The witness was buried the next morning. Not because anyone cared enough to demand justice, and certainly not because an investigation was underway. Ro simply had a practical relationship with death. Bodies could not remain in the street forever, so they were removed, buried, and forgotten. By midday, most of the people who had seen the dead man were already thinking about sothing else.
Arthur couldn’t stop thinking about him.
The witness had agreed to help them. He had known sothing important, sothing dangerous enough to frighten him, and he had still chosen to talk. Now he was dead. The thought lingered in Arthur’s mind as he stood near the small burial site, watching two laborers finish their work. There were no grieving relatives, no speeches, and no priest reciting prayers. Just a shallow grave and a city that kept moving.
Marcus stood beside him in silence. The soldier didn’t offer comfort, but Arthur was beginning to understand that this was his way of showing respect. Marcus had seen death before. Too much of it, probably. He knew that so losses ca with no satisfying answers.
By the ti they returned to Lucius’s house, the sun was already high. Livia was awake and imdiately began asking questions the mont she saw them. Unfortunately for her, Lucius appeared before she could get very far. What followed required very little translation. Livia insisted she was fine. Lucius insisted she wasn’t. Marcus quietly enjoyed the argunt while pretending not to.
For once, Arthur agreed with the physician.
The woman had been stabbed less than two days ago.
She lost the argunt.
Later that afternoon, Arthur found himself standing once again inside Gaius’s room.
At first glance, nothing had changed. The room remained modest, clean, and almost painfully ordinary. A narrow bed occupied one corner. Shelves lined the wall above a small writing table. A wooden chest sat near the foot of the bed. There was nothing here that suggested secrets, conspiracies, or murdered witnesses.
That bothered Arthur.
Gaius had known sothing. The dead clerk had risked too much and learned too much for this room to contain nothing.
Marcus leaned against the doorway while Livia sat in a chair nearby, pretending she wasn’t supposed to be resting. Arthur ignored both of them and slowly examined the room again. This ti he wasn’t looking for evidence. He was trying to think like Gaius.
That changed everything.
A historian learned very quickly that people left traces of themselves everywhere. Habits. Patterns. Small decisions repeated over months and years. Most of the ti, those details were aningless. Occasionally, they revealed sothing important.
Arthur’s eyes drifted toward the writing table.
Then back to the shelves.
Then the table again.
Sothing felt wrong.
He crossed the room and crouched beside it. The table stood slightly farther from the wall than necessary. Not enough for soone to notice imdiately, but enough to bother a man who spent his life studying details.
Marcus noticed the change in his expression.
Arthur ran his hand along the wall behind the table. His fingers brushed across rough plaster, old dust, and uneven wood. Then he stopped.
There.
A narrow section felt different.
He pressed against it.
Nothing happened.
Arthur tried again, applying more pressure this ti.
A soft click echoed through the room.
Nobody spoke.
Slowly, he pulled the hidden panel aside.
Behind it was a small hollow space carved into the wall. It wasn’t large enough to store valuables or weapons, but it was more than enough to hide docunts. Resting inside was a simple wooden box.
Arthur carefully removed it and placed it on the table.
The box wasn’t locked.
That surprised him.
Then again, perhaps the hidden compartnt had always been the lock.
Livia leaned forward. Marcus pushed away from the doorway. For a mont, all three stared at the box before Arthur finally lifted the lid.
Inside were several wax tablets, bundles of notes tied with string, and a rolled parchnt. Beneath them rested sothing heavier.
Arthur reached inside and lifted it into the light.
It was a seal.
Not a ring, but a proper bronze seal used for marking docunts. Age had darkened the tal, but the engraving remained clear. A strange symbol had been carved into its face: a circle intersected by several lines. The design ant nothing to Arthur.
What caught his attention was the cloth.
A narrow strip of faded purple fabric had been tied around the handle.
Livia noticed it imdiately.
Her expression changed.
Arthur looked up.
"What?"
She didn’t answer imdiately. Instead, she studied the cloth with visible uncertainty. Marcus noticed her reaction but seed equally confused. Whatever the fabric ant, it was enough to make both of them take the seal more seriously.
Arthur turned it over in his hands. The object wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t decorated with gemstones or precious tals. Yet Gaius had hidden it behind a secret compartnt.
That alone made it important.
Carefully, Arthur placed the seal beside the box and turned his attention to the notes.
The deeper he read, the more unsettling they beca.
Gaius had docunted everything. Nas. Dates. Shipnts. Questions. Connections. Warehouse XVII appeared repeatedly, but it was far from the only location ntioned. Several other warehouses surfaced in the records. So did transport routes, missing workers, and labor crews that vanished without explanation.
At first Arthur thought he was looking at isolated incidents.
Then he counted.
Not twelve nas.
Not twenty.
Dozens.
The witness had only shown them a fraction of the truth.
Gaius had uncovered sothing much larger.
Near the bottom of the box, Arthur found a smaller wax tablet. Unlike the others, it contained only a single sentence.
The handwriting was unmistakable.
Gaius.
Arthur read it once.
Then again.
Then a third ti.
The ssage was painfully simple.
"If you’re reading this, I was right."
Silence settled over the room.
Nobody laughed.
Nobody spoke.
The words carried a weight that pages of explanation never could. Gaius had known he was in danger. He might not have known exactly how he would die, but he had understood enough to prepare for it.
Arthur slowly lowered the tablet.
For the first ti, the dead clerk felt real.
Not a victim.
Not a mystery.
A man.
A stubborn, ordinary man who had discovered sothing terrible and refused to look away.
Livia finally broke the silence by pointing toward the rolled parchnt still resting inside the box.
The map.
Of course.
Arthur untied the cord and carefully spread the parchnt across the table.
The room beca quiet again.
Warehouse XVII was marked imdiately.
That wasn’t surprising.
The other six locations were.
So lay near the river. Others appeared near storage districts or abandoned buildings. One mark sat close to an old bath complex. Another had been placed beside what looked like forgotten service tunnels.
Every location carried the sa symbol engraved on the seal.
Arthur felt his stomach tighten.
This wasn’t one warehouse.
It wasn’t one operation.
It wasn’t even one district.
It was a network.
His eyes moved across the map until they stopped on a note scribbled near the bottom. The handwriting was rushed and uneven, as though Gaius had written it quickly.
Arthur leaned closer.
Then his pulse quickened.
Two words.
Beneath Ro.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
The city above suddenly felt much larger.
And whatever waited below it felt far worse.
Arthur’s hand drifted toward the bronze seal resting on the table. Almost without thinking, he picked it up and slipped it into his satchel.
Sothing told him he would need it again.
Then he looked back at the map.
Warehouse Seventeen had never been the destination.
It had only been the first door.
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