The Past
"Rent me a gun, Jhin?"
The boy smiled. They stood together in the smell of fresh raw fish at the rear of a stall by the river. "Give me two hours. Come back in two hours."
"I need it now, man. Do you have anything now?"
Jhin rummaged in some boxes that should have held condiments for the fish. He produced a slender rod tipped with a blue-black gemstone that occasionally flickered with a sharp inner light. "Zap 'em good. One hour, twenty gold. Thirty deposit."
It was highway robbery, but Oren's desperation was rank and stood out over the smell of river fish.
"Mists, I don't need that. I need a gun. Like I want to shoot someone, you get me?"
The waiter shrugged, replacing his magic wand in the box that definitely didn't contain horseradish as it said. He left and headed for the next place he knew to get weapons on the fly.
"I want to buy a weapon," he said to the woman, a bit older than Edie, maybe. There were all sorts of blades lined up. She indicated a case as if he were stupid. "No. I have knives."
Pursing her lips, she regarded him for a long moment, then pulled an oblong box out from behind the counter. The wood was etched and burned with the stylized image of a cobra, its hood flared in warning. He watched as she opened it carefully, pulling out a matte steel tube with a small bronze pyramid on the end. Holding the tube in one hand, she pulled the pyramid away. Tiny clockwork sounds came from within, gears or something. Three oiled, telescoping segments of tightly wound coils slid out and locked.
"Cobra," she said with a serpentine smile.
He sighed.
Outside, the sky was gray. It smelled sharply of smoke. Fires weren't unknown, but he heard no sounds of tumult and terror, so he didn't think much on it. He spent a few minutes in a public restroom, trying to figure out a convenient way to conceal his clockwork snake. Finally, he tucked the handle into the waist of his trews, the tube slanting across his stomach. The striking tip nestled between his ribs and his tunic, feeling like it might clatter to the paving stones with every step, but it made him feel marginally more secure
The Hellshouse wasn't really a dealing bar, but at the right hour of the night, it attracted a similar clientele. The regulars were still there on the week-ends, but most of them faded into the rush of those who spent the work week at work. There were the sailors too, and the locals who preyed upon them. As Oren pushed through the doors, he looked for Maus, but the bartender wasn't in sight. Nadi, the bar's resident pimp, was observing with a strangely maternal interest as one of her girls went to work on a young sailor. Nadi was addicted to a specific sort of hypnotic that Oren knew how to supply. Catching her eye, he beckoned her to the bar. She came drifting through the crowd as if in slow motion, her long face slack and placid as a cow's. He was certain that she would not have appreciated that comparison, so he kept it to himself.
"Have you seen Dett tonight, Nadi?" She regarded him with her usual calm and shook her head. "Are you sure, sis?"
"Maybe... Maybe two hours ago."
"With a couple of thugs, maybe?" he pressed. "One of them thin, dark hair..." He described as best he was able the impression of a person he had seen trailing him earlier.
"No," she said at last, her smooth forehead creased with the effort of trying to recall what seemed pointless to her. "Big boys." The way she said it sounded almost pornographic, but perhaps he read too much into that due to her profession. There was no judgment. They were all trying to survive. Her eyes were mostly black, pupils dilated and enormous. She stared at his face for a long time, then lowered her gaze. Perhaps she was going to try to sell him on one of her girls. Or one of her boys. Or on herself; she liked to think she was as seductive as any whore she owned. She saw the bulge of the steel whip at his crotch. "Cobra," she said. "Huh." Eyebrow raised, she looked at him again. "Going to fuck somebody up, Oren?"
"See you later, sis." He left the bar.
The Present
This wasn't the first forge he had visited in Kalzasi.
Yesterday, he had been cleanshaven, hair combed, wearing his best. Today, he was unshaven and shuffling along with a lazier carriage. It was paranoia; he knew that. The only runesmith who knew him was Torin. But he was touring various forges, especially those who boasted magical instruments in their inventory, and even though he wasn't dropping into several characters that he had built up over the years, he thought it was good practice to come and go without being remembered as himself. There were more little birds listening for him now, but he liked layers and layers of protection. Too many times, he had thought he was safe, unnoticed, and been proven wrong.
Painfully.
This was a safe enough investigation, however. By next season, Torin would be looking for a place of his own to start his career with no one but himself to answer to, at least professionally. Aurin wanted to understand the artisanal and commercial milieu into which he would be stepping. He knew Torin careful and exacting with his work, and creative with his designs. But running a business was something else entirely, and could take up all of the time he should be spending on his craft.
A part of him wanted Torin to take an extended apprenticeship at the Shinsei's forge. He hadn't yet cased the Skyforge, perhaps his paranoia kept him from putting himself before the gaze of someone so powerful. But his newest raven wasn't practiced enough to put his ear to the ground quite so well as he would want from such a placement and he worried it would go badly for Torin, who was guileless. That was also what could make him a particularly good little bird to twitter in Aurin's ears, sharing all the secrets he heard. Perhaps someday his reach would extend to the Palace, but not yet. Just now, he was in a shop in the Commons. Flirting with the young woman keeping an eye on things had garnered him some intelligence, at least. As he suspected, there were many blacksmiths in the city who bought runeforged tools and clockwork wonders from other specialists and passed it off as their own work or collaborations.
The forge was one skill. The magical and mechanical entirely different. It made sense that mundane smiths might want to imply that they carried things they couldn't create, if only because they could keep customers in their shops that way. Connoisseurs would know where to go for specialty creations, but a cunning smith could take an order from a less knowledgeable customer and send it to someone else, perhaps charging a bit extra on top. He could respect the racket. Caveat emptor they said in one of the older languages.
Torin would be a step above, of course, as he could work in steel and in his magic. He had even mentioned an apprentice in another shop who was teaching him the basics of clockwork mechanisms, so he could either move into that himself or work with his friend. But Torin would likely be painfully honest about who he collaborated with. That was acceptable. He had the face and the soul to build many honest relationships with customers and other artisans. His life could be a thing of quiet wonder.
Hazel eyes peered through a fine glass case, faintly fogged within. There was a medical scalpel on display, along with a placard describing it as a tool forged with frostrylyth, which would allow a surgeon to cut while also numbing the incision and slowing blood flow. It made sense, though it was not something Aurin had ever considered before. Sometimes Torin went somewhere else for a time, most likely thinking up little wonders like this. He saw obstacles and then figured out how to surmount them — such was the pendant warm against his sternum, which allowed them to at least share a few words on the many days between those where they could see each other.
Aurin was investigating the commercial side of things, but he thought he ought to ask Torin more about the work itself. Perhaps he ought to lend his own runic tricks to the lad's experiments.
He caught the smith's disapproving eye when the man came out to check on the shop. With a smirk, Aurin departed. He wanted to see if there were any forges that might be for sale, in any case, so Torin wouldn't have to start with nothing.
