The porter’s waystation smelled like packing wax and old paper, two levels down from Cole’s quarters and tucked into the landing the way maintenance closets always were functional space nobody looked at twice.
Crates stacked to the ceiling, manifest slips rubber-banded in bundles that looked like they’d been sorted and re-sorted more times than anyone had bothered counting.
Fenn stood at the narrow counter with his back to the door, stamping something methodically, and didn’t turn when Cole stepped in.
“Closed,” Fenn said.
The stamp came down again.
“Count’s due in twenty minutes and I’m three manifests behind wherever you think I am.”
Cole stayed in the doorway.
“I’m not picking up.
Just asking.”
“Asking costs the same as picking up when I’m on a deadline.” Fenn set the stamp down and turned, finally, leaning one hip against the counter.
He was older than Cole by a decade, maybe two, with the build of someone who’d spent years hauling weight up and down stairs and had settled into exactly the shape that work required.
His face gave nothing away.
“You need something moved or you need something known?”
“Known,” Cole said.
Fenn’s expression didn’t shift, but the stillness that settled over him said he’d heard the answer.
He picked up a bundle of slips, thumbed through them without looking down.
“That’s the expensive kind.
Known about what?”
“Pell Ott,” Cole said.
“Level 48.
Flagged two days ago for something he said on a landing.
I’m trying to figure out how far that’s traveled.”
Fenn set the bundle down.
Picked up the stamp again, turned it over in his hands like he was weighing it.
“You’re trying to figure out if Judicial’s heard it yet, or if it’s still just scaffold talk.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Cole met his eyes.
“Because his sister asked me to.”
Fenn studied him for a long moment, then nodded once, a fractional thing.
“That’s an answer I can work with.” He set the stamp down again, deliberate.
“Here’s how this goes.
Information like that, I’ve got it.
Porters hear everything twice before it gets anywhere official, and scaffold talk moves faster than paperwork ever will.
But asking me to tell you which levels it’s hit and who’s repeating it that’s not small.
That’s a two-flight favor, minimum.
If this blows back on me, Judicial pulls my name, not yours, and I need insurance against that risk.”
Cole had expected this.
Fenn didn’t deal in gratitude only in tallied debts that came due eventually.
“What’s the rate?”
“One favor I can call in later, no questions.
And you don’t get to say no when I do.” Fenn’s voice stayed even, no edge to it, just the plain terms.
“I’m not asking for anything that’ll get you cleaned.
Cole thought about it.
Thought about Maren’s face on the landing, the careful way she’d said please.
Thought about the fact that he’d already made one promise today without a plan for keeping it, and now he was about to make another.
“Deal.”
Fenn picked up a different bundle, started sorting through it like the conversation had moved into its working phase now, terms settled.
“It’s already at forty.
Heard it from a porter who runs that circuit yesterday somebody up there’s repeating it, and it’s strange enough people pass it along.
Flagged for asking questions about what’s outside.
Not the usual complaints, not the usual trouble.
Just questions.”
Forty.
Twelve levels higher than Pell’s own.
Cole’s gut twisted as he counted the distance.
Rumors didn’t climb that fast unless they carried weight, unless people wanted to believe them or feared them enough to keep them moving.
“How many people?”
“Can’t give you a count,” Fenn said.
“But it’s not staying quiet.
And if it’s at forty already, it’ll be at thirty by tomorrow, twenty by the day after.
You know how it goes.”
Cole did.
The silo’s rumor network moved faster than any official channel, carried by the same people who moved everything else porters, maintenance crews, anyone who spent their shifts on the stairs instead of locked into a single level.
By the time Judicial’s paperwork caught up, half the silo would have heard some version of it.
“Judicial asking about it yet?”
Fenn stamped another slip, added it to a different pile.
“Funny you should ask.
Deputy came through two days ago Corliss, out of the main office.
Asked one of ours if anyone had been talking about the stairwell thing by name.
Didn’t specify which stairwell thing, but the timing matches.” He glanced up.
“That name mean anything to you?”
Cole kept his face still.
“No.
Should it?”
“Probably not.” Fenn went back to sorting.
“Corliss runs quiet cases.
The kind where someone noticed something wrong and Judicial wants to know if it’s worth caring about before it turns into something loud.
If Corliss is asking, it means the file’s open.
Doesn’t mean it’s moving fast yet, but it’s not sitting on a shelf either.”
The supervisor’s count was coming.
Cole could hear boots on the stairs two levels up, steady and unhurried.
He had maybe two minutes before Fenn’s deadline hit and this conversation ended whether Cole was ready or not.
“Anything else?”
“Just this.
Whatever you’re doing for Pell Ott’s sister, don’t do it where anyone can see you asking about it.
Corliss is good at his job.
You start showing up in the same rumor twice, he’ll notice, and then your name’s in his file instead of just floating past it.”
“Noted.”
Fenn looked at him, and for the first time since Cole had walked in, his expression shifted not to warmth, exactly.
Just the small, unglamorous fact of one person deciding another was worth the effort of a real warning.
“The favor’s logged.
I’ll call it in when I need it.
Until then, we’re square.”
Cole nodded.
Turned to leave.
“Cole.”
He stopped in the doorway, looked back.
Already stamping the next slip, Fenn kept his rhythm unbroken.
“You’re asking good questions.
Be careful they don’t turn into the kind people remember you for.”
Cole stepped out onto the landing.
Pulled the door shut behind him and stood there for a breath, two, listening to the stamp come down inside and the boots still descending two levels up.
He’d come here for information and he’d gotten it.
The rumor had spread faster than he’d hoped and slower than he’d feared, and now Judicial had a name attached to it Corliss and a file that wasn’t sitting idle.
And he’d made a deal.
One favor, no questions, terms he’d agreed to without knowing what Fenn would ask for or when.
It was the kind of promise Cole had sworn, a long time ago in a different life, that he wouldn’t make again.
The kind that came due exactly when you couldn’t afford to pay it.
But Maren’s face was still there in his head, and the Archive had shown him a woman who’d died for distributing unauthorized information, and Pell Ott’s rumor was already at level forty and climbing.
Cole started down the stairs.
He didn’t have a plan yet.
A name Corliss and a timeline tighter than he’d wanted and a debt owed to Fenn that would come around eventually.
The specific, unglamorous fact of not carrying this alone anymore.
He didn’t trust how much lighter that felt.
The stairs rang under his boots, the sound swallowed by the hundred-and-forty levels pressing down from above.
Somewhere overhead, Pell Ott’s question was still moving, carried by people who didn’t know what it cost and didn’t need to.
Somewhere in Judicial, Corliss was building a file on a threat he didn’t understand yet.
And Cole had just bought himself a little more time to figure out what he was going to do with the space between them.
Two levels down, the porter supervisor’s boots hit the landing above.
The count would be starting now.
Fenn would have his manifests ready, stamped and bundled, everything squared away before the knock came.
That was how Fenn worked precise, transactional, nothing left to chance.
The kind of precision that made him valuable and dangerous in equal measure.
Cole kept walking, the rhythm of his descent steady, deliberate.
Below him, the silo opened like a throat.