The letter arrived folded twice and sealed in black wax.
It bore no crest. Nor signature.
If you wish to understand why merchants disappear, look to the Lamb that watches beneath Pewla Oldstone's stone.
Darla read it once. Then again. She tilted the page toward the lamplight as if the ink might admit more under pressure.
"The Cult of the Black Lamb doesn't like the light," she said, tapping the edge of the page against the desk. "It waits in the dark."
It doesn't gather in cathedrals. It doesn't march. If it worships, it does so in rooms with no windows and symbols no one can read twice the same way. Those who claim to have seen its rites disagree on what was invoked, or whether anything answered at all.
Some claimed an ancient entity that corrected imbalance through subtraction. Others said there was no entity at all. Only powerful people dressing cruelty in ritual language.
Darla believed it was embedded. Merchants. Magistrates. Possibly even members of the Emporium.
Three merchants had vanished in six months. Each had sold assets quietly to Pewla Oldstone. Each had been declared insolvent. Each had been described as settled.
The Emporium declined the case. Too political.
Darla Rainwood did not.
"It's thirty-five minutes," she had said.
Fifteen to get in. Ten to find what mattered. Ten to leave.
She mapped it quickly across her desk, charcoal moving with the confidence of someone who had done this before.
That was the plan, then. But now, the guard rotation had changed.
Two extra men at the east gate. A patrol that doubled back. Servants where servants shouldn't be.
It took twenty minutes just to enter the estate. In the second courtyard, Jonas almost stepped onto open gravel.
"Stop."
She caught his sleeve without looking at him. He saw nothing. She pointed at a lantern mounted high on the wall.
"Turnback patrol," she murmured.
Seconds later, boots crossed the gravel he had nearly claimed. She did not look at him. She didn't have to.
The correction stayed with him as they descended beneath the manor.
The cellar air was damp and cold. Lantern light slid across stone and caught in Darla's black hair. Her emerald coat looked darker here, but still deliberate. Even underground, she dressed like someone who expected witnesses.
She traced mortar seams with gloved fingers, head tilted slightly.
"The Lamb favors foundations," she said. "It hides beneath weight."
Jonas watched her, like he always did.
At six foot five, broad and solid, he had been hired after a dockside case turned rough. Muscle first. Instinct second.
She pushed him, not cruelly. Just consistently.
Except once.
A week ago, in the back corner of a tavern that smelled of sour ale and smoke, he had spoken to an informant who claimed to have seen the Lamb's mark.
The man's hands shook when he described it. A circle broken by something that was not a line, carved into a cellar beam in a warehouse near the docks.
Jonas had brought it to Darla the next morning.
She listened, and asked one question.
"And you believe him?" she asked.
"I don't know," he said.
She folded her arms and leaned forward in her chair. "Then find me something that's solid."
He nodded. As he often did.
The fifth chamber was wider than the others.
Barrels, flagstone, and a heavy iron-banded chest placed where it could not be missed.
"Too convenient," Darla said.
She stepped forward. Her polished boot settled on the stone before the chest. She shifted her weight slightly.
Jonas saw it before he understood it. Her shoulders locked. Her chin lifted. The sound was barely there, a click. He quickly crouched, one hand hovering near her ankle.
"Don't."
Her eyes flicked to him, brief irritation and then they focused.
"Pressure plate," she said. "If I ease off slowly, it will settle."
She tested it.
Jonas felt his jaw tighten.
At the Diligent Order, they made him stand on plates like this while instructors circled. Read the tension. Feel the transfer. Do not guess.
He lowered his head closer to the stone. Blond hair fell forward. There. A seam too precise to be decorative.
"Darla," he said.
Upstairs, footsteps.
Closer.
She glanced toward the chest. The lid had shifted just enough to reveal a folded black robe and a porcelain mask shaped like a lamb's face. The eyes hollowed too deep. The smile too gentle.
Evidence.
Her fingers twitched toward it before she stilled herself.
"One," she said.
Jonas slid a narrow wedge of steel from his kit.
"Two."
He pressed it into the seam and felt vibration under the metal.
"I think it's transferring weight," he said quietly. "Not resisting. If you lift fully, it completes."
"Based on what?"
"Training."
The word felt heavier than it should. He left that training. He did not finish. For a moment he saw the practice hall. The instructor circling him.
"You had the first half, Duvell. Where was the rest?" the instructor growled.
What if this was another half-understood mechanism. What if she moved because of him and nothing happened, except that she learned he mistook tension for danger.
Footsteps reached the cellar stairs.
"How certain?"
He did not answer. He pushed the wedge deeper until he felt something shift. It wasn't release or safety, only a subtle shift in the stone beneath his hand.
"I have something," he said.
The footsteps descended.
"Now?" she asked.
He nodded.
Darla inhaled once, squared her shoulders, and then she shifted her weight.
The stone beneath her boot made a sound he could not name.
Author's Note
I wrote this after thinking about a pattern I've noticed over the years.
It's not the loud disagreements that stay with me. It's the moments that pass quickly, when someone hesitates because they're not completely sure and the person in front of them usually is.
I've worked with leaders who earned their confidence. They were sharp, experienced, often right. I've also been the one with a concern I couldn't fully articulate yet, trying to decide whether it was worth slowing things down.
Darla has earned her reputation. Jonas is still trying to trust his own judgment. That gap between earned authority and developing instinct is what I wanted to sit with here.
There isn't a formula for how certain someone needs to be before they speak up, or how certain a leader should demand others be. In fast-moving work, both hesitation and overconfidence have consequences.
Sometimes the change happens quietly, before anyone agrees on what it was. Sometimes you only realize it after the weight has already shifted.