Rae really needed that book. Malloy had her sister, tricked away with honeyed talk of healing, hope, and a future, a future which won’t stretch ‘til tomorrow unless she succeeds. The raw memory of his fingers digging into her shoulder, stretching the skin of her frame, burned through her mind like a hot wire of shame.
“I’m sure you wouldn’t want us bringing your sister aboard the barge—she would be popular; it would cover your debts—but seldom do goods return undamaged. Better, I think, to grab the tiger by its tail. Better, to do this job yourself”.
The dusty shopkeeper peered down at Rae through tired eyes, pretending his undivided attention was hers and hers alone. Their meal of carrot and mutton lay steaming, beckoning, upon a desk filled by the shining wires, glass rods, and metal tools of the working Artificer. Upon an appliance of plates, coils, and steaming red ice lay the coveted book¬—hand sewn, near-falling-apart, yet full of the mysteries of their art.
A white raven sat in a gilded cage; one copper wing flapped to cut the silence between them as its multitudinous eyes tracked those that might feed it.
“Rings, I have begemmed rings which need cleaning. Mistress, she says only one of the tinkered arts is to be trusted and will pay in solid silver”. The last, punctuated with the clatter of the weighted purse onto the desk, set the winged thing to crowing its delight—for it knew what ultimately fed it.
Twin rings of cut glass and hammered brass, filthy enough to pass for gold and gems, were taken far to the back of the space, where Rae had spied the polishing wheel.
Once the heat, dust, and shards had settled, the enlightened craftsman beheld the ruined circles in his grasp, the bag of stones, the open door, the vacant space—yet—there was another, louder, explosion when the vacancy was found to extend to the book of his expanded mind.