The North Ridge is a different city. The air here smells of damp stone and clipped boxwood instead of coal smoke and river rot, and the streets in the afternoon are full of people who have never had to watch where they walk.

  I keep my head down. I'm carrying a wooden bucket with some wilted flowers I pulled from a public garden three blocks back - the uniform of a servant on a late errand. In this part of town I'm not a person, just part of the street furniture, and as long as I move with quiet, unhurried purpose the world looks straight past me.

  A carriage rattles to a halt on the main thoroughfare ahead. I slow my pace, staying close to a limestone pillar.

  Zeke steps out. Deep wool coat, posture easy and assured - the particular confidence of a man who belongs in rooms he's never been in before. His contact is beside him, velvet jacket, visibly nervous. Zeke doesn't look nervous. He nods to the head guard at the Baroness's main gates as if he's already decided how this afternoon will go, and the gates groan open, and he walks through without a backward glance.

  That's my cue.

  I turn away from the main road and slip into the side alley. The estate's outer wall rises high to my left, topped with embedded glass shards. In the corner where the street bends, the wall climbs to a platform - a watchtower position, two helmets visible against the sky. As I watch, both silhouettes begin moving downward. The guard rotation pulling toward the parlor, exactly as planned.

  Ten paces ahead, a metal cover bolted into the masonry at chest height, its surface pitted with rust. Three burlap sacks sit on the cobbles beside it, dry and mercifully not yet stinking. I set my bucket down among them and check the alley in both directions.

  Empty.

  The cover handle is ice-cold. I pull, and the hinge is well-greased - the Baroness demanding that even her waste removal be silent - and the hatch swings open without a sound.

  Inside is a dark tunnel, the floor lined with smooth iron plates angled at a steep incline. The smell hits immediately. Lye, old cooking fat, damp ash. Chemical and domestic at once. I grip the inner frame and pull myself in head-first.

  Tight. The iron throat barely clears my shoulders, pressing against my ribs as I work my way up the incline. I have to wedge myself against the sides and use friction to hold the angle, every inch a fight against the slope. Halfway through the wall I stop to breathe. My left leg is already complaining, muscles knotted from bracing against the iron. A dull vibration hums through the surface - the estate's security weave running through the walls.

  The inner cover is ahead, a few feet further up. I pull the brass rod from my jacket and work it forward until the tip finds the etched plate at the cover's center.

  It's a circular seal, geometric lines pressed into the metal, built to recognize a specific resonance - the quiet agreement between this lock and the house's security. If the cover moves without that recognition, the alarm screams.

  I press the rod to the center and let it draw the ambient energy from the ward, humming low and steady in my hand. I keep the pressure light - too much and I'll trigger what I'm trying to silence. I need the ward to read this as nothing unusual. Just another sack of kitchen waste. Just refuse waiting to be processed.

  The ward's hum shifts pitch, stutters, levels out. The blue light in the etchings fades to grey.

  The lock clicks.

  I shove the cover up and scramble through, dropping onto damp cobblestones. I pull the hatch shut behind me. One click. I hold still and listen.

  Nothing from inside. No voices, no running boots. I'm in.

  The waste yard is a wide rectangle, walled off from the main estate. To the north, a gate opens to gardens - marble statues pale in the afternoon light, lawns trimmed to a uniform flatness. Opposite them, a pair of wooden doors into the main house, closed. I check the perimeter walls. The platforms are empty for now, but the watch will be back once Zeke is settled inside.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The only cover is a canvas awning near the service entrance, and under it a stack of wooden crates overflowing with broken garden tools, rusted trowels, ceramic shards. I cross the open cobbles fast, staying low, and squeeze into the gap between the largest crate and the wall. Eight inches of space at most, the crate edge digging into my ribs. I exhale and hold still.

  The service doors open twice in the first hour.

  A man in a stained apron, sack over his shoulder, walks to the waste chute and shoves it through without looking around. Later, two servants come out together, mid-conversation about the Baroness's temper and the wine that went missing from the staging room. They head toward the awning and one of them tosses a broken bowl onto the pile of scrap. The shards clatter against the wood, close enough that I feel it through the crate.

  Neither of them looks down. They go back inside.

  Dusk comes gradually. The mansion's windows light up one by one, warm yellow against the deepening sky. From somewhere above me, the sound of boots returning to the platform - the watch is back. I stay in the gap and wait, watching the shadows stretch across the yard.

  The service doors open a third time.

  A woman comes out, carrying a wooden bucket sloshing with food scraps, heading for the bins at the far end of the awning. She props the door behind her with a brick. I'm out of the crates and across the yard before she turns around.

  The transition hits hard - heat, noise, the thick smell of roasting fat and scorched flour. Kitchens nearby. I find myself in narrow utilitarian corridors, raw masonry walls marked at every junction with painted symbols: a red circle, a blue square, a yellow chevron. A navigation system for staff who rotate too often to memorize a floor plan.

  Red circle points to the left. Kitchens. I need the delivery wing, but the other shapes are a gamble with no logic to the code. I pick yellow and move.

  The corridor rounds a corner and I pull up short - voices approaching from the kitchen direction, two men, close.

  "If the Baroness finds out about the wine, the staging room is the least of our worries."

  Need to hide. There was a shallow alcove with folded laundry stacked inside, just a few steps back. I press into it and pull a loose sheet over my shoulder. They pass without slowing and conversation fades around the next bend.

  The delivery room is just ahead, I can see the entrace. I stop before stepping through, keeping to the shadow of the doorframe. Large space, dry smell of grain and old paper, a desk near the entrance buried under shipping tags. Rows of empty wicker baskets stacked against the far wall. No light apart from what filters in from the corridor. I scan the floor - flagstone, uniform, undisturbed. No pressure plates. The walls are bare, no wiring, no glass rods. The Baroness trusts her perimeter and her watch. The delivery room itself is unprotected.

  Footsteps, behind me, coming fast.

  No time for a proper check. I go in, find the stack of baskets, and pull one over the opening as I drop down behind them. Dust everywhere. I hold my breath.

  The footsteps reach the entrance. They stop. A match strikes, the brief smell of smoke drifts through the wicker. A guard, taking a short break in the doorway. He stands there long enough that my knees start to ache.

  Then he moves on, deeper into the servant's wing.

  I stay where I am. The wall clock somewhere in the corridor ticks through the silence.

  The wait is the worst part. If Zeke was caught, if the Baroness grew suspicious, if he changed his mind and decided the audition wasn't worth the risk - I'm sitting in a dead end with one viable exit route, and the curse has been quiet for hours, which I've learned not to trust. I shift my weight off my left leg and count the ticks.

  I hear footsteps again, this time outside the service door. Not a guard's pattern, not a servant's shuffle. Measured and deliberate, coming to a stop directly on the other side of the wood.

  A knock follows. Not a simple tap - a complicated rhythm. Three fast, a pause, two slow, one final rap.

  I roll my eyes in the dark. Entirely unnecessary. Very Zeke.

  I get up, cross to the door, lift the heavy crossbar slowly to keep the brackets from groaning, and pull it open just far enough.

  He steps inside. Still in the wool coat, a small polished wooden box tucked under one arm. He looks as unruffled as a man who just had tea - which is either reassuring or alarming, depending on what happened in that parlor. He doesn't look at me as he enters, just scans the room in his methodical way, checking the corners.

  "You took your time," he says, quietly.

  "I had guards to wait out. Did you get the layout?"

  "The parlor, the grand hall, the primary gallery approach." He taps the box. "And I know where she's keeping the shipment."

  I push the door shut and drop the crossbar back into its brackets. The sound echoes through the room.

  "Lead the way," I say.

  Zeke turns toward the inner corridor, his silhouette outlined against the faint light from the passage. "Follow me. And keep up, Ashley - we're already behind."