Aldric did not look surprised when Clyde walked into his office with dissolved Howling residue still faintly visible on his coat sleeve.
He looked at the sleeve. Then at Clyde. Then back at the papers on his desk.
"Inside the Academy," he said.
"East corridor. Near the junction with the wing."
"Class?"
"Two hearts. I checked with my Hollow Eyes before engaging."
Aldric set his pen down with the careful deliberateness of someone managing a response they have decided not to fully express. "You engaged a Class II Howling alone. In a corridor. Without Hollow Edge."
"I had the butterfly knife and the Clockwork card."
"The Clockwork card you learned to use approximately forty minutes ago."
"Yes."
Aldric looked at him for a long moment. Then he picked his pen back up and made a note on the paper in front of him.
"The Academy's ward system should have flagged a Howling presence before it penetrated this far into the building," he said, writing as he spoke. "Which means either the ward system has a gap we have not identified yet, or this Howling had enough phase development to suppress its signature below the ward's detection threshold." He finished the note and set the pen down again. "Either possibility is a problem."
"I recovered the Astral Card," Clyde said. He reached into his coat and produced the card from the dissolved Howling, its surface still carrying the faint corrupted signature of its origins, the Echo Ichor's silver-white coloring dulled by the corruption that had been running through it. "It will need purification before it is usable."
Aldric took it and examined it briefly. "Echo Ichor. We will send it through the same process as the Clockwork card." He placed it on the desk beside him. "Go home. Rest. You have done enough for one day."
Clyde turned to leave. Then stopped.
"Principal Aldric. You mentioned once that there are people outside the official Lunar Sentinel structure who deal in ichor-related materials. Black markets, you called them."
Aldric looked at him with an expression that was not quite suspicion and not quite curiosity. "I mentioned it as a warning. Why?"
"How much would a purified Astral Card sell for? On one of those markets."
The silence in the room lasted for several seconds.
"Depending on the ichor type and phase compatibility," Aldric said finally, "a purified card from a Howling could fetch anywhere from three hundred shillings upward. Rarer ichors go considerably higher." He held Clyde's gaze. "The markets themselves are illegal. Ichor materials sold outside official channels end up in the hands of people who use them without training, without understanding the risks, and without anyone to manage the consequences when things go wrong."
"I understand," Clyde said.
"Do you?"
"Yes." He nodded once. "Thank you, Principal."
He left.
The street outside was fully alive with the mechanical day, vendors calling out, the market stalls running at full capacity, the city doing what it always did under its cobalt sky with its engineered light and its engineered dark and its long-practiced habit of surviving regardless of what the heavens were doing above it.
Clyde walked without paying much attention to where his feet were taking him.
Three hundred shillings.
He turned the number over in his head.
Three hundred shillings for one purified card. The Echo Ichor card sitting on Aldric's desk right now is going to be sent to the Bleeding Court for purification, and then it will come back and go into a safe somewhere, or get handed to a Sentinel who needs it, and that will be the end of it.
Three hundred shillings would cover six months of house payments. It would give Luchian enough breathing room that he would not need to sell carrots in the dark before the lanterns came on. It would put real distance between where they were now and the threshold of genuinely not having to worry.
He stopped walking and stood at the edge of the lane with people moving around him on both sides.
The card is in Aldric's office. It is going to the Bleeding Court. I am not going to steal it.
He started walking again.
But the next one.
That thought arrived quietly and sat there without making a fuss about itself.
The next Howling I kill alone, the card comes to me first. Aldric does not have to know immediately. I find the purification process, I sell the card, and I use the money where it actually needs to go.
He knew the problems with this logic. Aldric had been clear about why unofficial ichor trading caused problems. A card in the wrong hands, used by someone without training, ended in corruption and Howlings and more problems for the Sentinels to clean up. He understood that.
He also understood that Luchian was counting carrots at a kitchen table because a history teacher's salary had not been enough and a Lunar Sentinel's commissions were better but not predictable and the house was theirs but the margins were thin enough that any unexpected cost would make themselves felt immediately.
I would be careful about who I sold to, he thought. I would find someone responsible.
He almost laughed at himself for that.
Sure. A responsible black market buyer.
He reached the house and let himself in. The kitchen was empty. Luchian was still out. The currant cake plate from two days ago had been washed and stacked neatly with the other dishes because Luchian washed dishes the way he did everything domestic, thoroughly and without being asked.
Clyde sat at the kitchen table and looked at the opposite wall.
Three hundred shillings.
Aldric said the markets exist. He did not say they were impossible to find. He said they were illegal, which is a different thing.
He reached into his coat and took out the Latin book Soren had given him. Set it on the table in front of him. Opened it to the first page.
Learn the chant first, Soren had said. Pronunciation before everything else.
He started reading.
The Latin alphabet was not entirely foreign to him. Four years of historical analysis had included enough ancient texts that the characters were recognizable, even if the pronunciation rules were different from anything he had studied formally. He worked through the first section slowly, mouthing the words without making sound, building the muscle memory of the syllables before he asked his voice to produce them.
Tempus. Umbra. Ultimae. Horae.
After a while the front door opened and Luchian came in carrying an empty basket and the particular satisfied expression of someone who had sold everything they brought.
"Good day?" Clyde asked.
"Excellent day." Luchian set the basket down and looked at the Latin book on the table. "What is that?"
"New subject. Part of the teaching role."
Luchian looked at it for a moment. "Is it interesting?"
"Getting there," Clyde said.
Luchian nodded and moved to the kitchen to start something for dinner, humming quietly, the easy and unbothered hum of someone whose day had gone well and who expected the evening to follow suit.
Clyde looked back at the Latin book.
Three hundred shillings.
He turned the page and kept reading.