"Trial by inventory," Han said softly, recalling the phrase like a key. "We'll force the temple to show its books and find the page where a rooftop leaves fingerprints on a writ."

Hanna poured water into the bowl and washed her hands in the way of people who understand that ash tells stories to anything it clings to. "We'll need shoes that can argue with glass," she said. "Lines, grapples, and the kind of silence that knows when to be heavy instead of light."

The moth climbed from its perch to the table's edge and held its wings half-spread. A line of light gathered along the rim of the bowl and stepped from there to the vellum, then from the vellum to the window, like a sentence running toward a period. It paused at the sill, as if it could hear the wind visiting panes above the city.

Han folded the slip back into oilskin, slid it home, and tied the strap. He glanced at the chalk-marked glove in the kerchief and decided again not to consult it. The Auditor would find him soon enough without being invited.

"Bells with no tongues," he said, not to correct anything, only to name what the day had offered. "And a language that hides in hammer marks."

"Glass with no shame," Hanna said. "A roof that thinks it is a stage."

They left before the foundry's heat could cool the blood it had warmed. On the step, the street hesitated, then joined them. Above the row houses the city's roofline made its ragged horizon of chimneys and panes and frames where vines remembered how to climb. Somewhere up there, men were teaching moths to lie; somewhere up there, the lie would prefer to tell the truth if it were asked in the grammar it understood.

Hanna closed the door and the latch took her meaning. She tightened her gloves and set her shoulders toward the climb as if the city had been built with her trajectory in mind from the first stone. The moth's shadow crossed her sleeve and rested there. It had decided to be part of the ascent.

"Conservatory," Han said again, tasting the word for faults and finding none.

They turned toward streets that dissolved into stairs, then into ladders, then into the idea of a path laid across roofs by the people who maintain other people's stories. The city laid its tools out for them: hooks where washing lines once held linens, ledges that believed in boots, panes that would prefer to remain unbroken if everyone would keep their promises. Wind sang through a scaffold pipe. Somewhere a wind organ proved that air carries notes when glass tells it which ones to keep. The moth lifted, set itself to the music, and pointed, not with finger or word but with flight.

They went where it indicated, into the new grammar.

High Court Plaza put on its festival face at noon: a hundred paper visors turning the crowd into a flock of modest birds. The visors weren't disguises so much as reminders—before the law, every voice would be equal so long as it could be heard. Stalls selling lime water and sugared almonds lined the perimeter, their vendors pretending that justice worked up a thirst. The Council dais stood on its stone riser like a dock at the edge of a careful sea. Bronze standards bore the city's sigil: a menhir scored with tally lines. Beneath the standards, clerks in grey kept columns that would be history by evening and trivia by winter.

Han and Hanna stepped into the filtered light that the visors made, and the crowd adjusted as if an oar had dipped. Hanna carried the bell jar in its felt wrap—not as trophy, not as hostage; merely present. Han had the satchel with the Index Leaf under oilskin and the vellum slip from the mold, the items spaced in his awareness the way a chess player keeps pieces in both eye and hand. He felt the weight of the chamber ahead: the Auditor-Priest would be there. The Plaza had a taste for simple geometry—two arguments and the straight line between them—yet today's line bent around glass and heat and moths that read paper like roads.

The Councilors arrived in their layered blacks, masks plain, each with a badge of office pinned above the heart: coin, scale, anchor, key. The presiding Councilor—Mask of Scale—lifted her hand. The plaza settled into the hush that festival law demands: a silence that makes room for careful sentences.

"Petitions and charges," said Scale. "Those with standing may raise their matters; those without are welcome to learn."

The Auditor-Priest did not raise his matter; he placed it, as one sets a careful weight on a sensitive plate. He strode to the argument's ground, his winter-grey robe promising arithmetic. He held a ledger glove open upon his palm, the chalk of his sigils faint and professional. "Council," he said. "By doctrine, I accuse Lord Han of interference with records—tampering with an instrument belonging to the temple; possession of a cipher used to alter oaths; and intent to nullify a mark without audit. I request immediate seizure of materials and custodial inspection."

A murmur moved under the visors, not loud, more like air being taught a different shape. Scale tilted her head. "Do you present writ and witness?"

The Auditor produced both with the tidiness of a man preferring facts arranged in rows. The writ bore temple seal; the witness was a beadle with a throat still sore from foundry heat, who declared—in the formula that keeps perjury at arm's length—that he had seen Han flee with doctrine disguised as an ornament.

Han stepped into the shape of a reply and did not hurry. "Councilors," he said. "I hold a lawful purchase from the Night Market Vaults—Lot Nineteen—proved by the market's receipt and witnessed at sale. I hold an Index Leaf lawfully consulted at the Drowned Archive during the ebb. I hold no temple property. If the temple believes otherwise, we have tools to discover who is mistaken. And we may begin with the clock."

The Councilors liked clocks. They made men speak within borders. Scale gestured with two fingers. "Explain the clock."

Hanna had measured the plaza on entry. She knew where to stand to be seen by many without stepping on a Councilor's sentence. She joined Han, visor set, voice even. "The temple's charges presume a timeline," she said. "They claim: our possession at the Archive, our escape, and our interference at the Hollow Foundry, all within a span that would require a pour to be staged or a furnace to obey a prayer. Foundries don't pray. They heat. The pour you're concerned about was live. It could not have been staged earlier, because the core was still being dressed when we arrived; nor later, because the crew's crucible window would have closed." She turned slightly toward the crowd, making a saw-cut through confusion. "Metal does not care for doctrine. It listens to temperature."

The master of the Foundry—summoned by rumor, anchored by curiosity—had taken a place near the edge of the ground. He cleared his throat. "Pour schedules were posted at dawn," he said, unmasking to speak and then replacing the visor because he liked the rules that allowed him to like them. "If the Auditor's time claims are right, the shop would have had to move a bell through air that wasn't ready to help, and my men would be blistered more than they are, and one of my chains would be lying where none of us wants to step. None of that happened."

The Auditor did not bother to look offended. He turned a page in his hand-brief and presented a small wax tablet to the clerk below the dais. "We have a mark," he said. "A chalk debt laid at sale, accepted by Lord Han's glove. Acceptance is consent to audit. Consent to audit covers doctrine encountered thereafter. The mark has not been presented at the temple because the gentleman has preferred to walk." He let the Plaza see the mark's tidy loop and crossbar. "Everyone agrees chalk is honest—so long as it has paper to speak upon."

"Consent to audit is not confession to theft," Han said. "It is a door, not a sentence. And if we are discussing doors—we walked through one into the Drowned Archive while the sluice hand permitted. Your beadles tried to follow during the ebb and were moved more by water than by words."

A child near the almond stall giggled and then hid behind her mother's skirts. The Plaza loves small rebellions as long as a Councilor blesses them with a look.

"Order," said Scale.

The Auditor pivoted. "Then let us discuss this cipher he calls a purchase." He gestured, and the beadle set a small iron stand on the stones with the care of a man lighting a household shrine. "Set your toy there. We'll see if it performs." His tone made perform a trap.

Hanna unrolled the felt. She did not move into the trap; she walked past it. She placed the jar on the stone, lifted the glass, and let the moth ride the air with the careful manners of a guest. It settled on her glove and made no show. No lines on glass. No sudden constellation. She looked at it and made a small motion with her wrist, the arc Han had taught the night before. The moth opened and closed its wings, no more.

"Instruments answer to context," Han said. "Like men."

"We're discussing doctrine," said the Auditor. "Not temperament." He crouched—an elegant compromise with humility—and extended the ledger glove. Chalk lines warmed, as if the moth's presence had reminded them they were meant to speak. "There," he said, showing the Council the faint brightness. "Mark of transfer. He accepted it. By this consent—"

"By this consent," Hanna cut in, crisp as the edge of a scale, "you gave him a mark at the Vaults. A market receipt proves the sale. The chalk proves your disappointment. Neither proves theft."

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