Chapter 6: The Price of Information

Chapter 6: The Price of Information

The words Silent Partner were a brand on Cole’s mind, a maddening puzzle box with no visible seam. He had the key—his mother’s journal—but the lock was a ghost, a nameless entity somewhere in the sprawling, hostile city of Dunhill. His fervent desire for answers had now eclipsed his fear. Mere survival was a prison; discovering the truth was the only path to freedom. To vindicate his parents, he had to complete their life's work, and that work was impossible without the missing formula, the Argentum Vitae.

He knew where records of partnerships, guild contracts, and financial entanglements were kept. A place of meticulous order and suffocating silence: the Dunhill City Archives. The grand repository of every official document, from birth certificates to trade agreements. It was also, unfortunately, housed in a wing of the Grand Basilica, making it one of the most heavily monitored buildings in the city. To walk in there was to willingly place his head in the lion’s mouth. The obstacle was not just the guards and wards, but his own face, a face the Inquisitor had now seen. He couldn't do it alone. He needed a distraction, a disguise, a miracle. He needed Elara.

He found her in her usual throne-like chair, reviewing a stack of manifests. He approached with a new resolve, his servitude momentarily forgotten, replaced by the urgency of his quest.

“I need to get into the City Archives,” he stated, his voice low but firm.

Elara didn’t look up from her papers. “A death wish is a peculiar request, even for my establishment. The answer is no. The risk is astronomical.”

“My parents had a Silent Partner,” Cole pressed, leaning forward. “Someone who holds the final piece of their research. Their records, any financial ties, might be in the Archives. I have to find them.”

Finally, she lifted her gaze, her sharp eyes boring into him. She saw the shift in him—the terrified boy was being forged into something harder, something more dangerous. Something more useful. “And what makes you think I would sanction such a suicidal errand? You are still deeply in my debt. Your continued existence is my asset. Your immolation on a pyre is not.”

“Because you knew them,” Cole said, taking a calculated risk. “When I told you my name, you weren't just surprised. You recognized it. You knew what the key meant. Their work… it means something to you.”

A long, tense silence stretched between them. The usual smirk was absent from Elara’s face, replaced by a cold, unreadable mask. “My past is none of your concern, McDowell. But your assumption is correct. Their work is… of interest.” She steepled her fingers, her reagent rings glinting like captured stars. “Very well. I will provide a window. But the price for this will be steep. Another favor, to be called upon at my discretion, no matter the task, no matter the risk. Your debt to the Cage will double. Do you accept these terms?”

He was plunging himself deeper into her gilded trap, but he had no other choice. “I accept.”

“Gorok will provide you with the robes of a junior scribe,” Elara said, her voice all business once more. “Your time as a bookbinder’s apprentice should make you look the part. I will arrange for a distraction. A rumor, carefully placed, of a sale of heretical texts in the Ironweld district. It will draw the bulk of the Basilica’s attention. It will not, however, make the Archives safe. You will have a sliver of time, nothing more. Do not fail. And do not get caught.”

An hour later, Cole was a ghost of his former self. Dressed in the drab, grey robes of an Order scribe, his face obscured by a deep cowl, he slipped through the grand archway of the Basilica. The air inside was cold and smelled of old stone and sterile faith. The distraction was working; he saw a squad of silver-clad Flame Guard marching purposefully towards the exit, their expressions grim. He kept his head down, clutching a stack of decoy parchments, and made his way to the Archives wing.

The silence here was a physical presence. Scribes sat at long wooden tables, their quills scratching rhythmically, a sound like mice chewing on the bones of history. Towering shelves, packed with millennia of ledgers and scrolls, rose up into the shadows like the ribs of some great, dead beast. A single, aging Inquisitor stood guard at the entrance, his eyes scanning every face. Cole felt the Heart in his chest grow cold, a silent, defensive clench. He presented his forged work order, and the Inquisitor waved him through with a bored, dismissive gesture.

He was in. He navigated the maze of shelves, his new alchemical senses a strange guide. He could feel the age of the inks, the faint residual energies of the hands that had written the words. He found the section he needed: Disgraced Houses & Seized Assets, Pre-Purge Era. It was a library of failure and heresy. He pulled down a heavy ledger from ten years ago, its spine thick with dust. His hands, acting on an instinct he didn't know he possessed, found the McDowell entry. Most of it was redacted, black lines of censor’s ink obscuring everything. But in the margins, a single, overlooked annotation in a clerk’s hurried scrawl: Assets transfer query, ref. Guild Sigil 7. Partner invokes Anonymity Clause.

Guild Sigil 7. It was a lead. As he hastily tried to memorize the intricate symbol, the turning point arrived, not with a bang, but with the measured, terrifyingly familiar sound of heavy, authoritative footsteps echoing on the marble floor.

Thump… thump… thump…

Cole’s blood ran cold. He flattened himself into the narrow gap between two towering shelves, his heart hammering against his ribs. The Homunculus Heart pulsed with a frantic, silent scream of warning. Peeking through a sliver of space, he saw him. Inquisitor Kaelen. His silver hair seemed to burn even in the dim light, his presence a vortex of cold, righteous fury that sucked all the warmth from the air. He wasn't supposed to be here. The distraction was meant to draw him away.

“The rumor in the Ironweld was a fabrication, Captain,” Kaelen’s low, resonant voice cut through the silence. “A clever misdirection. I felt a… ripple. A dissonance. The heretic is a rat, and he is skilled at making you look at the wrong hole. Search this wing. Every scribe, every visitor. I want them all identified.”

Kaelen was here. Mere feet away. Cole held his breath, praying the shadows of the bookshelf were deep enough. He could feel Kaelen's proximity as a physical pressure, a suffocating weight on his soul. The Inquisitor paused, his head tilting as if listening to a sound only he could hear. His piercing eyes swept across the very shelf Cole was hiding behind. For a horrifying second, their gazes almost met through the narrow gap.

Cole’s terror spiked. The Heart in his chest flared instinctively, a defensive pulse of raw power. He choked it down instantly, but it was too late. A tiny, almost invisible wisp of blue energy, no bigger than a mote of dust, escaped him. It struck the ancient, dry wood of the bookshelf.

Kaelen’s eyes narrowed. He took a step closer. Cole’s world shrank to the space of a single, held breath.

But then, the captain Kaelen had addressed called out from the far end of the aisle. “Inquisitor! We have a scribe here with an expired work order. His papers are not in order.”

The immediate problem drew Kaelen’s attention. With one last, lingering glance at the bookshelf, he turned and strode towards his subordinate. It was the opening Cole needed. He didn’t wait. He slid the ledger back into place, turned, and walked—not ran—out of the aisle, melting back into the cowled anonymity of the other scribes and making for the exit. He didn’t look back.

He stumbled out into the grimy daylight, his lungs burning, his mind reeling. He had the clue. A sigil. He had survived.

Back in the Archives, Kaelen dealt with the incompetent scribe swiftly. But the feeling of dissonance lingered. He returned to the spot where he had paused, his senses on high alert. He ran a gloved hand along the dusty shelf where the McDowell ledger rested. His fingers stopped. There, on the dark wood, was a mark that hadn't been there before. It was a tiny, faint scorch, no bigger than a coin, with an almost imperceptible tracery of feathery lines emanating from its center. To anyone else, it would be nothing. To Kaelen, it smelled faintly of ozone and raw, untamed power. The stain. The McDowell signature.

He touched the mark. It was still faintly warm.

A grim, terrible smile touched his lips. The distraction had been a feint, but the heretic had come here after all. He had been close. So close. Kaelen looked out the grand window towards the chaotic sprawl of the merchant district, where dens like the Gilded Cage festered.

"He's not just in the city," Kaelen whispered to the silent rows of books. The hunt was no longer city-wide. It now had a focus. "He's in this district." The noose had just been pulled tight.