Jay bit the end of the magic scribbler and stared vacantly into the empty piece of paper.
‘What are you doing? Daydreaming?’
Lethe’s voice called her back from her reverie. In fact, she was actually daydreaming. The money they made from the Cathedral job was quite significant despite the loss of the loot bag eaten by the ogmotra. And the thief-taker Lethe knew was a no-nonsense woman, wide as an armoire and as straightforward as one. Instead busying herself in chasing the thieves and stolen goods, she made a living by waiting on both to come to her. Now she was the one brokering the deal between Lethe and Jay, and a committee of very much embarrassed Lectors that would rather have their Sacred Bond back intact. The negotiations were still ongoing but both the thief-taker and Lethe were optimistic. And that meant even more money.
It didn’t occur to her before now, that she has enough money to move. Move out of her lean-to and have an actual roof over her head. What an idea! But then if so, where to? Not anywhere in the Drowns for sure. They knew her there. And it would make tongue wagging to see the ‘loon’un’ from the alley have enough money to ‘live like the decent folk’, even if they believed that she was now working on her back. Three Knocks then? The long tenements built to house the factory workers and the employees of the magic-powered foundries erected after the Abrecari War were always overcrowded and seen people coming and going. Everyone that lived there was used to people being there one day and move the next, the neighbours took it as a sign of good manners not to ask too many questions. Jay could possibly see herself fitting in there, between the magic-works labourers in their iridescent, magic-resistant aprons and their loud families squeezed into small rooms of the tenements. She’d have space to keep her, now growing, inventory of the tools of the trade and no one would bat an eye if she was coming and going at all the hours of the day or night. Or… she could possibly rent out a room in The Clockwork Whaler and be closer to Lethe. Although she knew he’d be here only part of the time and the other…who knew? Jay still didn’t know where was the place he’d call his primary residence.
‘Well? Are you going to put some letters on that paper or you’re going to sit here until the nightfall?’
Jay fidgeted. She was sitting in the bar of the Whaler for, what it felt to her, hours now. Under the wary eye of Lethe she was filling page after page with letters and trying to make those into blocks that she could construct words from. It wasn’t going well. Lethe was making good on his threat to teach her to learn and write. And it’s been weeks now both since the Cathedral job and since he gave her the magic scribbler and paper and demanded that she put effort into becoming literate.
Jay sighed and took a few gulps from the tankard next to her, the bitter ale a welcomed distraction from the dreaded world of letters and signs. Then she put the scribbler to the page and with her tongue sticking out for extra support, she started to make lines and squiggles, hoping that they will magically turn into letters and then maybe even words if she was lucky.
‘What is that?’
‘Uhhh… a capital ‘J’?’
‘Is it now? And where is the modifier? Since all I see now is a capital ‘I’ and to tell the truth it’s not that capital to begin with.’
Jay leaned over the offending letter and tried to put additional lines onto it, which in turn made it even worse instead of better. Lethe groaned with exasperation.
‘Both the magic ink and paper are wasted on you kid. Slate and chalk is what you’re gonna get until you can make letters look like letters and not like something a cat shat out.’
‘Lethe! This is an inn not a bloody schoolhouse!’ Mort rolled into the bar, his heavily-tattooed arms barely fitting through the door. ‘Can’t you take it somewhere else?’
‘What is to you Mort? We’re buying your beer that you clearly cut with piss by the taste of it, so what is the problem? Can’t you be a good landlord and bring us some more?’
‘And a pickled herring. Please and thank you!’ called Jay, who was now very grateful to Mort for the distraction. ‘The letters make me hungry.’
Mort glanced at them sideways.
‘Pox on both yer arses!’ he said but he went off to get the beer and the herring. Since it was the middle of the day, the Whaler was still not even beginning to fill with its usual patrons and Mort had little to do. Jay thought that she probably wouldn’t be moving into the Whaler after all. As much as it would be convenient, she thought that she’d prefer not to put up with Mort all the time.
It’s been weeks. The thick cover of snow was now gone, replaced by the rains that seeped dampness and wet chill into the brick walls and into the bones of the people. Restored to her natural environment, Jay rarely thought of the time that they spent underground and what they seen there. Here under the cold arc-lights and between soot-smudged walls the underground seemed like a dream, a drug-induced hallucination. The voices she heard on their long walk out of the bowels of the earth she dismissed as a direct effect of Halkyon on her unaccustomed mind. The dagger that was resting in her sheath was the only proof that not all was just a dream, a feverish creation of overstimulated imagination. The dagger was also the only proof that there was anything else under Arklington besides the sewers. Even her burned arms were now better, treated with magic-imbued alchemical ointments. They had shed the dead skin and a new layer emerged from underneath. It was pink and still itched fiercely, but they seemed to be on the mend. All it was as it used to be all with exception of maybe…But then the bar of the Whaler was not the place to be thinking about the other thing that happened to her down there, was it? Even the memory of the hot sensations that crept over her body as they huddled on the hard stone made her cheeks burn. She lowered her head pulling her hair over her flushed face, tracing the messy letters with her eyes and hoping to lose the freshly-aroused thoughts in the maze of her writing.
Jay fidgeted again in her seat, feeling the yellow gaze upon her.
‘Well?’
‘Uh, I don’t want to write anymore today. Can we do something else?’
‘Oh? And what would you like to do then?’
What indeed…
‘Alchemy?’ blurted out Jay. You could teach me, right?’
‘Alchemy!’ cried Lethe with mock indignation. ‘See the kid that wants to learn the alchemy. And how are you going to read the formulas if you don’t know how to read?’
Jay felt deflated.
‘Ehh kid, listen. In the evening we’ll have a nice relaxing walk over the rooftops and see what fun stuff we can get, yeah? Besides…’
He leaned closer to her across the table, his green elbows almost touching her hands.
‘Remember when I told you that stealing the Sacred Bond can put us in line for commission gigs? Good ones too and well paid? Yeah? So, I think something is stirring right now. Something is coming our way. Something good. I can feel it.’
‘Good? Like what?’
‘I don’t know yet. But breaking into the Cathedral? Stealing the Sacred Bond? This is making waves. We just need to sit tight and not get ourselves locked up. That’s all.’
Lethe leaned back in his chair.
‘Now write ‘jurisdiction’ for me. That’s a word you should know how to write.’
Jay moaned pitifully and hid her face in her hands. But she felt Lethe’s words ring true. She will be patient, she promised herself.
