We settled in a workshop where the water had reached halfway up the walls.
Rem set the seal on the wet table. Beside him, Taya was drying a map of the channels over a brazier. Lily listened through a communication crystal, but the image kept breaking apart. The academy did not have enough power even for the infirmary lamps.
"At the Guild, you said you were only an assessor," I said.
"It was more convenient that way."
"For whom?"
Rem ran his thumb along the edge of the seal.
"Me."
After the hunt for the titanic lizard, he had been the first to examine the core. The original record bore my name, the time of the fight and the trace of Styx's energy. Kane had ordered him to change the owner of the prize to Leon and record a participation fee for me.
"I rewrote the report," Rem said. "Then I saw a cage for the queen, made the day before you returned."
Leon looked up.
"You knew my father was going to take the beast?"
"I knew he was preparing to seize an unidentified asset. I didn't dare ask whether it was alive."
Rem did not mention a family Kane might have punished, invoke fear or wait for us to call his confession brave. He merely listed the documents that bore his signature.
There were more than three hundred of them.
Eggs and young were taken from people for debt. Beasts capable of resisting the seal were declared dangerous and hidden in the lower archive. Some were used to test the Crown. The rest were kept dormant until they could be resold.
"Why weren't they destroyed before?" Lily asked.
"A living beast retains the trace of its previous contract, and to the Li family that proves ownership. Dead, it becomes nothing but a loss."
Kane was losing his claim to the city, and his assets were becoming witnesses. That was why the white fire had already been lit beneath the tower.
Less than an hour remained until the purge was complete.
Rem drew the route from the old freight station to the Guild archive, which had four entrances. Guards held the main one. The family door opened for the Li heir. The service lock accepted an assessor's seal. The fourth passage led to the furnaces and did not appear on the new maps.
"Kane knows you know about these doors," Cole said.
"He knows I won't dare use them."
Leon gave a quiet laugh.
"Today's a bad day for my father's calculations."
This time Styx was not the centre of the plan: she could send only two scouts through the ventilation shafts. Lenny remembered the academy tunnels, Taya knew where the old spillway crossed the freight line, and the workers brought tools. Cole gave us the guard rotations, Leon warned us about the family traps, and Rem was responsible for the seals.
Lily wanted to come with us.
"Who will receive the stream from the archive?" Rem asked.
"The academy network is almost dead."
"But it's still breathing," I said. "If Kane erases us inside, only his version will remain."
Lily pressed her lips together.
"You're leaving me outside the door again."
"I'm leaving you the one thing none of us can do."
"That sounds very nice."
"And it still makes you angry."
"Yes."
She was silent, then brought up a transmission layout on the crystal. She did not forgive me for the decision, and she did not interfere.
Rem held out his seal to me.
"Take it. If I lose my nerve, open the lock yourself."
"It's bound to your hand."
"I know."
He put the seal away again.
Uniformed men were waiting for us at the freight station.
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