CHAPTER 45: SOUTH WING BREACH

The clinic bell didn’t ring like a class change. It hammered three short, one long—real breach. The sound came through bone and into teeth.

"South wardline," Liora said, already moving. Her voice carried without shouting. "Dorian, lock the corridors. Wardens, clear students from windows. Armand, Lantern and Sapper only. No silhouettes in glass."

"Marrow, Shade. Hollow, Shade," I said. The leash hummed tight across my chest as both slipped into shadow. I grabbed the small bone lantern—cold light, soft as frost—and the little crawler I’d built last week. Eight finger bones in a ring, a jaw hinge for a head, and a chalk nub strapped underneath. It scratched ward routes without sparking anything awake.

We hit the south hall at a fast walk. The wardline that ran under the wainscoting should have been a steady blue-white. Here it pulsed out of rhythm, like a heart that had learned the wrong beat. Someone had smeared a thin resin across the lead glyph: iron-pine—same acrid scent as Gate Six, only sharper.

"Resin again," I said.

"Noted," Liora answered. "Lantern low."

I cracked the Lantern and set it on the floor. Its light was cooler than ward glow and didn’t trip the sigils. The Sapper clicked down the baseboard, chalking where the line went flat.

"Crowd," Dorian said from the intersection, calm and even. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. Students who had flocked to the clinic windows found other places to be.

I knelt at the cracked glyph. The resin wasn’t slapped on; it was brushed in a thin ring around the symbol’s throat, just enough to slow light. Annoying, not dramatic. Sabotage that wanted to look like wear.

"I can strap and pull the throat tight," I said. "We’ll need paste to eat the resin."

Liora held out a small tin from her kit. "Iron-pine solvent. Work neat."

Before my hand reached it, a gloved arm shot through the side casement—fast, silent—as if the hall were a stage and we were props. The hand went for the tray Liora had set down: the cracked gate tooth we’d taken off a test rig earlier. The glove had the same tiny stitch along the cuff I’d seen on Night Sweep.

The thief’s mistake wasn’t speed. It was angle. He had to turn his wrist to clear the latch.

I stepped to the line, anchored my heel, and let my hand follow the turn. Sabre half-drew with a whisper. I didn’t cut. I rotated the flat into his wrist and used that pressure like a lever, then captured his thumb with my other hand. One twist past comfort and his fingers opened. The tooth clattered to the tile.

He tried to yank back. I slid toward the frame, kept the lock gentle and firm, and bumped the window inward with my shoulder. He lost his balance and hissed air through his mask.

"Marrow—block," I said.

The hound rose from the window shadow outside, solid as a post. He didn’t snarl. He just existed where an exit had been.

"Second," Hollow clicked.

A footstep on slate to the right—light, already leaving. I let the first thief slither his hand free rather than break a wrist for pride. He vanished along the sill with a cat’s scramble. I didn’t chase.

"Don’t follow," Liora said, as if reading my legs. "We patch first."

I set the sabre home, picked up the tin, and dabbed solvent along the ring. The resin thinned and ran like cheap wax. I blotted with cloth until the glyph looked clean. Then I looped a thin rib-strap around the wainscot brace and tied it off to a small bone shim I’d wedged into the seam. When the strap took, I breathed and gave the line a small pulse—only when leather met wood.

The wardline shivered, then steadied into honest light.

"Hold ten," Liora said.

I counted. The glow kept the beat. The Lantern’s cold reflection went quiet on the tile.

Dorian stepped to the window, examined the latch, the sill, and the tiny scuff where the thief’s heel had missed a brick and found paint. "Small feet," he said. "City shoes. Not work boots."

"Glove," I said, pointing. The cuff lay half under the tray. I lifted it with two fingers. Same neat house stitch at the seam. Not academy issue.

"Bag it," Liora said to a warden. "Write ’found at south clinic window, time three bells forty.’ Nothing else."

Aldric picked that moment to appear at the far end, flanked by two blues who liked being seen with him. He was half-turned to Seraphine, explaining himself to the air. "I can flood the hall with light and catch them if they come back—"

"Discharging lightning in a clinic corridor is an immediate fail," Liora said without looking at him. "Stand clear, Mr. Voss."

He stopped like he’d hit glass. He tried a grin. It looked wrong. "Of course," he said, low enough that most students wouldn’t hear. Enough did.

Across the hall rim, Lyra had the Refuge queue in a clean double line. No panic. No raised voice. She tapped shoulders and pointed with a chalk nub. "Keep the doorway clear. Three steps. Stop at the line. Good. Next." People listened. They always did when someone made it simple.

The wardline held the full ten. I eased the strap and felt for any slip. None. The light stayed steady.

"We’re done," Liora said. "Armand, write me a plain note on what you touched. No flourishes. Dorian, walk the route from gate to pane. If the smell turns new, stop." Then to a warden: "Escort this glove to the desk. Don’t lose it."

We stepped back from the wall. Students shifted, buzzed, and slowly bled away. Not because anyone barked at them—because there was nothing left to see.

Ariadne arrived with Marcus. She didn’t waste a greeting. Her eyes went from strap, to solvent tin, to latch. "Report."

I gave her the short version. "Resin ring around the glyph throat preventing full flow. Solvent cleared it. Strap tightened the brace. One masked thief tried the window. Disengaged without injury. Second fled along the sill. We didn’t pursue."

She held my eyes for one breath, looking for drama and finding none. She nodded once. "File the solvent use and the strap note with House Admin. Include amounts. No adjectives."

"Yes," I said.

Pierce came late, slate under arm, hair slightly out of place in a way that meant he’d run but would die before admitting it. He took in the strap and the light. "Done?"

"Done," Liora said. "And a glove."

"Logged," he answered. His jaw worked the way it did when his thoughts were a paragraph long and he had no time for them.

Seraphine stood back from the cluster, hands folded, expression smooth. When the crowd thinned, she drifted close enough for me to hear, too far for anyone to say we were speaking.

"Efficient," she said. "But you make yourself small. This is a public school. Optics matter."

"I’m here to fix things," I said.

"You could do both," she said. "Fix them and be seen fixing them."

"If you change how you work," I said, "I’ll help you be seen for the right reasons."

She smiled like that was a compliment. "Midnight suits me," she said, and walked away as if she’d chosen it.

"I didn’t invite her," Liora said quietly at my shoulder, not looking at Seraphine, not needing to. "We’re done here. Next step."

She led me into an exam room, shut the door, and set two small resin flakes on a tray. "Gate Six," she said, tapping the first. "Clinic. Same base—iron-pine. Different binder. Someone is changing recipes."

"Learning," I said.

"Yes," she said. "At midnight we take a quiet look at Gate Four. Dorian, you, me. No escort. No lights. Bring the Lantern, the crawler, rope, and the boar frame. If we see nothing, we go to sleep. If we see something, we don’t chase it into a story."

"Understood," I said.

"Eat," she added. "And write the note before you forget the order you did things. ’I, then solvent, then strap, then check.’"

I almost smiled. "Plain language."

She didn’t smile back. "Plain wins. See you at midnight."

I found Lyra before I went. She was logging names with a clerk’s neat hand. "Thanks for keeping the door clear," I said.

She glanced up, guarded and professional. "Thanks for not turning the hall into a stage."

"Trying to keep it boring," I said.

"That’s what safety is," she said, then looked down to write. The pink at the tips of her ears had faded. She didn’t blush often; she didn’t need to.

I filed the short note: solvent, strap, hold, done. No heroics, no adjectives, just the kind of paper that lets work stand on its feet. Ariadne’s clerk stamped it without comment. That was its own kind of approval.

When I stepped back into the corridor, the wardline hummed the right song again. Students were already telling it wrong, because that’s what people do with a quiet fix. I didn’t correct them.

"Midnight," I told the Compass in my head, out of habit. It showed me a blank square and said nothing. Good. I didn’t want a cheer. I wanted a map.

I checked the Lantern, fed the Sapper a new chalk chip, and hung the boar frame’s straps across my shoulder. I kept Marrow and Hollow tucked in shade until the hall emptied. Then I let them heel me out into the cool air.

The clinic settled back into itself like a room exhaling. Resin lingered as a ghost at the edge of smell.

Someone was learning. So were we.

Midnight would test who learned faster.