The Stitcher's Debt

The Market of Unborn Things

They smelled salt fish and old wood as they climbed down the stone stairs beneath Saltgate Wharf, but the scent of quicksilver and foul perfume took over as they neared the bottom.

The docks had been carved out of undersea brick vaults and smuggling tunnels called the Under-Tide. Oil lamps hung from the roof in thick glass spheres, glowing with the strange bioluminescent algae that thrived at the edges of the deep. The Market of Unborn Things had opened, its velvet-draped stalls offering such wares as clockwork mechanisms never completed by their makers (all dead), poems that had been burnt into history before the ink was even dry, and crystalline vials of bottled memories from men who had preferred to forget what they once knew.

'Keep your head down and your coat buttoned,' Sterling murmured, his shadow stretching wide before him like a hound straining at a leash. 'These merchants are refugees from collapsing dimensions - they can smell a Weaver's copper ten paces away.'

Rowan drew his collar high, his leather-gloved hands tight in his pockets; the golden fire in his palms had settled into a steady rhythm, matching the distant throb of the bay outside.

They pressed through the masked buyers, their faces all soft folds of oil paint, noble families from the Upper Ward draped in thick veils, and hulking shapes as gaunt as their voices. At the very heart of the vault, a pavilion of black iron lattice rose from a ring of stacked ledgers. Suspended from iron hooks above the pavilion were hundreds of silver needles, each scarcely more than a pin's length, and below them, a woman perched atop a stool of bound, leather ledger books.

She wore a gown of spun glass that chimed as she moved, and her face was hidden behind a smooth mask of porcelain, without eyes or mouth at all.

'Madame Vane,' Sterling called, stepping up to the edge of the lattice.

The porcelain mask turned up toward them, and a voice sound in the space between Rowan and Sterling, sharp as a flake of broken ice.

'Lord Sterling,' the voice said, 'you carry the scent of the upper street with you. And a stray dog who bleeds bright colors.'

Rowan's shoulders squared, his fingers tightening around the iron pliers at his belt.

'We aren't here for small talk, Vane,' Sterling said, moving to stand in front of Rowan. 'Someone has been buying up Unweaving steel in bulk. Guild-grade, tempered in mirror-water. Who placed the order?'

The woman's mask turned toward Sterling, and the silver needles above her head began to sway in slow hypnotic chords, like some great nest of brass wasps. 'Secrets are not traded in coin, Lord Sterling," she said, her voice as crisp as ever. 'You know the rules of the glass. Information for information. A thread for a thread. Name your price.'

'It will cost you a thread,' Sterling said flatly.

'Sterling, I do not want your dirty little secrets," Madame Vane said. 'I want the history of the shop on Ironmonger Row. Three hours ago, it ceased to exist in the ether, floating away, still hot. Give me the shopkeeper's name, his ledger of debts, and I will tell you who bought your needles.'

'Vance,' Rowan said suddenly, stepping around Sterling.

Sterling's hand shot out, seizing his shoulder with a grip of iron, but Rowan shrugged the hand away.

'Vance,' Madame Vane said, her head cocking from side to side. 'Vance, yes. The old master who stitched the Grand Canal in seventy-four. A fine thread. Very strong.' She leaned closer, the glass of her dress scraping against the leather books on her stool. 'And what did he give you, boy, before being cut? Your fingers.'

Rowan's right hand shot out of his pocket, his glove falling away to reveal the tiny, golden thread that curled over his skin in intricate knots and whorls. A hush seemed to fall over the market, the pale-faced merchants freezing in place as they turned to look at the light that bloomed from Rowan's palm, the golden threads anchoring his skin like the thorns of some great rose. The porcelain mask of Madame Vane went slack, her lips parting in a soundless gasp, and above her head, three of the silver needles snapped, falling to the floor in great shimmering clatter against the damp, dark stones.

'A bloodline of Anchors,' Vane whispered, the breath leaving her body in a shuddering wisp of air. 'The First Stitch is breaking.'

'Who bought the needles?' Rowan demanded, curling his fingers into a fist to smother the light. It scorched, searing away at his skin, but he forced himself to take one careful step forward, past the edge of the iron pavilion. 'Tell me a name, Vane, or I swear I'll press my palm against your threads and set every stitch in this vault on fire.'

'Caution, Weaver,' Vane hissed, backing away until her glass gown pressed against the leather books. 'You sit in a room full of gunpowder and you insult the cannon. The needles were not bought by a man, but by a shadow.'

'Be more precise,' Sterling said, coming up beside Rowan, his silver pocket watch already in his hand.

'A man came to me three nights ago, without coin or gold,' Vane said, her porcelain mask shuddering. 'He had a glass of erased years - fifty years of memories stolen from the Guild's past. He wore the gray robes of the High Council, but turned to the light without his shadow. Twelve unweaving needles, forged in the mirror - water of the Court's lower pool.'

'Aldous,' Rowan growled. 'Master Aldous.'

'A man called Aldous would not take such risks," Sterling said, his fingers tightening around the watch. 'He is ambitious, but not foolish. Someone inside the Court of Mirrors is feeding him information.'

Rowan opened his mouth to say another name, but the ceiling of the brick vault shuddered, a deep, sick sound rolling through the stone. Several of the glass lamps swung loose from their chains, falling to the floor in great, chiming crashes of algae-stained glass. But instead of splashing on the floor, the water ran slowly backwards up the slope of the market floor, flowing against gravity until it ran out of sight through the archway at the far end of the room. The great, echoing crash of the bay beyond was silenced, as if the sea itself had stopped.

Rowan's hands went up, the gold ink blooming across his skin in violent pulses of light. It seared the leather of his left glove, sending a long, fine ribbon of gold trailing away from his hand. 'The second strand,' Rowan whispered.

'It is snapping.' Sterling seized his arm, pulling him back. 'Now!'

A cannon's shot echoed in the Under-Tide as the wall at the back of the market split open, but no water rushed in - instead, a great wave of grayness poured out, an ocean of featureless twilight that swallowed the bricks of the vault, the velvet-draped stalls, and the screams of the merchants who had run from the fighting.

Where the gray wave passed over a merchant, the merchant simply ceased to be, as if he or she had been struck from existence, a page turned blank in a great book of names.

'Run!' Sterling yelled, dragging Rowan toward the narrow iron stairwell at the far end of the market.

Rowan looked back once,

and saw Madame Vane's mask shatter, her glass gown dissolving into ash as the gray wave crashed over the pavilion of iron lattices. In three seconds less than the eye could see, the center of the market was gone, swallowed up the stairwell, leaving only a great, empty well in the middle of the room.

Rowan scrambled up the spiral stone stairs, his knees slick with the algae, Sterling close at his back. The heat in his palms had turned to unbearable pain, like a hook in his sinews, drawing him toward the surface. They burst out onto the wooden pier at the top of the stairs, falling to the pier in a heap, Rowan's breath ragged as he stared out across the bay.

The harbor was gone. Instead of the great black oil-slick sea that had surrounded the piers only minutes ago, there stretched out into the distance a great canyon of ashen twilight, hundreds of great ships hovering over the empty trench where the ocean floor should have been.

And at the very end of the pier, watching the sea fall away into the darkness, stood a tall man, wrapped in a silver cloak that reflected no light at all, and holding a slender steel needle that dripped with liquid light.