They used the next stretch of time the way tired people used borrowed breath.
Quickly. Without pretending it belonged to them.
Vincent moved first.
"Garagan," he said. "Rear path and loft."
The older man nodded and went at once, limping less than he should have for a man who had lost that much blood. He disappeared behind the stacked timber at the back of the row, checked the narrow service path, then reappeared long enough to judge the loft access above the neighboring bay. There was a ladder nailed to one post, old but usable. Good.
"Julia," Vincent said, "entry lane and adjacent bays."
She was already moving before he finished. She crossed to the mouth of bay six, paused once beneath the outer beam, and let her eyes drift with deceptive idleness over the rear row. Workers. Yard boys. Two real teamsters arguing over wheel pins. One fake laborer near a feed cart pretending his attention had never passed this direction. Another figure at the lane bend who had changed position twice in the last minute without obvious purpose.
She filed them all.
Evelyn stepped down from the wagon at last.
Not fully into the open. Just enough to move.
She came to Vincent's side with the quiet balance of someone conserving strength while refusing to show weakness. In daylight, with the screen no longer hiding the shape of her, she looked less like freight and more like the sort of trouble institutions preferred to describe on paper rather than face directly.
"You've used him as a runner," she said.
"Yes."
"And now?"
"We see whether Marek sends hands, mouths, or knives."
Evelyn's eyes tracked the lane where Rell had vanished. "Mouths first, if he thinks the value can still be recovered. Knives first, if he thinks panic already reached us."
Vincent nodded. "Which do you expect?"
She thought for half a beat. "Hands."
"Why?"
"Because Rell is not stupid. If he tells the story well, Marek hears opportunity before danger."
Bahlil let out a small bitter sound from the wagon bed.
No one looked at him.
He tried again. "You are all giving too much credit to a broker who survives by refusing personal risk."
Julia returned from the lane mouth before Vincent answered. "Then he will send personal risk in other people's names."
Bahlil sighed and leaned his head back against the sideboard as though the whole district had become one prolonged insult designed specifically for him.
Garagan came back from the rear path.
"Loft gives a partial view over the lane," he said. "Bad angle on the bay interior. Rear path narrows behind timber and opens toward the repair rows. Two men could hold it. Three if one likes bumping elbows."
Vincent looked toward the loft. "Take it when they come."
Garagan's brows shifted slightly. "You trust me above your head?"
"No."
"Good."
That was the right answer.
Evelyn glanced at the older man once, then toward the loft. "If they bring a ranged weapon?"
Garagan said, "Then I kill the man carrying it first."
Again, the right answer.
Julia stopped beside the wagon and folded her arms.
"Lane traffic is normal," she said. "Too normal in two places. One watcher near the feed cart. Another by the broken axle yard pretending to nap with his hat over his face."
Vincent asked, "Local hires?"
"Either that or the district grows men who sleep while standing at the exact angle of a line of sight."
Bahlil muttered, "It does, actually."
Julia looked at him.
He lowered his gaze.
Vincent considered the bay.
Open front. Partial rear escape. Loft above neighboring cover. Goods stacked enough to build obstacles. Water barrel. Tool rack. Wagon as center mass. If Marek sent a polite inquiry with four hidden cutters, the bay would compress fast. If he sent only mouths, fear and positioning would matter more than blades.
Better to prepare for both.
He pointed to the water barrel. "Move it left. Clear our footing."
Julia did it without comment.
"Crates," he said next. "Two forward, one back. Leave the center open."
Garagan climbed into the wagon bed to help, lifting the heavier box one-handed and with visible irritation at his own wounds. Together he and Julia shifted the freight into a shape less natural for storage and more useful for combat. Not obvious enough to look like fortification. Enough to break charge lines and create narrow channels.
Evelyn watched the arrangement form.
"You've done this before," she said.
Vincent looked at the crate in his hands. "Standing in bad places with worse people?"
"Yes."
"Often."
A faint motion touched the corner of her mouth. Not amusement. Recognition of category.
She stepped toward one of the smaller salvaged chests and opened it herself. Inside lay coiled rope, wrapping cloth, lamp oil, and a short iron pry bar.
She took the bar.
Julia noticed. "You prefer that over a sword?"
"I prefer what people do not read fast enough."
Reasonable.
Vincent looked at her wrists again. Raw skin where the shackles had ridden. Bruises. Less tremor than there should have been after confinement and poor food.
She would fight. The question was how long her body would tolerate it.
He said, "When it starts, do not overstay the first exchange."
Evelyn's eyes moved to him. "That sounds like concern."
"It sounds like instruction."
"Better," she said.
Julia straightened from the last crate and wiped dust from her palms. "If we are assigning instructions, mine for Bahlil is simple."
The merchant looked up with immediate dread.
"Make a sound only if it contains something useful."
Bahlil shut his mouth.
Garagan went to the loft then, taking the ladder without wasted movement. He disappeared into the slatted upper shadow and became, to anyone not searching hard, another broken piece of the district architecture.
Good.
Vincent took position near the front right of the bay, where he could see the lane and the wagon together. Julia held the left side by the bay post. Evelyn remained deeper in shadow near the wagon's rear wheel, pry bar low at her side, silver hair dimmed by the roof shade.
Bahlil sat where he was told to sit and tried to look smaller than his own money had once allowed.
Then they waited.
The western district moved around them in layers.
A repair hand pushed a wheelbarrow past the row and never glanced in. Two boys carried feed sacks and looked too curious by half before some older worker barked them onward. The fake sleeper near the axle yard changed posture once, enough to suggest he was awake and receiving signals from someone else's patience. The man by the feed cart bought actual feed at last, probably to justify existing where he had stood too long.
Time passed in short practical measurements.
Sun angle beneath the row roof.
The cooling of tea in a cracked cup left in the next bay.
The rate at which Bahlil breathed faster whenever footsteps slowed outside.
After perhaps half an hour, Julia spoke without looking away from the lane.
"He will not return with only one face."
"No," Vincent said.
Evelyn added from the rear shadow, "He will return with hierarchy."
Vincent glanced her way. "Explain."
"He arrived first as inquiry. The next layer will arrive as authority. False or borrowed, it hardly matters. Someone who can ask to inspect, advise transfer, or claim discretion."
Bahlil swallowed. "That sounds like Marek."
"You've dealt with him directly?"
The question came from Vincent.
"Twice," Bahlil said. "Never alone. Never in his own rooms. He dislikes patterns that can be drawn later."
Julia said, "Coward."
Bahlil hesitated. "Careful."
Interesting.
Vincent looked at him. "That sounded like respect."
"It sounded like accuracy," Bahlil snapped, then seemed to regret the edge the moment it left his mouth. He lowered it again. "A coward dies if he arranges business like Marek. He is cautious because he survives by being the second man in every room, never the first and never the last."
Evelyn said, "That is still a kind of cowardice."
Bahlil did not argue.
Vincent filed that too.
The district kept moving.
Then Garagan's voice came down from the loft, low and even.
"Lane bend. Three approaching. Rell among them."
Everyone sharpened at once.
Julia's hand settled fully onto her sword.
Evelyn shifted her stance near the wagon wheel.
Bahlil went pale so fast it almost looked theatrical.
Vincent asked, "Describe the others."
"One in gray. Clerk shape. Holds his shoulders like a man who carries papers people obey. One heavier. Yard labor clothes, but wrong boots. Hands free."
Authority and force.
As expected.
Vincent stepped half a pace forward into the open part of the bay and let his posture settle into the same road-weary hardness he had shown at the toll. Neither inviting nor defensive. A man already burdened by too much and therefore unwilling to be burdened by one more interruption.
Julia mirrored the mood at the opposite post.
Rell appeared first at the lane mouth.
This time his smile was smaller and his caution more visible. Beside him walked a narrow man in gray with a clerk's tablet tucked under one arm and a seal tube at his belt. The third was broader, dressed like yard labor but too balanced for it, his sleeves plain and clean where a real worker's would have held grease or dust deeper in the cloth.
Marek had sent both hands and mouth.
Good.
They stopped just outside bay six.
Rell inclined his head slightly. "Again."
Vincent said, "You returned quickly."
Rell's expression suggested he found that an unprofitable observation. "The district dislikes uncertainty around sensitive arrivals."
Julia's voice came cool and flat. "The district should learn to live with disappointment."
The man in gray stepped forward by half a pace.
He did not bother smiling.
"I am here under discretionary transfer review," he said, tapping the seal tube at his belt with one finger. "A private freight concern has requested confirmation of cargo continuity after road loss. We are authorized to inspect and advise secure relocation."
There it was.
Not city authority.
Not openly false either.
Borrowed weight. Enough to push if the room accepted the frame.
Vincent did not.
"Show the authority," he said.
The man in gray drew a rolled sheet from the tube and flicked it open just enough to reveal a stamped sigil at the bottom.
The same tower crossed by a diagonal line.
Evelyn saw it and went very still.
Rell noticed.
Good.
Vincent let his gaze pass over the document without reaching for it. "That means nothing to me."
"It need not," said the man in gray. "It needs only to mean something to the freight under review."
At that, the broad man in labor clothes shifted slightly, placing himself where he could rush either bay post in two steps.
Garagan above would have seen it.
Julia certainly did.
Evelyn's fingers tightened once on the pry bar.
Bahlil's voice came thin and involuntary from the wagon bed.
"That is not my declared route authority."
The gray man looked at him and smiled faintly, as if indulging a child who had remembered half the rules too late.
"No," he said. "It is the authority that matters after your declared route failed."
The bay went quieter than the district around it had any right to allow.
Rell watched Vincent.
The broad man watched Julia.
The gray man watched the wagon.
And from the loft above, unseen by them, Garagan waited while the first false authority of Surn tried the door.