Black Cat Smithy, Kingsway Market
The Mugrobi’s right arm was tucked close to his side, his wrist resting against the edges of the linen pocket, the prosthetic hand giving the pocket the right sort of bulge, one that wouldn’t catch the eye. He could feel the band squeezing at his wrist, digging into the sensitive skin there, and he longed to stop and scratch the itch, but that – no, that, surely, he could not dare. His light-colored trousers were loose and comfortable, at least, though the shirt and jacket he wore over them seemed to strain over his skin, the high collar of the Anaxi-made garments stifling against his throat.
Over his left shoulder, Aremu carried a rucksack, and he could feel the jangling of it against his back, the thumping of the bits of metal inside. He thought, not for the first time, that he would have done well to stay in the Soot District – to find a smith in Hollow Street, where there were not so many Seventen in their green uniforms, where there might even be a few others like him, doing their best to hide in plain sight, to stay out of field range, to keep their eyes straight ahead and their secrets hidden beneath their skin. And yet he could not trust just any smith with his designs, and he did not know when again he might return to Thul Ka – and so he hoped, very much, that the challenges of Anaxas would not be too much to overcome.
Aremu knew better, too, than to ask Niccolette to do this for him. She would have agreed to try, and that might have been the worst of it. He felt some days as if he could not look at her without seeing the ghost of Uzoji, and he thought, too, that she could not look at herself without feeling the same. He had seen her, glancing sideways at the mirror, and he had wondered – but, then, he was glad not to know. He could not help to shoulder the burden of her pain, and he could not share his own; there was no space in either of them for it. As he edged past the sort of stall that sold the weak, bland stuff Anaxi called tea, as he walked a little faster at the feeling of a glance against the back of his neck, Aremu missed Uzoji terribly; he missed the knowledge of his best friend at his back.
But Aremu did not dwell. If he had been the dwelling sort, he might never have left his bed in the last eighteen years, and he had never had the luxury of being so idle. He thought perhaps there was a lesson for Niccolette in that, but it was not one that he could share with her. She would learn it in time, he hoped; he thought perhaps she was learning it already.
It was a strange mirror of Thul Ka here, Aremu felt. This market would be a drop in the corner of even Windward Market, and even the Liars Market dwarfed it. And yet in such a small corner one could hardly tell; the little bits and pieces of life seemed to be the same everywhere. Even pale-skinned and weak-tea’d, with an odd, harsh sort of Estuan lingering in the air, Aremu could see the same bustling haggling, the same life teeming all around him. It was a connection of which he would have preferred to be unaware.
And, finally, there it was – the smithy he had heard of, the Black Cat Smithy. A human smith, not a galdor; he had hoped it might be easier that way. Aremu came to a stop at the edge of it, shoved his right arm a little more firmly into his pocket, and glanced around.
Aremu swallowed, once, and cleared his throat against the dust of the streets. “Good afternoon,” The passive called, his Estuan lilting in a distinctly Mugrobi accent, a slight frown etched onto his face. “Is anyone here?”