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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

Turning

Moira

“What about this one, Mrs. Marshall?”Moira held up her last skirt for the shopkeeper to see. “How much?”

“Tha’d better take it,” suggested Tabitha, the herb-seller. “It’d fit thy eldest gel, if Ah’m any judge.”

The three women stood there in the relative quiet of the mid-morning market in Medtown. A few other seers wandered through, sleepy from long nights of reading and work, yawning loudly as they picked up their last few supplies. The market itself was housed in an inside corridor of one of the towers and even the smallest sound echoed off the rock all around them.

Mrs. Marshall, a Verandi woman if Moira’s second sight was anything to go by, fingered the hem of the garment. Her thoughts danced in place like a small vanilla sun, nearly outshining Tabitha, who always appeared as a haze of sage and lavender smoke. “I’ve certainly let out as much as I can on Nerai’s last dress,” Mrs. Marshall murmured, voice rich and mature, but not accented like Sophia’s. “Oh, but Moira I couldn’t put you out of your clothes.”

Sensing that a deal was about to slip through her fingers Moira put on her best smile. “It’s nothing, really. Besides, I’m working on a new one this week.” Though it was true that going about in her trousers did feel a bit odd.

“Take it,” Tabitha urged. “Or that gel of thine shall grow right up through the roof, if’n thee doesn’t clothe her well.”

Mrs. Marshall relented. “Oh very well.” She dug around in her pocket and spilled a few coins into Moira’s outstretched bag. “Don’t be a stranger, now,” she added.

“I won’t,” Moira assured her, tying the bag closed. It would be rude to count the money in front of her so Moira clasped her hands instead, forcing herself to sound cheerful.

Tabitha wasn’t having any of it. “Aye, tha window was dark for near on a week, worried sa Marshall and ma’sel’ half to death. Next time tha needs help tha must come straightaway to us. Never tha mind that Jean-Marie or those scrying sisters upstairs.”

“I wasn’t sick, Tabby,” Moira said, more than a little annoyed. Her cuts from her ordeal with Sophia were still healing and she’d had to pretend a scarf out of spare fabric to hide them from view. Bad enough that half the people in Medtown stayed away from her because of an apprenticeship that she had had no control over, it would be social suicide to show off her most recent visit.

The herb-seller sputtered a bit, speaking for both shopkeepers. Thankfully Mrs. Marshall did not try to interject, Tabitha would have just overridden her if she had. Once you got Tabby going there was almost no stopping her. She finished her list of all the horrid diseases prevalent in the poorer districts of the city and of several rumors of gruesome plagues, that latter of which Moira did not believe, saying, “Well if tha weren’t ill to dyin’ then why wasn’t thine lantern lit, mah gel? Surely tha cannot afford the waste of six nights’ custom.”

Moira sighed, tired but happy that at least someone had noticed she’d been gone. She told Tabby about the nutcrackers, watching out of the corner of her eye as Mrs. Marshall made the sign of the Goddess; arcing her open palm in a circle to ward off evil that was starkly visible even in Moira’s second sight. Prayers always were. Moira waited as Tabitha’s initial offer receded in the ensuing silence, her smokey presence darkening and pulling back.

“It’s fine, this will help a good deal,” Moira said, patting her shopping bag and making the coins inside ring against one another. She was a little stung, but not hurt, by their reaction. It was the way of the Sheer. “Good day to you both.”

“Good-bye!”

“Bon vera.”

Moira took herself back to her apartment, holding the bag against her breast. There had been no chit left on her door when she had returned from Sophia’s to tell her the tally of her remaining tithe, and no visits from the nutcrackers in the two nights since. Gray hadn’t shown his head either, although his unexplained absence only made her more worried, not less. Perhaps he was afraid she would try to remove his mask again, a tactic that made her feel squeamish even though it wasn’t her superstition she had to contend with; the last thing she wanted to do was incur some foreign god’s wrath in addition to going against the laws of the Sheer. Debts had to be paid. The ledger had to be balanced.

Six nights and two, tonight making it the ninth day since she had gone to Sophia’s. Aftercare following a ritual with blood magic was less an option and more of a requirement. Sophia had insisted on keeping Moira longer than was traditionally necessary, nursing her as though she were an invalid. The two states of being were much the same as if Moira had been sick; she felt worn to the bone and could barely rise from her bed for the first two days afterward. Perhaps because the spell had taken more effort than usual she had received nearly triple the attention. Meals appeared at her bedside between naps and glasses of water refilled, seemingly on their own. Despite her pride Moira accepted Sophia’s extra hospitality, even though a part of her worried what her Keeper might ask for in return when the bill came due. Moira had been well-fed and doted on, and turned out on the sixth day when her second sight had finally recovered enough to give her a thin impression of the world around her.

Into the house and quickly to bed, rising again only as the sun reached its halfway point in its descent to the horizon. Moira got right to work, filling a bucket with warm water. She opened the seams on the flour sacks she’d been saving, shook the last of the dust from them out her front door, and plunged them deep into the sudsy froth. Though it was hard going–knowing exactly when the water ran clear–she knelt and scrubbed the fabric together by hand until the cakey feeling of the flour gradually washed away. She made sure to always buy ten pound sacks when she got the chance; the better to give new life to something a nobleman would have just thrown out. Anything less than ten pounds came in paper wrapping, which wasn’t as easy to find a new purpose for.

Each rectangle of matching fabric she hung up with its fellows. She couldn’t see the patterns herself but a few questions to the miller’s son had solved that problem. While the pieces dried she hurried her way through making tallow candles, counting impatiently in between each dip. She didn’t need the light but her customers would if they came.

Moira set the new candles about her reading room, unable to help the little bit of humming that resonated up from her heart and out through her lips. Though she had always been proud of her ability to sew neat, straight stitches, the one srir and six cassum pennies from Mrs. Marshall made her feel almost as happy as Sophia’s acknowledgement. Add that to the seven sams her other skirt had fetched her and she was well on her way to making up for the rest of her tithe. Even though she hadn’t wanted to give up her clothes it was better than her hair and besides, Sophia was right; only she could do the work to make sure her luck turned. The sangerist had gotten it moving again, now all Moira had to do was read her cards.

Reading would, of course, be easier if she had someone to read for. The last two nights had yielded no one, as usual. No different from before she had chosen to visit Sophia. It had to work, it just had to. Moira caught herself touching her scars and watching the door. Her fingers flew apart and she felt foolish.

“You haven’t even lit your lantern yet,” she muttered under her breath, and moved away. Pausing by the window, Moira held up her palm, searching for sunlight. Only the cool darkness of the inner Sheer touched her hand, but whether it was still evening or truly night she couldn’t tell.

She had just hung the light in the window and settled down to lining up two matching squares of fabric across the kitchen counter when a knock sounded at her front door. Moira started, the cloth under her hands jumping in different direction. “C-Come in!” she called, and ran smack into the laundry lines; the thick cord knocking the breath out of her.

Mentally cursing and cheeks flushing hot Moira emerged into the parlor. She heard the quiet ticking of a watch but could see no one in her second sight. Belatedly she remembered to bow, since her patron might be a lord or lady from above the Teeth. “Good evening and welcome! My name is Moira; I tell fortunes using the Verandi tarot. I can answer any question you may have, be it about business, love, or leisure. What may I do for you on this fine night?”

Silence reigned. Not a sound, not a whisper, save for that soft ticking, could be heard throughout the room. Moments stretched out in stillness, until Moira wondered if she had been stood up; if, in her haste to exit the kitchen she had failed to hear that the door had not opened at all. It wasn’t completely unheard of for someone to knock on a seer’s door and then hurry away in jest. Or perhaps whoever it was was waiting outside for her to let them in.

Moira wasn’t so sure. She held out her hands to get a feel for the quality of the air. “Hello?” she said, feeling a little silly, if uncertain. “I’m afraid I can’t see. Is there someone here?”

A denseness of presence that she had not noticed–the way she took no notice of the walls or chairs–moved slightly on her right. It was an almost imperceptible change but one that was accompanied by the far-off tinkling of metal. And then she heard the soft hush-on-hush of velvet brushing against more velvet.

The sound had come from directly behind the guest’s chair at her reading table, deeper into the room than she was now. Moira took a deep breath and turned around, all smile, trying to ignore the prickle of queerness that was suddenly in the air. “Who’s there, please?” she said.

All at once a handsome tenor answered her, the rich voice stripped by age. “…have to forgive me, dear seer, for the oddness of my appearance here on your doorstep tonight. I should explain; I have a great need for your services tonight but due to ill health I am unable to visit you in person. In my place I have sent one of my servants. Please read for him. He will play each record of my request upon your instruction on the portable phonograph…”

Moira circled back around to her own chair, standing behind it, listening. When silence fell again, to be replaced only by the scratchy hissing of the metal phonograph stylus trailing away past the recording, she understood at once.

“An automaton,” Moira murmured.

The servant across from her was no flesh-and-blood human at all, but a creature of clockwork. Automata were not unknown in the Sheer, in fact the city was full of them. They came in all manner of shapes and sizes, from the enormous boilermen who shoveled coal into the blazing furnaces of the Faid Faran, to the wiry divers who heaved open the many locks on the sluices and aqueducts that fed the Sheer. But aside from the ones that could not leave their posts–either by design or demand–there were those automatons used and displayed only by the very rich folk who lived above the Teeth. While the boilermen and the winders for the Lifts seemed almost a part of the city itself, blending into the machinery right well until one caught sight of their dull glass eyes and the peeling paint on their faces, and had all been built by the Sheer’s first Baron, Alecto Marquette; the clockwork men and women who had come after his time were nothing more than yet another example of needless decadence.

Household service was a common use of these machines. They took the places of manservants and maids, turning well-qualified human beings out of work. Moira had, on occasion, observed automata–with Sophia’s verbal assistance–walking about the Pride market at the bottom of the city or entering the counting houses nearby, on errands for their masters and mistresses. She had never known one to seek a reading, however.

Moira sat, feeling uneasy. It wasn’t just her concern that she would not be able to read correctly if the lord who needed the question answered wasn’t here for the Sangrine to get an impression of, but also the lack of life entirely in the other half of the room.

Automatons did not look or feel like people. It did not matter to her that they had faces or hands or eyes to ‘see’ with. What mattered is that they had no more personality or soul than a tea kettle. Automatons would not and could not be human, no matter how much their lonely masters might wish it so. Moira chewed on her lip, blindly watching the ‘man’ who stood in front of her.

The servant moved, taking the seat across from her. Underneath its heavy weight the old chair creaked and groaned. It spread its arms out, asking her if they should begin, a gesture she could barely hear.

Moira suppressed a shiver. The mechanisms inside these uncanny simulacrums of humanity were unknown to her, but they went about their tasks with queer single mindedness, unstoppable. She was certain that even if she refused to read for it, which she knew full well she could not afford to do, that it would sit there and wait for her to do so, unable to understand her dismissal, and scare away all her other potential customers.

Nutcracker men were among the few automatons built by the first Baron that had free ability to move about the city. He had made others, of course: lampkillers who stalked the streets above the Teeth in mourning black, chasing firecats and turning down the gaslights in the more prosperous neighborhoods. Talleymen who noted the price of stocks on neat abaci and ran them to the Reach, overseers in the factories at the Ream, and cleaners that tried in vain to scrub the soot from the tower sides in the nicer districts above them. No breed of clockwork creature was quite the same, each of them as diverse as their individual tasks, and even though Moira knew she had nothing to fear from this servant she still hesitated before reaching forward.

“Please give me your hand,” she said, unable to bring herself to be rude. When no reaction was forthcoming she sighed. “I know you probably can’t comprehend this but unless I get some semblance of your master’s spirit from you the reading he’s asking for might fall flat. It might not work,” she corrected herself. However silly it might sound out loud, Moira wanted to do her best, despite the circumstances.

It seemed like an age before the automaton acquiesced, its insides ticking away rapidly all the while. At last it placed its hand in hers, the gesture a bit stiff.

Moira resisted the urge to jerk away. The metal fingers, gloved, stilled in her palm. She adjusted her grip to something more comfortable, put her other elbow on the table, and leaned forward, trying to catch even the faintest glimpse of something human. At the very least, depending on how newly-made the servant was, she knew she should be able to see the lingering touches of its maker, whether it was the famous Jacques Augusti or one of his peers; though her hope was that she would be able to catch the stains of personality that its master had inadvertently left upon it.

Long minutes clicked by, the air in front of her no more changed than if she had grasped an end table. Barely moving her lips she said, “Play the next record.”

There was a pause while the automaton’s other hand brought the phonograph stylus around, not quite hitting the beginning of the recording. That beautiful tenor filled the room again and Moira found herself wishing that the man himself could have come, just so she could hear him in person. “…name is Solanus Callesta, Grigore is the name of the gentleman in your presence tonight. I have labored long over these next words, as I know they are all you have to go on. My request to you, dear seer, is no easy one for me to make. I shall be as brief–and as frank–as I can be, and spare you no detail. It goes without saying that all this should be in confidence. My tale is no national secret but the actions of my younger self…shame me, and are difficult to admit, even to one such as yourself–”

A sudden falling star of lapis regret bloomed and faded in Moira’s second sight. She jumped her hand back at once and began to shuffle frantically, turning one ear to better hear the rest of the story.

“My son, my only boy, was…to be my heir. Saints above, has it been so long? He–Rolano–was always a willful child, nothing like his sisters. I expected him to take over the family business and care well for the goods we ferried from here to Rimsea and Citta Roza. But I, saints, I suppose I pushed him too hard.” That brilliant voice broke off for a moment, the only intervening sound the hissing of the stylus before Lord Callesta began speaking again. “Dear seer, you must forgive me. I am an old man and I am often lost in thought these days. I suppose it is easier that way, the better not to dwell on painful times.”

For her part Moira frowned at her cards. Under her hands they felt dead and lifeless, completely robbed of magic. It wasn’t that the power in them was thick or thin but rather that she had nothing to draw on. She shuffled and shuffled, drawing the stacks in and out again, fanning the cards together until they finally gave off a solidness, a platform from which she could begin her work. Once that was accomplished she started all over again, attuning the Sangrine to that one flash of spirit she had seen and the words still rolling by her.

“Rolano had little aptitude for the work I wished him to do. He was no merchant but a poet at heart, hoping to capture the curve of the sunlight or the swiftness of the wind in the span of a few well-chosen words. I…I told him he was a fool and a nancy, and he would do better by himself and his future household by sticking to his maths and improving his manner. He did no such thing and, in secret at the time, began walking out with a young woman who was his peer in age but not in social standing. Natishka was…a nice girl.”

Moira nodded at Lord Callesta’s hesitancy. She could tell from the names alone that the family was Rimsean, whereas the woman was a Verandi gypsy. A match made by the muse of jesters if there ever was one, and a hopeless love, too; there couldn’t have been a wider gulf of race or class between them. Rolano might have done better to throw himself at a coal miner’s son for all the good his courtship of Natishka had seemed to do the family. But she couldn’t help but be sympathetic; wanting to marry for love and not for strategy or money, was a more-than common narrative for those who lived above the Teeth.

Lord Callesta continued. “I discovered them–it does not matter where or how–and forbid Rolano to see her again. How he cursed me! And then, later, how he begged. He insisted Natishka could be brought to heel from her flying caravan, he promised she would dress like a proper lady instead of like the harlot I thought she was, he swore a thousand things…if only I would allow them their love. She was a brilliant woman, ugly and faceless of course, but intelligent and shrewd. I could see that they loved each other honestly and yet I turned him away and arranged a marriage with a courtesan, a sweet woman with a fine head on her shoulders, good business sense, and powerful connections. What an imbecile I was, thinking I could mollify him by presenting him with such an orchestrated creature. No, Rolano prevailed in his requests and when I would not relent he…”

“Ran away,” Moira finished, speaking almost in tandem with the recording. She had finished her shuffling, glad at least that Lord Callesta was long-winded, since her magic felt far away and stiff from lack of use. In one smooth motion she spread the cards in an arc face-down, and waited.

“I have not spoken to Rolano since that day,” Lord Callesta said, and his voice sounded even more tired now. He paused to cough roughly and after that the silence was unnaturally long before he began again. “Eighteen years come and gone. Not a night passes now where I do not regret the horrible words I said to him, the wretched names I used to describe his love. I am ashamed that I could not see the damage I was doing, but it is done. I employed a spymaster to find him some time ago and only recently received his address. Given the fool I have made of myself, dear seer, I ask you now: is it worth it? Do I write to him? And if I did…what would I say? Tell…tell Grigore your fortune and he will record it when you give the signal. I pray for your honesty in this matter. I may be worn in body and spirit but I can see now the folly of my mistake. Please help me.”

Moira blew out a long breath as the recording hissed out into scratchy silence before the servant removed the stylus from its track. This was how most fake seers made their money, they listened to the tales of the woebegotten and downtrodden and gave whatever advice they felt like. She could just as easily do the same. How Jean-Marie managed to do it Moira would never understand; lying to those who sought her help seemed worse than stealing the money outright. And besides, her cards wouldn’t allow her to.

“Begin,” she instructed Grigore.

The automaton fumbled with the phonograph for a moment, metal ringing as it slipped out the already-played cylinder and shunting in a new one. It flipped a few other pieces on the equipment, the significance of its movements meaningless to Moira. Finally the servant vacated its chair, placed the phonograph upon it, and scooted the seat around the table until it was next to Moira–the better to absorb her voice with. Grigore, for its part, returned to its place opposite her, standing so still it was as if he wasn’t there at all.

Soft hissing to Moira’s left was the only indication that the phonograph was ready. Awkwardly she cleared her throat and introduced herself, describing her manner of fortune telling. “I have my cards spread in a half-circle on the table. Normally I would have you choose nine, the nine that felt right to you, and set them aside. Since your servant is here I will do that for you.” She did not say that because the automaton had no soul she was doubtful it had the capacity to choose any cards, much less the correct ones.

At this decision the Sangrine warmed to her. They didn’t want to be touched by the empty clockwork either. Moira moved her outstretched hand like pendulum over the line of cards, keeping up a soft, running dialogue, of when she picked one and why. Some of the Sangrine felt heavy, some light, others swirled with color. It was impossible to know what they were when they were face-down, it was only when she turned them over that the thread would form and the images that signified each card would swirl into view.

Finally Moira held nine cards. She brought the remaining ones together and set them on the end table behind her, out of the way, where they couldn’t interfere. Then she shuffled once more, thinking hard about Lord Callesta’s story, allowing it to sit in her mind and filter down to her hands.

“At the corners I place four anchors, face-down. They do not turn, but hold the reading in place. Five cards will be your reading tonight. One along the top, one at the bottom, and three in the middle. At the top is your past, the bottom your present, and in the middle are three cards; they are the shapes around which the future will take place.” Moira flipped the top card and let out a shaky sigh of relief. Somehow, despite the absence of the man himself, the cards knew.

The Eight of Flames burned in the darkness, an octavo circle of guttering fires spilling their meager light across a barren landscape. “Struggle,” Moira said. “You have carried this burden a long time. As you have said this is your past, but you see no clear way out even though you hope for resolution.”

Moira knew it could sound as though she was repeating her customer, faking the reading, especially with the man himself not present to see that the cards had been chosen at random. Hurrying on, she turned over the bottom card. Strong and unshakable, the Five of Mountains showed her several gloomy sea-side peaks standing fast against the torrent of a raging tide that threatened to crumble and wash them away. A line of golden light connected the two cards, links in the chain of Lord Callesta’s life. “You endure the pain of your decision,” she said, traveling down the knots of meaning. “The Five of Mountains often describes resilience in the face of adversity and yours has been of a kin to that, though it has been your own guilt you have weathered instead.”

“The shape of the future is difficult to accept sometimes.” Moira hesitated, her hand poised over the middle three cards. She was wrapped in the reading, all her thoughts bent towards poor Lord Callesta and the grief that pained him. How badly did she want to give her own advice, but it was the will of the Sangrine that she had to communicate, not her own.

Unable to wait any longer Moira flipped the three remaining cards in quick succession. The Sailor, the King of Flames, and the Knight of Mountains all shimmered into view. Around the King’s head was a shining crown of fire and it was he, not the rough men that she usually saw, who stood at the wheel of swift clipper ship. High in the distance, supported and buoyed by the calm strength of the ancient hills, was the tiny figure of the Knight. Their meaning was as clear as daylight.

Moira described the cards she had turned over and the vision she saw, sparing no detail. “The Sailor usually is ascribed to the triumph of will in difficult circumstances; it is one of the Major Arcana. But here, when combined with the other two, it is saying something different. You must let go of the stones you carry, release your cares. Commit your voice in writing or in person and speak to your son. You know already what you must do, my Lord, but the King confirms it. Let his wisdom allow you to see with clear eyes the path in front of you. I cannot say whether your words should be those of apology or of love, but your boy is well and in the prime of health. Even if your disagreements are many, the cards believe there is yet the space inside his heart to help mend the bridge you both destroyed. That is all.”

She sat back, more than a little drained. It had been a long time since a reading had gone so well. Moira waited as the automaton took back the phonograph, removed her recording, played one with Lord Callesta’s thanks, set down a few coins, and left. When she was sure Grigore was really gone she stood up so fast that she bruised her knees on the edge of the table and limped, anxious and cursing her own impatience for the second time that evening, to the other side.

Breathlessly Moira counted the money, going over it four times to make sure she had the amount correct. Five srir and four half cassum pennies she had been paid for her trouble, just over the cost of one month’s tithe. She stared at the coins, happy for what she’d received but confused about the pennies. “Perhaps from the housemaids’ wages,” she decided, stashing the monies in various nooks and crannies around her apartment. After all, it wasn’t unheard of for household staff to want to chip in to help their master or mistress.

Moira put the water on for tea. She didn’t have any more leaves but Sophia had insisted her former apprentice take a few of her own. Despite her concern over the eventual tally Sophia would present her with Moira couldn’t say no to tea.

She hadn’t been more than ten minutes at her sewing this time before the door opened without so much as a cursory knock.

“H-Hello?” called an uncertain, reedy voice from the parlor. “Is anybody home? Only I saw your light and–”

Moira spun on her heel and narrowly avoided clotheslining herself again. “Coming!” she said, tucking a strand of her hair back into place and attempting to look more presentable. She slipped under the laundry and into the parlor as quick as could be. Before she could say so much as, “What can I do for you?” the customer seized her hand and wrung it tightly.

“Thank the stars you’re open! I came by last week and your window was dark and–”

“Slow down,” Moira said, subtly attempting to extricate her hand from the other woman’s crushing grip. She wasn’t sure if she should feel odd or flattered that someone had been looking specifically for her. Seers did build up reputations over time, but she had rather thought hers was one that would keep customers away, rather than bring them to her door. Regardless she ushered her new guest inside, chiding herself for–once again–forgetting to reshuffle her cards after the automaton had left. It had been so long since she had had a steady stream of customers that her habits were getting rusty.

Gently she patted the girl’s shoulders, guiding her into the open chair. “Why don’t you tell me your name and what you need,” Moira said, even though the new woman was already doing just that.

“–was worried that you weren’t coming back so I waited but things have been so busy I wasn’t able to come by for a few days and I saw someone else was with you just now so I took a walk around the block and I just got back so I appreciate your waiting even though I know you weren’t waiting for me, exactly; I’m Lesedi Zaire, mage Appraisee of the Citadel and I need your help: you see my tour hasn’t been going very well and–” Lesedi paused to take a breath and Moira jumped in at once, taking her place on the far side of the reading table.

“Half a moment, please. I’m afraid I’m not quite ready.” Moira hurried her cards together and began to work them in earnest. The last shreds of the magic that had told Lord Callesta’s fortune faded away, leaving the Sangrine receptive to Lesedi. Moira found she couldn’t look directly at the girl, who was Ombolan from her name alone; Lesedi’s emotions zipped back and forth so quickly it made Moira dizzy to watch.

As rare as it was to have a visit from an automaton it was rarer still to see a Citadel mage in person. The Sheer was a city that called to people from every country, from every walk of life, from every hidden corner of the earth. Some folk had been here almost since the founding of the city itself; good-natured Wharites like Tabitha from the sheep country beyond the sea, dark and golden-eyed Verandi gypsies hailing from an island archipelago long ago broken by war and conquest, fair-haired Toulene like herself, and Merulan artisans who had nothing in common with the practitioners streaming forth from their Citadel. Only after the Sheer was well-established had other races arrived: the mask-wearing Rimseans and Citta Rozans who held their secrets close and their lies closer, the shrewd and calculating Yuan tradesmen from the northern islands, ever-rich merchant princes from the exotic oases and desert lands of Ombolan and the tottering Sultanate, Vestigians from around the Horn, and once or twice Moira had seen an Imperial soldier–mysterious scouts from the silent Empire to the west. The Sheer welcomed them all, allowing trade and business of any kind–even blood magic, a practice considered heresy punishable by death in any other civilized part of the world–but not the Citadel. Moira did not know why their wizards were turned away, that it was a decree from the Reach was the only guess she could make. To her ears the folk in Medtown, superstitious as always, whispered no more darkly about Invested Mages than they did about the queer and closeted Rimseans. Still, the cold reception made meeting one a rare sight indeed.

Moira didn’t see the point in telling Lesedi to leave, just because the Baron had bad a political relationship with her country. Money was money, no matter who was paying her.

She had to shuffle fast, clearing Lord Callesta’s energy from the Sangrine before she could incorporate Lesedi’s. Trying to attune to the mage made prickles of apprehension crawl up Moira’s arms.

“–been offered a position here in the city; a partnership, a real, honest-to-goodness partnership, and I just don’t know what to think because if I take it then I won’t be getting my Investiture for years, maybe forever, and that would mean less funding–or no funding, really–if I ever went back to the Citadel, plus, not to mention, all the rest of my classmates got their apprenticeships no problem but no, Lesedi’s the only one who has to go out and make her way in the world–”

Moira slapped the full stack of cards down the table. Startled by the abrupt noise, Lesedi trailed, thankfully, into silence. “Let me see if I understand,” Moira began calmly, trying to shake the other girl’s contagious worry out of her hands underneath the table. “You’ve been offered a job here that could net you a steady income and with work you enjoy but if you return to the Citadel now you’ll…” she groped for the right word, “become Invested. Is that right? Just ‘yes’ will do.”

Lesedi nodded vigorously. “Mmhmm!” she said, voice trilling as she moved. “Being Invested is about more than money, it’s also the resources we get access to and the prestige and the Lady’s Library and–”

“I see.” Moira drew three cards off the top of the pile, laying them out in the order she would turn them over; middle first, then left, then right.

Lesedi couldn’t help herself. The poor girl was bursting with curiosity. “So, how does it work exactly–Father always said this sort of thing was rubbish but I never thought so; you never see this sort of thing at the Citadel but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real magic, right, I mean–”

Moira put a finger to her lips and said softly, “The reading has begun.” and was gratified to hear Lesedi calm herself at last and lean closer to see what the Sangrine might say.

Quickly, taking advantage of the pause, she turned over the middle card. Moira nodded when the Seven of Forests swirled out of the darkness, one path leading to a multi-forked crossroads, seven trees standing tall between each dusty track. “Change and renewal; this is your current situation. It is time to chose a new path, whatever that may be.”

The left revealed the Three of Forests, many roads converging into one, while the righthand card became the Eight of Rivers. Moira frowned. She tapped the cards alternatively with the fingers of each hand, looking along the golden thread between them.

“What is it?” Lesedi asked, doubt creeping behind her words. No doubt of Moira, but rather a conviction that whatever Moira had to say wasn’t going to be good.

Moira touched the Three of Forests. In front of her was a beautiful wooded landscape of walking trails and crystal streams, each image brought on by the cards separate from the others, and yet still a part of the greater whole. She hesitated before speaking. The advice the Sangrine were trying to give was not remotely what Moira herself would have chosen. “Usually this card is for fulfillment; it represents the combination of emotional energy, intellectual knowledge, talent, and inner will in order to go down the path or reach the goal you’ve been planning for. But here it’s come up under the ‘choice to avoid’. In this case–”

“The Citadel…” Lesedi murmured, “and my investiture, everything I’ve been studying and working towards, perhaps–”

“Perhaps it’s time to consider another path,” Moira finished for her. She tapped the Eight of Rivers and the waters sparkled in her second sight. “Rebirth: simple to say but difficult to achieve. Look with new eyes on your current situation and the tools right in front of you, renew your objectives and see your potential in the here and now.”

Lesedi was uncharacteristically quiet as Moira drew the cards back inside her deck and shuffled them to clear the energy. “Do you think…” Lesedi rose slowly, digging into the various pockets about her person. “Do you think I should, though?”

Moira considered her response carefully. “The cards have spoken,” she said at last, knowing that Lesedi was fishing for her personal opinion. It was advice Moira couldn’t give, since she would tell Lesedi to return to the Citadel across the sea, if the mage knew for sure that that return would net her recognition and steady pay.

Somehow–later, she was a little fuzzy on the details–she convinced Lesedi to leave. When the girl was finally gone and the door shut behind her Moira’s scrounging fingers found a long length of ribbon, a sack of ground chalk, and three Ombolan coins on the guest chair. It wasn’t a denomination of currency that Moira was familiar with and she spent the better part of an hour’s quarter trying to feel the patterned relief on either side.

Her very bones felt exhausted from the readings; they had been strange, but good, and she knew she had been paid fairly. It had been a long time since she had felt that. But even though she waited at first eagerly and then with a resigned frown, for the rest of the night, no one else came.

Dawn broke on the far-off eastern horizon and Moira hid a yawn behind her hand as she ducked away from her sewing. She chewed on her bottom lip as she snuffed the lantern’s light. If this was all she got, night after night, it wouldn’t matter if she had been paid even or not. Moira doubted she would have enough to appease Gray and she knew she could not frighten him away a second time.

“I have to trust Sophia,” she said, even if the prospect of eating almost nothing and putting everything else toward her debts made her stomach snarl in protest. “At least something is better than nothing,” she told her cards as she put them away for the day.

Moira unhooked the clotheslines from the kitchen, lay her fabric to the side, and lingered longingly at the salt jar that held her last lump of bread leaven. She patted its cool, ceramic sides. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Stumbling sleepily in the bedroom she fell face-first onto the worn blankets and was asleep almost at once, lulled into hungry dreaming by the music in the pipes.

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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.

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PS.

Tabitha’s dialect is supposed to be reminiscent of a Yorkshire-English dialect. If I have messed up on my you’s/tha’s/thee’s/thine’s/etc PLEASE LET ME KNOW.