Chapter 42 The Split

Chapter 42 The Split
The testimony took two days. Sable ran it with the same methodical efficiency she brought to everything — precise questions, careful documentation, no editorializing in either direction. Silas gave his account of every major event from Prosperity Gulch through the Redemption Falls session and back. She noted each Debt Forgery application separately, asked him to describe his intention for each one, and made notations he couldn't read from across the table.
At the end of the second day she closed her files and said: "That's sufficient for the initial federal record. I'll call you for follow-up testimony as the case develops."
"Through what channel?" Silas asked.
"I'll find you," she said. "The System knows where you are."
He believed her.
He told Eliza the evening of the second testimony day. Not a formal conversation — she'd known for days that it was coming. She'd been building toward her own version of it.
They sat in the small room at the back of Kane's office that had become their default meeting point. The manifests and documents were gone, filed in federal records. The table was clean.
"The Crane Sr. territory," she said.
"Yes."
"Sable showed you the map."
"She showed me information and let me draw conclusions," Silas said. "Her phrase."
Eliza almost smiled. "She's careful."
"She's good," Silas said. Which was the same thing he'd said about Eliza once, a long time ago in a different alley.
She heard it. Looked at the table for a moment.
"The federal case needs someone here," she said. "McGreed's testimony has to be managed. The Crane immunity deal is going to try to minimize his culpability by maximizing McGreed's. Someone has to push back on that in real time, in the documents." She paused. "Sable's good but she's institutional. She'll follow the process. Someone needs to be watching the process from the outside."
"That's you," Silas said.
"That's me," she agreed.
They sat for a while.
"Grey Hawk?" she asked.
"He'll go where he decides," Silas said.
She nodded. They both knew where Grey Hawk would decide.
A blue box appeared. Silas dismissed it without reading it. There were moments the System's commentary was genuinely unwelcome.
"The scar," Eliza said. She reached across the table and turned his left hand over. The palm, the collection mark from the forgery cost. The line in the skin that felt like nothing.
"It's not getting bigger," Silas said.
"I know." She held his hand for a moment. Not examining it. Just holding it. "The memory you lost. The woman's face."
"I can't recover it."
"I know," she said again.
She put his hand down carefully.
"Write to me," she said. "When you find the telegraph."
"I will."
"And when the Assessor shows up—" She stopped. "If the Assessor shows up—"
"I'll handle it carefully," Silas said.
"That's not what I was going to say," she said. "I was going to say: tell me."
"I'll tell you," he said.
She stood. Picked up her deputy's badge off the table — she'd set it there at the start of the conversation — and pinned it back on her vest. It caught the lamplight.
"My father will want to say goodbye in the morning," she said at the door.
"I know."
She left.
Silas sat at the clean table. The ledger in his coat. The map of Crane Sr.'s territories in his memory.
The room was very quiet.