The next cycle I awakened with the music of the bells to stoke the Blue Anvil, and then changed into something more appropriate to the task at hand: my olmleather trencher and threaded trousers and a shirt patterned in spikefish designs. Only thereafter did I sup. I briefly caught a few words between Roz and Hakru—he gave me just a nod—then the eldest journeyman excused himself while Elfyro set out in front of me a trencher of sea tangerines in sweet gravy and a plate with a medley of seared sprouted fungus.

“That party was a blast,” I admitted. “Thanks for taking me.”

“What ya think of that taroe?” Roz snapped back bluntly.

“Oh, Zelvy? She’s nice.”

Roz bared her teeth in a grin. “Ya, Zelvy, Zelvern Clorathau, ya mean nice nice, or…?”

To which I could only shrug and glance helplessly about the table, but there was naught but confusion on their faces. I flushed suddenly as dark as a crimsoncuttle.

“I’ve never…you know…with a taroe, or, well, I mean—I’ve only been with darklings.”

Darkling, my brain thought.

“Tell ya truly Klask,” Roz said, winked, “it’s all the same but different. Ya ken? Ya try if ya want. All’s to say just—if ya want to see her again come sometime when I visit Aqta. They live together.”

I smiled. I had considered calling upon her, but my mind still had not caught up with itself from the last few days. Besides, I had another matter to attend to today.

“Thanks, Roz. I may just, but I—”

I stopped myself, and couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Well I guess I don’t need you. For this anyway. She said she stays in Acdulc.”

“Ah-ha! Sounds like it’s goin glowingly.”

She seemed to take me in for the first time this cycle with a scrupulous glance.

“What’re ya so dressed up for?”

“I won’t be joining you in the firing room this cycle. At least, for a few turns. I’ve…to see to a matter about my journeyperson’s piece.”

“What ya mean? Oh…you mean the Shaper’s priest thing. Just make another, ya ken?”

I assiduously selected a few choice sprouts to eat. My father would say, focus on the technique, but he wasn’t here, and I’d been asked to replicate.

“I just want to do it justice is all. You know, like what if I make it and she says, ‘No, no, that’s not it at all…’ ”

Roz bared her teeth, and tore into a part of a fishmeat filet that still glistened upon her plate.

“Just be careful about those people. I don’t say this lightly. It is a death cult. Did you have any of her priests in the S’uldra?”

I shook my head. “No. I saw a travelling, well, show I guess in Lheren once though. They had a piece of godglass. The things they can conjure with that…Roz, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

My mind danced with visions of what I’d seen. The panoply of violet spirits in motion like a grand opera. The song began to whisper into my ear, just as then, in a language I’ve never known but immutable in the fullness of emotion beyond what I could understand.

I wondered, now, looking at Roz’s dour sharklike complexion, if anyone could. Or if the doomsayers were right and that the Moonmother was just a mad god. And if that was true, that the magic and wonder she brought to Valthyr, things even I in the World Within had seen, were just features of the death song.

“If ya ever saw a dead beast,” Roz began, “well, think about Valthyr the same way. He’s dying, ya? Maybe?”

“Dead, they say, too.”

“Sure. I think Shu’una is like…like a carrion feeder that rides the world. Just sayin Klask. I’ve seen some stuff too.”

She pushed her plate back finished, then left me with a pat on the shoulder and nary a goodbye.

I finished eating, made small talk with Elfyro, then departed. My calling this cycle to get my claws back on the journeyperson’s piece I’d submitted to the Guild of Glass. The vase.

I went downstairs and out onto the webbed concourse, lurid in pinkish-red sporeglow.

“Take me to the Guild of Glass. Blackbloom branch,” I said to the sporesong directly, webs and tufts of color above me like smoke or clouds.

Some of it swirled in front of me. I followed it through dipping paths that led me to a greatshroom hollowed out inside like a giant tent. Within I hurried through concourses and stairwells.

At a set of double doors painted blue the sporesong dissipated. Above them set into the mushroomwood framing were the sigils of the grandmasters: Flute, Olm, Feather, Fish, Mushroom-cap, Stalactite.

I pushed at one of the doors, which swung open, revealing an austere atrium. There were hewn tables set with glassworks. Among them and hanging from silken weavings were glow-casting glowshrooms set into glasslamps.

It smelt of tallow and ink. I closed the door behind me, and it became extremely quiet.

I approached the desk. At it sat a nefra, its icy chitin mottled in milk and azure. It turned to me, studying me with its compounded eyes.

“Hello. I’m Klask Pax…I’m a journeyperson. I was wondering of my journeyperson’s piece…”

“Well what about it?”

“Uh.” I cleared my throat. “Well…I submitted it maybe a half a year ago now. I’ve just been wanting to have it back. Do you do that?”

The nefra’s whiskers twitched.

“Pax, you say? I don’t see your file here…I’ll have to take a look…”

She scurried away, down the leftmost hall. Left alone in the green-lit dark, I peered around at the works displayed herein. I looked upon small phials inlaid with stenciled succulents, delicate amphorae, goblets and chalices wrapped in lesser dragonmetals such as gold and silver like truculent vines, and various figurines of the five races, among other sundries.

Finally she returned, carrying a tablet of some kind.

“Here it is,” she called.

She skittered to the desk where she set it down with two of her spindly limbs. She flipped it open. It was not a tablet at all, but a silkstone book. My family possessed one of these. It had been in the family for generations. It predated our arrival in Silsern.

She paged through, and began naming names.

“Dhorathask…? Lanthos…? Jhaska…?”

“Klask,” I said firmly. “Honestly, I’ve just become a journeyperson. I’m probably dead last.”

“Oh. Well, I suppose that makes sense.”

She paged through a bunch of pages in quick order. I saw my father’s name flash by, then Kotatarl’s, and then she was on a page heralding Klask Pax. There was some writing there underneath my name but I could not make it out.

“Here we are…all right…so your journeyperson’s piece—oh, Weaver’s will…”

“Mm?” I asked as mildly as I could manage, though my heart was suddenly pounding.

“Well, I’m—I’m still reading this, mind—it seems your journeyperson’s piece was displayed in a gallery in the ruby canto. Stilldance it’s called. Stilldance Studios. I say was—it seems this was the subject of a Judicator’s investigation. The most recent entry states you’ve been cleared in the matter, so your journeyperson status is not in question. But there’s no further mention of the journeyperson’s piece.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Oh.”

“Well,” she huffed, “my best guess is the Judicators have it in their possession still.”

I frowned. I felt the flux of cold within myself like a dark flame.

“Does it say where? Who? Anything like that?”

“It says…as to the Judicator in question, T’nas of Tarsura.”

“And as to where?”

She scanned the entry again.

“I’m afraid not.”

“Thank you. I appreciate your help.”

“Shamara, Klask Pax.”

“Shamara.”

Outside again, I wandered out of the tentlike greatshroom corridors and palazzos. The streets were busy, now, all around me, and even above and below I could see the flash of crowd motion. I pulled the olmleather trencher close about myself and waded through.

I tarried in the sapphire canto at a time fountain outside a square bustling with hurrying people. The square bordered a fenced park covered in sporegrass and small fruited shadeshrooms. A few paths led inward, and many of the people rushed to and fro therein. Beyond the park a spiral spire woven of silk and dragonmetal rose. Around it several towercaps, their gills lit in azure, and the rest of the city burning beyond.

It had not been long since I’d left. A little more than a turn. I had thought this would take possibly much longer, that the Guild would have looked about and eventually delivered me my journeyperson’s piece. Perhaps even this cycle, that I would be strolling along the silken boulevards with it firmly in my grasp.

But I desired to not investigate it any further with the Judicators. I would rather just put the incident, and, I supposed, the piece itself, behind me.

I had another errand to run. I’d been saving them up, I supposed, while I absorbed the terms of my journeypersonship. I had been passively seeking the Guild of Couriers, but I hadn’t looked. I reached into my pocket and felt the little silkspeak bracelet-weave. I could not read it, nor even really tell if there was a pattern.

“Take me to the Guild of Couriers,” I said to the sporesong.

A portion of it broke off into a vortexlike whorl and I followed that as it let me through the sapphire canto, through streets woven of silk and dragonmetal, betwixt whose solid filaments I could see glowing mushroom tenements in an uneven dilapidated sprawl below me, and beyond that a great green pit or mound, within and underneath the city.

I tarried, glancing at the sporesong. It seemed willing enough to just wait, hovering there swirling, as I stepped to the railed edge of the enclosed road, pressing my face against the fine filament, looking out. A cold, wet sea wind gusted upon me.

I remembered the dream I’d had, of my brother Drathos suffused in water.

“Watch out. Windshadow’ll get ya.”

I turned, a little stumped. The Windshadow was, to me, just a legend. Someone chittered. I looked up and saw Zelvy there, hovering in place. She wore a shaggy outfit of brown cloth and fungus-fringe.

“Well, Klask, how’s it goin?”

I frowned. “Not exactly as expected, to be honest. I—I had to retrieve my journeyperson’s piece.”

She looked at me blankly.

“It’s been…” I scratched my head. “It’s been confiscated and I think that may be that.”

“Confiscated? By who?”

“The Judicators,” I said glumly. “I’ve a commission to make a piece identical to this one. I had hoped—”

I stopped. I realized now I did not even need to replicate the piece, if I were able to obtain this one again. I could just give it to Aethyra directly.

“You should ask Roz,” Zelvy said offhandedly.

“Roz? What’s she got to do with the Judicators?”

“Well, nothing, really. But she’s an undine—you know?”

I nodded, though most of what I knew about the undine was myth and legend, aside from Roz. There were only a few hundred undine left in Valthyr it was said. Among that number most of them wizened and ancient. It was said that there are still a few among them that remember the Fall itself. They had been the slave-magicians of the Myr it was said.

Zelvy’s wings pumped as she hovered in the wind beside me.

She crossed her arms. “She helped me out once with the Judicators, if you must know.”

“Really? What kind of trouble would you have with the Judicators?”

“You barely know me, Klask Pax.”

I grinned. “I just mean you don’t seem like it anyway.”

“I could say the same thing of you. Why’d they take your piece away, huh?”

“They said it was shadowstuff,” I said reflexively, to which Zelvy recoiled.

“Shadyr? You?” Zelvy chittered. “It’s hard to see you of all folk making a shadyr…”

“I agree.” I stretched. “I suppose I’d best be off before the Windshadow gets me, eh? What are you doing here anyway?”

“I go to school right here, right up the street, you know. See you later!”

“See you!” I called as she flew away, glimmering.

Alone, I followed the sporesong the rest of the way to the Guild of Couriers, which was not far, and paid two lanterns for a courier appropriate for this so-called Upper Fate, to take Lhuna the silkspeak message. By the time I was back at the Blue Anvil, the klepsydras showed it to be nearly mid-cycle.

I changed from my formal attire then brought the furnace back up, as it had dwindled. While it flared I found Roz, Hakru and Elfyro dining together on candied hushberry salad. They each gave me a warm greeting as I sat. Elfyro rose and brought me my plate.

“We didn’t know when you’d come back,” the young darkling said.

“Where’s the vase?” Roz asked.

I took a few bites of the salad, considering my response.

“I wish I knew,” I said finally. “A Judicator has it.”

I looked at Roz as I spoke, but she merely frowned, crunching into a berry.

“What’s the Judicator want with your vase?” Hakru asked.

“Who’s the Judicator?” Roz asked.

“Its name is T’nas of Tarsura.”

Roz bared her teeth. “I know it. Why’re ya tangled up with a shadowchaser…? Ya don’t seem like the type.”

I shrugged. “It came to Silsern—to my village—after I’d submitted the vase as my journeyperson’s piece. It said it was a matter of sourcing…it didn’t find anything,” I finished lamely.

We finished eating while the conversation turned to other matters. Hakru said a cheery farewell, that he had to go assist Dryskar with his preparations for Aethyra’s menagerie. Then I followed Roz up to the firing room where we worked for a few more turns, until our uncovered faces and arms were covered in soot and sweat.

We made pieces to be hawked by bazaar-merchants and street-sellers: little phials and tea-cups and molded figurines. As I worked beside the undine, I worked up the courage to finally ask her further on the subject of the Judicator. I thought of what Zelvy said, of the special status of the undine.

After I had poured out the last set of olm-cat figurines to cool into their molds, I cleared my throat.

“Roz—are you able to—you know, inquire about my vase by any chance?”

She looked up from her work at me. Her purple eyes flashing. “Ya think an undine’s gotta pull is that it?”

“Uhm…honestly…” I looked away. “I was talking to Zelvy today and she said it was maybe a possibility.”

“Zelvy, huh? Did ya—” she looked me up and down briefly “—call on her?”

“No—no…turns out her school’s near the Guild, I think. It was a chance meeting.”

“Funny that. Ya—I’m still getting used to Aqta bein so close.”

Roz sighed.

“I don’t agree with the way they do this, ya know…they just keep us around for the last of our great magic. It’s not for any other reason…” She bared her teeth. “But for ya, Klask, sure. I’ll inquire and see if I can find this T’nas of Tarsura for ya.”

We’d finished our glassblowing, and eaten a spicy ragout of Elfyro’s creation. Now, we sat around working hobbies late into the cycle. Hakru had retired to his chamber. A flute’s melody drifted down the hall. I sat back, nibbling on some fish jerky.

Roz was seated at a beat-up mushroom chair dragged over to an opened window. Its curtains slithered in the wind. A filament of sporesong poured through window, pooling in front of her. She spoke softly to it, and its shape shifted. I was not at the vantage to see what it made.

I yawned, and was just about to bid Roz shamara for the cycle, when there came a rap at the second-story door. I leapt up immediately—I had changed into a set of casual, robelike linens, which was not what I’d answer the door with during most of the cycle.

I padded over, stood tall and peered out the peephole.

I saw a darkling, perhaps guilded, clothed in layers of tan and crimson. When I opened the door, one of the hinges creaked.

The darkling started. Then he asked, “Are you Klask Pax?”

“Aye. What of it?”

He hefted a booksized parcel, wrapped in silvering cloth, which I accepted gingerly.

Once I’d taken it, with nary another word he turned and eloped into the dark. I came inside, and sat at the table, setting the parcel out in front of me.

Roz dashed the sporesong with a wave of her hand. “What ya got there Klask?”

“It’s a tablet. I suppose I’m not sure from whom.”

“Fine cloth on it,” she observed.

I ran a claw over it, feeling its fine, silken grain. The cloth was printed or sewn with images of crawling vines or roots. I looked at Roz.

“You recognize the cloth or something?”

She just shrugged.

I unwrapped it, revealing a pale stone tablet with words writ upon it in serpentine, stylized runes. I read.

Klask! You nearly stumped me with that silkspeak trick! For a few turns I thought I had a secret admirer. Hope you are well! Are you going to be at Glorana’s Grove next cycle? I bet you’ve never seen a Heart out in your Fuming Shoals. I’ve seen it play once before, and it’s worth a visit.

Shamara,

Lhuna

I looked at Roz. “Any idea who’s Shello?”

She bared her teeth. “Only the most famous blade this side of the dragon. What in the chrome hells did they teach ya back in Silsern Klask?”

I thought back, but drew a blank. Then I remembered Zelvy and Aqta: both still, somehow, in school after all these years.

“Roz, how long did you go to school?”

“Few decades.”

I almost scoffed. I must have made a sound.

“Wasn’t my choice. Well it was and I made my choice when I could.”

“Yeah,” I said. “My family—my family was relatively well off in Silsern. As kids we fished and dove with the others—my brothers and I—but I always knew I’d be a glassblower. In school, we were instructed in the sciences and ethics and histories demanded by the Pact—I know that much—”

I stopped, as a memory flooded back, far across the waves in the deepsea to Silsern, back in time, to the shell school beyond the surf. I remembered then the lessons of the Last Wars, and the nine Myr that helped the slave races finally triumph over the dracomancers.

“The Hearts of the Nine…Shello’s the Banshee Blade!”

“Ya! Exactly!”

“Glimmering. I’d love to see it.”

“Aqta’n I are goin. Ya need a ticket but there’s room in Glorana’s. It’s massive. Ya can ride with us there but…it’s kinda a date I’m taking Aqta on.”

“This—” I gestured to the pale tablet “—is from Lhuna. She’ll be there.”

“I’m happy for ya, Klask. Have fun—but not too much fun, ya ken?”

I slept restlessly. I dreamt, or thought I dreamt, of Tama’s Maw splayed before me, gaping, with a loud whorl of suction thrumming. I was underwater, and taken into the sea-cave. All light vanished. I drifted in this vast and turgid expanse. It was cold as eternity. It seemed like time forgot.

Something burned forth, a blue spirit, a smoking flame. It came from my palm. I cried out, or tried to, but my words caught in my mouth in the endless mirk. The water grew cold as ice. It was not a flame at all. My hand throbbed. The thing before me like a great pillar of the deep ocean, glowing and whirling, a maelstrom of frozen flame.