They stumbled into the fog of the Artisan Nexus, and their lungs heaved. The taste of lightning and iron lay thick upon their tongues.

  The rain had ceased, and it left the cobblestones slick with a greasy film of oil and soot.

  Bella held fast to his waist, and she did not let go. Not until they reached the corner of the street where Valerius dwelt.

  Then the dread fell upon her.

  She pulled away. Her hands shook, and she wiped the dust from her face in wild, jerky motions. She looked at him. Truly she looked at him. The horror of the deed she had nigh committed washed over her face. It was a grey tide.

  She retreated. Not in body, but behind the eyes. She spoke low of beam-weights and stresses, and she fled up the stairs to the historian’s rooms. She did not wait for him. August did not follow.

  He stood in the street. The brass placard swung against his bruised ribs. A cold weight. A collar.

  He was no man now. He was a force unbound that had nigh killed her.

  He slept in the alley that night. He would not return to the cage.

  He stayed there while the sun rose and dragged itself across the smog-choked sky. He stayed while the city woke, and shouted, and went back to sleep.

  Hunger clawed at his belly. He ate nothing. He drank from a leaking downspout.

  Valerius found him as the light failed.

  The historian brought no breaking of fast; he brought a sheaf of law-papers and a grim look lit by the dying sun.

  "If you stay," Valerius said, adjusting his spectacles, the glass catching the twilight, "she will seek to mend you. And next time, the reckonings may not hold."

  "I know."

  "Then we need a new bond."

  They walked through the rising fog, heading away from the Scholasticum. The city was settling into the uneasy rhythm of the night shift. A low sound of carts and voices. Distant. Muffled.

  "Where are we going?" August clutched his coat tight against the damp.

  "To the one place where a broken tool holds yet some worth."

  Valerius checked a pocket watch that had ceased to run years ago.

  "The Serpent’s Coil. It is a delightful house. The stew is mostly rat, and the ale is watered with river sludge, but the folk there are… pragmatic."

  "Sell-swords?"

  "Contractors. Seekers of fortune," Valerius corrected. "Men and women who solve ills the Guilds are too polite to name. You shall fit right in."

  They crossed into the Lower Ward. Buildings sagged here, and they leaned against each other like drunkards. The air grew thicker, heavier with the scent of unwashed bodies and despair.

  "You're selling me."

  "I am leasing you." Valerius stepped over a pile of filth.

  "There is a difference. A sale implies a transfer of ownership. A lease implies a return. I intend to get you back, August. In time."

  "Whole?"

  Valerius paused. He looked at August, eyes magnified by the spectacles.

  "Let us not look too far ahead."

  The Serpent’s Coil smelled of nothing good.

  It sat near the disused merchant gate. A squat, ugly house of black timber and river-stone that seemed to have sunk into the mud of the Lower Ward. Wet dog. Cheap leaf.

  A place for men who sold violence by the hour.

  August followed Valerius inside. Smoke made the air thick and blue. Sawdust covered the floor to drink the spills. Ale and spit and other things.

  The patrons went silent as they entered. Hard eyes tracked them. They saw the scholar in his tweed, looking like a pigeon walking into a hawk’s nest. Then they saw August. The white streak in his hair. The withered arm strapped tight to his chest. The brass placard.

  Instrument.

  A low murmur ran through the room.

  Valerius marched to the back table. A man sat there, nursing a tankard of dark ale with his left hand. His right sleeve was pinned up to the shoulder.

  Captain Percival.

  He was leather left out in the sun too long, deeply tanned, lined, his face a map of old scars. He did not look up as Valerius spread the papers over the sticky wood.

  "You're late, historian." His voice was gravel tumbling in a mixer.

  "Delays could not be helped." Valerius smoothed the parchment.

  "Matters of stability."

  Percival looked up. Eyes the color of flint. He looked at Valerius, and then he looked at August. He scanned the boy from the mud-caked boots to the white hair. He lingered on the placard.

  He snorted.

  "You want me to take a cripple and a scholar’s pet?"

  He took a pull of ale. "I run a crew, Valerius, not a nursery. And surely not a disposal service for broken toys."

  "A lease, Captain, not a recruit." Valerius tapped the document.

  "Hazardous Ordnance. You do not pay him. You maintain him. Bread and bunk. If he breaks, the Scholasticum District bears the cost. You get a breaker for the price of a loaf."

  Percival raised an eyebrow. "Breaker? He looks as if he'd shatter if I sneezed."

  "He melted Kogsworth Avenue. He caught a three-ton gear-press with his body but yesterday. He is… potent."

  Percival stood up. Tall, lean, dangerous. He walked around the table. Circled August.

  August stood still. His right shoulder throbbed where the gear-press had clipped him. A deep, angry purple bruise spread across his chest, hidden by the shirt. His arm felt like dead wood.

  Percival stopped in front of him. He poked the brass placard with a stiff finger.

  Clink.

  "Instrument 001," Percival read.

  "Does it speak?"

  "I speak." Low. Rough.

  "Do you fight?"

  "I survive."

  Percival laughed. A dry, barking sound. "Survival is for rats. Wardens fight. We kill the things that eat the rats."

  He leaned in close. Sour wine and steel.

  "You think because you cracked some pavement you're a soldier? You're a burden. One arm. No training. And a leash held by a librarian."

  "I don't need a leash."

  "Every man has a leash, boy. Some are just longer than others." Percival turned back to Valerius. "If he dies in the bog, do I have to fill out papers?"

  "Only a form for loss adjustment. Standard clerks' work."

  Percival grunted. He picked up a quill. He did not read the contract. He merely signed it. A jagged, angry scrawl.

  "Done. He's mine until he breaks or the lease expires." He looked at August. "Dawn. Training yard. Don't be late, Chattel. If you aren't there when the whistle blows, I'll send the Watch to slay you myself."

  August nodded.

  "Go." Percival waved a hand.

  "Set your affairs in order. Say goodbye to your soft bed."

  August looked at Valerius. The historian was still seated, putting the signed papers in order with care. He did not reach for his coat.

  "You aren't coming?"

  Valerius adjusted his spectacles, refusing to meet August’s gaze.

  "The trade is done, August. My presence would only… cloud the… well. I have left a note back in the rooms."

  He signaled the barkeep for a drink.

  August turned. He walked out. The eyes of the sell-swords followed him. He was not one of them at all, just gear.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  But gear had no need to feel guilt.

  The street outside Valerius’s rooms was grey. Fog rolled in off the river, thick and cold, muting the city. Aether-lamps were yellow halos in the soup.

  Bella was waiting.

  She was pacing in front of the door. She still wore the clothes from the accident, the white shirt stained with his blood and the floor’s dust. She had washed her face, but the red rims around her eyes remained.

  She was not weeping now, just reckoning, thinking. Her mind was a fortress again, rebuilding the walls he had smashed through.

  She saw him approach. She stopped pacing and blocked the path to the door.

  "Valerius told me," she said. Voice tight. Held in check.

  "He left a note."

  "I need my things. My coat. The carving tools."

  "This is madness." She crossed her arms. "You have a dead limb. You have a great wound from a heavy blow less than two days past. Your weakness is grave. Going to the Wardens is no trade. It is a strange form of death."

  "It is work. It is a purpose."

  "It's folly! They're sell-swords, August. They die for copper coins in the mud. You are… you are worth more than that."

  "Am I?"

  "Yes!" Her control cracked.

  She stepped closer.

  "You have that thing inside you, that… That potential. And you're going to get it killed in a bog? For what? To prove a point?"

  "To get away from the table."

  "I can fix the governor," she pleaded.

  She reached out, almost touched his arm, then pulled back.

  "I can make it safe. I can set the flow right so it doesn't hurt. We just need time. We need to cast the numbers again."

  "Safe?" August laughed. A bitter, jagged sound.

  "Like the press? Like the blast?"

  "That was a mistake. A wrong reckoning. I won't make it again."

  "You will. Because you don't see me, Bella. You see the problem. You see the broken gear that needs filing down."

  "That is not true."

  "It is."

  He looked at the brass placard. Chattel.

  "I'm not sitting in that cage anymore. I'm not waiting for you to turn the dial."

  "I saved you," she whispered. "I gave you a name. I gave you the armor."

  "And then you nigh crushed me."

  She flinched. The truth of it hit her like a physical blow.

  "I'm leaving, Bella. I'm going. I'm going to learn how to use this… thing. On my own terms."

  "You will die."

  "Maybe. But at least I'll die on my feet."

  He stepped around her. She moved to block him again.

  "August, pray. Stay. We can… we can find the way. Together."

  He looked at her. He looked at the woman who had lain beneath him in the dust, her eyes wide and human.

  He wanted to stay. He wanted to go back to the roof and eat bread.

  But he felt the weight of the placard. Felt the echo of the drill in his skull.

  "It's better than being your test subject."

  The words hung in the fog. Final.

  Bella recoiled. Her face went pale. It was a slap. A rejection of everything she was, everything she tried to be.

  She stepped aside.

  August walked past her. He went up the stairs and gathered his few belongings. The rough wool coat. The stone chisel. The pouch Borin had given him.

  When he came back down, she was gone.

  He could not sleep.

  He walked to the outskirts. He went past the silent manufactories and the slums where the shadows watched with hungry eyes. He walked until the city gave way to the broken earth of the old quarries.

  Dawn was hours away. The sky was a bruised purple.

  The quarry was a scar. A deep, jagged wound in the earth where the First Dominion had mined the stone for the aqueducts. Grey. Silent. Filled with still water that reflected nothing.

  He was not alone.

  A figure sat on a flat rock near the water’s edge.

  An old man.

  He was arranging slates. Balancing them. Impossible stacks of flat grey stone, towering five feet high. Held together by nothing but the pull of the earth.

  He looked like a hermit who had forgotten how to speak to folk, in rags that were clean but threadbare, with hands like gnarled roots.

  August walked down the scree slope. Stones clattered under his boots. Clack. Clack.

  The old man did not look up. He placed a final, tiny pebble on top of a swaying tower of slate. It held.

  "You shout, boy." Deep voice. Earth moving against earth.

  "Even when your mouth is shut. The stone likes not a shouter."

  August stopped. "I'm doing nothing."

  "You push."

  The old man turned. Eyes the color of moss.

  "You walk like you're fighting the ground. 'Move,' you say. 'Break.' Proud."

  "The stone screams at me. It hurts."

  "Because you listen not. You try to out-shout it."

  The old man stood up. He moved slowly, but there was a weight to him. He looked like he weighed three times what a man should weigh.

  "The song is not in the stone, boy."

  He tapped August’s chest. "It is in you. The stone is but the echo. If you scream, it screams back. If you bleed, it drinks."

  "How do I stop it?"

  "You stop it not. You be with it."

  The old man bent down and picked up a smooth, dark river stone. A pebble. Round and perfect.

  He held it out. "Take it."

  August took the stone. Cold. Heavy.

  "Make it float."

  "I can't. The Aether is weak here."

  "The Aether is everywhere. It is but quiet. Ask it."

  August closed his eyes. Tried to summon the roar. Tried to push.

  Pain. A spike in his temple. The pebble stayed heavy.

  "Nay," the old man said.

  "Push not. Lift not. Ask it to fly."

  August breathed. Let go of the anger. Let go of the fear. He thought about the bird he had carved. He thought about the moment the First Dominion stone had hummed in the workshop. Listening.

  He felt the grain of the pebble. The layers of silt and time.

  Up? he asked. Not a command. A thought offered.

  Hum.

  A tiny vibration. A shiver in his palm.

  The pebble lifted.

  An inch. Two inches. It hovered, turning slowly, bobbing like a cork in water.

  It did not scream. It sang. A low, contented note.

  August opened his eyes. He stared at the floating stone.

  "There," the old man whispered.

  "Bind with it. Do not conquer it."

  The pebble dropped back into August’s hand.

  The old man sat back down.

  "Keep it. When the noise gets too loud, remember the weight. Remember to ask."

  "Who are you?"

  The old man smiled. A smile of cracks and fissures.

  "Just a listener. Go. The Captain likes not lateness."

  August froze. The chill of the quarry seeped back into his bones. He had not mentioned Percival. He had not mentioned the lease, or the dawn deadline, or the Serpent’s Coil.

  "How…" August stepped back.

  "How do you know that?"

  The old man did not answer. He just picked up another slate, his mind already drifting back to the impossible balance of the tower. He hummed a low, grinding note. It closed the talk as effectively as a door slamming shut.

  August put the pebble in his pocket. It felt warm now. Like a heartbeat.

  The Warden training yard was a pit of mud.

  Located behind the Serpent’s Coil, it was a fenced-in square of churned earth that smelled of sweat and failure.

  Dawn broke grey and miserable. Mist clung to the ground.

  Thirty new bloods stood in a ragged line. Hard men. Desperate women. Old soldiers with haunted eyes and farm boys who had lost their land to the banks. They wore mismatched leather and rusted mail.

  August stood at the end of the line.

  He was wrapping his arm.

  He had stolen a leather belt from the rooms. He strapped his right arm, the withered one, the bruised one, tight to his torso. Buckled it hard. He could not use it. If he moved it, the pain blinded him. If he tried to lift a weapon with it, the muscle would fail.

  He made himself one-armed.

  Other recruits stared. Stared at the white streak in his hair. Stared at the brass placard swinging on his chest. Instrument.

  Captain Percival walked down the line. He held a baton of ash wood.

  He did not yell. He whispered. And his whisper carried more threat than a scream.

  He stopped in front of August. Looked at the bound arm. Looked at the placard.

  "Look at this."

  His voice carried across the yard.

  "The Scholar’s toy. One arm, no sense, and a necklace that says 'please don't kill me'."

  The recruits snickered.

  "He's the rock-breaker," a big man with a broken nose whispered. "The one who melted the street."

  "He's a paperweight." Percival tapped the placard with his baton.

  Clack.

  "If you can't lift a shield, Chattel, you're just cover for the real soldiers. Why are you here?"

  "To work."

  "To die," Percival corrected.

  "Run."

  They ran.

  Laps around the yard. Through the mud and the puddles of still water.

  August struggled. His balance was off. Without his right arm to pump, his gait was lopsided. He slipped. Fell. The mud coated him.

  "Get up! The foe waits not for you to wipe your face!"

  August got up. Ran. Lungs burned. Shoulder throbbed in time with his steps.

  Endure, he told himself. You are stone.

  They ran until three recruits vomited. Until one fell.

  Then they fought.

  "Swords," Percival barked.

  He pointed to a rack of wooden practice wasters. Heavy, blunt sticks weighted with lead.

  "Pair off."

  August found himself facing the big man with the broken nose. A veteran named Rook.

  Rook grinned. He had all his teeth, which was a surprise.

  "Don't melt me, rock-witch."

  August took the wooden sword in his left hand. It felt wrong. Strange. The weight was too far forward. A tool for slicing, for fine work.

  August did not have fine work. He had gravity.

  "Begin!"

  Rook lunged.

  August tried to parry. Brought the sword up.

  Clack.

  Rook battered his guard aside easily. The blow jarred August’s wrist.

  Rook spun. Slammed the wood into August’s ribs.

  August stumbled back. Air driven from his lungs in a choked gasp. He could not find his center. He was fighting the weapon as much as the man.

  Rook advanced.

  Whack. Whack. Whack.

  Shoulder. Thigh. Ribs.

  August fell. Landed in the mud, gasping. The wooden sword flew from his hand.

  Rook stood over him, raising the waster for a finishing blow.

  "Enough!"

  Percival’s voice cracked the air.

  Rook lowered the weapon and stepped back with a smirk.

  Percival walked over. He looked down at August, at the mud, at the wooden sword lying in a puddle.

  "Wretched."

  August wiped mud from his eyes.

  "I… I'm not left-handed."

  "The enemy doesn't care about your skill of hand. You try to paint with a needle. You try to be a duelist. You swing like a builder, not a soldier."

  Percival turned. He walked to a weapon rack near the wall. Filled with the heavy, ugly things. Maces. Axes.

  He reached down. Picked up something that looked like it belonged in a quarry, not a battlefield.

  A breaking hammer.

  It had a haft of hickory, wrapped in rough leather. The head was a block of cast iron, square and brutal, with a spike on the back. It weighed ten pounds.

  Percival walked back. Tossed it.

  It spun through the air.

  August reached up with his left hand. Caught it.

  Thud.

  The weight hit his palm.

  It did not feel strange. It felt… correct.

  The balance was at the head. It wanted to fall. It wanted to hit.

  "Don't duel. Break the foundation. If you can't hit the man, hit the knee. If you can't hit the knee, hit the floor he stands on."

  August stood up. Gripped the haft. Knuckles turned white.

  He looked at the dummy standing in the corner of the yard, a wooden post wrapped in straw.

  He walked over to it.

  He did not try to fence. Did not try to feint.

  He swung.

  Used his hips. Used the turn of his torso. Let the weight of the iron head do the work.

  CRACK.

  The hammer hit the dummy’s leg strut.

  The wood did not just break. It exploded. Splinters flew and the dummy toppled, the main support sheared clean through.

  Silence in the yard.

  Rook stopped smirking.

  August looked at the hammer. He felt the vibration of the blow travel up his arm. Not the song of the stone, but close. The song of impact.

  Percival nodded. Grimly satisfied.

  "Better. But hitting wood is easy. Wood doesn't bleed. And wood doesn't scream."

  He pointed to the gate.

  "Dismissed. Except the Chattel."

  Dusk settled over the yard. The new bloods filtered out, heading for the stew pot and the ale. They gave August a wide berth.

  They respected the hammer. They did not respect the man.

  Percival stood by the gate, smoking a thin cigarillo. Smoke curled blue in the twilight.

  "You want to be a Warden? Or do you want to be a Lease?"

  "I want to be of use."

  "The lease stays in the yard. The lease cleans the latrines and sharpens the swords. A Warden goes where I say. When I say."

  Percival took a drag of the smoke. Exhaled slowly.

  "I have a task. A contract the Guilds will not touch. Too dirty. Too small."

  "Where?"

  Percival pointed West. Toward the sinking sun. Toward the rising fog that hid the horizon.

  "West Bog."

  August stiffened. The Bog was a death trap. Sinkholes. Gas pockets. Things that crawled in the dark.

  "There is a tower. Ruined. First Dominion watch-post. It sinks into the mire. The foundation is rotten."

  "I know it. I have seen the maps."

  "Good. Because you're going there."

  Percival flicked ash onto the mud.

  "Crag Bats. Nesting in the belfry. The Alchemists need the wings for cures. They pay a high price. I need three pairs. Whole."

  August stared at him. "That is… that tower is unsound. If I climb it, the weight…"

  "Then tread lightly, rock-breaker." Eyes cold. "Or don't come back."

  This was not a mission; it was a culling. Percival was testing the goods. If August survived, he was worth the feed. If he died, the lease was cancelled.

  "You have one arm. You have a hammer. And you have that trick of yours. Use them. Or become part of the foundation."

  August looked at the hammer in his hand. The iron head was cold.

  He looked at the placard.

  He looked at the West.

  Fog turned purple as the light died. The Bog waited.

  He thought of Bella. Thought of her face when he left.

  He thought of the old man. Ask it to fly.

  He nodded.

  "I shall have them," August said.

  He turned. He did not go back to the barracks. He walked out of the gate. Walked West.

  Into the dark. Into the mud.

  Toward the tower that groaned in the night.