The next few days were quiet.

  No jobs from Ervan. No word from Reva. The Hollow Hand had its quiet stretches and this was one of them and Zelig had learned early not to fill quiet stretches with noise just because the noise was available.

  He ran his con on the Row Tuesday morning. Forty six marks. Decent. He paid the communal water bill for the building which was two weeks overdue and which nobody else on the floor was going to pay and which if left unpaid would result in a visit from the district water mage that nobody wanted. He kept the rest.

  He came home to Marie mending and the room smelling like the soup she made when she had leftover bones from the market, which meant she had been to the market which meant it was Thursday, which meant he had lost track of the days again.

  “Thursday.” He said, sitting down.

  “Thursday.” She confirmed, not looking up.

  He watched her work for a moment. The needle going in and out of the fabric with the same rhythm it always had, practiced to the point of being automatic, her eyes doing the actual thinking while her hands just handled the execution. She had three clients in the Middling Ring who sent her regular work. Enough to cover food and half the rent. His cons covered the rest and neither of them talked about that arrangement out loud but both of them knew the shape of it.

  “You’ve been sleeping strange.” Marie said.

  “I sleep fine.”

  “You sleep at the wrong times. You’re up late and then you’re tired in the mornings and then you’re fine by the afternoon.” She glanced at him briefly. “I’m not asking. I’m just saying I notice.”

  Zelig said nothing.

  Marie went back to her mending.

  That was the thing about Marie. She had a way of putting information on the table and then leaving it there without demanding you pick it up. It was more effective than demanding. He had told her that once and she had looked at him with the expression that meant she already knew.

  Flint showed up at the door on Friday.

  This had apparently become a thing that happened now. Zelig had not agreed to it explicitly but had also not told him to stop which Flint had correctly interpreted as permission. He arrived with two cups of something from the stall three streets over and stood in the doorway until Zelig moved aside to let him in.

  Marie looked up from the table.

  Flint looked at Marie.

  “You must be Marie.” He said, with the specific warmth he deployed on people he wanted to like him, which was everyone. “I’m Flint. I work with your brother.”

  Marie looked at Zelig.

  Zelig’s look back said: he’s fine.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Marie’s look said: I’ll decide that.

  “Sit down then.” She said to Flint. “You’re letting the cold in.”

  Flint sat down and within four minutes was involved in a conversation with Marie about the Middling Ring clients she mended for, asking questions Zelig would never have thought to ask, the kind of questions that made people feel that what they did mattered and was interesting. Marie, who was not easily impressed, was answering them.

  Zelig drank his cup and watched.

  Flint caught his eye at one point with a look that said: she’s good.

  Zelig’s look back said: I know. Don’t.

  Flint’s look said: I’m just talking to her.

  Zelig’s look said: I know what you’re doing.

  Flint smiled and went back to the conversation.

  Saturday Zelig went back into the Metarealm.

  He had been rationing it, which was a word he had started using internally for the practice of not going every night even when he wanted to. The empty pool feeling from the last session had taught him something. Recovery mattered. Pushing before recovery just meant pushing from a smaller base each time.

  He went in and ran forms for what felt like two hours. The masked man’s techniques, the movements from the first stone, the blocks and redirects from the second vision. His body was getting less wrong about them. Not right yet. Less wrong.

  He worked the sand with the mana he had, which was slightly more than last time. Small. Still small. But the ritual work he had been quietly researching through the Pale Accord’s secondhand text market had given him a simple Base to Challenger advancement sequence that he had been running every morning for ten days and something in his pool had shifted slightly, like a room that had been rearranged in the dark and you could tell by the way the air moved.

  Challenger rank was close.

  He came out with a headache and slept until noon.

  Sunday Marie made the bone soup properly and they ate at the table together and she told him about a woman in the Middling Ring who had commissioned a full wardrobe repair and was apparently so particular about the thread color matching that she had sent the first attempt back three times.

  “Three times.” Zelig said.

  “The third time she sent a note explaining in detail why the thread was still wrong.” Marie said. “With a diagram.”

  “A diagram.”

  “Of the thread.” Marie said. “She drew a picture of thread to explain to me what thread should look like.”

  Zelig looked at his soup. “How much is she paying.”

  “Enough that I drew a picture back confirming I understood.” Marie said, completely flat.

  Zelig looked up.

  Marie’s face was doing nothing. Then the corner of her mouth moved.

  He laughed. Actually laughed, which happened rarely enough that Marie looked briefly startled and then pleased in the way she got pleased when something surprised her, like she was filing it away somewhere.

  They finished the soup.

  Marie collected the bowls and Zelig stayed at the table and looked at the water stain on the ceiling that had been there since before they moved in and would be there after they were gone.

  “The man on the horse.” Marie said from the other side of the room. “The king. The one who came through the Row.”

  “Amalak.” Zelig said.

  “People are saying things about him.”

  “People say things about everything.”

  “They’re saying he came through the Underlayers specifically.” She set the bowls down. “Not the Middling Ring, not anywhere with actual money. Here.” She looked at Zelig. “Why here.”

  Zelig thought about the counting quality of Amalak’s eyes moving across the crowd.

  “Because there are more of us.” He said. “More people down here than anywhere else in Luren. More fear per street. More awe per face.” He paused. “He was collecting something.”

  Marie was quiet for a moment.

  “I didn’t like the way that felt.” She said. “Watching him.”

  “No.”

  “Did you.”

  “No.” Zelig said. “I didn’t.”

  He looked at the ceiling again.

  “Don’t go to the Row if you hear drums.” He said.

  Marie looked at him for a long moment.

  “Okay.” She said, which meant she had heard him and also meant she had noticed that he had said it, which meant it was going somewhere behind her eyes for later.

  Monday Ervan called them in.

  New job, he said. Bigger than the delivery.

  Zelig sat in the dim room with the crew around the table and felt the quiet shift in the room that happened when something moved from small to real.

  He was ready.