North Quay smelled different when Tarin was there to collect something instead of keep it from being eaten.
Wet rope and river silt still lived in the cracks between the freight stones. Hot brake metal drifted off the carrier cages. Tagged cargo gave off the faint card-ozone bite he remembered from the Gutterhound run, but today nobody was shouting about a broken route or blood on a loading board. The work order in his pocket was clean. The loan authorization had three signatures and a carrier stamp. The portable stabilizer kit was supposed to be the easy part.
Jessa took one look down the loading ramp and said, "We don't stand here."
Tarin pulled his attention from the carrier clerk cutting the paper seal on the outer transit cage. "Why?"
"Because the man by the drain has watched that case twice and the river once, and the woman under the lamp hasn't moved a crate since we got here."
He found both people only after she named them. The man by the drain wore a carrier-gray overshirt with no company mark. The woman under the lamp had work gloves tucked into her belt instead of on her hands.
Neither looked at Tarin now.
Jessa had already shifted to his right, putting the loaded handcart between them and the open service alley.
"Could be waiting for somebody," Tarin said.
"Could be. Move anyway."
The carrier clerk frowned from inside the cage. "You taking the kit or not? I need the bay clear."
"Taking it," Jessa said. "We're moving the handoff six paces left."
The clerk looked ready to object until he saw her expression. Then he dragged the narrow transit case off its rack by the reinforced handle.
It took both hands.
Tarin reached automatically and stopped when his shoulder warned him before the weight did. The joint had improved from sharp pain to a deep, stupid ache, which mostly meant it waited until he forgot about it. He took the lower handle with his good arm and let the clerk carry more than half.
The portable stabilizer was not elegant. The case was a squat steel-edged box with a carrying frame, substrate ampoule slots, a folded brace arm and a calibration plate sunk behind thick glass. Expensive enough to insure. Ordinary enough that nobody would write songs about stealing one.
Useful enough that people would.
The clerk set it on the handcart. "Loan title stays with the annex. Named work order only. Shock or contamination, you bring it back for recalibration. Replacement terms are on page two."
"I read them," Tarin said.
"Good for you. Sign here."
The paper matched what Mara had made him read before she let him leave Quill. Annex mark. Carrier chain. Serial. Calibration date. The case serial matched the work order.
Tarin signed the custody receipt.
The clerk signed beneath him and pressed the carrier stamp into the handoff box.
Valid paper. Valid handoff.
Tarin's eyes caught on the calibration plate as the clerk turned away.
The date behind the glass said the kit had been recalibrated nine days ago.
The adjustment collar beneath it had an old crescent of black residue around the lower screw and a bright half-moon where metal had rubbed clean against metal. Fresh enough to show silver. Not nine days of ordinary carrying wear. One corner of the calibration plate sat a hair deeper than the other three.
He bent closer.
"Don't," Jessa said.
"I'm not touching it."
"Not what I meant."
The woman under the lamp had put her gloves on.
The man by the drain was gone.
Jessa shoved the handcart sideways.
Smoke burst across the ramp.
It did not billow like a warehouse fire. It arrived all at once in a dirty gray wall, thick enough to swallow the carrier cage and turn the nearest lamp into a pale coin.
Somebody yelled. A stack of hand trucks crashed over. Workers started moving in three directions at once.
"Left wall!" Jessa shouted. "Workers out to the ramp, not the alley!"
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A hook-line snapped through the smoke and struck the stabilizer case hard enough to ring the frame.
The line tightened.
The handcart jerked out from under Tarin's palm.
He caught the side rail with his good hand. His bad shoulder came along anyway, wrenched forward by the case's weight. Pain flashed down his arm, white and immediate.
He nearly let go.
Jessa kicked the cart's front wheel sideways into a drainage groove. The wheel dropped and jammed.
The hook-line pulled again.
Instead of rolling, the cart twisted. The carrier frame screamed against stone.
"Leave the line!" Tarin coughed.
Jessa had already done something better. She planted one boot on the cart axle and hauled the stamped custody sleeve out from beneath the case before it could tear loose.
A second hook came low through the smoke, not at the kit but at Tarin's legs.
He jumped badly.
His boot clipped the cart rail. He hit the ramp on one knee and felt the first hook-line vibrate through the case above him.
A cheap ranged card cracked somewhere to his left.
The shot took a lamp chimney. Glass burst over the stones, and the smoke went darker.
Four, his mind tried to make it. Counting bodies in smoke was a good way to lie to himself. He had seen two. He had heard at least two lines and one shot. That was all he actually knew.
"Tarin!"
Jessa was not calling for analysis.
He got up.
The case had shifted half off the cart. The first hook was caught around the carrying frame, not the case body. Whoever held it had the angle now. One more hard pull would either free the jammed wheel or tear the frame apart.
The stabilizer's folded brace arm was visible through the side grate.
For one stupid instant the thought offered itself cleanly: open it, brace the cart, use the tool to hold its own recovery.
The calibration plate sat crooked behind glass.
Tarin put both hands on the case instead.
The bad shoulder hated him for it.
"It's compromised," he said.
Jessa's face appeared through the smoke two feet away. "The people or the box?"
"Box. Calibration. Don't open it."
"Wasn't planning to."
The hook-line pulled.
They let the carrying frame go.
Metal tore with a sound like a butchered hinge. The outer frame peeled away from one corner of the case and vanished into the smoke on the line.
The thieves had expected resistance to travel through the frame. Tarin and Jessa had given them the frame.
For half a second the case itself was free.
"Now," Jessa said.
They shoved it off the trapped cart.
The kit hit the wet stones hard enough to make Tarin flinch at the shock clause in the loan terms. They did not stop to save the cart. Jessa took the front handle. Tarin took the rear with his good arm and braced the case against his hip.
It was too heavy to carry cleanly that way. That was fine. Cleanly was not available.
They moved toward the public ramp where three warehouse workers were already hauling one another clear of the smoke.
A figure came out of the gray on Tarin's side.
Not the man from the drain. Younger, scarf over the lower face, one hand holding a compact brass-and-glass lens toward the case.
The Copy-Lens caught the calibration plate, the broken carrying frame mount, Tarin's grip.
Visible things.
Public things.
The poacher's other hand reached for the case handle.
Tarin slammed the steel corner into the person's wrist.
Not hard enough to break it. Hard enough to make the hand open.
The lens stayed up.
The poacher stepped backward instead of trading blows, already angling toward the alley. Tarin started after them.
Jessa yanked the front of the case sideways.
"No."
One word.
The smoke thinned enough for him to see the service alley mouth.
Two silhouettes were already withdrawing through it. The lens carrier was moving toward them. A fourth shape had the torn carrying frame hooked behind one shoulder and was running for the waterline cut.
Tarin could chase one.
Maybe.
He had no Latchknife in his hand, no Threadward laid across the alley, no Cinder waiting for a mark. His shoulder had gone from ache to a hot pulse that made his grip unreliable. The kit weighed enough that Jessa could not carry it alone at speed.
Behind them, one of the warehouse workers shouted for help with a man who had fallen over the overturned hand trucks.
The poachers wanted a chase.
Or at least they were prepared for one.
He studied the lens carrier, then the case between him and Jessa.
"Ramp," he said.
"Finally."
They carried the stabilizer into open sight.
The poachers did not follow.
By the time the smoke thinned enough for faces, they were gone into the freight cuts with the broken outer frame and whatever public images the Copy-Lens had taken.
The carrier clerk came out of the cage furious, coughing, and missing his cap.
"Where's the frame?"
Jessa pointed toward the alley. "Gone. Case isn't. Get your workers counted before you worry about metal."
He looked as if he might argue.
Then the fallen worker groaned, and the clerk ran.
Tarin lowered the kit onto dry planks beside the cage. His shoulder shook once when the weight came off. He tucked the arm close to his body and waited for the trembling to stop.
The case had two fresh scrapes, one torn frame mount and no obvious breach in the main shell.
The crooked calibration plate was still crooked.
Jessa crouched beside him. "Tell me you weren't about to turn that thing on in the smoke."
"I considered it."
"That's not the answer I asked for."
"Then no."
She gave him a flat look.
"I considered it before I saw the plate again," he said.
"Better. Not good. Better."
"Seal?"
"Main shell held," Tarin said. "Outer frame didn't. Calibration plate doesn't match the stated condition. It looked wrong before the attack. Now the case has taken a shock too."
The clerk's anger changed direction.
"You saying it was bad when I handed it over?"
"I'm saying I won't certify it as usable."
"That's not the same thing."
"No."
Tarin did not fill the gap for him.
The clerk knelt and looked through the plate glass without opening the case. His mouth tightened at the bright wear on the adjustment collar.
Jessa handed him the custody sleeve. "Write what happened. All of it. Including when he flagged the plate."
The clerk looked at her.
"You want the claim to survive?" she asked.
He took out his pencil.
The quarantine tag came from the carrier cage, not from Tarin's pocket. The clerk wrote the kit serial, the handoff time, the attack time, the broken-frame note and the calibration discrepancy. Then he threaded the tag through the surviving case handle and pulled the locking strip tight.
QUARANTINED — NOT FOR USE
The words sat against the steel where the poachers' hook had scarred it.
Only after the case was back behind a restricted cage line, with the custody sleeve clipped to its outside record board, did the System move.
No level followed it.
Tarin let the panel close.
Across the ramp, Jessa was making the clerk mark the service-alley exit on his incident sheet. The poachers had taken a bent carrying frame and a view of everything Tarin had done in public. They had not taken the kit.
They also had not made it trustworthy.
The quarantined case sat behind the carrier line with its crooked calibration plate still visible through the scratched glass.