Chapter 8

Sancia prepares to flee Tevanne and meets Sark at their fishery rendezvous, but notices only three traps where Sark always sets four. Finding fresh blood and a lodged fléchette, she deduces Sark is dead and the site is a lure. Using Clef to sense rigs upstairs, she re-aims the remaining traps and arms an old espringal with iron nails, crippling one attacker and triggering another trap as she bolts.

Outside, a scrived bolt slams into her coin satchel, scattering her life savings but sparing her. Pursued by a coordinated squad with floating lantern rigs, she breaks into a warehouse with Clef, climbs to the roof, and spots a clean, campo man directing the hunt with a round golden device. When he activates it, all scrivings in the area die—lanterns fall, Clef falters, Sancia’s touch-sense vanishes—and a Foundryside rookery collapses.

Under fire from unscrivved espringals, Sancia makes a desperate rooftop leap, dives into a rookery, and escapes through apartments. As the scriving outage fades, she reaches the Michiel walls and, with Clef, exploits a temporal rules loophole in the lock to enter the campo and shake pursuit.

Stranded and broke, Sancia robs a brewery for quick funds, then finds the Scrappers. She recounts the ambush and the scriving shutdown. Claudia and Giovanni, alarmed, sell her dolorspina darts and Giovanni’s experimental flash-bang orbs. They warn that a formidable enforcer has already beaten Antonin and shaken loose Sark’s details. Sancia resolves to hit Sark’s apartment for his panic kit and forged papers to escape Tevanne.