“Seventeen,” Yu-ra repeated.
She stood up, walked two paces away and came back.
“Mine says one.”
“I know.”
“No. I mean—” She stopped. “Sorry. Give me a moment.”
Jin waited.
Yu-ra sat down again, leaving a smaller space between them than before.
“Does Theo know?”
“Yes.”
She nodded once.
Jin told her about the violet forest. About the first creature breaking apart and the three points that had changed everything. He kept his voice low, but once he started, he didn't turn it into a joke.
Yu-ra listened without interrupting until he reached the doorway in his kitchen.
Then she looked at him.
“Your kitchen.”
“Poor neighborhood. Good connections.”
She laughed despite herself and pressed her palms over her face.
“I'm glad,” she said through her fingers. “I am. I'm also jealous enough to bite something.”
“There are dumpling boxes outside.”
She lowered her hands.
“Can I go?”
He explained the one-object limit.
“I'm light,” she said automatically.
“You're alive.”
“Inconvenient.”
He laughed. So did she, more quietly.
“When that changes,” she said, “ask me too.”
“I will.”
She held his gaze for a moment, then knocked her knee against his.
“Meanwhile, your landing is terrible. Seventeen hasn't fixed that.”
They practiced until Arin returned to complain that the beautiful light had gone and neither of them had noticed.
By the time Jin reached the Fantasy watch building, his shirt had dried against his back and his stomach was asking whether a successful lunch entitled him to dinner.
A stranger sat on the fallen gatepost, eating an apple with a knife.
She had copper-threaded hair, a patched green coat and three little glass pins hanging from her collar. The guard who'd left for the village stood beside her, looking relieved to have delivered his problem to somebody else.
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“Tamsin,” Garran said.
The woman pointed at Jin. At one pin. Then held out her hand.
Jin shook it. Get faster updates on g.com.
She sighed and turned the hand palm-up.
Oh. Professional hospitality.
Kessa handed him his coin pouch. Tamsin plucked out the silver, held it to the light and waited.
Jin caught her wrist before she could pocket it.
She picked up the glass pin with her other hand and touched it to her throat.
“Tamsin.”
She offered it to him.
“Jin.”
The glass warmed. A second word followed her name, then a quick stream of speech. It meant nothing.
She tapped his throat, encouraging him.
“I want to know what you people are saying about me,” Jin told the pin.
Tamsin's eyebrows rose.
“That should keep me in work.”
Jin froze.
She smiled and slid the pin's clasp onto his collar, glass against his skin.
“Trade tongue. You speak yours, they hear Common. You hear Common, you get the meaning. Spoken words only, so don't ask it to teach you to read.”
“I understood that.”
“Excellent. Then you'll understand that the silver is mine.”
She pocketed it.
Jin turned to Garran.
The veteran folded his arms.
“Stop offering yourself to animals.”
Bram bent double.
“I wasn't—”
“You bowed to a crownstalker,” Kessa said. “Then you danced at the raker. There is a pattern.”
“Professional versatility.”
Bram slid off the gatepost laughing. His sore hand tucked against his chest made it look more painful than it sounded.
“You could have told me the reel was going to be thrown,” he said.
“I didn't know until you suggested it.”
“I suggested the rope. The rope!”
Jin looked at him.
Bram looked at Jin.
Kessa covered her mouth with her good hand.
“My reel didn't.”
“I'll buy the next one.”
“With what? I watched her take your money.”
Jin held up two coppers.
Bram looked genuinely wounded.
Garran handed Jin a round oatcake before the argument got louder.
“Eat.”
“Does he always do that?” Jin asked Kessa.
“Feed strays? Yes.”
Garran pointed at her.
She took a bite of her own cake and pretended not to see him.
Tamsin took another bite of apple.
“One willing voice from each language binds the pin. That's what we just did. It won't steal thoughts. It will let people lie to you in wonderfully clear sentences.”
“How do I turn it off?”
“Take it off. Please don't swallow it. I had one customer.”
Garran interrupted with the wrapped copper band.
Tamsin's amusement faded when she saw the stamp.
“Rook.”
“You know it?” Jin asked.
“I know the man. Used to mend his calling bells. Stopped when he wanted one that would keep ringing inside a creature's skull.”
She tapped the band with the back of her knife.
“Recall collar. Helps a handler find his beast. He'll know roughly where this stopped moving.”
Garran looked toward the road.
Kessa stood.
“He's been pushing things out of the quarry,” she said. “Charging the farms to drive them back.”
“That sounds familiar,” Bram muttered. “He wanted half my feather money last month.”
Jin looked at his pouch. Two coppers clicked together at the bottom.
“Does nobody here have a normal job?”
“I do,” Tamsin said. “You paid me.”
A voice called from the road.
“I heard somebody was dancing with my competitors.”
A lean man in a red scarf walked through the broken gate. Small bronze bells hung from the leather strap across his chest.
He looked at Jin's shoes, then at the white thread stuck to the gatepost.
“Which one of you,” he asked, “has been feeding my runner footwear?”