The air in the Exchange smelled of lavender, polished brass, and the kind of expensive, old-world perfume that made you feel poorer just by inhaling it. A jarring shift from the sweat and copper tang of the pits, but Alice didn't mind. She was too busy staring at the counter.

  The attendant tallying her winnings moved with the solemn grace of a priest performing high mass. She wore a severe, high-collared black dress with white cuffs, an outfit that hovered somewhere between a maid and a funeral director. Her face was hidden behind a polished wooden mask similar to Celo's but devoid of the aggressive crossguard. In its place, two small, delicate golden arrows were painted on the right cheek, pointing upward in parallel lines.

  "One moment, please," the attendant murmured, her voice soft and utterly professional. "Just verifying the streak multipliers for the final payout. The irregularity of the final match requires a manual override from one of the managers."

  Alice drummed her fingers against the mahogany counter. The rhythm was too fast, too loud, and she knew it. She squeezed her eyes shut, recounting the impossible math in her head for the tenth time, terrified that if she stopped thinking about it the numbers would evaporate like steam.

  Five crowns. A pathetic red chip given out of pity. She'd bet it on the Icebreaker. Four-to-one. Twenty. She'd bet the twenty on herself. Sixty-to-one. Twelve hundred. And then the Sheltie fight, the risk-it-all streak multiplier compounding on the existing pot. Sixty-to-one again on the rolling total.

  Twelve hundred times sixty. Plus the streak bonus. Plus the base pot. The number was too large to hold in her skull. Every time she tried to picture it, the figure blurred at the edges, like staring directly into the sun.

  "Verified," the attendant said.

  Alice's eyes snapped open.

  The woman swept her hand across the counter. She wasn't counting stacks of clay anymore. She was sliding a small tray of iridescent chips toward Alice, each one shimmering like oil on water, shifting from purple to gold under the gaslight.

  "The total balance is ninety-three thousand, six hundred, and eighty gold crowns," the attendant stated, as if she were commenting on the weather.

  Alice stared. That wasn't a purse. That wasn't a scholarship. That was the GDP of a small township. That was enough to buy a minor title, a country estate, and a carriage with solid gold wheels.

  A sound escaped her throat. A high, bubbling giggle that she couldn't suppress and didn't try to. The iridescent chips sat there on their velvet tray, patient and impossible, and the sheer physical reality of it hit her somewhere behind the ribs. Her mouth fell open. Her thoughts went white. A tiny, very real droplet of saliva pooled at the corner of her lip and she did absolutely nothing about it.

  "Madam?" The attendant produced a silk handkerchief from her sleeve, her tone polite but pointed. "Do try not to moisten the chips. They are still Cellar property."

  Alice snatched the handkerchief and wiped her face, her cheeks incandescent behind the black lacquer mask. "Right. Sorry. Dust allergy." Her voice came out thick and unconvincing. She cleared her throat, forced her spine straight, and tried to reassemble some dignity. "Ninety-three thousand... six hundred..."

  "And eighty," the attendant supplied helpfully. "How would you like to receive the funds? We offer standard Gold Crowns, Imperial Bank Cheques, International Drafts, or..." She tapped a ledger on the counter. "An Open Line of Credit with the House."

  "Credit?" Alice asked, her voice finding its footing. "How does that work?"

  "It is a spectral account," the attendant explained, interlacing her gloved fingers. "We bind the sum to your mana signature. You may draw upon the funds at the Cellar, Sorto Manor, or any of our affiliated safehouses across the continent simply by providing a signature. It is weightless, secure, and immune to pickpockets."

  Carrying ninety thousand gold coins out of here would require a wagon and a squad of armed men. Alice nodded. "I'll take the credit. For the bulk of it."

  "Very good. And for walking-around money?"

  "Cash out fifty gold crowns," Alice said, running the mental arithmetic of rent and food. "And give me another five crowns in Stags."

  "Stags are heavy, Madam," the attendant warned. "Five crowns is a hundred silver pieces."

  "Mix them. I need small change."

  The attendant nodded and began counting. She produced a heavy leather pouch, filling it with the fifty gold crowns. Then came the silver, a mix of standard Stags and the larger, hexagonal Grand Stags worth five silvers each, to keep the weight manageable. The bag still landed on the counter with a heavy, satisfying thud.

  Alice secured the pouch inside her satchel, feeling the weight settle against her hip. It felt like safety.

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  She hesitated, looking past the teller at the heavy iron vault door standing slightly ajar behind the counter. Gaslight caught the runes etched into its surface, and they pulsed once, slow and blue, like a sleeping heartbeat.

  "Before I go," Alice said, "I'd like to look around. I have credit to burn, after all."

  The attendant's golden arrows seemed to glint. "Of course. The Vault is at your disposal. Please, follow me."

  They passed through the gate and into the cool, climate-controlled air of the Vault. The temperature dropped five degrees in the space of a doorway. The room beyond was lined with floor-to-ceiling cages and display cases, organized with obsessive precision, everything catalogued and caged and priced.

  The first section was dedicated to mundane ballistics. Polished field cannons sat on lacquered pedestals alongside squat, ugly mortars. Racks of bolt-action rifles stood at attention against the far wall, their stocks oiled to a mirror shine. Crates of blasting charges were stacked in a corner, each one stenciled with a faded military serial that had been scratched out and re-stamped with the Cellar's own inventory code. Even the ammunition was sorted by caliber into brass-fitted drawers, each labeled in the same precise hand.

  "Anything catch your eye?" the attendant asked.

  Alice's hand drifted to her satchel, feeling the outline of the heavy service revolver she'd stripped from the Bandit Leader. Reliable, heavy, and mean. Also stolen.

  "How much for a standard double-action?" she asked, pointing to a gray-steel revolver sitting on a velvet pillow. "Nothing fancy. Just a workhorse."

  "Six chips," the attendant said smoothly.

  "Six chips? That's six crowns." Alice frowned behind her mask. "You can buy a brand new one downtown for four crowns and ten stags. That's a thirty percent markup."

  The attendant didn't blink. "The price at a downtown gunsmith includes the paperwork, Madam. Specifically, the registration forms required by the Imperial Armaments Act of 1286. Every gun sold outside these walls is logged, ballistics-tested, and tied to the purchaser's name in the Constabulary database."

  She gestured gracefully to the wall. "These, however, are ghosts. No serial numbers. No paper trail. No history. You are paying for the anonymity, not just the steel."

  Alice went still. She looked down at her satchel. The bandit leader had been a professional, or at least he'd carried himself like one. But he was also a criminal. Surely he wouldn't have used a registered weapon.

  "Can I check something?" Alice asked.

  "Be my guest."

  She pulled the bandit's revolver from her bag, flipped the cylinder open to check the load, then turned the gun over and squinted at the underside of the barrel near the trigger guard. There, stamped into the metal in tiny, crisp figures: RM-492-B.

  "Crap," Alice whispered.

  Registered.

  "I take it that one has a history?" the attendant noted dryly.

  "Too much of one." Alice shoved the gun deep into the bottom of her bag. She'd have to toss it in the river later. She looked back at the display case. Six crowns was a rip-off, but she had ninety-three thousand of them now.

  "I'll take two," Alice said. "And a box of ammunition. Clean."

  Parchment and vellum hit her nose before she saw the shelves. The dry, papery warmth of old books, undercut by the sharp, metallic tang of binding glues that had been banned for toxicity a century ago. The armory's cold iron smell was gone, replaced by something older and more patient.

  The shelves here were taller, looming over them like canyon walls, packed tight with volumes that would have seen a bookseller arrested for treason just for possessing. Political manifestos. Banned histories. And, of course, the Grimoires.

  Alice walked down the aisle, trailing her fingers near the spines but not touching. She wasn't particularly hungry for a Grimoire. Her childhood bedroom back at the Estate had been lined with them. She'd memorized the theories of combustion, the thermal dynamics of mana, and the philosophy of the flame until she could recite them in her sleep.

  None of it had helped her light a candle.

  But things were different now. She had broken the seal. The fire in her blood was real, and for the first time she wasn't looking for a way to start. She was looking for a way to aim.

  She stopped at the Pyromancy section. It was warm here, the books themselves radiating a low, residual heat that prickled against her skin even at arm's length. She scanned the titles. The Ignited Soul. Thermal Vectors in Vacuum. Ash and Ember. All familiar. Her father's library, duplicated in a criminal basement.

  "Nothing appealing?" the attendant asked, her hands clasped patiently.

  "Redundant," Alice sighed, pulling a thin, charcoal-colored volume from the shelf that she didn't recognize. The Volatile Catalyst. "I have most of these at home. They make for excellent paperweights."

  She looked at the attendant. "Can I look inside?"

  "Table of contents and the preface only," the attendant recited. "We run a business, Madam, not a public library. If you read the spell, you've consumed the product."

  Alice flipped the cover open and scanned the chapter list. Standard intermediate theory, focusing on rapid expansion and flash-points. Nothing revelatory, but considering her current strategy was "explode and pray," a refresher on controlled detonation wouldn't hurt.

  "How much?"

  "Six hundred and twenty chips."

  Six hundred and twenty crowns. Pricey for a slim volume, but magical texts operated on their own inflation index. The attendant, sensing the hesitation, tilted her head slightly. "I have never once seen a customer regret buying a Grimoire, Madam. I have, on several occasions, seen them regret not buying one."

  "Fair enough," Alice muttered. She had ninety-three thousand. She could afford a little light reading.

  She went to hand the book over, but a flicker of movement on a lower shelf stopped her. Separated from the elemental texts by a deliberate gap of empty space sat a grimoire bound in a pale, leathery material with a texture that made Alice's stomach clench the instant she recognized it.

  Human skin. It was bound in human skin.

  She stepped back. The cover had pores. Fine, visible pores, and a faint yellowish sheen where the oils of someone's hands had worn the surface smooth over decades of use.

  "A conversation piece," the attendant noted, following her gaze. "Though the binding tends to sweat in humid weather."

  "Lovely." Alice grimaced and turned away. "I think I'll pass."

  But the book sitting next to the abomination caught her before she could move on. The cover was a deep, crushed velvet, so dark a red it looked almost black in the shadows. It had a wet sheen to it, perpetually slick, like fresh arterial spray. The title was embossed in gold leaf that seemed to shimmer with its own light: The Velvet Scripture.

  Alice reached out, compelled. "What is this one?"