Chapter 3

CHAPTER

3

The world was kinder to Matti’s senses as he walked home. The sunlight seemed less piercing, and more a promise from the gods that perhaps everything was turning in his favour after all. The last of Maha’s Revenge had lifted from his skull somewhere between the look of guilt on Piere’s face and the moment when they shook hands.

Matti had made plenty of bargains in his life, and he was pleased with the one he’d just completed. Whatever his criminal tendencies, Piere obviously knew what he was doing with a sword, and that was all Matti needed.

Matti certainly didn’t need lessons in duelling. And now he had them, because the merchant in him hated letting something go for nothing when it could be leveraged instead. Silence in exchange for sword lessons.

Duelling was something between athletics and art form; for most sons of successful Houses it was considered a frippery. An amusing hobby at best. Matti was expected to have better things to do with his time than mess about with blades. But he’d always loved watching the formal duels at namings and other ceremonies, as well as the show matches that sometimes adorned other celebrations. It had nothing whatsoever to do with his work, and therein lay the appeal. Already the anticipation of it was like a silken undershirt, something not meant to be glimpsed by others, reminding him of his own satisfaction with every step.

It had been a long time since Matti associated secrets with anything good . All the other secrets in his life were the large ones, the ones that pulled tight headaches into existence and wove an ugly twill from his thoughts when he was lying in bed at night, unable to sleep. The secrets that had become as natural as breathing.

Matti looked at his palm, opening and closing his fingers. The sword had felt strange there: heavy and ungainly. No doubt he’d looked a complete fool with it dangling from his arm.

Piere had looked the opposite of ungainly. He had a trim torso, each muscle well-defined and visible under the pale skin, as would be expected from someone who made their living in such a physical manner. And the way Piere moved . A fierce economy, each motion sharp and graceful, as though the air knew to dance out of his way or be sliced apart. Matti would never learn to move like that in fifty years of tutelage, let alone a handful of months, but the desire to try was like a shout within him.

Matti was a few doors down from his own house when he recognised a man walking in the opposite direction, down the street towards Matti himself. In a few more moments they would be face-to-face.

Matti entertained a short-lived fantasy of ducking up the front steps of a neighbour’s house, pretending he was paying a call, and avoiding the encounter entirely. But it had to happen sooner or later, and he’d had enough of feeling wrong-footed for one morning. He could manage this.

“Adrean,” he called. “Good morning.”

Adrean Vane’s eyes slid onto Matti with a speed that suggested he’d been keeping them deliberately averted. “Good morning, Mr. Jay,” he said, and Matti groaned inwardly as he pulled to a halt, stepping aside to leave space on the footpath for others to pass them by.

“Adrean, really,” said Matti. “Stop it. I’m not going to be Mr.-Jayed by you of all people.”

Adrean was as tall as Matti, though more leanly built, and his hair was straight and longer than was fashionable, with a tendency to fall across his eyes like a raven’s wing. He sighed as though the informality were a struggle, as though the years that they’d known each other did nothing to make up for the difference in their status.

Perhaps it couldn’t. They’d never been anything like friends, but Matti had always felt a kernel of admiration for Adrean Vane. The only son of Jay House’s senior business agent, Adrean didn’t care a button for trade, and had no intention of following his father into the Guild of Spinners and Weavers. He was a musician; he was an amateur duellist. He was doing exactly what he wished to do with his life.

Gloomy sigh completed, he said, “Congratulations on the engagement, Matti.”

“Thank you.” Matti tried to make something appropriate arrange itself on his tongue. I’m sorry I’m marrying the girl you love? It’s not personal?

Adrean did not look inclined to interject anything that might make things less difficult. Not that Matti could blame him. From Adrean’s perspective he was the superior Mr. Jay, swooping in and offering Sofia the prosperous House name that Adrean never could.

“I hope we’ll see you there” were the words that came out of Matti’s mouth, and he nearly felt his tongue spasm with the desire to suck them back in again. Now it sounded like he was rubbing it in Adrean’s face.

“I can assure you that you will,” Adrean said. “Good day.” He gave the kind of lingering bow that was as bad as the Mr.-Jaying, stepped around Matti, and continued on his way.

“Fantastic,” Matti muttered to himself. “Well done.”

Between them, Adrean and Matti’s own stupidity had managed to kick a fair dent in the good mood he’d been carrying home. He felt itchy and annoyed as he let himself in the front door of the Jay townhouse, hung his coat by the door, and climbed the stairs two at a time. The door to his father’s study was ajar, and Matti stepped inside to find his father behind the desk. Tomas Jay was spinning his glasses with one hand, while the other combed absently through a nest of tawny curls. The patches of grey at his temples were more pronounced than they’d been a year ago.

Standing close by, and speaking in a low tone, was Corus Vane. Both men looked up as Matti entered.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Corus straightened. Jay House’s senior agent had his son’s long face, made even longer by the fact that his own hair was neatly trimmed. “So, some good news at last,” Corus said warmly.

“Yes,” said Matti.

“Congratulations, Matti. Huna smile.” Corus turned back to Matti’s father. “I’ll let Matti know if I can pin down anything more definite, Tomas. But we should assume the worst, and start strategising accordingly. This is a real concern.”

“And we were so very short on those,” said Tomas. He waved Corus out of the study.

“What—” Matti began, but was interrupted by a minor commotion behind him. It sounded like someone, or something, managing to collide with both sides of the doorframe at once.

“Oh, Huna’s dripping—”

“ Mayanesh, ” said Tomas, equal parts indulgent and reproving.

A large walking pile of fabric pushed past Matti and into the study, where it nudged a fold of heavy wool aside to reveal the face of Matti’s sister. Maya’s hair was braided back, and the fabric’s rub had given her a fuzzy black halo of loose strands around her face.

“Good, you’re back. Someone needs to talk sternly to the supervisors at the workshop in East Quarter,” Maya said to Matti. “The new colour formula’s taken well, but I don’t think this bolt has had more than flirting acquaintance with a burling iron.”

“We laid off some of the quality control staff two months ago,” said Matti. “But that shouldn’t— Gods, I hope nobody’s taken it into their head to helpfully start cutting corners. I can look into—”

“There’s something more pressing,” said Tomas.

Maya shot a look at Matti, then a sharper one back at their father. “Dad, what is it? What was Corus here about?”

“He knows not to bother you with House business,” said Matti. “Is it something to do with the Guild?”

“He was bringing it to you, Matti, but you were out and I was handy.” Tomas took longer than usual to affix his glasses to his face, and during those few seconds the last of Matti’s good spirits evaporated.

“Dad,” Matti said.

“It’s only rumour so far,” said Tomas.

“ What? ” said Maya.

“Harte House is branching out into wool.”

“Wh-what?” This time Maya sounded a lot shakier.

Matti, moving with legs that felt as though he’d run the distance between the Rose Quarter and the docks without pausing for breath, went to lean on the corner of his father’s desk. He splayed a hand on the leather-inlaid surface for balance, and his fingers found the deep scratch in the leather that he himself had put there when he was young, an overexcited child playing at man of business with an empty fountain pen.

He said, “What kind of wool? What’s the rumour?”

“A series of rumours.” Tomas began to count on his fingers. “They’ve approached one of the most innovative loom builders I know, with an order for something different to their usual. To handle a new kind of material. They’re looking into warehouse space here in Glassport—that one’s certain. Enris Harte mentioned it in passing at a Guild meeting last week, and then tried to cover for it. I didn’t know what to make of it at the time, but it makes sense now.”

“Warehouse space?” said Matti sharply. The Hartes were silk-makers, spanning the whole breadth of the process from raw worm-thread to finished bolt. Their farms and workshops were all well inland, and there was no demand for Thesperan silk offshore; the country of Ashfah, Thesper’s closest neighbour across the sea, produced more than enough. There was nothing for the Hartes in Glassport except a market for their end products.

“And,” said Tomas, in the tone of someone coming to the pointy end of a thing, “they’re inquiring about hiring ships to make the crossing to and from Fataf.”

“So we know the kind of wool,” Matti said. There was a sensation in his throat like swallowing too-cold water. “Black libelza.”

“Harte is already a luxury name,” said Maya, echoing Matti’s thoughts. “They’ve got the connections. If they keep to libelza and other kinds of superfine, if they concentrate their efforts at that end of the market…”

“They can more than give us a run for our money,” said Tomas grimly. “They don’t know the business like we do, but I imagine the learning curve would be quick for someone with Jacquelle Harte’s reputation. The expertise in processing isn’t there, but you can buy that, if you’re rich enough.”

Unspoken was the fact that Jay House had been forced to lay off enough skilled workers in the past few years to staff a moderately sized workshop. They’d be easy enough to find, to hire, for anyone looking to break into the market.

“If we could only—” said Matti, but stopped. It was useless to talk that way. If only Matti had anticipated more, worked harder, forced himself to find more opportunities where the goddess had laid them hidden in his path. If they could only afford to outfit another ship—to buy raw libelza wool from the auction houses across the sea in Draka—to pay the high duty on it when it arrived in Glassport.

If only the last ship, which had been their last chance, had made it.

“You will,” said Tomas. “You will be able to, Matti. I know you’ll turn this around. This engagement—”

“I know,” Matti said. He glanced at Maya, who had unburdened herself of the rolls of fabric and was twisting her hands in her skirts. She looked back at him and managed an encouraging smile. Matti willed his mouth to smile back, and willed the anxious, self-blaming lump of ice in his throat to go away—everything was going to be fine, he’d fixed it. Matti would turn this around. All he had to do was get married.

A voice came drifting up from downstairs. “Hello? Maya, where are you?”

“We’re all up here, Mama,” called Maya over her shoulder. “Dad’s study.”

After her footsteps sounded on the stairs, there was another rustle of fabric, and then Matti’s mother was sweeping into and across the room. In most respects, she was a shorter version of Maya, though still taller than the average. Nessanesh’s braid was smooth rather than a game attempt to wrestle waves into submission, and the lines of her face were deeper. The women’s fashion for long sleeveless tunics belted over the basic combination of shirt-and-skirt or shirt-and-trousers was beginning to show some bleedover from shorter, more masculine styles of jackets. Nessanesh wore a brocaded jacket in green and red with stiff flared sleeves, over a black skirt edged in rows of gold floral embroidery.

“You look nice, Nessa love,” said Tomas.

Nessanesh lifted a hand above her shoulder and flicked its fingers wide, a family gesture of resignation. “Nice, the man says! I suppose I am a mouse, every other day I exist under this roof. I suppose I do not know how to dress myself.”

Tomas turned a look of entreaty on his two eldest children. “Twenty-five years of marriage and you see how I’m treated?”

“Twenty-five years of marriage to a Jay and he’s surprised I can put a visiting outfit together,” said Nessa loftily. Tomas pushed his chair out so that his wife could lower herself to sit on one of his knees. “I have been out to spread the news of our son’s engagement. I have dropped it everywhere. Like a biscuit into coffee. Matti, Gerta Lourde has a tongue loose with news about changes to the fee structure at her aunt’s bank. We will talk about it at dinner. How did you fare at Tolliver’s?”

“Fine,” said Matti. He slid Lourde House’s banking fees into his list of things to worry about that evening. “I now have a best man.”

“Who did you get?” asked Maya. “Was Aren Rowell available? He was best man for Ellen Jessamy, you remember, when everyone knew that Nicoletta Picia was going to challenge for Jacinda, and he did a great job. Ellen and Jacinda hired him again as swordguard for the ceremony when they named Ellen’s nephew as their heir.”

Matti ran his tongue around his mouth. “I hired someone new to town,” he said. “He hasn’t worked in Glassport before.”

His mother looked at him. Her tone was still gentle but her black eyes did all the piercing that was required. “Six hundred gold, Matti,” she said. As if Matti could somehow have forgotten.

“Don’t worry, love,” said Tomas. He wrapped an arm around his wife’s waist. “It’d take a spectacular cheat to pull one over on our Matti.”

Matti managed, somehow, to keep his face from doing anything revealing. “I know better than to buy without a sample, Mama,” he said. “Hardy Tolliver vouched for his skill, and he gave me a demonstration. He’s. He’s very good.” Matti felt his face heat.

“What’s his name?” Maya asked. “Where did he work before this? If he’s had any interesting victories, especially at a wedding, there’ll be gossip. I’m sure I can write to someone and find out.”

“Luca Piere,” said Matti. “And I don’t know. I didn’t ask.” After all, it didn’t necessarily mean anything that Piere had mentioned Guildmaster Havelot by name. And Matti wasn’t inclined to trust Piere’s accent any more than the rest of him; the man was an admitted con artist, no matter what else he was.

“By the way,” Matti added, aiming for casual, “Wynn Amberden has bought me lessons from a dancing master, as an engagement present. It’s for the Half Moon Ball. A secret.”

“What a nice idea that is,” his mother said. “A surprise for Sofia.”

“I’ll go in the mornings, instead of swimming,” Matti said. He’d come up with the story on the walk home from Tolliver’s; it wasn’t perfect, but it was the best he could do. Perhaps nobody would have noticed, but on the occasional morning his mother was up early enough to walk part of the way to the baths with him, peeling off at her favourite bakery to smell the first trays of raskils fresh from the oven. Now he had a solid excuse to be heading in a different direction.

“I should be off to the council offices.” Tomas levered first Nessa and then himself up out of the chair. “The health committee is meeting with the Guild of Physicians leadership to discuss changes to their accreditation and complaints process. And then I have an afternoon of being shouted at by Lysbette Martens and her allies to look forward to.” Tomas’s time as the city’s Spinners and Weavers Guildmaster was split between Guild business and serving on the city’s ruling council, as well as representing the Glassport branch at the annual Guildband meeting of representatives from across the Nine Free States of Thesper.

“They’re still pushing for the canal project?” Maya asked.

Tomas nodded grimly. “Lysbette gave another very pretty speech, using Henry Penseil’s mouth to do it, and I think they’re wearing down some of those who voted with me last time the proposal was raised. This time they’re selling it as an employment initiative. Think of all the jobs! ”

“You can’t blame Penseil, Dad,” said Matti. “A city-funded canal all the way to the border with Barlow would be an amazing thing for his Guild. Of course he’s onside.”

“I can blame Henry, and I will,” said Tomas. “Lysbette’s self-interest is the root of this proposal. I refuse to applaud just because she’s managed to point out the ways in which it will line pockets other than those of her own House, at the expense of city funds. It’s our turn to host the Negenhal next year. We can’t afford to strain our budget any further. And if we must create jobs for engineers, what about fixing the plumbing in the Ash Quarter? What about fixing the roads ?”

“They are a disgrace, the roads in that neighbourhood,” Nessa agreed. “Twice this year already I have had the carriage axle repaired, as though we can afford such expense! Now I walk from the south side of Ash Bridge all the way to Kupa’s stall, and one day when I break my ankle on the same holes there will be no more japetas on our dinner table.” The tiny pancakes of mashed vegetables spiked with garlic and smoky burr-spice were a Yaghali dish, and only one street vendor in the city made them in what Nessa proclaimed was the proper manner.

Maya made a showy sound of pain and clutched her chest, smiling. “You can’t fool us, Mama. An abyss would have to form between our house and the Ashmarket before you stopped going for Kupa’s japetas.”

“Even then, I think she would learn to fly,” said Tomas fondly.

“At least japetas are cheap,” said Maya.

The silence was short and well-worn, full of glances held for exactly long enough for the four of them to realise that it didn’t matter what was said in this room. They were so used to keeping some things unsaid that the sound of them could still feel fresh and strange.

“Yes. And you do not fight for my ankles, lovely though they are,” said Nessa. “You heard Kupa’s brother, when we had them to dinner. Roads not safe. Water pipes not replaced since they were first laid. Children sick from sewage leaks.”

“Exactly.” Tomas’s face was set in a way that Matti had known, and loved—and even felt a little afraid of—ever since he was a boy. “Glassport itself could easily swallow all the money that such a canal project would take, given the rate the population’s growing. And that’s without considering the distance between the hospitals and—”

“Yes! Enough!” Nessa slapped his arm. “We are too easy an audience for your speeches. Go and deliver them where the people do not agree with you.”

Tomas kissed her temple and took another step towards the study door. “Speaking of Barlow, Matti—any luck with Alain Collins yet?”

“He still won’t commit,” said Matti. “I’ll write to him again today.”

Tomas nodded. “The payroll list from the weavers will be coming in at noon, and I know I said I’d try to make sense of that twenty-page report purporting to explain why everyone is suddenly charging twice as much for sea-scarlet dye as they were last year, but what with one thing and another—”

“Of course. Go. I’ll take care of everything,” said Matti.

“Yes, yes,” said Tomas. He rested a hand for a moment on Matti’s shoulder as he left the room. “You always do.”

Luca got lost twice before he found the boardinghouse.

The first time, it happened because he’d stopped concentrating on his feet and started composing letters to his mother and Perse in his head. It was a difficult exercise. Luca had trouble keeping a peaceful tone when communicating with his older brother in person, and didn’t have much more luck in writing, no matter how hypothetical.

I’m fine. I’m getting by. Men far less clever than I manage to make their living by the sword; there’s no reason to think I won’t be able to do it.

Too defensive? Perhaps.

So I conned one of the best-looking men I’ve ever met out of two hundred gold, and now I’m a member of his wedding party, because the goddess has a great fucking sense of humour.

He was never going to write any of this down. Never going to actually send it. So what did it matter? If he were being honest—ha!—then the letter would be a lot uglier.

Yes I know I fucked everything up and yes if I were a better sort of person I’d be on the first coach home and I’d face the consequences, but even on the other end of a prison sentence I’d still be faced with the rest of my life and I can’t, I won’t, I can’t—

That was when Luca realised that he’d emerged into a small square containing an unfamiliar food market, and he no longer had any idea in which direction the harbour lay. Smells gloriously assaulted his nose: roasting nuts, an elusive herby fragrance, hot bread, briny seafood mingled with vinegar. Luca paused in front of a stall selling one of the few foods he’d never seen before: small balls of dough lifted sizzling from oil and rolled in dark sugar. They were a shade of green that bordered on lurid.

“What gives them that colour?” Luca asked the woman behind the stall. Her headband and trousers were both made from fabric in a striking and deeply unfashionable patchwork pattern, moving lightly enough to be cotton rather than wool.

“Lascari leaves.” Sensing a willingness to buy, she was already scooping several of them into a waxed paper bag.

Luca pulled out his purse and asked directions while he was at it. The woman’s answer brought out the musical hint of a far-south Elizen accent. Luca managed to escape the conversation before he found himself mimicking her cadences to her face, but he muttered southerly notes to himself for a few minutes while he was busy burning his fingers on the hot sweets and getting lost for the second time.

That time, it simply happened because his sense of direction in unfamiliar places was mediocre on a good day, and on a bad day was appalling enough that he had once been accused of putting it on in order to be obnoxious. But if his brain was hopeless at grasping the layout of new places, his muscles at least knew what to do. He learned a place by walking it. And he was too restless, too curious, too bursting with novelty and the remains of guilt and fear and relief, to stay in the Tollivers’ attic room all day.

The lascari balls were delicious. Luca licked the last of the sugar off oily fingertips as he walked across a crowded bridge, keeping close to the wrought iron railing, around which was tied a series of ribbons in varying states from fresh to rotting. It was an exam-time tradition common to students destined for the more academic Guilds. Perhaps there was a law school nearby.

The bridge widened into a main street lined with buildings as varied in appearance as the ribbon-offerings. These days the Negenhal was a lawmakers’ meeting of the governing councils from all nine of the Free States, held every other year and with each capital taking its turn to host, but the first ever Negenhal had been little more than a series of peace talks that took hold of a war-ridden Thesper and shook it like a wrinkled blanket until it grumbled its way into the current arrangement of city-states. Before then, the city of Glassport had been a kind of passive battleground of cultural influence, sitting as it did close to the midpoint between the cities of Barlow and Harbeke.

Now it had been the capital of its own state, controlling its own territories, for nearly two hundred years. And yet to Luca’s eyes and ears and nose Glassport still gave the impression of two cities existing… not side by side, but piled defiantly on top of each other, like two theatregoers refusing to relinquish their warring claims on the best seat. A distinctly Barlowian flourish to the roofline here; a street sign in Old Harbekan there, the stone engraving worn almost to indecipherability with age.

No matter its enmeshed twin origins, Glassport was the major port on the west coast, and like any centre of trade it was a loudly messy cultural quilt. The market stallholder was not the last Elizen voice Luca heard, and before long he felt confident that his ear had collected nearly all the Thesperan city-states. He even heard the soft, inky Ashfahani tongue being spoken as he passed the open doors of an enormous blocklike building and caught a strong whiff suggestive of a horse market.

Northern looks like Jay’s were rarer, but here and there Luca caught a glimpse—gathered fabric with lace underskirts on display, embroidered felt caps on both men and women, dark skin—or heard a strong accent that could have signalled either Manisi or a citizen from the northern kingdom of Narama. Far enough north, it was nearly impossible to place someone as hailing from one side of the border or the other.

Luca ran a hand through his own hair. He’d wondered if he should dye it, but red wasn’t an uncommon colour here; there didn’t seem to be any uncommon colours. And he liked his hair. Other people liked his hair. Mattinesh Jay’s eyes had lingered on it.

Luca did draw a few glances on the street, but most of them were directed at his waist. The weight of the sword, his awareness of its sheath and its balance as he walked, was both familiar and unfamiliar. Luca had spent enough hours of his life wearing his weapons for the weight of them to be a friendly comfort, but he’d never had cause to wear them on the street. They’d never been the mark of his trade before. It sent an uneasy thrill up his spine, and made his feet feel as though they might strike up sparks against the stones of the street.

Eventually he made his way to the boardinghouse that he’d found on his first afternoon in this city. There were rooms enough at every price point, but Luca had fallen inconveniently in love with the first place he’d walked into, and had not managed to convince himself that he was willing to settle for any of the cheaper or less wonderfully situated rooms he’d viewed afterwards. He didn’t mind waiting a week in the Tollivers’ attic. He didn’t mind that the rent would take most of the money he’d both conned—and, now, promised to earn legitimately—from Mattinesh Jay.

The boardinghouse looked like most of the other houses on the street, tucked shoulder to shoulder with its immediate neighbours, narrowing to a pointed orange roof. The blue doorframe was carved and painted with the symbols of the Hearthkeeper god, Osta. But it was the room within that Luca cared about, because that room had a view down to the water. It was only one of the many sly fingers of salt water, the canals, that branched inland through the city of Glassport from the main harbour itself. But it was, if you stretched the term, sea water. Luca’s home city of Cienne sprawled next to a lake studded with small islands, but the horizon was an uneven line of mountains no matter which way you looked. Glassport had the horizon of the ocean: straight and vast as a line drawn by the gods.

The trappings were important when you were reinventing yourself. Luca Piere lived by the sea. Luca Piere carried a sword. Luca Piere didn’t have to have a family to write home to, if he didn’t want one.

“Can I— Oh, it’s you again,” said Miss Vaunt, when she answered the door. Her eyes swept Luca from toe to head and her posture shifted. A hint of a pert smile made itself known in her cheek; her face, a lighter brown than Mattinesh Jay’s, was a dense paint-splash of freckles beneath a kinked cloud of hair. “Here to tell us you won’t be taking the room after all, then?”

Luca canted his own posture in response, letting his grin flirt with her cheek until it rendered up that smile. “Never fear, my sweet one,” he said. “No torture yet invented by the devious minds of men could induce me to go back on my word, once given.”

“That’s nice,” said the girl. Luca wished he could remember her first name. “Because none of those tortures you mentioned will induce Mama to give you back that deposit you laid down to secure the room.”

Luca laughed. “I was merely going to ask if, by any chance, the current occupant is planning to leave any earlier than I was told?”

“Sorry,” she said. “We’ll have to do without the pleasure of your company at breakfast for a little while longer.”

“Ah, well. Pata rewards the patient. Thank you for your time, Miss Vaunt.”

Now her brows arched, knowing. “It’s Dinah,” she said, and threw him another smile before she closed the door in his face.

Not ready to return to the Tollivers’ yet, Luca made his way from the boardinghouse to the harbour proper, following the smell of salt as it deepened and broadened into something rich with fish, with damp, with the sharp smell of wood stain, with tar and smoke and a hundred other layers beneath that. The smell of everything that could be packed into a ship’s hold and carried from one place to another, there to be sold or transformed into something new.

The thrill in his feet and spine had settled into a thin whisper that threatened to become words unless Luca trod it into silence. He’d hoped to crush this whisper beneath the coach’s wheels when he left Cienne. No matter. He had distance, now, and time. He would exhaust it eventually.

He strolled in a slow, winding path along the docks, looking for nothing in particular, but noticing as much as he could. He passed ship after ship and craned his neck to see if there were sailors working in the rigging, or to watch furled sails sway gently against the clouds. He noted which figureheads needed a fresh coat of paint, or had lost some detail of their design through either skirmish or decay. Many of these figureheads were clutching the reef-knotted rope and had the seaweed crown of Itsa, patron goddess of the Guild of Sailors and Shipbuilders. Other deities appeared as well; these ships were likely owned outright by, or else exclusively contracted to, grand Houses dedicated to some trade or another.

The names of the ships appeared on scrolls held by these figureheads, or were painted close to the waterline in careful script. LADY JENNY. brIGHT MORNING. FEARLESS.

A street away from the waterfront, Luca stopped and entered a glassblower’s shop, which was set incongruously between a drinking house and the office of a shipping company. His eye had been hooked by one of the pieces in the window, a beautifully made figurine of a caterpillar, each body segment a bulb of clear glass shot through with spirals, specks, or shards. It was the kind of thing Luca would usually have bought without a second thought, and gifted to his mother.

He was halfway to taking the caterpillar off the shelf before he remembered that he didn’t have that kind of money any longer, and also that his mother—

Well. He didn’t have the money.

Luca’s fingers tingled as he used one to follow a tendril of green in the glass. He could always steal it. That was part of who he was now, wasn’t it?

The shopkeeper, an elderly man with the most lovingly trimmed and outrageously waxed white moustache that Luca had ever seen, was engaged in discussion with another customer over a display box on the counter. He’d glanced at Luca on Luca’s entry into the shop, but his attention was split at best. Luca’s coat, shabby as it was, had deep inner pockets. It would take no time at all.

Luca bit down on his own cheek hard enough that he wanted to gasp as a chill skated down his spine and the memory of glass shattering, musically high and cold, rang its phantom notes in his ears. Gods, gods, how stupid could he be ? Standing in a shop owned by one of Kusi’s children, thinking about stealing from them, as though he hadn’t already done more than enough back home to earn the ire of the Artificer goddess.

He murmured an apology of a prayer under his breath, promising another handful of coins to Kusi’s Guildhall, even though the donation he’d made in a guilty panic upon arriving in Glassport had been another of the reasons he’d found himself broke enough to start running small cons.

The other customer left, and the shopkeeper made eye contact with Luca as he was putting away the box.

“Lovely work,” said Luca politely, gesturing around the shop with a jerk of his head. The Elizen accent was still on his tongue, and danced out before he could suppress it. “Yours? Your family’s?”

“Yes to both,” said the man. “Were you looking for something in particular?”

“Just whiling away the time,” said Luca. “I’ve a meeting soon. Hoping for a job.”

The blue eyes above the moustache strayed to Luca’s sword. “Serving as escort on a voyage, are you?”

“Why, yes,” said Luca, pleased to have his story thus embroidered. “Yes, I am.”

Five minutes later, he knew all about Rubin Nyfaert’s family and had gained a sprinkling of new words and terms that might come in handy if he ever wanted to pretend at being someone who knew anything about glassworking. He’d been told a story about how Glassport was first founded—though Nyfaert referred to the city as Glashaven, a sign of stubbornly Harbekan roots—that Luca was almost certain was a pretty myth, but it was a good story nonetheless.

For his part, Nyfaert had learned that Luca was an orphan by the name of Kal and that he’d been raised by a retired sword master, and that he was keen to leave the city on a seafaring job because of delicate circumstances that might or might not involve seducing a prominent member of the Guild of Lawyers while the man’s own husband slept in the next room.

It wasn’t hard. It was just a matter of the right smile, the right talk . And if Luca could do anything, he could talk.

The Tollivers thought he was a talented young duellist trying his luck in a new city. Everyone in the drinking house, when Luca tried the pocket watch con on Jay, had thought he was a harried clerk sent on an errand. Even though it was what had gotten him into trouble in the first place, even though it had sent him fleeing here with a new name on his lips, Luca couldn’t help himself. Something in him thirsted after the shining, open ease in someone’s face when they were looking at Luca and believing his story. Something in him quietened, within the skins of these other invented people. These people whose skins Luca wore as easily as his sword belt might have had their own small worries, but they didn’t have a disaster sprawled in their wake. Or an unwanted future hanging over their heads.

Being himself was a failed experiment. Luca had learned that lesson already.