“I wouldn’t,” said the woman, who clearly assumed that Tes intended to pry herself free the usual way. “There is a lot of metal in this shop.”
Tes’s free hand stopped, hovered, withdrew. It was true—she could get herself loose, and expose her power in the process, but in a test of speed, she would still lose.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“We’ll get to that,” said the woman, leaning an elbow on the counter. “But first…”
Suddenly she had a knife in one hand and a lock of Tes’s hair in the other. With a flick of her wrist, the curls came free, dropping like a dark ribbon into the woman’s palm. As Tes watched, the knife vanished, and the woman tied the lock of hair into a knot, and slid it in her pocket. Panic wormed through her; not at the loss of the curls—she had a mountain of them—but at how they could be used. Just as names had value, so did anything that came from a person’s body. That was meant to belong only to them.
The woman rapped her fingers on the counter, drawing Tes’s attention back to the metal pinning her hand.
“Now,” said the woman, “before I begin, you should know, for every lie you tell, you’ll lose a finger.” She looked around. “I imagine those are important, in this line of work.”
Tes fought to steady her heart. She had never been a good liar, which was why she’d always opted for omission. Better to say nothing and avoid the traps, the tells. But she had a feeling silence wouldn’t buy her much.
“Where is Haskin?” asked the woman.
“There is no Haskin,” she said. “It’s just me.”
“Could have told you that,” said the man, hefting a sword from a shelf. He held it up to check his teeth. The woman let out a low sigh, halfway to a hiss, but kept her attention on Tes.
“What’s a girl your age doing with a shop all her own?”
Tes swallowed. “I’m good at what I do.”
“So am I,” said the woman, and Tes sucked in a breath as the metal pinning her hand tightened a fraction, cutting into her skin. “Our friend brought in something to be fixed. Where is it?”
“You’ll have to be more specific,” said Tes. “After all, this is a repair shop.”
The man chuckled, the sound like a blade on a whetstone. The woman didn’t smile. She nudged the ticket forward. Tes made a show of staring at the number.
“I remember him,” she said after a moment. “He was sick.”
“Not anymore,” said the man, in a way that made it clear he hadn’t gotten better.
The woman clenched her teeth. She didn’t like this man, thought Tes. That was good. That was something.
The woman’s cold eyes swiveled back to her. “What’s your name?”
A name was often a valuable thing, but only if you were alive to use it. “Tes.”
“Well, Tes. Our friend made a mistake. He should have brought that piece to us, not you. We’re here to take it off your hands.” As she said that last word, she tapped the metal pinning Tes’s fingers to the table. “Did he tell you what it was?”
“No,” said Tes, glad it was the truth. “He practically shoved it at me, never even said what it was meant to do. Do you know how hard it is to fix a spelled object without knowing its purpose?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Did you? Fix it?”
“No,” she said, the word coming out too fast. The metal tightened suddenly, white-hot pain as the steel sliced into the base of her thumb. “I mean, not yet,” she gasped out. “I’m still working on it.”
“But it can be fixed?”
Tes nodded, frantic, and after a moment, the metal loosened. Blood dotted the counter between her fingers.
“Where is it now?” asked the woman, gaze drifting over the shelves, and Tes gritted her teeth to hide her surprise. Something in the bland way she scanned the shop made Tes suspect she’d never seen the doormaker before, at least, not when it was whole. If they didn’t know what they were looking for—
Tes twisted, gesturing with her free hand to the wall of shelves behind her. The stash, as Nero called it.
“Third shelf,” she lied, the words coming out too fast as she wracked her brain for the contents of each basket, something that was roughly the right shape. “Second bin from the left.”
It was a dangerous gamble, and as the woman rounded the counter and pulled out the bin, Tes watched for signs of suspicion, or anger, braced for the feeling of steel slicing through skin. But all the woman did was lift the contents from the bin.
A box.
Roughly the same size and shape as the one bundled beneath the counter between her feet. Only this box would never open doors to other worlds. It was a simpler thing, meant to capture and play sounds, like the one she kept beside her bed to help her sleep.
She’d salvaged it from a market a week before, wanted to see if she could modify the spell to hold a voice, thought it might be nice if Vares could talk as well as listen.
“Doesn’t look very broken,” said the woman.
“The box is just a container,” said Tes. “That part was easy to fix.” The same had been true for the doormaker. “It’s the spellwork inside that’s hard.”
“Well then,” said the woman, placing the box on the counter. “I suggest you get to work.”
Tes took a deep breath. “I need both hands.”
The woman tipped her head, as if considering. Then the metal released, withdrew, returning to the cuff on her arm. Tes rubbed her hand, flexed her fingers, tried to hide how badly they were shaking. Her thoughts spun as she looked down at the box on the table in front of her.
“This will take time,” she said.
Please go, please go, please go, thudded her heart, loud as the drums she’d heard in that other London.
The woman turned, as if to leave, then grabbed a chair and dragged it across the shop floor to the counter. She spun it around and sat, arms crossed along the back.
“We’ll wait.”
III
Lila Bard should have listened to her gut.
After all, it had gotten her this far.
Six Helarin Way wasn’t in the shal. Far from it. Helarin Way lay on the city’s northern bank, nearer the ostra and vestra than the dregs of London. It was an affluent borough, with elegant, well-appointed shops, all of which sat dark at this hour, though the streets were still well lit, lanterns burning with warm, enchanted light.
There was no date etched into the coin, no way to know if the time printed on the edge had come and gone, or lay ahead. But the Ferase Stras had been attacked less than a week before, and one of the thieves had been carrying this coin. She had to hope it wasn’t a keepsake, but an invitation—one that hadn’t yet expired.
SON HELARIN RAS ? NONIS ORA
Eleventh hour. According to the clock on the corner and the watch in her pocket, it was half past eleven now. She quickened her step, boots sounding first on stone, and then on wood as she crossed the bridge onto the northern bank.
This part of London moved at its own pace, time turned to honey by the moneyed elite. It played home to performance halls and smoking parlors, dinner clubs and grand estates, places where the city’s wealth and power were both on full display. She saw no painted hands, and yet, the coin rolled in her fingers, letters pressed against her skin.
As she neared Helarin Way, Lila forced her steps to slow and lengthen into a more casual stride, turned up her collar and straightened her spine, carrying herself with a confidence she always felt, but rarely showed, taking on the airs of the people she’d passed as she made her way to the address.
With any luck, it would be the pleasure garden Tanis spoke of, the Hand all gathered neat within, her hunt begun and ended in a single night. But when she got there, she found only a darkened house.
Not a vestran estate, with grounds and a gate, though hardly a hovel. Three stories, with dark iron ringing its doorway and trimming the balconies above, the roof a series of gold-tipped peaks.