The laminated sheet quivered slightly in the investigator’s hand. Tassir Corvent’s signature. Scrawled. Dark. Ink named Galdron Hess as the sole architect of the city’s destruction, an attestation of industrial terrorism, murder, and high treason. She looked at Tassir. His jaw dragged against the leather knuckle pinning his cheek to the parquetry, his pupils blown wide. *Why?* “No,” Mirelha said, the word a dry leaf in her mouth. “That’s impossible.” The lead agent tilted his head, calculating. “The affidavit is notarized. Penned. Sealed. We have our perpetrator.” He gestured to two uniformed bailiffs. “Take him away.” The bailiffs flanked Hess. Hess met Mirelha’s gaze without flinching. Not anger, not accusation. Just bone-deep weariness. “Tell me,” Mirelha demanded, whipping around toward Tassir as he was dragged across the polished floor. “Tassir! Tell me this isn’t real!” He struggled, a choked sound escaping him as another guard's hand clamped over his mouth. His throat worked against the leather restraint, panic sharpening his features. Then he managed to wrench his head free for a second, gasping, “The winter! Mirelha, the winter! When we were trapped! I… I thought… He took everything from me! My family’s land! I wrote it then! A contingency! Before the gala! Before I knew! Before I understood!” *The winter*. Months back in the Drevka peaks. Before Hess had laid bare the truth about Caspian. Before the reel-to-reel tapes. Before the vault. Tassir had drafted that statement when Hess was still the monster in their sights, the mark in their crosshairs. Bile rose in her throat. Her stubborn refusal to believe Caspian could ever stumble had blinded her. Her vindictiveness had cornered an innocent man who had bled to keep her breathing, clearing him of manufactured sabotage only to trap him under an old affidavit she had pushed Tassir to assemble. “Take him,” the lead agent repeated. He turned to a subordinate. “Get the transport idling. Archon Facility. Maximum security.” The bailiffs gripped Hess’s elbows. He offered no resistance, keeping his gaze level upon Mirelha. The calculating saboteur she had tried to forge in the snow was unraveling into sawdust. A high-pitched, excited squeal shattered the grim tableau. “My masterpiece! You forgot my masterpiece!” Jibbo, surprisingly clean for having just wrestled a dozen raccoons, bounded through the retreating crowd. In one hand, he swung an ebony leather satchel—identical to the case resting near the agent's boots. In the other, Jibbo fluttered a sheaf of carbon sheets bound with yellow yarn. “You wanted to see proof, Chief?” Jibbo beamed, practically vibrating. “Well, here it is! My finest trade! Took all night to get the mayor’s mark on it!” He thrust the ribboned stack toward the baffled agent. The agent snatched the pages, skimming the top leaf. “What in the hell— This is a regional freight accord! For ‘exclusive distribution of all valley provisions and recreational consumables’?” He looked up, stunned. “Where is Hess’s admission?” Jibbo puffed out his chest. “Admission? Oh, that scrap? You mean this one?” Jibbo popped the clasps of the satchel, revealing not a legal folio, but a single crayon sketch of a snowmobile and a grinning raccoon. “During the raccoon riot,” Jibbo explained, ignoring the man's reddening neck, “I saw your pretty valise, Chief. Twin to mine! So I traded!” He tapped the case under the agent's arm. “That’s *my* emergency kit. Full of civic supply accords! The mayor stamped them at dawn when I called it ‘rural enrichment’!” He winked. “He eats that up.” The agent stared from Jibbo to the wax drawing, down to the freight accord in his hands. The smug certainty slid off his cheekbones. “You mean to tell me…” the agent rumbled, “you swapped the primary docket… for this… this *bureaucratic garbage*?” “Garbage?” Jibbo gasped. “Chief, that pact makes me the sole purveyor of regional trail mix and spare spark plugs! It’s a goldmine!” Two bailiffs loosened their hold on Hess. The third, pinning Tassir, glanced uncertainly between their furious superior and Jibbo. The valise held nothing punitive. The sworn affidavit bearing Tassir’s pen stroke was simply gone. The agent scanned the floorboards, looking down into the hollow compartment of the swapped case. “There is nothing here,” he muttered. “No affidavit, no deposition. Just… this.” An official wax crest stared back from the requisition sheet. Without orders, the bailiffs stepped back into the shadows. Hess turned toward Mirelha, steady and composed amid the wreckage. “You are clear of the law, Mirelha,” Hess murmured, meeting her stare. “Yet the syndicate’s buyer is waiting at the docks for the freight your brother promised.”

The Pickpocket