afraid.
Everyone except the man with the clean ears.
That was the mistake.
In Furnace Sink Nine, ears collected grime before hands did. Hands were washed for work, theft, surgery, and prayer. Ears were forgotten. The man pretending to be a road scavenger had ash rubbed on his face, torn cloth over his chest, and a limp that came and went depending on who watched him.
But his ears were clean.
Vaela smiled.
Not kindly.
"Keep walking," she told Kael.
Kael glanced at her from the rear of the group. His marked hand was wrapped again, but black pressure still leaked through the cloth in veins. His face was gray under the dirt. He looked like a corpse that had refused the paperwork.
"Problem?"
"Business."
"Do not sell me."
"You keep saying that like it is not my most valuable option."
Orrek snorted from beside the cart.
"She would ask too much."
"I always ask enough."
Vaela slipped away before Renn could object. The clean eared man had crouched near a corpse groove, pretending to pry metal from the floor. He carried a broken chisel. No rust on the grip.
No blood under the nails. His eyes flicked once toward Kael’s bandaged hand, then toward the ceiling lanterns. Black Ledger habit. Court informant discipline.
Maybe both.
Vaela stepped beside him and crouched.
"Bad place to steal floor teeth."
The man did not look at her.
"Bad place to talk."
"Good. Then you will listen fast."
His chisel shifted toward her thigh.
Vaela’s crescent blade touched the soft skin under his jaw before he finished the movement.
He went still.
CLICK!
A lantern above them flared, then dimmed.
The man whispered, "Killing me rings the road."
"Who said kill? I am here to sell."
That made his eyes move.
Greed was faster than fear in some people. Vaela trusted greed. Fear could become courage by accident. Greed stayed stupid if you fed it properly.
"Sell what?"
Vaela leaned close enough that her voice would not carry.
"The marked one is not taking the third corpse lane. He knows it is watched. He will cut through old ash lungs and rise under Lower Court granary vents."
The man swallowed.
"Why tell me?"
"Because Black Ledger pays for direction. Hollow Court pays for delivery. I prefer Ledger coin. Court ownership contracts are ugly."
"You travel with him."
"I travel near value. There is a difference."
His eyes narrowed.
Vaela gave him a truth to make the lie breathe.
"He is injured. Worse than he looks. His hand is pulling him. He is trying not to spend whatever makes him hard to kill. If you put hunters ahead of the ash lungs, he either breaks there or burns enough strength for a capture crew."
The man believed that part because it was true.
He looked past her shoulder.
Kael was guiding the last workers around a collapsed wheel shrine. Renn argued with the old woman about biting unknown wires. Orrek dragged the cart with one arm and hate.
The informant licked his lips.
"How much?"
"Ledger slate cleared. Two water seals. One clean fever dose."
"For a route?"
"For the first route."
"There is more?"
Vaela smiled wider.
"There is always more if buyers stay polite."
The chisel lowered.
Hook set.
The informant reached into his coat and pulled out a flat strip of black bone with a Ledger scratch mark. He pressed his thumb to it. The strip warmed, taking the print.
"Name?"
"You do not get mine."
"Payment needs name."
"Payment needs fear. Write Two Crescents. They will know."
He flinched.
Good.
Her old corpse market shadow still had teeth. He passed her the strip. She did not take it with bare skin. She folded it into cloth and tucked it away.
"Ash lungs," he said.
"Third turn after the broken jaw shrine. He will try to look like he is taking the dead road deeper. He is not."
The informant nodded once and began limping away. This time the limp stayed consistent. Fear was teaching him craft.
His clean ears had begun to sweat.
Good. A lie carried better when the carrier felt hunted by it too.
Vaela waited until he reached the next lantern. Then she picked up a loose bolt and flicked it into the corpse groove beside him.
CLINK!
The road reacted.
A small pressure eye opened in the wall.
The informant froze.
Vaela looked away before he turned. Let him think the road had noticed him on its own. Let him rush his report. A rushed lie traveled faster than a careful truth.
She returned to the group.
Kael did not ask until they had passed two more lanterns.
"What did you sell?"
"A road we are not taking."
Renn’s head snapped up.
"You spoke to an informant?"
"I educated one."
Orrek frowned.
"You told him where we are not going."
"I told him where a greedy man would want us to be. Different thing."
Kael watched her. His eyes were tired, but not dull.
"And what did it cost?"
Vaela pulled out the wrapped payment strip.
"Maybe medicine. Maybe poison. Maybe a tracker. We will find out before we use it."
Renn made a strangled sound.
"You brought possible poison back to the fever girl?"
"I brought possible leverage back to all of us. You are welcome."
The old woman cackled.
"I like her. She is terrible."
"I am efficient," Vaela said.
Kael took the cloth wrapped strip from her. Their fingers touched for less than a breath. The Hollow Court mark under his bandage pulsed once.
Vaela felt it through her skin.
Not power. Not warmth. A pressure answer. Like something buried under Kael had noticed she had chosen the group again and filed the fact away.
She pulled her hand back.
"Do not make that meaningful."
Kael looked down at the strip.
"I did not say anything."
"Your hand did. Tell it to mind itself."
Orrek laughed. It hurt him, so he stopped with a curse. Ahead, the dead road split again. The third corpse lane curved right, toward a tunnel with jaw shaped stones hanging low from the ceiling. The old ash lungs lay beyond it if Vaela’s lie had roots. The real service shelf narrowed left, nearly hidden behind hanging corpse straps.
Vaela pointed left.
"There."
Renn stared.
"That is not a road."
"No. It is a bad idea. Roads are watched."
Kael moved to the rear again.
Behind them, far back through the dead road, a horn made of pressure bone sounded once.
HOOOOON!
Then twice.
HOOOOON!
The lie needed one more cut to live.
Vaela stopped near a hanging corpse strap and dragged her blade across her own forearm. Not deep. Enough to bleed. She smeared the blood on the stone beside the third corpse lane, then pressed Kael’s discarded outer bandage into it with the toe of her boot.
Renn saw and went pale.
"That bandage has his mark residue."
"A little."
"You are leaving a trail?"
"I am leaving bait that smells expensive."
Kael watched the black stained cloth darken against the stone. The mark in his palm pulled once toward it, annoyed, then snapped back to the true route.
"They will know it is false."
"Eventually," Vaela said. "A good lie does not need to live forever. It only needs to stay alive long enough for the truth to get around a corner."
The old woman nodded with solemn approval.
"Terrible girl. Work well done."
Vaela pointed her blade at her.
"Compliment me again and I leave you for the road."
"You like compliments."
"I like payment."
"Same hunger wearing cleaner boots."
Orrek laughed once, then winced hard enough to grip the cart. Even Kael felt the corner of his mouth move. A small thing. Dangerous in its own way. Warmth made leaving people harder. It also made walking through the dark less empty.
Vaela pretended not to notice any of it. Kael did not trust the lie because it was clever. He trusted it because Vaela had left herself inside it. Her blood, her old name, her market fear. A person did not spend pieces of their past unless the present had started to matter.
The informant had sold the lie.
Fast.
Far down the wrong corpse lane, a man screamed once when the first hunter hook found Vaela’s bait instead of Kael.
HAAARGH!
Vaela’s smile vanished.
"Move."
The group squeezed onto the service shelf. The cart scraped the wall. Workers held their breath as the drop to the right opened into a pit full of old chain racks. Kael was the last to step onto the shelf. At the far end of the third corpse lane, black lanterns began blooming one after another, moving toward the wrong road with hungry speed.
Vaela had bought them time.
Not safety.
Time.
In Furnace Sink Nine, time was the only currency that did not forgive bad spending.
A sour draft moved through quota-chain rust, fungal sourness, press soot, and labor sweat baked into stone and died against Kael’s chest. It did not get past him.
Behind them, the wrong road kept buying screams with Vaela’s blood on the receipt.