Disclaimer: As this is not the finished version the author reserves the right to change this and any following chapters in full or part; including but not limited to grammatical, editorial, stylistic, or plot-related changes. The author does not expect, however, for this version to differ vastly from the version that will be published in the near future.

That being said, The Toymaker’s Opera is an alternative-world steampunk adventure. It is a story about a poor fortuneteller, a living automaton, a mad Baron, and a city that dreams. It is a story about the price of friendship and happiness, about legacy and talent, blood and luck. But most of all, it is a story about the things that have no price.

The Toymaker’s Opera

Chapter Three – Into the Red

Moira

 

Dawn was only beginning to crest the tallest towers of Sunsgate when Moira left her apartment the next day. She locked the door and slipped the key’s leather cord around her neck, tucking the cold brass under her blouse where no one could see it. Once more, to make certain it was there, she patted the secret pocket that held her one srir coin. Its six sides felt solid against her palm and she dropped her hand as she descended the stairs to the street. Constant touching would only alert thieves, so as much as she wanted to reassure herself of its presence, she abstained. However nice it was to have she knew it would soon be gone.

A rattling and clunking to the left alerted Moira to someone else’s presence and she paused, thin soles rocking back and forth on the grating of the street that divided Medtown from the Wrightsward district below. “Good morning,” she called, spirits lifting a little. Today would be a good day, no matter what she had to do to make it one.

“Bon vera,” answered a cheerful, thickly-accented voice. The rattling stopped just in front of her, the vibrations of the cart’s passage taking only a little longer to dissipate. “If it isn’t Sa Moira! We miss you at the docks last month. Where you been, hey?”

Moira smiled. Most folk in the Sheer would count it unlucky to cross paths with a Verandi gypsy, especially so early in the day, but seeing as how her own Keeper had belonged to the same race she saw little reason to worry. “Bon vera to you, too, Rashka. If your brother is in at Skyman’s Wharf, what brings you so far up the city?”

He chuckled; a deep, throaty sound that sounded more like purring than anything else. “Oh, ah, I am collecting things–supplies, yes.” The dancing spark in his yellow eyes was evident enough, even without her sight. “I am not in any way getting out of being nanny to my little nieces and nephews, that would be silly.”

“I’m sure they can manage without you for a few hours,” she laughed. “What are you collecting?”

Rashka gave the side of the cart a soft kick. “Anything what can be used in the Junkyard. Coleed can’t find anybody who won’t overcharge us.”

“I know the feeling.” Moira held her hand out to test the air. It was warming slowly as the lower districts came to life and the boilers and furnaces spat out clouds of steam. However sweet Rashka might be Moira knew that the longer she stayed chatting the more daylight she burned. There were some opportunities at market that would not wait. “Let me see what I have.”

She disappeared into her apartment and reappeared a moment later carrying a bowl with all the ashes that had accumulated since the ash-man’s last visit. “Will these do?”

“Ha,” he agreed, holding up a jar and helping her scrape the ashes from one vessel to another. Along with those he gladly accepted a few of the rags that had been worn so threadbare that she could hardly imagine their usefulness. When it came time for payment he pressed a fat length of twist wound around a wooden bobbin into her hand. “For you.”

Moira was quite grateful, and not only because few gypsies paid equal to what they received. They weighed each transaction with outsiders more unfavorably than those with their own people–no matter the items exchanged–but perhaps her association with them had brought a more even trade in the end. Whatever Rashka’s reason, she thanked him and, by the time she had put the bowl away by the stove and the twist on top of her mending and returned to the street again, he was gone.

Dappled sunlight and deep shadow spattered her bare forearms with warmth and chilling cold as she walked quickly up the boulevard. The night market in Patchwork would be closing shortly and if she wanted to catch the shopkeepers at just the right moment then she had to hurry.

Few people knew the districts around Medtown as well as Moira did. Being blind lent her a familiar sympathy with the place she had always called home.

The seer’s and medium’s district spanned one city block midway between the Teeth and the stone-lined market of the Pride at the bottom of the Sheer. Two avenues branched off inward from the main street of Charms, the southern one called Crystal ending where it met the waterwheel sheds for this level, and the northern one called Seance ended abruptly at the broad square that housed the Lane of Lifts; the entire district making a square horseshoe shape. Moira knew that if she headed south on Charms she would soon find herself amongst the counting houses and various appraisers that serviced the Sheer, whereas continuing north past the turnoff for the Lifts would bring her directly into Patchwork. Walking amongst the tangle of iron gratings, pipes, and sluices, it was easy for even lifetime residents to get lost.

She passed the open rush of air that told her the Lifts were just to her left, which meant that the block did in fact continue on her right toward the outside face of the Sheer some two towers distant. A turn that way would bring her up into the vibrant Les Paradis–the residence of stubborn herbalists and horticulturists who, even in the near blackness of the Sheer, refused to give up the green futility of their craft. The right-handed exchange at the cross-section of Charms and Crystal, however, would have brought her down Brigid’s Stair and into the affluent makers’ district of Wrightsward. Since space was scarce in the city, only a few wards took up a full block’s street along one side of any given tower; Wrightsward, Medtown, and the Pride were among the few that did.

“Sweet sunlight, sa,” drawled an unfamiliar voice, interrupting the neatness of Moira’s mental map. “Might you be off to Patchwork today?”

Her feet stopped moving at once. Though her hands ached to pat the secret pocket once more she kept them by her sides, turning one palm slowly forward and the other behind. She let her frustration with the delay show on her face, even though her heart was pounding. Thieves and worse were as thick as wool over the body of the city, and each gang warred for their own territories with unrestrained, bloody viciousness. “What do you want?” she snapped.

There was the sound of leather scraping against stone as he moved from leaning casually on his post. “Bridge toll, four jak.”

“Don’t be stupid, there isn’t any bridge toll.” If only she felt as big as her words, as sharp as the knife in her voice. And there was the reason she couldn’t leave the Sheer, no matter how long her luck unwound; it didn’t take much imagination to picture herself beaten and robbed in a foreign city where she knew no one and nothing, and where the customs and laws were as strange to her as the Sheer seemed to others. No, it was safer here, for all its dangers. Besides, if she couldn’t make her way in a city that she knew, how she should prosper elsewhere she would dearly love to know.

A curling of smoky intent hardened into a flash of grey in her second sight. Moira stepped back a pace just in time to avoid the ghosting of clever fingers trying to find her purse. She slapped her hand out, missing the would-be thief by a thin margin. The breath of air from his passage tickled the hairs along her arm.

“Bridge toll,” he repeated, sounding gruffer, and not nearly as jovial.

Her own rush of worry blotted out the emotions around her and Moira shook her head to clear it. Yes, her blindness kept her from seeing the street and the people and the faces of her cards; but her own innate magic, her second sight, provided her with a rush of brilliant colors and images that popped and flashed in the blackness. “What, are you new in town? The bridges between districts don’t belong to any gang. Don’t make me get the nutcrackers.”

“Ha! The Baron’s men aren’t about, so who’s going to care?” Once more he stepped toward her, the whispering rasp of his thin linen shirt the only giveaway to his movement.

Moira stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled. The sound bounced off the rock and the chasm just ahead of her that separated Medtown from Patchwork. High and shrill, it caught the attention of several people walking above in Philandry and below in Wrightsward; the scrape of their boots pausing, creating a well of sudden silence.

“Shit!” The thief stopped, his hand so close to her skirt pocket that she could feel him on the periphery, where the fabric met his skin.

As her whistle died Moira held completely still. She held her arms close to her chest and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. If she ran now she would look as guilty as the thief, better that he be caught in the act than her have to face the nutcracker’s wrath. And the coin was safe in her bodice, besides.

Wrapped up in her own fear she didn’t hear the approach of the soldiers until a musket went off behind her, incredibly loud. Her ears rang painfully and she barely heard the thief cry out. The man in front of her fell to the ground. Acrid smoke tinged the air.

Moira dared not move. She stood where she was, gasping, waiting. Her heart thundered in her chest, pulse echoing hard in her throat.

The nutcrackers were the current Baron’s men, his silent soldiers. There were few laws in the Sheer, but those that there were they carried out automatically, and without thought or mercy. You couldn’t reason with a nutcracker, couldn’t ask for forgiveness or for an extension when your tithe was due. The nutcrackers came and went from Baron’s Reach at the top of the city, patrolling the streets in small marching groups and collecting the dead. No one knew how they knew where to go or what to do, but Moira did know that if you called they would answer.

Slow bootfalls approached her. A hand–a gloved hand–touched her wrist. Moira let herself be moved. The nutcracker led her gently, but firmly, around the body of the thief and forward for several long minutes until it at last placed her palm upon the column that marked the first step up to the bridge.

She had to swallow twice before she could speak. “Thank you.” It had been a long time since she had seen one for herself–before her loss of sight, when she was still little more than an apprentice–and no matter how long she lived she knew she would never forget what they looked like: old-fashioned red velvet coats with a double-row of brass buttons, white trousers, and neat black shako hats. But for all that they might have the shape of men Moira was keenly aware that they were anything but. They had human faces, complete in every detail save two; buttons sewn in where the eyes should be and huge blocks of wood protruding from their breasts up to their mouths, rendering them completely speechless. It was a cruel way to design an automaton, but she couldn’t deny that their silence suited their cold demeanor.

The nutcracker bowed, its presence lending the air next to her a certain denseness. A few of its fellows were picking up the unfortunate thief, arguing amongst themselves in their sharp, clacking voices. The soldier at her side turned on its heel and proceeded back to the Lane of Lifts from which it had come, the others following soon behind.

Moira breathed easier once they were gone. It was the way of life in the Sheer but she felt better with them removed in any case. If she couldn’t pay tithe at the end of the month she, too, would be hauled away to the Reach and never be heard from again. “It won’t happen,” she assured herself, not entirely sure she believed those words, and took the first steps up to the bridge. If it was a choice between Sophia and the uncertainty of life on the street she knew what she would rather do, no matter how unlucky it was. “Well, I can’t tell fortunes if I can’t eat,” Moira said with false cheerfulness, and set out for Patchwork.

As she made her way out across the bridge the wind picked up and caught her skirts, tugging at them first from the north, then the east. Moira walked cautiously with one hand on the stone railing. Halfway across her prudence paid off; she felt the change in the side rail’s construction before the stones underneath her gave way to wooden planks. Even though she was still in the shadow of one of the towers and not at a crossroads, the bridge was not as wide as a street and it did not abut against the black sides of the towers but rather made a thin isthmus between them. Everything ahead of her would be made of wood instead of iron or steel and she must go carefully, for though Wrightsward was surely still below her it would make a long fall to get there if she stepped in the wrong place.

The districts were not seamless from one end of the Sheer to the other, even on the same level. Grating, such that Medtown had for its streets, would start on the south end and within the span of one tower’s block turn to cobbled roads, back to grating, then to rusting sheets of corrugated steel or tin, and finally to brick before at last hitting the intersection. Every district was a world unto itself, and it was as plain as day that the Sheer had had many builders at the same time that it had only ever had one architect. Patchwork’s shoddy construction had failed over a century ago, so the district had done the only thing it could to rebuild; entwine their knowledge of carpentry with the original borders of the fallen ward and create a precarious, sprawling structure of wood that was forever being replaced as rot and age took hold.

Moira felt her way forward until her groping hands found the guiding line of the swinging rope bridge that would take her the rest of the way. Any self-respecting city would have been built on the plains of Stolenseam at the base of the cliff, or in the mountains to the west. She couldn’t think of anywhere less convenient to put a shack much less a bustling metropolis.

The Sheer had clung to the cliffside, if legend and their calendar were to be believed, for well over six hundred years. If so much could change in one day then it stood to reason that over the course of the city’s history many fashions and inventions and prominent divas had come and gone, leaving behind the things that did not alter; the nutcracker men, the firecats, the Phage, and the various invisible laws that ran the Sheer.

“Bridge toll, ha!” Moira grumbled to herself, still swallowing the fear from her encounter. She had a great deal of money on her person–at least it was a great deal of money to her–and it would be more than devastating for her to lose it.

At some point during the city’s construction, or perhaps long after, the various gangs and thieving bands grew emboldened off the pride of their recent conquests in the districts and their territory-grabbing exploded into an all-out turf war over the numerous stairs and bridges across the Sheer. It was a seditionary mistake. Alecto Marquette, the city’s first Baron, sent his soldiers straightaway to clear the miscreants out and hold the thief Keepers, rat kings, Specters, reyhounds, and pimps who had started the violence responsible for their actions. The city of the Sheer had no hall of justice, and no need for one. Moira remembered Sophia’s telling of what had happened next better than her own mother’s, remembered her keeper’s sharp laughter and the certain edge in her voice as she explained that the Baron’s nutcrackers had stood on either end of the bridges, fired into the crowd of rioting fools, and ran their bayonets through anyone who was left standing after the first volley, pitching those worthless bodies over the side. Anyone who tried to stake a claim on public ground after that was just as lucky, and anyone who tried it now was suicidal. That was the thing about nutcrackers; once they were called they never wavered, they never tired, they never stopped until the disturbance did.

Moira didn’t know what kind of man the founding Baron had been. She could throw a stone and find an old mining family that had kept their ancestor’s foreman’s cap, and wouldn’t hear a bad word about the man’s employer. But in equal measure she could kick on the doorstep of half a dozen folks in Medtown alone who lamented the strange layout of their apartments, or the way that some of the stairs in the city ended under doorways or flipped upside down on the wrong sides of bridges. The oddness didn’t stop there. Stories about Alecto, much like the laws themselves, were passed by word of mouth; and they varied in the telling. Moira wasn’t sure if she should believe those repairmen who fixed the lifts out over open air in their death-defying rigging of ropes and faith, those men who said that Alecto had been genius inventor in his own right but a hard master, or those painted sopranos who sometimes visited her reading table who said that the old Baron had been a stupid layabout with no time or care for arts and culture.

The balance of the city tipped both ways. For reasons that did not filter through the rumormongers on Moira’s street Alecto Marquette had lost the barony and died during the War of the Flotilla Fortuna, leaving the city in the hands of Baron Octavian d’Bardi instead.

A sigh of relief escaped Moira’s lips as she felt her foot scuff against the wooden platform that marked the entrance into Patchwork. She stepped off the rope bridge and onto the creaking pine jetty.

“Fair morning, Sa Moira,” called a half-familiar voice to her right.

Moira nodded. “I’m not too late, am I Drake?”

The apprentice carpenter scratched his head, setting down his toolbox with a heavy clunk. His warm presence flashed back and forth across her second sight, like the movement of a saw. “A few stalls were still open when I came by, but you’d better hurry.”

She thanked him with a smile and rushed on. Talking with Rashka had taken more time than she’d planned. It was hard enough trying to judge the hour anyway on any given day of the week when her only way to tell time was to hold her hand to her kitchen window to see how far along the warm sunlight had crept. There were more than a dozen different markets in the city, almost as many as there were districts, and they all ran at separate times. She could just as easily have taken the lifts down to the largest market, the Pride, at the bottom of the city. But whereas the Pride was just starting its business hours, the night market in Patchwork was nearing its final ones and that was exactly what Moira needed.

Canonfire had bombarded the Sheer during the War of the Flotilla Fortuna from the flying airships that had surrounded the city. Quite a few of their shots had hit the districts directly, one volley in particular aimed at Masonhead, the predecessor to Patchwork. The force of the impact had blown out the stonework street and collapsed most of the houses inside the towers. Even long after the cleanup had been finished most of the surviving artisans refused to return to such an unlucky place, and the woodworkers from the shops at the base of the cliff had jumped at the chance to improve their standing by moving up the city.

Meandering pathways of wooden walks criss-crossed the wide district, leading to horseshoe- and disk-shaped platforms with slanted roofs. Arrowed signs at each intersection pointed upways and crossways and sideways toward the different shops. Here Moira had to be careful; it would be the work of a moment of inattention to get hopelessly lost. Most districts were on the straight and narrow between the towers but it seemed that no one had told the carpenters this; their spiral staircases and drop ladders turned the whole place into a three-dimensional maze, where she had to climb up or down, or shimmy across a narrow opening, just to walk what might otherwise be twenty simple feet forward. The smell of baking bread in communal ovens and fresh sawdust drifted through the crisp air. Unlike Charms’ street even the sounds of her passage, of her leather shoes scraping against the wood, died before they carried too far.

As different as Patchwork was from the grate-lined streets of Medtown, so was the rule of Alecto Marquette different from the current Baron’s. Octavian d’Bardi rarely came below the Teeth, preferring to spend all his time on the bleak peak of Baron’s Reach or tucked away within the gilded halls of the Il Susurrus opera house. Moira knew as well as anyone else that it had been d’Bardi who had ordered the city mint to change the stamp on the back of the coinage to the silhouette of his favorite theater, but only on the silver srir, mandrin, hollus, and the golden kravn; the copper cassum being too insignificant for him to bother with. His obsession with the opera house didn’t stop there.

d’Bardi wrote his own scores, which were always well-received above the Teeth and softly snickered at below. He was as particular about his choice of tempo and instruments as he was of the singers who acted in his pieces; even being known to leave the city on a rare occasion to fetch back a certain soprano or baritone that he insisted play a part, even if they had quit in the middle of a season. The Baron would play his violin for a captive audience of cleaning maids in the middle of the day and not attend a performance held in his honor later the same evening, and he was well-known to shout at the orchestra and destroy several months worth of other people’s hard work by closing a show halfway into the first act of its opening night.

When he did deign to come below the Teeth, however, it seemed to be all anyone would talk about. Like only last month, when it was reported that the dollmaker’s shop he had visited had later been ransacked by nutcrackers for not having the particular model that the Baron had requested. His temper and impatience with the folk of Wrightsward was as legendary as his odd concertos and symphonies; if someone wasn’t ready with whatever he wanted, when he wanted it, heaven help them. Moira counted herself not lucky but at least fortunate that the Baron had never proven himself interested in the ‘undisciplined hocus rubbish’ with which he regarded the practice of fortune telling. Dealing with snooty rich men and dolled-up women from farther up the city was as close as she wanted to get to the Reach and its brooding lordling.

Over the years d’Bardi had certainly collected his own share of rumors on par at least with those about the Baron Marquette. Moira’s good friend Tabitha always said that she was certain that ‘Lord Octavian’ was busy buying gifts for his various lovers among the city’s many sopranos. Hector, her favorite merchant in the Pride, maintained that the Baron’s opening trading policy was good for business even while the Merulan sellers to either side of him vehemently disagreed. Mrs. and Mr. Marshall at the dry goods store on the far end of Medtown were always more than happy to gossip about the horrible screaming that could supposedly be heard coming from the Reach at night, along with the names of those people they knew who had disappeared at the hands of the nutcrackers. Some said the Baron was mad, others said he was cold and distant, but those who had heard him play insisted that he was the most passionate man they had ever met.

Moira wasn’t sure what to believe, except to know enough to stay out of the man’s way altogether. Nevertheless the tall tales the citizens of the Sheer would tell about their ruler had at least a grain of truth in them. Managing the Baron’s demands went almost hand in hand with the unwritten laws of the Sheer itself, since failing to do so queried up severe–if not lethal–consequences.

Along with gangs not owning bridges or major stairways there were other, subtler, rules. Some were universal throughout the city while others were localized to each district. Luck, for example, was a precious commodity that no one talked about, when to do so would only invite its absence. Green clothing on the opening night of a new opera was forbidden throughout the whole Sheer, even though Moira wasn’t sure why. Certain lifts were not to be used at certain times of day, every door or window had to be air-tight–though that was practical, and then there was the law she knew best: you can’t get something for nothing.

Wind tugged at Moira’s hair as she hurriedly crested a ladder and entered the market. “I’m not too late am I?” she gasped, running her hands together to check for splinters.

“Almost, Sa Moira,” replied the nearest shopkeeper, a stout woman with a voice to match. “We were wondering what kept you. Tell me you have more than linen ribbons to trade this time.”

Moira fished into her secret pocket, not taking out the coin until she was under the cooler shade of the shop’s awning. “Can you make change?” she asked, relishing in the brief shocked silence that the silver srir produced.

“Finally. The usual then?” The shopkeeper sighed gratefully. She rummaged around her stall after Moira’s nod. Paper rustled and within it Moira could hear the click of bones and the dull clunking of tallow candlesticks shifting around.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“And mind you have more of the same the next time!” the shopkeeper called after her as Moira left the stall, supplies swinging at the bottom of her shopping bag and change in hand.

One by one Moira ducked under the different awnings of the vegetable and fruit sellers, comparing prices, trying to make her copper coins stretch the distance between today’s meal and next week’s. At length and only a little poorer for her ambition, she walked away from Patchwork with a peck of bruised apples, half an armload of wilted greens, woody carrots, several enormous turnips, and one large, ugly celery root that nobody wanted.

Not an hour later Moira stolled along the narrow close streets below the Tammy. She finished her apple core, munching the tiny seeds into pulp and flicking away the stem. If there was something she hated even more than backtracking to her apartment to drop off her purchases and then having to go out again, it would be trying to navigate her way through Miller’s Corner.

It was cold here within the tower, moreso because of the river pounding over the man-made falls in the district above her. The power generated on Tamamil’s Row ran across the street on lines of sheathed copper wire to the factories that lined the Ream. All that meant for her was that the thunder of the falls, the roaring heartbeat of the textile looms, and the heavy snarling of the mills’ grindstones combined to produce a cacophony of sound so loud that she hardly knew which way was left, nevermind up or down. Through some stroke of unfortunate coincidence or simple bad planning these three districts had been placed directly next to each other. Moira put out her hand for balance and swore she could feel the wall of the tower tremble beneath her skin.

Robbed of one of her chief senses Moira progressed more slowly, counting the doorways until she came to the one she was looking for. She slipped inside, glad at least that the mill was the only competitor for her attention here, even if she did still have to shout.

“Eh? Speak up gel!” yelled the miller. “Ah can’t hear tha wit’ all this racket!”

Moira cupped her hands around her mouth and hollered right back. On the other side of the partition the crunching and endless moving of the grinding wheel made the whole room shudder with it. Flour overlaid every available surface, sifting through the air and covering her in a fine layer of powder. Streaks of it caked her cheeks as she held up her hands. “I said, how much for ten pounds?”

The miller clapped his hands. “What’s that? Need a tenner?”

“Yes!”

“Well that depends on the quality.”

Moira shrugged. “It always does, doesn’t it?”

“Eh?”

She waved the question away. “Just tell me what you have.” As Moira listened to the prices for the different grades of flour her face fell. She had twenty-three of her copper cassum left and two sams–little oblong coins made of Sulisine wampum. In the course of a shopping trip on the Sheer it was normal for the currency to shift nationalities, even if that did make it harder to keep track of the math. The sams, which came from farther away, were worth more and would fetch her only five pounds of wheat flour. Moira knew she could spend more, though counting out how many cassum it would take to get to ten pounds made her shopping list drastically shorter. She thanked the miller for his time with a pang of regret and made her way back down the close to the barley mill instead.

By the time evening was well in hand, and her narrow kitchen overflowing with sacks and packages, Moira stumbled–yawning–through her front door with an armload of firewood and five days worth of ship’s biskets rattling in her bag. Well aware that by all rights she should put her food away and light her lantern, the sharp ache in her stomach won without a coin toss. She put the one half penny she still had left under her empty tea jar.

Bottles clinked together as Moira set aside her barm from the brewer’s. Salt hissed as she topped off its glazed cannister with a sigh of frustration. Bone soup and the limp chives she had bought went on the little cast-iron stove to simmer. Moira felt over each of her purchases as she put them away, checking the length of the candlesticks and pressing gently on the skins of the apples, setting aside those that were the most bruised to be eaten first. Altogether it was a pauper’s meal and as much as it filled her with pride to have bargained for everything she did, it hurt her dignity to have to make the concessions in the first place.

After what seemed like hours of pounding the biskets into as fine a flour as she could manage, Moira was just sitting back to rub the ache out of her arms when she heard a sharp rap at the door. She rose, passing through the cloth curtain that divided the kitchen from her reading room parlor. The warm, yeasty yet nutty smell of rising barley bread followed her to the door.

“Hello?” she called through the wood, unwilling to open the door if her visitors should turn out to be thieves.

The hard knock came again, no-nonsense and brusk. “Collections!”

Moira wrenched open the door. Cool night air cut right through the thin linen of her shirt, a reminder that winter was not quite over. “What do you want, Gray?” she snapped. “I said I’d pay you next week.”

“It’s well after midnight, sweetheart,” he chuckled without humor. “Time to pay up.”

Moira bit down on the urge to throttle him and settled on berating herself instead. She had known the Hex dealer would arrive sooner or later, hungry for the rest of the coin she owed him. Quickly she ran over all her purchases of the day, wondering if there was anything she could have abstained from. Finding no item on her shopping list that might have waited, Moira felt the hot flush of anger override her initial fear and indignation.

“No,” she said, placing herself squarely in the way and holding onto either side of the doorframe, barring any attempts he might make at an entrance. “You’re not getting so much as a bent pin from me today. Tithe is due this week and I’m not wasting my money on you.”

Across from her Gray’s impatience roiled and burned like a struck match in her second sight. Ordinarily he was a man she never would have associated with but for the debt he had hanging over her head like an executioner’s counterweight. He and his ilk skulked their way through all the back markets in the Shade, where the darkness between the towers was almost as absolute as the poverty, plying men and women with expensive drugs that they couldn’t afford and running up tabs they would never be able to pay. It hadn’t been her bill to begin with but it was her responsibility to see it done, even if the loss of such capital was almost enough to make her scream.

He was a Rimsean man, one of the strange folk who wore masks instead of faces. She couldn’t see what sort of mask he wore but she could hear the way it muffled his voice slightly, and the so-soft whispering of his hair against it. The smell of his trade wafted over to her, acrid yet oddly sweet in a sugary sort of way. Gray held up his arm and leaned in. On the street behind him the sound of Medtown’s nightly revels went on, rowdy musicians jangling their tambourines and singing bawdy songs of prediction to whomever paid them.

“I have had it up to here with waiting.” Gray hissed at her, too close now for her to slam the door in his face. “It isn’t my fault if you’re too rubbish a seer to pay the Baron your dues. I know you have money, I saw you at market, I want to be paid and I want to be paid now.”

“But, Gray–”

He slapped his hand against the doorjamb. “But nothing, Moira! I’ve given you time, I’ve been more than generous, haven’t I? I’ve given you extension after extension and still nothing. I’m not leaving until I get my sixty-five srir, no matter what I have to do to get it.”

“Can’t…can’t we work something out?” Moira cast around for a solution but didn’t step down. If she did that then it would be all over. The misfortune his presence would bring into her reading room would be bad enough, never mind how he might physically ransack the place. She hardly had any furniture to begin with; only her end table, reading table, two chairs, and her bed with its bureau trundle drawers. There was nothing she could give him; her apartment nearly naked as it was.

Of course there were other things she could do for money; selling her hair being only one of them. Moira bristled at the thought and quickly turned away. Being poor and looking poor were two completely different things; and besides the fact, it was a line she had told herself she’d never cross. She could sign herself into indentured service somewhere in the Ream, but even if she managed to keep all of her fingers while doing factory work, the deductions for room and board would offer her such a meager margin that Gray would have her brought before the nutcrackers anyway before a month was out. She couldn’t mine for coal without being able to see the seam, she couldn’t scramble back and forth on the riggings at Skyman’s Wharf as a dockhand–that would be more than willful suicide–and she certainly wouldn’t stoop to being a washerwoman or some noble’s servant. No matter what this debt was worth in coin, it wasn’t worth her pride.

“How about a reading?” she stalled, hoping he would decline. Oh, if only she could make him go away! Time to gather at least a part of that payment was what she needed, even if doing so would only net her more interest.

Gray huffed. “Like I need any of your superstitious nonsense–”

Moira reached forward without warning, grabbing for his mask. Her fingers slipped on its smooth surface before he jerked away.

“What in the Saints’ names are you doing?” he yelled, reeling back to try to avoid her questing fingers. “Don’t touch me!”

She took a threatening step in his direction, holding up her hands and marching him backward and down her front steps to the street. When the grating clanged underneath his heels she stopped. “Come back the fortnight after next, I’ll have your money then.”

Gray did snarl, the sound echoing oddly behind his mask. “You’d better have it all, too,” the dealer spat, his voice so sharp that not even his fake facade could dull the sting, “or it’s to the nutcrackers that you can expect to make your excuses!” And with that he whirled and stomped off into the night.

Breathing hard, Moira took the stone steps back up to her apartment two at a time. She closed the door and leaned against it, inside and alone once more. But for all the solid rock under her feet and the reassuring smell of rising bread, she could feel her grasp finally beginning to give way.

~~~

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