Later that night I climbed onto Mains and made my way through the familiar maze of chimneys and mismatched slate and clay and tin. I came around a corner and saw Auri sitting on a chimney, her long, fine hair floating around her head as if she were underwater. She was staring up at the moon and swinging her bare feet.
I cleared my throat softly, and Auri turned to look. She hopped off the chimney and came scampering across the roof, pulling up a few steps short of me. Her grin was brighter than the moon. “There is a whole family of hedgehogs living in Cricklet!” she said excitedly.
Auri took two more steps and grabbed my hand with both of hers. “There are babies tiny as acorns!” She tugged at me gently. “Will you come see?”
I nodded, and Auri led me across the roof to the apple tree we could use to climb down into the courtyard. When we finally got there, she looked at the tree, then down to where she still held my long, tan hand with both of her tiny white ones. Her grip wasn’t tight, but it was firm, and she didn’t give any sign of letting go.
“I missed you,” she said softly without looking up. “Don’t go away again.”
“I don’t ever plan on leaving,” I said gently. “I have too much to do here.”
Auri tilted her head sideways to peek up at me through the cloud of her hair. “Like visit me?”
“Like visit you,” I agreed.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FORTY-THREE
Bloodless
There was one final surprise waiting for me on my return to the University.
I’d been back for a handful of days before I returned to my work in the Fishery. While I was no longer in desperate need of money, I missed the work. There is something deeply satisfying in shaping something with your hands. Proper artificing is like a song made solid. It is an act of creation.
So I went to Stocks, thinking to start with something simple, as I was out of practice. As I approached the window, I saw a familiar face. “Hello Basil,” I said. “What did you do to get stuck here this time?”
He looked down. “Improper handling of reagents,” he muttered.
I laughed. “That’s not so bad. You’ll be out in a span or so.”
“Yeah.” He looked up and gave a shamefaced grin. “I heard you were back. You come for your credit?”
I stopped halfway through my mental list of everything I’d need to make a heat funnel. “I beg your pardon?”
Basil cocked his head to the side. “Your credit,” he repeated. “For the Bloodless.” He looked at me for a moment, then realization dawned on his face. “That’s right, you wouldn’t know. . . .” He stepped away from the window for a moment, and returned with something that looked like an eightsided lamp made entirely of iron.
It was different than the arrowcatch I’d made. The one I’d constructed was built from scratch and rather rough around the edges. This one was smooth and sleek. All the pieces fit together snugly, and it was covered in a thin layer of clear alchemical enamel that would protect it from rain and rust. Clever, I should have included that in my original design.
While part of me was flattered that someone had liked my design enough to copy it, a larger part of me was irritated to see an arrowcatch so much more polished than my original. I noticed a telltale uniformity in the pieces. “Someone made a set of moldings?” I asked.
Basil nodded. “Oh yes. Ages ago. Two sets.” He smiled. “I’ve got to say, it’s clever stuff. Took me a long while to get my head around how the inertial trigger worked, but now that I’ve got it. . .” He tapped his forehead. “I’ve made two myself. Good money for the time they take. Beats the hell out of deck lamps.”
That wrung a smile out of me. “Anything is better than deck lamps,” I agreed, picking it up. “Is this one of yours?”
He shook his head. “Mine sold a month back. They don’t sit long. Clever of you to price them so low.”
I turned it over in my hands and saw a word grooved into the metal. The blocky letters went deep into the iron, so I knew they were part of the mold. They read, “Bloodless.”
I looked up at Basil. He smiled. “You took off without giving it a proper name,” he said. “Then Kilvin formalized the schema and added it to the records. We needed to call it something before we started to sell it.” His smile faded a bit. “But that was around the same time word came back you’d been lost at sea. So Kilvin brought in Master Elodin. . . .”
“To give it a proper name,” I said, still turning it in my hands. “Of course.”
“Kilvin grumbled a bit,” Basil said. “Called it dramatic nonsense. But it stuck.” He shrugged and ducked down and rummaged a bit before bringing up a book. “Anyway, you want your credit?” He started flipping pages. “You’ve got to have a chunk of it built up by now. Lot of folk have been making them.”
He found the page he wanted and ran his finger along the ledger line. “There we are. Sold twenty-eight so far . . .”
“Basil,” I said. “I really don’t understand what you’re talking about. Kilvin already paid me for the first one I made.”
Basil furrowed his brow. “Your commission,” he said matter-of-factly. Then, seeing my blank look, he continued. “Every time Stocks sells something, the Fishery gets a thirty percent commission and whoever owns the schema gets ten percent.”
“I thought Stocks kept the whole forty,” I said, shocked.
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Most times it does. Stocks owns most of the old schemas. Most things have already been invented. But for something new . . .”
“Manet never mentioned that,” I said.
Basil gave an apologetic grimace. “Old Manet is a workhorse,” he said politely. “But he’s not the most innovative fellow around. He’s been here, what, thirty years? I don’t think he has a single schema to his name.” He flipped through the book a bit, scanning the pages. “Most serious artificers have at least one just as a point of pride, even if it’s something fairly useless.”
Numbers spun in my head. “So ten percent of eight talents each,” I murmured, then looked up. “I’ve got twenty-two talents waiting for me?”
Basil nodded, looking at the entry in the book. “Twenty-two and four,” he said, bringing out a pencil and a piece of paper. “You want all of it?”
I grinned.
When I set out for Imre my purse was so heavy I feared I might develop a limp. I stopped by Anker’s and picked up my travelsack, resting it on my opposite shoulder to balance things out.
I wandered through town, idly passing by all the places Denna and I had frequented in the past. I wondered where in the world she might be.
After my ritual search was complete, I made my way to a back alley that smelled of rancid fat and climbed a set of narrow stairs. I knocked briskly on Devi’s door, waited for a long minute, then knocked again, louder.
There was the sound of a bolt being thrown and a lock turning. The door cracked open and a single pale blue eye peered out at me. I grinned.
The door swung open slowly. Devi stood in the doorway, staring blankly at me, her arms at her sides.
I raised an eyebrow at her. “What?” I said. “No witty banter?”
“I don’t do business on the landing,” she said automatically. Her voice was absolutely without inflection. “You’ll have to come inside.”
I waited, but she didn’t step out of the doorway. I could smell cinnamon and honey wafting out from the room behind her.
“Devi?” I asked. “Are you okay?”
“You’re a . . .” She trailed off, still staring at me. Her voice was flat and emotionless. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“In this and many other things, I aim to disappoint,” I said.
“I was sure he’d done it,” Devi continued. “His father’s barony is called the Pirate Isles. I was sure he’d done it because we’d set fire to his rooms. I was the one that actually set the fire, but he couldn’t know that. You were the only one he saw. You and that Cealdish fellow.”