The alliance vote needed five moderate delegates in one room.
Caed.
Two were missing.
One was hiding.
One had already sent word that she would not risk coming unless Varen signed personal protection in blood.
"She wants insurance," Caed said while pinning delegate routes to a board in the dye shop. "She thinks you'll trade moderates once you get the child lists."
Varen met her eyes. "Would you trust me if our positions were reversed?"
Caed did not answer.
Sera drew three route circles in chalk.
"We can't move everyone at once. Too exposed."
Prell pointed to the east lane route. "Shortest line from glass chapel district."
Jak tapped a different lane with his knife tip.
"Shortest line is where assassins wait. Use trash bridge and chimney runs."
Vane stood at the back, reading a fresh recall strip with a face that gave nothing away.
"I can lend four field officers until sunset," he said. "After that, my command authority narrows to advisory unless treaty renews again."
"And if it doesn't renew?" Elya asked.
"Then this becomes your civil war without legal witnesses."
Rill handed Varen a folded vow strip.
"Blood insurance," she said. "Write that you won't abandon moderate witnesses to continuity custody or hardliner purge."
Varen pricked his thumb and signed.
---
Delegate one was Brother Fen, keeper of Mercy Kitchens in low chapel quarter.
They found him feeding sixty people from two soup cauldrons and one bad stove while pretending armed lookouts on surrounding roofs were normal kitchen staff.
"You came fast," Fen said when he saw Caed.
"Because fast is all we have," she answered.
Fen looked at Varen with open suspicion.
"You are the school weapon."
"Today I'm your ride," Varen said.
Fen snorted.
"That inspires no confidence."
They moved him anyway.
Route team: Varen, Jak, Sol, one Inquisition operator named Darr, and Fen.
Sera took second route with Caed and two wardens to collect Sister Mornel from tannery cloisters.
Vane and Prell took third route to retrieve old doctrine scribe Kel from the ridge hospice.
Elya stayed in command at the dye shop with Iven and Rill, tracking each team by runner intervals and bell codes.
It lasted thirty-seven minutes before first blood.
A roof tile dropped in front of Varen's boots.
Jak glanced up and hissed, "Three above left."
Crossbow bolts came a heartbeat later.
Darr took one through shoulder and slammed into a crate stack. Fen went down behind a rain barrel, hands over his head.
Varen tried to cast a high lattice and his right hand betrayed him, thread wobbling into nothing.
He shifted to left-hand anchor and slammed a low shield instead. One bolt skipped off and shattered a window.
Jak ran wall-side, climbed drain chain, and disappeared onto the roofline.
Sol dragged Darr into cover and shouted route code into a whistle.
Two short, one long.
Varen looked at Fen.
"Can you run?"
"Can you stop asking stupid questions?"
They sprinted through butcher lane while bolts chased them from above. Varen kept low anchors at ankle height where his left hand could still hold steady.
One pursuer dropped into their path with hooked blades and ash-thread sash.
Hardliner.
Fen surprised everyone by swinging a soup ladle he'd somehow carried from the kitchen and cracking the attacker's jaw.
"Run!" Fen yelled, then looked at the ladle in his hand like he'd just met himself.
They cleared into chimney row where Jak rejoined with blood on one cheek and two missing knives.
"Three up top now two," he panted. "Third jumped me and ran east with message tube."
"Can you track?"
"Not without abandoning your holy cook."
"I heard that," Fen said.
They reached checkpoint blue where Elya's runner waited with fresh route update.
Wrong update.
"Route two compromised," the runner gasped. "Sera's team diverted to glass basilica under heavy pursuit."
Varen swore.
Glass basilica was not on planned path.
Which meant either Sera made a hard tactical choice or someone fed all three routes at once.
"Who sent the update?" Varen asked.
"Command post. Signed Prell."
Jak and Varen exchanged a look.
Prell was not at command post.
Someone was signing him.
---
Glass basilica had no roof and too many entrances.
Once a chapel, then an archive, now a shell of cracked columns and broken stained panes that turned afternoon light into knives.
Sera's team held the western transept behind toppled stone pews. Caed crouched beside her, bleeding from the arm. Sister Mornel, tiny and ancient, sat between them clutching a satchel like it held her lungs.
Eight hardliners pressed from east arches with shields and short spears.
"About time," Sera shouted as Varen's team slid in.
"You picked the worst building in the district," Jak yelled back.
"I know."
Prell and Vane arrived from the north side one minute later with doctrine scribe Kel and a half-dozen local volunteers carrying clubs.
No one had time to discuss route leaks.
The hardliner captain stepped into center nave and pulled his mask down.
Brass teeth.
Alive, smiling, and very tired of missing chances.
"You keep stealing my cargo," he called to Varen.
"Try not treating children like cargo," Varen answered.
Brass teeth spread his arms.
"You think this is about children? This is about who writes doctrine next decade."
Caed shouted, "Doctrine without mercy is just math for cruelty."
Brass teeth laughed.
"Mercy doesn't hold cities."
He signaled and his line advanced.
The fight through broken glass was ugly and close.
Varen abandoned precision entirely and used broad blood anchors to pull stone panels down as moving cover. Effective, slow, exhausting.
Sera's pins took knees and wrists but she was running low on prepared needles.
Vane fought in straight lines and made each movement count.
Prell held center with shield discipline that reminded Varen he had trained real wars before becoming a bureaucrat with bad patience.
Fen kept Sister Mornel alive by being impossible to predict with kitchen tools turned weapons.
Then Kel screamed.
A masked attacker had slipped through choir alcove and grabbed the old scribe by the neck with a blade at his ear.
"Back!" the attacker yelled. "Drop arms or he bleeds!"
Varen froze.
Kel was one of the five delegate marks. Without him, the moderate ballot failed automatically.
Brass teeth saw the hesitation and drove his line forward.
Sera shouted, "Don't stall!"
Varen made another wrong call.
He tried a split-step cast with his damaged hand to close the distance without risking Kel.
The cast misfired.
He landed short, off balance, and ate a spear shaft across the ribs hard enough to drop him.
Breath gone.
Vision white.
Kel screamed again.
Jak moved first instead, vaulting from a side altar and landing on the hostage taker's back. Blade flashed. Hostage free.
Brass teeth cursed and blew a retreat whistle.
Hardliners disengaged in disciplined pairs, dragging two wounded with them and leaving one dead where he fell.
Vane started pursuit.
Caed grabbed his sleeve.
"No. Vote matters more than revenge."
---
They secured the basilica, counted bodies, and gathered delegates in the old sacristy for immediate roll check.
Present: Caed, Fen, Mornel, Kel.
Missing: one delegate still unlocated.
Kel shook so hard he spilled tea down his own robe.
"They knew every route," he whispered. "Even my false route."
Elya arrived from command post with Iven and three copied dispatch slates.
"It's worse," she said. "All ambush windows came from one forged command queue using Prell's sign and Vane's observer countersign."
Prell stared at the slates.
"No one can forge both without archive access and treaty registry key."
"Or without someone on the inside handing them both," Vane said.
The room went quiet around that.
Prell met Vane's eyes.
"You accusing me?"
"I'm accusing math," Vane said. "And math is pointing at a very small room."
Before Prell could answer, Sol came in from perimeter with a stripped message tube.
"Found this on a dead attacker," he said.
Elya cracked the seal and read aloud.
"If retrieval fails, execute fallback: fracture moderates by exposing Sovereign pledge as false. Release copy at first bell."
Jak frowned.
"What copy?"
Rill took the note and swore softly.
"The blood vow Varen signed this morning."
Caed went cold.
"If hardliners can publish a forged or altered version, moderates will think he promised protection then sold us." She looked at Varen. "That ends alliance before the ballot starts."
Varen held out his hand. Elya gave him the note.
At the bottom, small and easy to miss, sat a tiny seal pressed in black wax.
Not hardliner.
Not Red Mercy.
Continuity office sub-seal: archival transcription desk.
Elya looked up slowly.
"Someone in your own record hall is running this war," she said.
From outside the broken basilica, first bell rang across the district.
Jak swore and climbed a window frame for street view.
"Posters," he said. "Every corner."
They moved fast through chapel lanes and saw the damage immediately.
Broadsheets nailed to doors, walls, prayer poles, and market posts.
Header in thick black script:
SOVEREIGN PROTECTION PLEDGE.
Below it, a blood-scan copy of Varen's signature followed by added clauses no one in the room had seen:
MODERATE CELLS WILL SUBMIT ALL CHILD STOCK TO TEMPORARY COLLEGE CUSTODY FOR RECLASSIFICATION.
NONCOMPLIANT HOUSES FORFEIT SANCTUARY RIGHTS.
Crowds gathered and started shouting before anyone finished reading.
"He lied!"
"They're taking our wards!"
"Continuity warned us!"
Rill grabbed one sheet and held it to the light.
"Paper came from college press stock," she said. "Cut pattern from archive annex."
Caed's face drained.
"If this runs two bells, half my delegates go underground."
Vane looked at Varen. "You need public denial now."
Varen shook his head. "Denial without proof sounds like panic."
Prell snapped, "Then get proof."
They split again, this time by message speed.
Jak and Sol tore posters down in chapel quarter.
Rill and Caed ran doctrine lanes to hold moderates in place.
Vane and Prell moved to lock college press.
Varen, Elya, and Iven went for archival transcription desk where the sub-seal came from.
Archive annex was already in lockdown when they arrived.
Two continuity clerks barred the door with legal rods.
"Closed by rector order," one said.
Elya shoved the forged broadsheet into his face.
"You printed this?"
"No comment."
Iven ducked under the rod, kicked the latch pin, and opened enough for Varen to shoulder through.
Inside, the press room still smelled of fresh ink. Rollers wet. Type blocks scattered. One plate half cleaned on the sinkboard.
Elya snatched it and held it up.
The plate bore Varen's name in reverse and the fake custody clauses line for line.
"Who approved this run?" she shouted.
No answer.
One compositor bolted for back stairs with a satchel.
Varen chased him through stacks, failed a cast when his right hand locked again, then tackled him physically on the landing.
The satchel burst open.
Inside were three things:
A silver press chit signed by continuity chair Meroth.
A narrow key tagged WHITE ROOM COPY.
And a schedule slip with one line underlined twice:
LAST DELEGATE (AUNT HALVI) - HOLD UNTIL FALSE PLEDGE RELEASED.
Iven read it over Varen's shoulder and turned white.
"They're holding Halvi now."
Elya looked at the timestamp and cursed.
"Transfer happened ten minutes ago to old candle warehouse. If they break her before ballot, moderates lose quorum anyway."
No time to regroup.
They ran.
Old candle warehouse sat between canal and tannery wall, stacked with wax barrels and old hymn boxes. Two guards at the front wore continuity sashes over hidden knife harnesses.
Varen did not negotiate.
He hit one with a shoulder and drove him into the door frame. Elya sprayed lock salt in the second guard's eyes. Iven kicked the dropped knife into canal mud.
Inside, Aunt Halvi sat tied to a packing chair, hair half torn out, face bruised but awake.
One interrogator in archive gray coat stood over her with a heated seal iron.
"Sign withdrawal," he said. "Or we mark you apostate and pass your orphan house to hardliner stewardship."
Halvi spat at him.
"My house fed your clerks through winter."
The interrogator raised the iron.
Varen slammed him through a crate stack.
The iron clanged across stone and burned out in wax.
Halvi stared at Varen while Elya cut her bindings.
"Is the pledge real?" Halvi asked.
Varen held up his bleeding left thumb.
"This is my blood," he said. "I promised protection, not seizure. They forged the rest."
Halvi looked at him, at Iven's bruises, at Elya's shaking hands, and made a hard old-woman decision.
"Then I will vote," she said. "And I will say that in front of everyone."
Outside, Jak's whistle sounded three long notes.
Emergency gather.
When they reached the lane, Jak handed Varen a fresh poster ripped from the rector's own notice board.
This one had no fake clauses.
No explanation.
Only a single line in Meroth's official script:
BALLOT LOCATION CHANGED FOR SECURITY - BELLVALE OUTER COURT - SECOND SUNSET.
Caed read it and swore so softly Varen barely heard.
"They moved the vote to the place with the children," she said. "If this goes bad, everyone dies in one courtyard."
