Kosika couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she saw one kneel, heard another let out a ragged sob. A sound that splintered the woods, and made her wince, and turn her back, and run.
Part One
CLOCKS, LOCKS, AND CLEARLY STOLEN THINGS
I
RED LONDON
NOW
Master Haskin had a knack for fixing broken things.
The sign on his shop door said as much.
ES HAL VIR, HIS HAL NASVIR, it declared in neat gold font.
Once broken, soon repaired.
Ostensibly, his business was devoted to the mending of clocks, locks, and household trinkets. Objects guided by simple magic, the minor cogs that turned in so many London homes. And of course, Master Haskin could fix a clock, but so could anyone with a decent ear and a basic understanding of the language of spells.
No, most of the patrons that came through the black door of Haskin’s shop brought stranger things. Items “salvaged” from ships at sea, or lifted from London streets, or claimed abroad. Objects that arrived damaged, or were broken in the course of acquisition, their spellwork having rattled loose, unraveled, or been ruined entirely.
People brought all manner of things to Haskin’s shop. And when they did, they invariably encountered his apprentice.
She was usually perched, cross-legged, on a rickety stool behind the counter, a tangle of brown curls piled like a hat on her head, the unruly mass bound up with twine, or netting, or whatever she could find in a pinch. She might have been thirteen, or twenty-three, depending on the light. She sat like a child and swore like a sailor, and dressed as if no one had ever taught her how. She had thin quick fingers that were always moving, and keen dark eyes that twitched over whatever broken thing lay gutted on the counter, and she talked as she worked, but only to the skeleton of the owl that sat nearby.
It had no feathers, no flesh, just bones held together by silver thread. She had named the bird Vares—prince—after Kell Maresh, to whom it bore little resemblance, save for its two stone eyes, one of which was blue, the other black, and the unsettling effect it had on those it met—the result of a spell that spurred it now and then to click its beak or cock its head, startling unsuspecting customers.
Sure enough, the woman currently waiting across the counter jumped.
“Oh,” she said, ruffling as if she had feathers of her own. “I didn’t know it was alive.”
“It’s not,” said the apprentice, “strictly speaking.” In truth, she often wondered where the line was. After all, the owl had only been spelled to mimic basic movements, but now and then she’d catch him picking at a wing where the feathers would be, or notice him staring out the window with those flat rock eyes, and she swore that he was thinking something of his own.
The apprentice returned her attention to the waiting woman. She fetched a glass jar from beneath the counter. It was roughly the size of her hand, and shaped like a lantern with six glass sides.
“Here you are then,” she said as she set it on the table.
The customer lifted the object carefully, brought it to her lips, and whispered something. As she did, the lantern lit, the glass sides frosting a milky white. The apprentice watched, and saw what the woman couldn’t—the filaments of light around the object rippled and smoothed, the spellwork flowing seamlessly as the woman brought it to her ear. The message whispered itself back, and the glass went clear again, the vessel empty.
The woman smiled. “Marvelous,” she said, bundling the mended secret-keeper away inside her coat. She set the coins down in a neat stack, one silver lish and four red lin.
“Give Master Haskin my thanks,” she added, already turning away.
“I will,” called the apprentice as the door swung shut.
She swept the coins from the counter, and hopped down from her stool, rolling her head on her shoulders to stretch.
There was no Master Haskin, of course.
Once or twice when the shop was new, she’d dragged an old man from the nearest tavern, paid him a lin or two to come and sit in the back with his head bent over a book, just so she could point him out to customers and say, “The master is busy working now,” since apparently a man half in his cups still inspired more faith than a sharp-eyed girl who looked even younger than her age, which was fifteen.
Then she got tired of spending the coin, so she propped a few boxes and a pillow behind a mottled glass door and pointed to that instead.
These days she didn’t bother, just flicked her fingers toward the back of the shop and said, “He’s busy.” It turned out, no one really cared, so long as the fixing got done.