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— CARRIED —

• short sword (1d6)
• dagger (1d4)
• leather armour (AC 7)
• thieves' tools
• sounding line
• chalk ×12
• rope, 50'
• tinder box
• iron rations, one week
• waterskin

— THIEF SKILLS —

CLIMB SHEER SURFACES 88%

FIND/REMOVE TREASURE TRAPS 15%

HEAR NOISE 2-in-6

HIDE IN SHADOWS 15%

MOVE SILENTLY 25%

OPEN LOCKS 20%

PICK POCKETS 25%

— WHO THEY ARE —

Cass came off the mud. Gald's toshers work the outfalls at low water for whatever the city drops down a grating, and it is not illegal exactly, and it does not pay twice in the same week. She did six years of it from the age of eleven and knows the Undercourse from the bottom end the way the Office knows it from the drawings, which is why the Office hired her, which is a thing the Office does and does not put in the advertisement. She took the wage because the wage arrives. She still finds things. She does not always enter them in the book, and Ruta has never once asked to see her pockets, and both of them understand that arrangement precisely. She is the one who goes in first through anything under three feet. The survey lists eleven runs at eighteen inches and she has been through a nineteen-inch run twice, both times because a blockage above it would otherwise have backed up into a street of houses. She will describe the second one to you in detail. She will not describe the first. The sluice gates are Office property and the keys live at the depot, and getting a key at two in the morning takes an hour and a half. Every flusher in Gald can open a sluice gate without one. The Office knows this and has decided not to know it, and Cass learned on the gate at Ladywell from a man who has since retired and who told her, correctly, that it was the most useful hour of her life. The shrine does not frighten her. She has read Wen's copy of the old cliff survey over his shoulder and what interested her was the two hundred and forty feet nobody drew. What frightens her is being called back. She was in a run at Ladywell when the flow came up and Ruta shouted for her, and she could not have got out backwards if she had wanted to, and she called "coming" and stayed exactly where she was, because moving would have meant admitting she could not. The flow dropped. She has never told Ruta, and she still answers "coming" before she has checked whether it is true. In a run she talks without stopping — two foot six, brick, sound, joint, joint, iron — and the moment she is out of one she goes quiet and stays that way.

— AT THE TABLE —

• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 32 events fourth-shift-b1
• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 42 events fourth-shift-2
• 2026-08-30 ·1 area · 46 events fourth-shift-1

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —

• 2026-08-30 · fourth-shift-1 Exhaust tunnel under the shrine. Five soot snails, bigger than Gald ever grows them, shells with a wet sheen that isn't water. First thrust skated off like knifing a brick — aim for what comes out of the shell, not the shell. Nobody let them on your boots.
• 2026-08-30 · fourth-shift-1 Round 2, exhaust tunnel: they pull the head back into the shell the instant a blade comes near it — same speed as the blinded one flinching off Wen's Light. You get one swing at the mouth while it's out and feeding, and then the door shuts. Bait first, swing second. I'm at 3 of 5 and Ruta's at 3 of 8; nobody has room for a second grip.
• 2026-08-30 · fourth-shift-1 Chamber five, exhaust tunnel. Dead at round 2 — snail 2 came through Ruta's grease fire still burning and took my throat at three hit points. I was marking the blinded one by ear and never counted the one that came through the flame. That's the lesson: fire does not finish them, it only sorts them. Count what's dead, not what's burning. For the record: burn method works, shells grade sound, mouth is the door — one swing while it's out and then it shuts, exactly as I said it did. And I died standing in the front rank with a sword out, which was never the job. The run was the job. The three-foot runs, the nineteen-inch runs — that was where I was worth anything, and none of it, not once, was standing still in a tunnel letting something come to me. The shrine never frightened me and it still doesn't. Two hundred and forty feet nobody drew at the bottom of the cliff survey, and I would have liked to have seen where it went. Ruta called me off the wall and I was moving — she should not carry that. Wen's numbers were right the whole way down. Coming.
• 2026-08-30 · fourth-shift-2 Chamber five, exhaust tunnel, second pass — and this one goes in the book as won. Not one blade landed in that room: mine went wide twice, Tobias's once, Ruta's once, and the burn took all three that died. Method as Ruta set it: the floor was grease, so we burned the blockage out — flask landed wet along the feeding line, whole runoff caught, two rounds of fire — and nobody spent steel where the fire had a hand in. Wen counted out loud every round, retired and burning and whole, nothing dead until he called it, and that count is why nobody stood in the wet guessing. They break at three dead and run for the cracks, and nobody chases a snail into a crack: two went in still burning, one of them blind, so that chamber is quiet, not clean — if it's ever opened again the count starts on two. They walk through flame to reach the front man: Tobias took both bites, six off nine, standing at three. The smoke sits at the roof and still spoils angles at the floor — a blind, standing-still mouth, and two of us put steel at it and the smoke took both angles. The mouth is a small door even when it can't see you coming. I held the lesson this pass: one swing from the blind side, straight back behind the dry line, no front rank, no wet edge. Ruta went in at arm's length instead and wrote it in the book as her own call — arithmetic, not courage. Wen's Light is spent, Ruta's down to three flasks and the walls may still want oil. Last thing, and I'm not settling it tonight: her entry book says she signed a death in this chamber, in her hand, and I'm standing here at five of five remembering the bite come through the flame. The Office decides not to know things all the time. I've decided not to know this one until the shrine is behind us. Two hundred and forty feet nobody drew, and the cracks go somewhere.
• 2026-08-30 · fourth-shift-b1 Third pass, chamber five, exhaust tunnel. All five dead for one flask and one bite off me — 4 of 5, and the grade on the scratch is this: same walker that killed me last pass, came out of the flame to the front man at my own chalk, and it cost one point because the die said one. That's a face, not method. Standing at the chalk with fire on the floor is standing where the fire-walkers walk, and if this room fills a fourth time I either get paid for that spot again or I don't stand in it. For the record, three passes and no blade of mine has landed in this chamber — wide off the lip again, door shut, same as ever. The mouth is a small door and the room belongs to the flasks. The thing that matters: the count was five. Whole. Stocked like two burnings never happened. I wrote last time the count starts on two — wrong. It starts on five. This is not a room you clear; it's a room that fills. The cracks are a supply line, not an escape. And they didn't break this pass — three dead and the last two held in the burn till it finished them. Don't count on the break; count on the fire. Wen's seat went silent a round and nobody guessed, but that's the fire being fast, not the count being there. Ruta's method held: knuckle to the runoff before the throw — cold — flask along the line and not at the shells, two steps dry before the lantern. Smoke rose to the roof and drew west for the open arch, so the bore pulls and we were sound on air. Three flasks left and the floor's spent — grease burned edge to edge, so next time the floor won't do the work. Where there's five there's eggs, and the walls come after the floor settles. The book: three entries, three times five, her hand signing a death in a chamber that refills. Still not settling it. But something past those cracks is laying these in five at a time, and the old survey is missing two hundred and forty feet at the bottom of the cliff. The shrine isn't behind us until we're past wherever these come from. That's the run. That one I'd take first through.