The Lowmarket opened after dark.

  Eiran had known about it, the way everyone in the Warrens knew: a whisper shared among those who couldn't afford the guild-approved shops, a last resort for the desperate or the careful. He'd never had reason to visit before. His needs had been simple, his purchases legitimate, his world bounded by the workshop and his rented room.

  That world had gotten smaller. Now he needed to make it larger.

  The market sprawled through the basement of what had once been a warehouse, before the river trade shifted and left this district to decline. Vendors set up on overturned crates and salvaged planks, their wares illuminated by candles and the occasional oil lamp. The air was thick with the smell of tallow and rust and something chemical he couldn't name.

  Eiran moved through the stalls, keeping his hands in his pockets and his expression neutral. The goods on display ranged from mundane to questionable: clothing that had clearly belonged to someone else, tools that bore the marks of workshops they'd been taken from, bottles of substances that promised more than they could deliver.

  And components. Parts salvaged from broken machines and defunct inventions, stripped of their identifying marks and sold for coppers to anyone who asked the right questions.

  "Looking for something specific?"

  The voice came from a woman sitting behind a table cluttered with metalwork. She was perhaps forty, with the calloused hands of someone who worked with forge and file, and eyes that assessed Eiran's worth in a single sweep.

  "Gears," he said. "Precision work, if you have it."

  "Precision work doesn't end up here often." She gestured at her stock, a scattered assortment of cogwheels in various sizes, some brass, some iron, none of it obviously high-quality. "What's your application?"

  "Personal project."

  "That's what everyone says." She picked up a gear and turned it in the lamplight. "This one's clean. Came out of a ship's clock, if you believe the story. Probably more truth in it than most. Six coppers."

  Six coppers for a gear that would cost two standards new. The teeth were worn but even; the central bore was clean. Eiran could use it for the secondary drive train, where precision mattered less than durability.

  "Four."

  "Five, and I'll throw in the lot of brass screws you've been staring at."

  They settled at four coppers for the gear, eight for the screws. Eiran added them to his bag and moved deeper into the market.

  ---

  The fixer found him near the lamp-oil stall.

  He was younger than Eiran expected, perhaps twenty-five, dressed in clothes that were too clean for the Lowmarket, with a smile that was too practiced. The kind of person who made his living in the spaces between legitimate transactions.

  "You're Havelock's apprentice," he said. Not a question.

  Eiran stopped walking. "Who's asking?"

  "Name's Deft. I hear things, is all. Word gets around when someone starts shopping where they've never shopped before." The smile widened. "Especially someone in your situation. The apprentice whose work got stolen, building something on the side. Must be frustrating, working with scraps when the real materials are sitting right there in your master's workshop."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Course you don't." Deft fell into step beside him, uninvited. "I'm just saying, hypothetically, if someone wanted to move certain items, workshop items, say, things that wouldn't be missed right away, there are people who could help with that. Take a small percentage. Handle the risk. Leave the original owner with clean hands and a fuller purse."

  Eiran stopped walking.

  "Let me be clear," he said. "I'm not stealing from Havelock. I'm not interested in your services. And if you spread rumors suggesting otherwise, I'll find out, and I'll make sure you regret it."

  Deft's smile flickered but didn't disappear. "Didn't mean any offense. Just offering services. That's what I do."

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Find someone else to offer them to."

  He left Deft standing in the crowd and didn't look back. The encounter had cost him more than the time spent. It had drawn attention, created a witness, established a connection between Eiran and the Lowmarket that could be used against him later.

  But he hadn't taken the bait. That had to count for something.

  ---

  The information about the competition came from an unexpected source.

  Marga ran the secondhand bookstall near the market's eastern edge. Her stock was limited, mostly technical manuals and out-of-date almanacs, but occasionally she acquired more interesting items: guild records, patent filings, the printed proceedings of merchant councils and trade organizations.

  "The Exhibition?" She pulled a pamphlet from beneath her table, its cover faded but legible. "Last year's rules and entry requirements. Two coppers, or you can read it here for free if you don't mind standing."

  Eiran paid the two coppers. He could afford that much for information.

  The pamphlet was comprehensive. Entry requirements: a working device or documented invention, sponsored by a guild member or merchant of recognized standing, with a non-refundable fee of three royals payable at registration. Judging criteria: novelty, utility, craftsmanship, and potential commercial application, evaluated by a panel drawn from the Merchant Council and visiting experts.

  Prizes: First place, fifteen royals and formal recognition in the Council's records. Second place, eight royals. Third place, four royals. All entrants received a certificate of participation, which was worth precisely nothing except as proof that you'd had three royals to waste on an entry fee.

  The sponsor requirement was the key challenge. Without one, Eiran couldn't even register, regardless of how much money he had saved. And sponsors weren't easy to find. Guild members and merchants risked their reputation on every entry they vouched for. A device that failed spectacularly, or worse, an entrant who proved to be a fraud, could damage a sponsor's standing for years.

  Why would anyone vouch for an unknown apprentice with no connections and a history of being cheated by his own master?

  Eiran folded the pamphlet and tucked it into his coat. The question had no good answer yet. But at least now he understood the shape of the problem.

  ---

  The walk home took him through streets he didn't usually travel.

  The Warrens bled into other neighborhoods as you moved away from the river, not better neighborhoods, exactly, but different ones. Craft Row, where the smaller workshops clustered together for mutual support and shared customers. The Thread District, where the textile trade had once flourished and now merely survived. The Merchant's Mile, where the real money changed hands in buildings that had better locks and cleaner windows.

  Eiran paused at the edge of Merchant's Mile, looking at the lit windows of the trading houses. Aldric Sorn's establishment was somewhere in there, the instrument dealer who had visited Havelock's workshop twice, who had bought products and asked questions about the barometer work, who had seemed to know more than a simple merchant should.

  A sponsor with connections. A man who dealt in the kinds of precision instruments that Eiran's device represented.

  The thought lodged in his mind like a gear tooth catching.

  Sorn was a merchant. Merchants invested in things that might turn a profit. A competition entry, if successful, could generate significant interest: licensing opportunities, manufacturing contracts, the kind of recognition that drew buyers to a craftsman's door.

  But approaching Sorn directly was dangerous. The man knew Havelock. Any proposal Eiran made might be reported back to his master, and the secret work would be exposed before it could bear fruit.

  He needed to find another way in. An intermediary, perhaps. Someone who could gauge Sorn's interest without revealing the source of the inquiry.

  The Lowmarket had shown him that Kettleford contained worlds he'd never explored. The question was whether any of those worlds could help him reach the one he needed.

  ---

  That night, Eiran sat in his room and counted his resources.

  Money: forty-seven standards, after tonight's purchases. Three royals and eleven standards, or close enough.

  Materials: brass fittings, gears, the cut lens, springs, screws, and miscellaneous components adding up to roughly four royals worth of goods at legitimate prices. Perhaps two royals worth at what he'd actually paid.

  The device: sixty percent complete, by his estimate. The core mechanism was functional. The calibration system was designed but not yet built. The housing and external controls existed only in sketches.

  Time: three months until the competition registration closed. Perhaps two weeks beyond that until the Exhibition itself.

  Entry fee: three royals. Which meant his current savings would just barely cover it, leaving him with nothing for contingencies, nothing for final materials, nothing for the unexpected costs that always arose.

  And still no sponsor.

  The math was worse than it had been when he started. The more he learned, the more obstacles appeared. The Lowmarket could provide components but not legitimacy. His savings could cover fees but not security. His skill could produce a device but not the connections to bring it before judges who might recognize its worth.

  He thought about Deft's offer. About the workshop materials sitting there, accessible, valuable. About how easy it would be to take just a few things, sell them through the fixer's network, use the proceeds to fund what needed funding.

  No.

  The word was clear and final in his mind. Stealing from Havelock would make him no better than Havelock had been. Would prove that the theft of the barometer principle was just how things worked, just what people did when they saw an opportunity. Would transform Eiran from a victim into a perpetrator, and surrender whatever moral high ground he'd managed to keep.

  He would find another way. Legal, if possible. Grey, if necessary. But not that. Never that.

  The candle guttered and died, leaving him in darkness. Eiran lay on his narrow bed and stared at the ceiling he couldn't see, and tried to believe that the way forward existed, even if he couldn't yet perceive its shape.

  Three months. Forty-seven standards. No sponsor.

  He'd started with less. Not much less, but less.