The chandler's shop had been closed for nine months, and the basement still smelled like tallow.
He'd walked past the address twice before finding the door, a side entrance half-hidden behind stacked crates that someone had arranged to look abandoned but weren't. The wood was dry. No rot. Someone swept here. The lock turned with a clean action that had nothing to do with a building that had been empty since Smokeveil.
Three steps down. Stone floor, damp at the edges where canal water seeped through the foundation. One candle on a table that had been a workbench once. He could see the inkwell stain from whoever used to keep accounts here, a dark ring soaked into grain that no amount of scrubbing would lift. Two chairs. The good kind, with backs. Someone had carried these in.
The handler was already seated.
