The meeting point was a storage annex wedged between a chandler's shop and a rope-maker's stall, half a street back from Sunford's eastern harbor. Crates of tallow and coiled hemp lined the walls. The air tasted of salt and tar and the fish-stink that permeated everything within a quarter mile of the docks.

Keegan had been in this port town for three weeks. Three weeks of dead drops, intercepted letters, and two Crownless cells burned to ash. Two safe houses raided. Eleven operatives either dead or in chains. And every thread he pulled led here, to this exact stretch of waterfront, where the Crownless ran their smuggling operation under the nose of Sunford's gentry.

Every thread except one. The one that had pulled back.

He'd gotten the message two nights ago, slipped under his door at the boarding house while he slept. No seal, no signature. Just a location, a time, and six words that had gotten his attention:

I can give you everything. Help.

The anonymity was either very smart or very stupid. Either way, it had earned this meeting.

Keegan adjusted his position against the far wall, arms folded, back to a stack of crates that put the only entrance directly in his line of sight. He wore his mask pulled down around his neck. No need to spook a potential asset before he'd heard them out. The dirk on his hip was another matter entirely.

The door scraped open at exactly the appointed time. Punctual. Good. Meant they were scared enough to follow instructions.

He didn't move from the wall. His gaze tracked the figure who stepped inside, cataloging details with the automatic efficiency of a man who'd spent two decades sizing up threats. Build. Posture. Whether they were carrying. Whether their eyes darted like a cornered animal or tracked the room with the calm of someone who'd planned this.

The door closed behind them. Thin light from a cracked shutter fell across the space between them.

"Nobody followed you?" Keegan said. A test. He wanted to see if they'd lie or if they'd actually checked.

He let the silence stretch, watching them stand there in the half-light of the storage annex. Salt air seeping through the gaps in the walls. The distant clatter of dockworkers loading cargo for an evening tide.

"Here's how this goes," he said, unfolding his arms and stepping off the wall. His boots scraped on the stone floor, "You contacted me. That means you already know who I am and what I've been doing to your friends for the last three months. So I'll skip the part where I pretend to be friendly."

He stopped about ten feet from them. Close enough to read their face in the dim light. Far enough to draw steel if this was a trap.

"You said you can give me everything. I'm here." His head inclined a fraction, gray-blue eyes steady and unblinking. "So start talking. What's your name, how deep are you in, and what exactly do you think 'everything' means? Because I've heard that word before from people who turned out to be worth about half of it."

He waited. The silence in the annex was total except for the groaning of ships at their moorings somewhere beyond the walls.

"And this condition of yours," he added, voice dropping a register. "Smuggling you out of Sunford. That's a big ask from someone I've never met. So you'd better make the next five minutes worth my time, or I walk out that door and you're on your own. Your call."

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