My routine, in the cycles that now followed, quickly fell into place. At high cycle in Blackbloom all the bells all across the city would ring and ring, and in half-sleep I would hear the rush of water through ancient pipework.

Thereafter I would rise, alongside Roz and Hakru, while the apprentice Elfyro prepared breakfast then set out our tools while we ate. I always rushed breakfast, as I knew how important it was to kickstart the furnace for the cycle’s work. My father had always instilled that into me. Keep it hot. Nothing worse than a cold furnace.

It was turns and turns of work here. The Blue Anvil itself was a beast of a thing, huge and hollow and wrought of azure dragonmetal. I asked Roz who built it and she tossed me a shrug and told me it was Dryskar’s ancestors apparently. But after that first cycle where she showed me the ropes, and gave me the figures she used to bring it to temp, she did not check on me at all.

I supposed I would not check on me either. It was a boring job, but necessary, and I did it gladly enough. I liked to bring the furnace to a fever pitch of intensity after lunch, which would allow the heat to simmer in there and I could oft duck out for a turn or two once I got the hang of it. I’d done this routine back at home, too.

All of us except Dryskar would typically sup together as the cycle drew late. For these dinners we oft took turns cooking, though when they came around to me I had to admit I had no idea how to work with the deepfruits and inland meats they had here. I did, however, promise to cook sea tangerine stew for them soon, but I’d have to go to the market first.

One late cycle, as we sat around counting the cave stars in the second-floor communal living area, Dryskar came and took me aside.

“You are working out just fine, Klask. It is a compliment really. I didn’t have high hopes for you. But I admit, truly, I was inspired by your vase. I work now upon a thing, a jungle of glass and ice. It is so far solely in my mind.”

The nefra chittered at himself.

“I ramble, child, my apologies.”

“I appreciate it,” I got in.

“For now you will continue to keep the furnace for me, and in return we shall advance your journeyperson’s training.”

His compounded eyes regarded me. Perhaps trying to see how I’d react.

“You’ll receive a small stipend. As well as access to the second-floor workshop if you haven’t.”

He pointed next door.

“Roz showed me. I just haven’t really had the opportunity to make anything yet.”

“Find the time,” Dryskar advised. “Roz already has the lanterns to give you. If you make some bits of glass that are any good perhaps we’ll put them out to the street.”

“Sure. Gladly.”

Back with the others, after Dryskar had left, I strode up to Roz and held out my hand. It was a playful gesture, she and I had built up a bit of a rapport, and she took it in stride.

“My stipend?” I asked.

She flipped a pouch up into the air, and I caught it with the reflexes from an entire youth of shell-foraging. It jingled lightly.

“There it is,” Roz said, nodding curtly and folding her arms. “So, what’re ya gonna do with that there stipend?”

“Well…Dryskar said I was to use it to buy glasswork supplies.”

“Hah! We’ve got plenty of supplies…right Haka?”

She looked at him until he nodded reluctantly.

“So,” Rozraheth said, turning back to me, “what ya should do with that money, is come meet me and Aqta and a coupla other people at the Flaming Flagon. Sorry Elfyro you’re just too young. Haka—you know you’re always welcome.”

“Hm,” Hakru said, straightening up and looking at me. “Maybe.”

So it was that I found myself at the Flaming Flagon not a turn hence. A live band played a dipping melody somewhere beneath us.

“Where are they?” I called to Roz as we walked past the bar and into a downward-sloped corridor. “The band I mean.”

“Deep, in the Echo. Maybe we check it out later, ya?”

She bared her teeth, then went on. I, almost out of habit at this point, followed her. The next level took a good fifty steps to reach, and we entered a large hollow chamber, a bar in one corner, still the music wafting, the lighting low and lurid and wafting with spores.

In the open air of the hollow, a bit of sporesong curled and spun according to the beat.

“AQTA!” Rozraheth screamed.

She lumbered forward to a round table which three people sat around, and grabbed up a darkling nearly from sitting into a huge hug. I stood there behind her. The sporesong hung low over the table here.

I knew of Aqta, as Roz had spoken of her girlfriend often and easily, but I didn’t know the others. Aqta was a darkling, spectacled, orange of hair, which I’d never seen before. After Roz set Aqta back down she introduced me, yelling over the pulsing music.

“Hey! This is Klask! He works with me! This is my girlfriend Aqta, and these are our friends Glym and Lhuna!”

Glym, the pale druan I had met when I’d first arrived in Blackbloom, before I’d even gotten to the Blue Anvil. He wore a dark silk robe with a crimson mantle overtop it dotted with fungus patterns. Beside him, another druan held up a hand in a brief wave. By deduction, this was Lhuna.

She was, to me, beautiful and unctuous. Her skin carried a sheen like the dew on a moth, and her hair shimmered. She had on a black dress that shone with bits of gold and silver within it. But just as soon as she had waved to me, she turned back to conversation with Aqta.

Glym stood, then held out his hands in astonishment.

“Klask!” he exclaimed. “How’d you like that ssyoth?”

He turned to the others.

“Believe it or not, I know this druan already.”

He extended his hand, and we clasped arms briefly. He winked.

“You looking to get another drink?”

“Nah…” I said, sitting down.

Glym sank bank into his seat beside me. “Sure, I get you.”

“This must be your favorite place,” I jested.

“We live close,” Glym said quietly.

Roz jerked her head at Glym. “What’s up with him?”

Another voice spoke, dark and mellifluous. It was, beside him, Lhuna.

“He got dumped is all. He’s dour.”

“Sorry love,” Roz said to Glym.

He shrugged and looked down.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“That guy you met?” I asked him.

He nodded. “Thanks, Klask.” A wan smile. “I’ll be fine, really, it’s just gotten me down. Stuff happens and people are different. I get it. I get it. barely knew him really…”

“It’s all right to feel bad.”

Hakru slid in across from me with a pitcher of ssyoth and began pouring it out into five cups. We chatted on and shared the beer. The music was gradually getting louder and more frenetic.

“How’s your job?” Glym asked loudly.

“It’s good! I’m still just fitting in, learning, you know, but they give food and lodging. What about you? What do you do?”

The well-dressed darkling’s eyes widened, then he grimaced. “Thought you knew, Klask.”

He gestured to the sporesong orbiting the chamber.

“You see how this stuff goes gold around me and Lhuna? The sporesong? It tells you things…keeps track of things…you know? The gold means we’re Upper Fate.”

I knew, well enough, what the Upper Fate meant. At least from books I knew. Blackbloom’s social stratas were divided into three Fates, of which the Upper Fate was the highest. The Upper Fate dealt generally with the administration of Blackbloom. However, they were moreso known for their parties and hedonistic lifestyles in the winds of gossip that reached the S’uldra.

“She’s…uh…your sister then?” I asked. “Lhuna, I mean.”

“Twin sister, yeah.”

He looked over to her, but she was in the midst of conversing with Aqta and a very boredlooking Rozraheth.

At this point I had begun to feel the ssyoth. Hakru tapped the empty pitcher which made a brief, shrill ringing sound, startling everyone at the table.

“It ain’t my work anyway,” Hakru said of the pitcher, feeling around it for a maker’s mark. “Klask, get us another, eh?”

I got up and took the pitcher to the bar, which had started to be quite crowded with casually-dressed denizens, and was waiting my turn when Roz showed up beside me.

“Shamara.”

“I’ve got it,” I said loudly.

“We doin a little more than that, ya know.”

I looked at her in clear confusion. I supposed I had done that a lot lately.

She began to sway rhythmically from side to side, her long arms raised.

“Dancin, Klask! When the rhythm goes up…we’re—” she waved generally around “—goin down into the Echo!”

“The Echo?!”

But the tender was upon us, and soon enough came back with another pitcher of ssyoth. I took out my pouch with the stipend inside and fumbled out the lanterns. There were, altogether, three coins. The tender scooped them without another word, and I took the pitcher back to the table and poured everyone a second round.

I nursed the new ssyoth, looking back for Roz, and mostly just listening in on the conversation, which had drifted to the thread of Aqta’s living arrangements. She rented, it seemed, in the sapphire canto, Enthris, but would be preparing to move somewhere.

“I heard to stay out of Lower Blackbloom,” I said.

Glym and Lhuna nodded at that, but Aqta clicked her tongue.

“No, no…there’s bad parts and good parts, just like anywhere. Look…I’m just happy to be getting out of the Spire with a real credential. I lived my whole life down there. It’s not bad.”

A brief silence fell, interrupted by Roz moments later returning with two shots, one of which she gave to Aqta. The shot had a layer of black liquor laid perfectly atop a layer of white. They interlinked arms within the elbow and took up the glasses and clinked them.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Light & Shadow,” Glym said dryly as we watched them do it.

“It’s Butterfly Tevalia and usually jhorum, but any dark liquor will do really.”

They slammed down their shotglasses but the sound seemed to barely carry here.

“Finish your drinks!” Roz hollered, still working on hers.

I took a big gulp, being further along than almost anyone. Glym pushed his aside and burped and sat back.

“My brother is ready,” Lhuna said, glowering at him.

The music suddenly went uptempo. Roz looked around, then stood and boldly proclaimed, “To dancing!”

No one protested. We all peeled ourselves out of the chairs and went to the bar for one more blurred serving. I saw the bartender pour out five white clouds straight onto the bar from a bottle. He then scooped them into shotglasses and added the second layer, the dark liquor.

“Light & Shadow,” Roz said and handed them out to us.

The world narrowed to a corridor of chaos, and I stepped through into the dance.

The Echo Roz spoke of was a place, deep beneath the fruit of the towercap, at least it was flights of curling stairs, wherein a band played in a chamber with holes leading every which-way above.

It was a medley of a dance-pit and we lingered upon one another and others as well. The band all nefra plucking delicate silver-gold instruments of wind and string in dragon-rhythms that we followed.

Time broke apart here for me.

Lhuna and I danced twice. The first time shortly after arrival, I showed her a wilderness dance, I was not sure if it looked tribal or not, and in the cacophony here I felt anonymous except to her. She learned some, demonstrated some of the fire-dance technique which had taken me years to learn.

I noticed quickly she was a natural at this, at dance forms. I had never been. The memories of the struggle to learn fire-dancing came back to me. If I tried to dance like her and Glym, full of motion and spinning energy, I was sure I would embarrass myself.

The second time we danced closer and without the frills of tradition. She smelled of moonsuckle. We spoke close like this, but I was an outsider as to what it was about.

The next thing I knew the early cycle’s bells were ringing. I was in bed, in my room in the Blue Anvil, I quickly surmised. The nearby bedside window was cracked open. The curtains flared above my face in the breeze. My head throbbed, and each bell-ring made it worse. I slammed the window.

I thought back on the cycle previous and the memories of the Flaming Flagon streamed back in, the drinking and dancing with Roz, Aqta, Glym and Lhuna.

My room was furnished with dresser, bed, desk and chair, and not much else at all. No klepsydra, no endtable, and no decorations. The walls barren and uninteresting. The furnishings wrought from gray, ashen mushroomwood.

I had decorated the dresser with a few sentimental items. My eyes ran over them now. The shark god figurine. I thought of Jaky as I looked at it. It had been a while since I thought of her. Her furtive glances, her playful laughter. I wondered how she was doing. I wondered when I would see her again.

At breakfast I poked despondently at the eggs, sitting alongside Hakru, with nary a sign of Roz, until he finally broke the silence.

“Hey, Klask,” he said quietly, “you want any jam with that?”

He held out the opened jar of bloodjam, but I waved him off.

“Have fun last night?”

“Yeah. Really glad I got to see some more of the city. Glad I got to meet some people too. You know them already?”

“A little.” Hakru shrugged, an effort in his current state. “I know Aqta pretty well. She and Roz have been a thing for years. The other two not as much. They’re Roz’s friends, I know that, they’ve known her a while. They’re nobles.”

The last statement he said almost ominously. Like a warning. He glanced at my plate.

“Better get a move on soon. Furnace’s gotta run.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

I knew I was plodding today. I scarfed a few more bites, then shoved the plate aside for Elfyro. I hurried downstairs to start the fire. As I went, Roz rushed past me in the hall, going upward. She hadn’t been at breakfast.

“Hey!” I said as we passed.

She gave me a nod and a sharp-toothed smile.

In the furnace room I hinged open the furnace’s dragonmetal door and began to shovel. My head still throbbed. Shovelful after shovelful of coke until the flame roared in my face. I set aside the shovel, closed the furnace and leaned against the wall, resting, until the heat began to rise.

I found Roz in the workshop, back turned, looking into the firing chamber through a small window.

“It’s firing up now,” I announced.

“Come help me then…”

“Glad to,” I said with relish.

She gestured at me.

“Get your tools then!”

I looked down at my clawed hands, which were empty and sooty. I ran over to my room and grabbed my oiled tool satchel from where it had been gathering dust on the desk. I was ready to prove my worth, I suppose.

I eyed Roz when I returned. “Shoveling coke—it changes you. I’m sure you know.”

She laughed and laughed at that.

“So what I mean is…” I unsheathed a blowpipe and a rod with a flourish. “I’ve been waiting for this. You ken?”

“Ya, ya seem ready.” She bared her teeth at thatl. “We make a lotta cups, carafes, vases, jugs, ya ken?”

“Vessels.”

“Vessels. Exactly. Ya wanna just throw down a few?”

We did just that when the slag got hot enough. I blew some simple cups then started in on some stemmed items. Working alongside Roz I had to keep an eye out so I didn’t bump into her. I was used to working alongside my father. He was a careful man, and determinedly habitual. Both of these things Roz was not.

I watched her. I saw in her slitted green eyes the fires of creation. I saw her blow out a long bubble then twist out three different long glasses, the rods she wielded swirling as she worked.

After an hour of this I could feel the heat diminishing. I went back and shoveled more coke, then returned to find Roz and Elfyro eating contemplatively at the little common table. The table was set with two plates and a carafe of water and a few cups. The plates bore spiced biscuits, brown with orange flecks.

I sat down and delicately plucked one, careful not to get too much soot on it. The biscuit was still warm. I bit into it, and chewed. It was incredibly, fiery hot.

“Water,” I gasped, coughed, then determinedly chewed it up and swallowed.

Elfy and Roz were both giggling. The boy poured me a glass and then pushed it over with a last smirk. He was not that much younger than me, really, but we were on opposite sides of the divide between which a child grows up. At least, I thought so.

“Keeper take it,” I cursed. “What in the great gleaming gill did you put in these!?”

“I told ya he doesn’t know of aught,” Roz said to Elfyro.

“It’s Bluereach spicecap,” Elfyro said. “Master got a visit from…her.”

“Who?” I asked.

“A Shaper’s priest,” Roz explained, and grimaced.

That she called her the Shaper told me all I needed to know. Many others would just as easily call her the Moonmother. I felt similarly. In my youth I had befriended a few of her spirits, and found them charming.

I shrugged. “I saw godglass once. Just a mummer’s trick really.”

Roz stared at the table, then shook her head. “No, no, see Klask that’s just not true. Ya don’t know but I’ve been all over Valthyr. Ya know Oceanflame? I saw what she’s buildin there. I tell ya it ain’t no mummer’s trick. I tell ya it’s a sight for the ages.”

“If it’s so impressive,” I said carefully, “then why don’t you like her?”

She glowered. “Watch her mad hands turning everything over. Watch the corridors that go into crystal parkways, into empty cathedrals. Watch her mad hands making the old ghosts again and again and again. How many times around the wheel? Do you know how many times I’ve had a dead relative conjured before me? Danced around like a toy? She’s taken their effigies, Klask.”

She looked down at her hands, the fingers of which ended in straight talons.

“I was to be a priest myself. But I don’t want what she wants.”