28
NYRIUS
The shed sits three miles east of Oxwood on a disused trade road that stopped appearing on official maps four years ago.
Cyran found it through the account records — a property Malrec put money into on paper, but nowhere else. When we arrive before dawn with six men, the bolt lock on the main door is new and heavy, which tells me everything I need to know about what's inside.
We go through the side entrance instead.
The interior smells of lamp oil, damp wood, and old iron. Crates stacked along the east wall, a workbench with ledger books piled at one end, a locked cabinet that Cyran opens with crackling fingers while I work through the first ledger by lantern light.
The numbers are meticulous. Malrec kept better records of his illegal income than his legitimate accounts — columns of dates, shipment volumes, payment figures, and beside each entry, a two-letter code I spend ten minutes decoding before I understand it.
Route identifiers. Every shipment logged by passage, date, and profit.
"Cyran." I hold the lantern closer to one column. "The eastern route payments. Cross-reference these dates against the rebel attack reports from Ardenmere."
He takes the ledger, scans it, goes still. "They match."
"He wasn't just moving weapons through the conflict zones." I set the book down and open the second ledger. "He was timing the shipments to coincide with the attacks. Selling to both the rebels and the dark elf response teams." I find the column I'm looking for. "He had buyers on both sides."
The second ledger is more personal. Less column work, more notation — names, dates, instructions. I read through two pages before I find it.
Seed the border lord connection. Use the blacksmith. Establish relationship publicly, then expose. Dual purpose — removes the lord's credibility, provides a visible criminal for the weapons supply.
Below it, a payment record. A sum large enough that I have to read it twice. Paid to a contact I don't recognize by name but whose address puts him in Oxwood's tavern district.
Someone was paid to spread the rumors about Edria and me. Not to discover them — to create them, shape them, make sure they traveled in the right direction to the right ears before the arrest.
I close the ledger.
We find two men in a rear room of the shed, asleep on bedrolls — low-level runners who didn't scatter fast enough when Velis's operation collapsed. They're frightened and cooperative before Cyran finishes his first question.
The older one talks for twenty minutes.
Malrec had been running the western corridor for six years. The accounts handled the money. The road maintenance coverhandled the movement. For the last two years, he'd been specifically managing the narrative around the weapons supply — seeding stories about rebel activity to justify his authority, keeping the dark elf councils focused on suppression rather than investigation.
"And the woman," I say. "The blacksmith?"
The man glances at his partner. "Six months ago, the contact came through with a new job. Spread rumors. Make it look like a scheme on her part." He shifts on his bedroll. "We didn't know they'd actually arrest her. That wasn't the original plan."
"What was the original plan?"
"Discredit the lord. Make him look foolish for being manipulated by a human woman. Keep him distracted from the investigation." He swallows. "The arrest came later. After Drest reported the lord was getting too close to the accounts."
I stand up and walk out of the shed before I say something that makes this more complicated.
The names in the third ledger take me an hour to work through, because they're encoded differently — initials only, cross-referenced against a separate code that Cyran finds in the locked cabinet. When we match them, two of them belong to nobles I've sat in council with.
Not Thalen. I note that, and note also that it doesn't make me feel better about Thalen.
Lord Fenrath's initials appear beside four payments. Lord Caevar's beside two. Both coded asstability contributions— payment for looking the other way while Malrec's supply moved through territories adjacent to their own.
I copy the relevant pages by hand and we ride back to Oxwood.
I presentthe evidence at the emergency council gathering that evening — six lords assembled in the Denvara hall, Cyran standing at the door with the original documents. I lay out the records, the shipping logs, the witness testimony, and the notation about Edria's framing in sequence, without editorializing.
The room is very quiet by the time I finish.
