Cassian counted the turn of the lock.
One full rotation. A pause. Then the pressure seal released with a damp metallic cough.
He shifted his grip on the knife. Mara stood behind his right shoulder, close enough that the broken edge of her pencil pressed through his coat. He could feel each breath she chose not to take.
The bulkhead opened twelve centimeters and stopped.
A gloved hand appeared around its edge holding a narrow inspection mirror.
Cassian caught Mara's wrist before she could raise the camera. The mirror moved once, showing shelves, black water, the dead terminal. It angled toward their hiding place.
He pulled her down.
A bolt struck the shelf where her head had been.
The sound was small, more snap than shot. The metal shelving shivered. Three ledgers slid free and fell into the water.
Cassian was already moving.
He crossed the aisle low, drove his shoulder into the half-open door, and heard a curse from the other side. The gloved hand vanished. He hooked his fingers around the bulkhead edge and hauled it wider despite the pain tearing across his bandaged palm.
The intruder came through with the motion instead of fighting it.
A knee caught Cassian in the ribs. He turned enough to lose the breath rather than the bone, trapped the leg, and put the knife against the seam of a dark diving suit.
The intruder laid the bolt launcher under his chin.
They held there.
Water ticked from the overhead pipes.
Behind the mask, pale eyes narrowed with recognition.
"Your left side is still vain," Nessa Vale said. "You'd rather get shot than let anyone ruin your profile."
Cassian eased the knife back one centimeter. "The launcher first."
"You always were romantic."
"Nessa."
"Ash." Her mouth curved beneath the mask seal. "That sounded ridiculous even before you started wearing it."
Mara stepped from behind the shelf with the camera raised. Her face gave away nothing, but the cracked pencil was gone from her hand.
Nessa looked past Cassian. "And this must be the audit with legs."
"Mara Quill," Mara said. "You entered a restricted customs archive using my dead father's credential. Please keep your hands visible."
"Polite. I see the family resemblance."
Cassian took the launcher from under his chin. Nessa let him, which concerned him more than if she had fired. He broke it open. One remaining bolt, steel-headed and short enough to disappear between ribs.
"Who followed you?" he asked.
"No one."
"You checked the upper landing twice before you opened the door."
"Habit."
"Your habits are faster."
Nessa's gaze dropped to his bandaged hand. Blood had begun to work through the cloth again. "And yours used to include gloves. Life beneath the family crest looks rough on you."
Mara's attention moved between them. She did not ask how they knew each other. That restraint landed harder than suspicion would have.
Above, the fire bell rang again.
Twice this time.
Nessa stopped smiling.
Cassian closed the launcher. "Still no one?"
"No one I invited."
Boots entered the customs hall overhead. More than one pair. The first moved directly toward the lower stairs while the others divided, one toward the street entrance and one toward the old inspection corridor.
A containment pattern. Rusk had taught Cassian the same one when he was seventeen and still mistook obedience for competence.
Nessa reached for the inside of her suit.
Cassian caught her wrist.
"If that is another weapon," Mara said, "I would appreciate knowing before the armed authorities arrive."
"It's the credential they're coming to find," Nessa said.
She drew out a black disc no wider than a coin. Its edge had been filed flat on one side. A green light pulsed at its center in time with the bulkhead reader.
Mara lowered the camera by a fraction. "Put it on the shelf."
"No."
"It is evidence in an investigation authorized by the city council."
"Then the city council can come underwater and take it from me."
The boots reached the lower passage.
Cassian heard the brief static of a throat microphone, then a man's voice, muted by concrete.
"Archive C. Seal both exits."
Nessa tilted her head. "That sounds expensive."
Mara held out her hand. "The credential."
"You have admirable faith in paperwork for a woman standing in a flooded basement with three armed men outside."
"Four," Cassian said.
Nessa listened again. "I only heard three."
"The fourth stayed above to watch the street."
"Still showing off."
The lower door handle moved.
Cassian pointed toward the rear wall. "You came through the tide run."
Nessa's expression did not change quickly enough.
"There is no tide run on the plans," Mara said.
"Plans are stories rich men tell insurers," Nessa replied.
The handle moved again, harder.
Cassian gave Nessa back the launcher. "Get her out."
Mara looked at him. "No."
"The passage will be narrow. Nessa knows it. You don't."
"And you intend to do what?"
"Make four men report three directions."
"That is not an answer."
"It's logistics."
The look she gave him was cold enough to preserve meat. Then she took his injured hand, turned it palm up, and stripped away the wet bandage.
Cassian almost pulled free. Not because it hurt. Her grip was firm and exact, her thumb braced below the cut without pressing into it. She examined the reopened seam while men gathered outside the door.
"You cannot hold a knife properly," she said.
"I can hold it."
"You are dripping on the floor."
She opened two buttons of her shirt cuff, tore a strip from the dry lining, and wound it twice around his palm. No fuss. No tremor. She tied the cloth with her teeth and one hand while keeping her eyes on his.
It was an impractical thing to notice with a strike team outside, but Cassian noticed the care she took not to knot it over the wound. He noticed the faint ink mark along the side of her thumb. He noticed that she had placed herself between him and the bulkhead while she worked, as if her narrow back could hide him from a bolt.
"There," she said. "Now your bad plan has one fewer defect."
The door jumped in its frame.
Nessa was watching them with an interest Cassian intended to discourage later.
"Tide run," he said.
She moved to the last shelving unit and kicked loose a rusted retaining pin at its base. Cassian helped her pull. The shelves rolled forward on tracks hidden under the black water, exposing a maintenance hatch in the wall.
Mara stared at the opening. "That was omitted from three generations of customs plans."
"It was omitted from the customs office," Nessa said. "Different tradition."
She spun the wheel. It resisted until Cassian put his good hand beside hers. Together they forced it through half a turn. Brackish air breathed through the seal.
The archive door buckled inward.
Nessa went through first. Mara followed, protecting the camera beneath her coat. Cassian pulled the shelving unit back across the hatch, then squeezed into the passage and dragged the hatch shut by its inner handle.
Darkness closed over them.
Nessa switched on a lamp fixed to her shoulder. The passage was barely high enough to crouch in, a brick throat furred with salt. Water rushed around their boots toward the harbor. Behind them came the crash of the archive door giving way.
Mara looked back once.
Cassian touched two fingers to her elbow. Forward.
She obeyed without argument. That worried him too.
They moved bent nearly double. Nessa set a hard pace, one hand skimming the wall where old iron markers broke through the mineral crust. The tide run forked after thirty meters. She took the narrower branch.
Cassian caught the back of her harness. "That goes east."
"Congratulations on retaining direction."
"The harbor is south."
"And the south outlet has a grate with an alarm loop."
"Since when?"
"Since people with money discovered poor people also enjoy doors."
A light flickered behind them through the seams of the hatch.
Mara crouched at Cassian's side. Her wet hair had come loose and lay against one cheek. "Are they likely to enter?"
"Once they find the hatch."
"How long?"
Nessa glanced back. "Depends whether they're clever."
"Three minutes," Cassian said.
"He means two," Nessa told Mara. "He rounds up when he thinks a woman might panic."
"Then he has not been paying attention."
Mara continued east.
Cassian watched her place each boot where Nessa had placed hers, testing the brick before committing her weight. No wasted movement. No complaint about the water rising to her knees. The white strip she had tied around his hand grew red at the center but held.
At the next junction Nessa stopped before a vertical shaft. Rainwater fell through it in silver threads. An iron ladder climbed toward a round cover.
"Old weigh station," she said. "Comes up behind the cooperage."
Mara blocked the ladder.
"Before we leave, the credential."
Nessa leaned against the wall. "Persistent."
"Thursday at four ten every week for eleven months. That was you."
Cassian heard no question in it.
Nessa rolled the black disc across her knuckles. "Most weeks."
"You used Edrin Quill's identity to enter a protected archive after his death."
"His identity is buried on Lighthouse Road. This opens doors."
"How did you get it?"
The light behind them strengthened. A tool struck metal in the archive, the vibration traveling through brick.
Nessa looked at Cassian, measuring what he already knew. He knew nothing. He kept his face still.
That answer appeared to amuse her.
"Your father gave it to me," she said to Mara.
The falling water tapped against the ladder rungs.
Mara's hand tightened around the camera. "When?"
"Six days before the council attack. He paid half my fee, gave me that disc, and told me Archive C would hold the rest of my instructions. Thursdays only. Four ten in the morning."
"What fee?"
Nessa pushed away from the wall. For the first time since removing her mask, there was no joke waiting in her face.
"Salvage."
Behind them, iron screamed as the hidden hatch began to open.
Cassian moved to the ladder and set his back beneath the cover. It lifted after one hard shove, spilling gray rain into the shaft. Nessa climbed first. Mara put a foot on the lowest rung, then stopped and looked down at the credential in Nessa's hand.
"What did my father hire you to bring up from the bottom?"