The job came through Reva.

  A Middling Ring merchant had a lockbox in his office that the Hollow Hand wanted opened. Not stolen, just opened, the contents read, the box closed again and put back exactly where it was. Clean intelligence work. The merchant was careful and well connected enough that walking in the front door was not an option.

  Reva had found a way in through a private auction the merchant was hosting that evening. Invitation only. High end, the kind of event where the door people were paid enough to actually check.

  “We need someone who can talk their way through that door.” Reva said.

  Zelig was already thinking about it when she said the next part.

  “There’s somebody else who heard about this job.”

  The somebody else was leaning against the wall outside the building where the Hollow Hand met, when Zelig arrived that afternoon. Not hiding, not waiting nervously. Just leaning. Like he had been there a while and was comfortable with that.

  He was maybe Zelig’s age, broad shouldered, with the kind of face that looked like it had never once carried a bad mood for longer than thirty seconds. He was dressed well for someone from the Underlayers, not Middling Ring well, but the effort was visible and intentional.

  He looked at Zelig coming down the street and smiled like they already knew each other.

  “You must be the handkerchief guy.” He said.

  Zelig stopped. “Who are you.”

  “Flint Ursid.” He pushed off the wall and stuck out his hand. “I heard about the auction job. I heard you heard about it too.”

  Zelig looked at the hand. Shook it.

  “Zelig.”

  “I know.” Flint said it the same way Reva had said it, like he had already done his homework, except where Reva had said it flat and plain Flint said it like it was the start of something. “So. You want to stand out here and figure out which one of us is better or you want to go in and talk about splitting it.”

  “Splitting it.”

  “Job’s big enough. Two people talking their way through that door is actually better than one. More convincing. A young man alone at a private auction looks like a gate crasher. A young man with someone looks like he belongs.”

  Zelig looked at him for a moment.

  The math was straightforward. Flint was right and clearly knew he was right and was not pretending otherwise. That was either confidence or arrogance and the difference between the two was whether he could back it up.

  “Let’s go in.” Zelig said.

  Ervan listened to both of them without expression.

  Flint did most of the talking, which Zelig let happen because watching someone talk told you more about them than anything else they could do. Flint talked the way very few people talked, with the whole room, not just the person in front of him. He made eye contact with Reva, with the two men at the table, with Ervan, cycling through them so nobody felt like furniture. He laid out the logic of two fronts being better than one in the time it would have taken most people to clear their throat.

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  Ervan looked at Zelig when Flint finished.

  “You agree with this.”

  “Yes.” Zelig said.

  Ervan looked at Flint. “Equal cut. Six ways now.”

  “Naturally.” Flint said, like he had already assumed that and found it reasonable.

  Ervan nodded once.

  They had three hours before the auction.

  Flint talked the entire time.

  Not nervously, not to fill silence. He talked the way some people breathe, like it was just the thing he did when he was alive. He had opinions about the merchant they were hitting, about the Middling Ring in general, about the specific social rituals of private auctions and how the door people at these things were always more insecure than they looked which was the lever you pushed.

  “You talk a lot.” Zelig said at one point.

  “I know.” Flint said, completely unbothered. “Does it bother you.”

  “Not yet.”

  Flint laughed. Actually laughed, not performed laughed. “I like you already.”

  Zelig said nothing.

  “You do that thing.” Flint said. “Where you don’t respond to something so the other person feels like they said something wrong. Is that on purpose.”

  Zelig looked at him.

  “Yes.” He said.

  Flint laughed again. “Okay. Okay I see you.”

  The auction was in a narrow building three streets into the Middling Ring, the kind of building that announced itself through restraint, no signage, clean stone, a single lantern at the door. Two men on the door, dressed well, with the posture of people who had been told they were important tonight and believed it.

  Flint straightened his jacket and looked at Zelig.

  “Follow my lead for the first thirty seconds.” He said. “After that do whatever you want.”

  “I always do whatever I want.”

  “Perfect.” Flint said, and walked up to the door like he owned the building and was slightly disappointed in it.

  Zelig watched him work.

  It was something. There was no other word for it. Flint hit the first door man with a name, a specific name, the name of someone who had supposedly sent them, delivered with the particular boredom of someone repeating information they found slightly beneath them. The door man’s face shifted, that micro expression of someone who doesn’t recognize the name but is now afraid that they should. Before he could say anything Flint had already moved past him, still talking, now to the second door man, asking him a direct question about the auction’s lot order that required an answer, and while that answer was being formulated Zelig walked through the door beside Flint like they had never stopped moving.

  Inside. Clean. Twenty or so people in a long room with things on tables.

  Flint glanced at Zelig without turning his head. The glance said: told you.

  Zelig said nothing. The glance back said: I noticed.

  The office was on the second floor. Zelig went up while Flint stayed on the floor below and talked to every person within range, which was his way of making sure that if anyone looked for them, there was a Flint shaped reason nobody had noticed anything unusual.

  Zelig found the lockbox. Opened it. Read what was inside in the way he read things, fast and completely, the contents going somewhere in his head where they would stay until he needed them. Closed it. Put it back.

  Came downstairs.

  Flint was mid story with three people around him, something about a trade dispute in the Middling Ring that had apparently ended with someone’s prized fighting bird escaping into a textile market. The three people were laughing. One of them was the merchant himself.

  Zelig stood at the edge of the group and waited.

  Flint wrapped the story up, extracted himself from the group with the same ease he had entered it, and fell into step beside Zelig heading for the door.

  “Get what you needed.” Flint said quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. The merchant’s name is going to come up in about six months in connection with something you’ll want to know about. Hold onto whatever you read.”

  Zelig looked at him. “How do you know that.”

  “I talked to him for four minutes.” Flint said. “People tell you everything if you ask the right questions in the right order.”

  They walked out the door. The door men did not stop them.

  On the street Flint put his hands in his pockets and looked up at the Shining Place the way most people from the Underlayers looked up at it, with want, except on Flint it sat differently. Not yearning. More like he was taking a measurement.

  “You’re going up there one day.” He said. Not to Zelig. Just out loud.

  “Yes.” Zelig said.

  Flint looked at him. “Me too.”

  Zelig looked back.

  Two people from the same place going to the same destination. The silence between them had a different quality now than it had three hours ago.

  “Don’t get in my way.” Zelig said.

  Flint smiled. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”