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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

Tithe

Moira

 

Frosty air nipped at Moira’s fingers as she swished her way through Medtown’s market. Her new skirt, finally finished, was warm and clean after being hung out by the stove. The heat wouldn’t last long in the early winter’s chill and so she was grateful to be out of the wind.

Business hadn’t been perfect; she still had nights where no one visited her at all, but a few times a week customers would trickle in looking for answers. Something was better than nothing, even if the little money she was making got swept into her savings for tithe and for Gray, and she took almost none of it for herself. Despite the tightness of her purse strings and the pinched ache in her belly she crossed the market with a bounce in her step. Today, cold and bitter as it was, was the day for her favorite errand.

Moira refused to let her circumstances dampen her good mood. Perhaps tonight she’d be cursing the frugality of her customers but for now she was afloat with anticipation. Each step bounced her heavy shopping bag and all the favors and trinkets within that she’d been given in lieu of coin.

She knew as well as anyone else that the Sheer ran off bartering just as easily as it ran off of currency. It would be the work of a moment to turn to any of the stalls and offer up Lesedi’s sack of ground chalk in exchange for food or household supplies. Her blindness, however, prevented her from doing just that. Moira had no frame of reference for the worth of the favors she collected since her whole life had been spent in Medtown, learning the tools of her own trade. She was no worldly merchant’s daughter who could name, for example, the origin, grade, composition, and therefore the worth of the chalk. Such talents, sadly, did not belong to her. Instead, once she had amassed enough favors to make a trip in bulk, Moira swept herself across Medtown and to the appraiser’s.

Moira walked on, turning down all the familiar streets in the close beyond the market, feeling the change in the stone beneath her: from cobbles to brick to roughhewn rock and back to cobbles again. Soon she emerged onto Crystal, not far from the alley of townhouses where Sophia lived. A sharp gust ran down the corridor between the towers and snatched the last of the warmth from her skirt. Moira shivered.

To her right, at the end of Crystal, the waterwheels for this level rumbled on, their faint roar evident even from here. Moira continued, running her hand along the basalt rock of the tower. After a few minutes her questing fingers felt the stone change to smooth tile–the long grooves of a number marring its otherwise perfect surface–and back to rock again before finally touching the corner that announced an inner stairway. She kicked until she found the first stair of a long set of steps and started up, moving slowly. The appraiser that she prefered to visit made his home far above the street level of Medtown, in one of the areas where the ceiling of grating overhead was higher than on Charms, and a third story could be added. Moira suspected the reason for that was actually because of the wheelhouse at the end of the lane, that the equipment to pump and turn the municipal supply of water required a taller space than a residential district did.

By the time she reached the appraiser’s door her calves were aching and she clutched hard at the rope railing. Instead of being two switchbacking sets of stairs the steps had been carved in one nearly vertical swath, each one uneven and pitched more steeply than the last. Sometimes, she was sure; the architects of the Sheer had created impossible places on purpose and lay laughing in their graves.

The soft creaking of reed mats answered her firm rap on the door. “Well, well,” an elderly male voice greeted her. “If it isn’t Moira Mim. And what brings you to my house after an absence of many months?”

“I haven’t been seeing another appraiser, if that’s what you mean, Jia,” Moira retorted. “Now give me a hand.”

Only after she had been pulled inside and out of the wind could she hear the keening sound of island music issuing from a distant gramophone. Jia Sung, a keen and conservative man from the Yuan islands, had left behind the prosperous port city of Fanrong, bringing himself and his wife Hua to the Sheer so many decades ago that he knew everything there was to know about bartering and everyone who would pay the highest price for the goods he collected. Moira remembered seeing him only once, when she had been escorted by Sophia.

Jia had long, expressive fingers unscarred or roughened by manual labor. His skin was the color of fine parchment, though Moira suspected that it had only darkened with age since she had last looked at him. His long, fine black hair he wore in a neat topknot and his silk robes whispered in an endless symphony as he moved deeper into the flat.

“Wo de Hua,” he called to his wife. “We have a guest.”

Moira only just heard the woman’s murmured response as they crossed the foyer. “Yes, yes, will have tea.” And then she was gone, her quiet presence disappearing behind one of the many sliding latticed doors that boxed off apartment into what seemed like a hundred rooms.

When Moira and Jia were seated together at the low table in Jia’s office, they took their tea in comfortable silence before settling down to business. Moira, for her part, tried to make the drink last. Misty warmth seeped from the small cup into her hands and the bitter smell of jasmine oolong was as familiar to her as the dusty scent of burning cordwood in the little pot-bellied behind her.

To her right, unseen but no less present, was Jia’s grand wall of wonders. Thousands of drawers–some no wider than the length of her thumb, others larger than a breadbox–held all of the favors Jia received. If she was a buyer instead of a seller then he would parade out beautiful or useful items to suit her taste, enthusiastically making a case for each trinket better than any auctioneer. Shelves she couldn’t see on either side of the wall hosted scrolls and heavy books, all resources he could reference if he was given an item that he wasn’t familiar with.

“What have you brought me today?” Jia asked when their tea was finished.

Moira dug deep into her shopping bag. She produced a rough-fired clay figure and placed it on the table in front of her. “This statue; Ombolan, I think–” More trinkets and promises emerged, each arranged in display beside its fellows. “Ribbon and pins as usual, chalk, this book, a loom shuttle, and a wheel of cheese.” This last she held in its wax paper wrapping as far away from herself as possible.

“A wheel of cheese,” Jia repeated flatly.

“Yes.”

He huffed in disbelief. “Why don’t you eat it, for heaven’s sake?”

“I tried,” she nearly snapped. The refusal of food was almost too painful to bear. Moira slapped her hand for emphasis on the edge of the table when Jia tried to give it back to her, possibly out of pity; she had no idea how thin she might look to him. “No. Absolutely not. Take it.”

“Moira–”

“Jia, please. It made everything in my kitchen smell like rotten vomit.”

He took the package from her and gave it a whiff, coughing thickly before he’d quite finished taking the whole breath in. “By the Reach! Gods above, that is foul.”

“I told you so,” she said.

“Yes, yes.” Jia waved her comment away, getting up and giving the wheel to his wife who, Moira imagined, took it with arms outstretched as far as they would go. “Put it in the cold cellar. Gods!” he said again. “I can tell by the, ah, smell alone that it belongs to a particular cheesemaker who specializes in cave-aged cheeses.”

Visiting Jia was her favorite errand for the simple reason that he often had buckets of knowledge to impart on the subject of each item she brought him. Never having had a formal education, his on-the-spot lectures filled a well inside Moira that often ran dry. The subject of cave-aged cheeses, however, was one she was happy to skip over.

“What about these?” she asked to change the subject, indicating the other favors she had brought him.

Jia went down the line, naming pitifully small prices. It was less than what Moira had expected. Her hopes drooped. “And the book?”

“Ah, a critic’s analysis of A Comedie in B Flat. Nearly worthless, I’m afraid. It wasn’t one of Baron d’Bardi’s better plays.”

“Oh.” She waited until he was almost finished tallying up her compensation, unsure if she should try to bargain for more. “Jia?”

His quill scratched to a stop in the giant ledger book he’d brought out. “Mm? Was there something else?”

Moira turned over the clay statue and pointed to the bottom. “There’s a maker’s mark here, but I can’t quite make it out by feel. Could you–”

“By the Siren!” he cried, and took it from her at once. Hastily, Jia rummaged for his spectacles. “This is, this must be…yes, there they are…aha! I thought so!”

“What, what?”

Jia muttered to himself without answering for a moment. Then he delicately placed the statue back on the table. “There was no way for you to know, of course, but Moira this is–Gods, this is a rare find indeed.”

She could have strangled him for keeping her in suspense. “Jia,” she said, “don’t leave me in the dark here. Just how rare a find is it?”

“Rare enough to earn you a pretty penny, certainly. I haven’t seen one of these in a long time. This is one of Tamerlan’s, a golem. Notice the rough shaping and crude facial expressions? Normally that’s the sign of a complete novice but the signature here–” He tapped the statue’s base. “–says otherwise. The depression and seal indicates the final touches used to breathe life into otherwise immobile clay. None but its master may give this one spirit again, it’s not the sort that just anyone can use. A shame, since Tamerlan herself is long dead. But still, some collector above the Teeth will be willing to part with a great deal of coin for this, if I’m not mistaken.”

Moira thanked him and made ready to leave, taking her time rising to her feet. With so little food recently she didn’t want to get a rush from standing too fast. “How much does it all come to?”

“Eleven srir,” he replied.

“Oh, surely Tamerlan’s golem is worth more than that,” Moira urged, trying to sound nonchalant.

Jia considered this. She could almost hear the wheels turning in his head, trying to figure the difference so he could make a steep profit. “Thirteen, then, a lucky number for a lucky find. And one healing charm, as well. Will that satisfy you?” He drew away quickly and returned, pressing a small, embroidered bag into her hands.

She clicked the coins between her fingers. With the nineteen srir she already had and the odd pennies it should afford her a good margin. The charm scroll sent off motes of glowing firelight in her vision, leaving strange spots and after-images when she tried to look away. She frowned, with fine reason to be wary. “What sort of healing charm?”

Jia chuckled as he escorted her to the front door. “One from Medtown, made especially for seers; use it if you need to return yourself to balance.”

Moira nodded in understanding. He didn’t mean anything like what Sophia had done for her, but rather if her inner scales of magic or energy weren’t quite even with one another.

Quickly—but carefully—she descended the steep steps and retreated back across the district to her apartment.

Today it was Solsday, the one night set aside for Medtown to rest and prepare for the upcoming week. It had been a few days since Moira’s last meal and she was in the middle of daydreaming about the bone-broth soup she would make with ingredients from the Faid Faran–the cheapest place to buy such things–when a knot of dense energy ahead on the road made her stop dead in her tracks.

It could easily be an overturned stall or cart, but Moira wasn’t so sure. She walked forward slowly, cautiously, to avoid tripping over something she couldn’t see. “Hello?” Moira called, arms outstretched. Before her there was only darkness, with a small stain of blue where the grating by her landing should be. “Is someone there?” She could try to go around it, of course, but whatever it was was solidly blocking the steps up to her front door.

The sound of wood hitting wood chopped through the early morning silence. After a pause it came again from the bottom of the steps by the street. Then, a hissing.

Moira stumbled back, startled. There were a thousand sounds she hoped never to hear: the shuffle and scrape of housebreakers, the cloth-rustling of body snatchers, the keening whine of stray, starving hounds, the pitter-patter of thief children dodging her steps; but there was no sound she hated more than the one she couldn’t get away from, the sound of the nutcracker men.

She could hear it now; the whisper of velvet jackets, the dusty crush of old leather boots moving against the grating, and the rattle of the tithe box. The clacking came again, this time no more than an arm’s length in front of her. Long minutes passed. The denseness of the lead nutcracker did not move, nor did it leave.

Moira managed a few shallow breaths. Her voice wavered when she spoke. “Is it that time already?” she asked, trying to stay polite, knowing they were long overdue. It wasn’t that she hasn’t been expecting them, rather that she had hoped to be at home with her own doorway solid and safe at her back, and not out on the street–or outnumbered.

The nutcracker moved mechanically, not a motion wasted. It held out a slate for her to read, the change in the air touching her face and hands.

“I can’t see,” Moira said, feeling her pulse quicken. This was her last chance to have the money. She held out her hand, sure it was trembling. “Please sign for me, how much do I owe?”

Nothing happened. Moira waited, every beat of her heart twisting like a screw tighter and tighter into her chest. What if they didn’t let her into her apartment to get the rest of the money? What if the nutcracker who had signed for her last time wasn’t here? What if there was no way to know how much she owed them?

Moira took the slate dully, knowing she was sweating through her undershirt. She’d almost rather it was Gray, making his caustic remarks about her mother and lording her debt over her head. At least if she kicked him and ran there was a fifty-fifty chance she might get away. The nutcrackers had muskets. Unless she wanted to be gunned down like that thief she would be smart and turn out her pockets without delay.

“You know this,” Moira murmured, talking more to calm herself than for the benefit of the nutcrackers. “Four months late. Market rate for a flat with one bedroom and a parlor after summer Solstice was…four srir. I already paid a third for one month, so that means I owe the Baron fifteen srir and twenty cassum pennies, yes?”

Her hopes sank when the box rattled and the clacking came again. A chorus of wooden argument went up all around her; she had been so intent on the one nutcracker in front of her that she had failed to hear the rest of the regiment surrounding her.

At least when they took her away she wouldn’t have to deal with Gray anymore. Moira cursed herself. She could have gone to Sophia earlier, she could have taken on extra work for Mrs. Marshall or sold herself to another trade for a master who would pay off her debts in exchange for her service. She could have–

Hot tears dripped from her eyes onto the slate in her hands. She’d worked so hard. If Gray hadn’t shown up as soon as she’d rented her own place and started demanding recompense plus interest then she would have been able to save more, to do more, to do something with her life instead of starve and read and starve and read and never be. Going to the Reach was more than a death sentence, for the people who were dragged away never came out again, but it was the end of something more, too. Something Moira didn’t have the words for.

Slowly, Moira scrubbed the tears from her face. There was no Sophia to help her now. No Tabby or Mrs. Marshall or Hector or any of the city’s muses that she could care to name. “I’ll get it for you,” she said, surprised at how calm she sounded. If there was no way to figure the amount she owed, if the market price had changed on Equinox and she had been fool enough not to check it, then there was only one thing to do.

“Excuse me, let me through, the rest of it’s inside.” Moira ascended the steps to her apartment, the regiment of nutcrackers shadowing her every move.

The door turned open easily, the familiar coolness of the brass knob offering no comfort. In she went, the automatons following into the parlor. Moira cringed as they did, feeling their denseness and the twisting scarlet whisper of the Baron that they brought with them.

She checked every corner, every hideaway, until all the coins she had been saving sat in a pile on her reading table. Moira listened numbly as the lead nutcracker counted them. She had even set out the pennies, just in case.

At last, after what seemed like an age of being between one future and another, caught in the windy gulf of uncertainty, she heard the singing of silver and knew that her tithe was being swept off the edge of the table and into the collection box. The lead nutcracker stood, locking the box with a loud snap.

“Well?” Moira asked, not knowing whether she should shake with relief or fear.

The nutcracker smacked its boots together, bringing itself smartly to attention. It whipped off a salute that she could not see, wooden fingers tapping against the brim of its shako hat. Then, crisp as an Imperial soldier, it turned and marched out, each of its fellows falling into step behind. One by one they joined the tramping line, until her apartment was hers again.

Hardly able to swallow, Moira waited until she was certain they were all gone before she dashed to the door and locked it tight. Returning to the table, she felt across it for her change. “N-No!” she gasped, and patted the empty tablecloth again.

Moira knelt and searched the floor. Several frantic moments later she straightened, one half cassum penny clenched between forefinger and thumb. Everything else was gone.

Hot and cold all over Moira sank into her chair and put her face in her hands.

~~~

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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