Adventurer's Row wakes to grindstones and stew. Stones sing thin as insects. Steam and brass ride the morning air. Notice boards wear yesterday's rain, corners curled like tired ears. Far off, the Ebon Spire throws a cool stripe across necks, and no one says why that feels good.
Colin takes it slow. He likes seeing how a street starts its day. At Whittle & Whet a treadle blurs under a boy's boot while a blade sheds tidy sparks. A goblin courier waits with a string bag, catching stray wire curls with a practised pinch and the proud look of someone trusted with pointy things. The proprietor balances a paring knife on two fingers, nods like the knife agrees with him, and names a number that is honest.
Colin tries the weight. It sits in his hand like it remembers work. "Good manners," he says, and pays without haggling. The maker's stamp is a small river bend. He files it away to say aloud later. The goblin gives him a tiny thumbs up and sprints off under elbows.
Copper & Kettle carries the clean bite of tea leaves and vinegar. Pans hang with the stubborn shine of things that expect to earn their keep. A cookbook lies open on a bench with margin notes that can actually cook. Butter hotter. Less salt if bragging. Plate up for mates. A troll grandmother taps a stockpot lid, approves the ring, and moves on with the measured grace of someone who has fed armies. He buys the book because handwriting like that does not lie, and because a recipe can end arguments that auctions only move.
Hammer's Rest is a line of anvils and a calendar of bruises. Dwarves lean into metal like it is a cousin who listens. A smith with a scar that looks like a misplaced smile shows him a bracer plate scuffed by the Spire. Not for sale yet. It needs its story cleaned. Lead taken. An orc apprentice turns the quench barrel and hums a mining song under his breath, off-key and happy.
Braid & Buckle stacks straps that want a fourth life. The leather worker behind the bench is an orc with neat stitches and a voice that irons kinks out of problems. He offers to tidy a pair of belts from the boot-lot boy on house terms. "Bundle," he says, practical. "If you gather three, I make the fourth on the house." Colin nods.
A porter on the corner toots a whistle at a runner with a crate. Running fines are real on market days. An elf bard blows into cold fingers, reads the sign that says no sprinting with soup, and laughs into his scarf. An orc hauling casks slows, grins at the same sign, and keeps his pace like a saint.
Merchant's Mile is different weather. Glass holds perfect reflections, even of liars. Door attendants smile like locks. Fees gleam tidy and cold in chalk beside doors. An elf doorman uses the window to fix a crease in his cloak without breaking eye contact with the street. A demon clerk in a neat cap counts deliveries with two inked fingers and never looks surprised.
Glimmerglass Optiques smells of lemon and brass polish. A cracked-edge lens in a brass mount sits lonely in a drawer that wants to be closed. The proprietor, a woman whose spectacles have opinions, lets him test the focus. It does not correct anything. It makes edges decide they belong to themselves. Useful for patter and pointing, if not for seeing. He buys it because it is a conversation disguised as an object. A pair of elves at the counter argue softly about focal lengths like it is poetry.
At Ledger & Lute Pawnbrokers a shard of mosaic tries to be a fortune. It lies on velvet like a patient on a sheet. The clerk names a price that would feed a barracks and half a stable. Colin tilts the shard to the light. Scales catch colour that does not belong to this morning. He sets it down as if it is asleep. "If it is here in a week," he says, cheerful, "we will argue like friends." He leaves a card that promises to argue politely. A troll porter carries a mirror sideways past the door and the whole street tilts to give him room, the way a city remembers its own shape.
The Exchange Rooms sit where the Mile kinks toward the river. Velvet rope waits like a smug cat. The foyer smells of citrus and new ink. Contracts rest on silver clips, tidy, and a little hungry. A bell by the desk looks made for polite disasters. An orc matron reads the posted terms aloud to a goblin nephew, each clause like a lesson he will not forget.
The terms are a sermon of small traps. Expedite fee for "urgent clarity." Storage that begins before a man can change his mind. Reserves not printed where eyes can find them. A shill clause that fines the bidder, not the room that encouraged it. All compliant. All unfriendly.
A clerk glides over, teeth and hospitality aligned. "Valuation suites available. We can have your item assessed within the hour."
"Within the hour is a lovely way to say at a price," Colin says, pleasant. He reads a clause twice for the joy of finding the hook. "We sell in daylight down the Row. Applause is our expedite fee. If any of yours prefer clapping to clauses, send them along."
The smile holds. The eyes flick toward the rope. "We wish you every success," the clerk says, which means the opposite here. A demon couple at the leafed table count coins with the quiet care of people who have been embarrassed by fees before.
Back in the light, a side lane breathes clove where there should be bread. A hatch blinks once, then forgets to be a door. Undercoin is awake and walking. Colin keeps his feet like daylight and keeps going.
Grey Lantern Cut waits on an angle off the Mile. Its lanterns are smoked glass, so the light comes out polite. Grey Lantern Curios fits in the bend like a secret that has already decided it will behave. The proprietor's hair agrees with the stall name. Noll Grey looks like a person other people confess to by accident. A moth dozes on his sleeve and refuses to leave. A dwarf and a goblin haggle over a tin of pins, in the manner of old friends who use new numbers.
"Looking or needing," Noll asks, a voice that keeps the air from hurrying.
"A bit of both," Colin says.
The table is a map of small trouble. Rings that remember fingers. A compass that likes the idea of north more than the job. A coin that stands on its edge.
The coin leans into the light like a listener. Its rim shows a breath of sheen. Not a glow. A sharpen. For him, the specks in the air line up like iron filings under a comb. The sharpen runs the coin's edge once and goes away. The hairs on his arm decide they have learned something new and do not tell him what.
"Is that me or the alley?" Colin asks, quiet.
"You are seeing reflections," Noll says, mild. He nudges the moth. It stays. "This lane loves tricks."
"Tricks that keep time," Colin says.
Noll sets the coin spinning. It wobbles, rights itself, thinks about falling, refuses. "Counterweight coin," he says. "Useful for telling cheats they are holding the joke wrong. Less useful for paying tax. Stands on ceremony."
Colin names a price that is more friendly than smart. Noll names a price that is not cruel. They meet in the bit where two people agree not to waste each other's time. Colin pays from a small pouch he keeps separate, the one that started this morning and did not exist yesterday. House Fund. He does not announce the phrase. It belongs in Lyria's tidy hand, not in air.
He tries once more. "You ever see light do that."
"I see coin," Noll says, friendly stone. "That is enough sight for a day."
"Fair," Colin says, and pockets the coin in the pocket he keeps for ideas, not for sales. It sits against his palm with the confidence of a thing that will choose its own trick. A young orc with a ribboned braid peers, grins at the edge-stand, and runs to tell someone who will not believe her.
Ink & Salt sells contracts that do not lie about rivers and notices that do not try to be poetry. A scribe with a smudge of blue at the knuckle offers calligraphy swans for the fee sheet. The scribe is an elf with a soft cough and perfect columns. Colin orders straight lines on thick paper and numbers big enough to read from the door. The elf looks offended and then relieved.
He walks back with a light purse and heavier pockets. A paring knife that wants work. A cookbook that knows what it is doing. A cracked-edge lens that will make show and tell less like lying. A coin that sharpened the air for him and no one else.
Three Lutes breathes out when he opens the door. Tamsin has chalk on her cuff and the look of someone who has moved furniture in her head and then moved it in real life. Lyria sits with the ledger and three spare quills like a general who learned to count before she learned to plan. An elf student from last night holds the door for a troll in a vest, and both pretend they did not mean to be kind.
"Find anything," Tamsin says.
"A cookbook with better manners than me," he says, laying it down. "A knife that will not sulk. A lens that forgives the right face. One coin that thinks about standing up."
"Outright buys," Lyria says, as if she had written it an hour before he chose it. A narrow column sits at the right margin of the ledger. House Fund. The words look like a promise and a warning. "Two coins in," she adds. "Cap is five a day until registration."
"Agreed." He lifts the lens to his eye, looks a fool, accepts it. Tamsin does not laugh because she is generous. Milo laughs because he is alive.
Tamsin flips a key over her knuckles and lands it in his palm. "Spare room," she says. "Two turns up, one down, mind the dip in the stair. Wash is hot if you start it now."
"Bless you," he says, and means it.
He climbs past the stew smell and the wall of mismatched shields. The spare room is small enough to remember all at once. Sloped ceiling. A window cut to the size of a reasonable view. Bed that looks like it will forgive a tired back. He nudges the shutter with a knuckle. The lane's noise comes in sensible.
He empties his pockets onto the table: paring knife; brass lens; the Counterweight Coin; the small pouch with two coppers that is the House Fund; the cookbook, heavy with honest margins. From the inside coat lining he slides a card the colour of old milk, smooth in a way this city never is. Letters from another alphabet ghost across it, rubbed thin by thumb. He looks at it for exactly one breath. It goes back where it lives.
He opens a scrap book and writes a page title he will not be proud of later: Costs.
Ink and paper. Rope. Shelves that pass inspection. Fees. Permits.
Another line, written smaller: Passage?
He taps the page with the end of the quill. Adds: Translator? Archivist?
He draws the Spire as a thumb of black and writes, Not yet.
The coin stands when he sets it so. He watches the rim, looking for that moment the specks of dust decide to be a line. For him, it happens again, a tiny sharpen that runs the edge and is gone.
"What are you," he says to the coin, as if asking a dog not to eat the garden.
The coin does not answer, because coins have manners when no one is buying.
He makes it a test anyway. "I will go home," he says, firm. The coin thinks about it and drops flat with a tiny clack.
"Rude," he says. He stands it again. "I might go home." The coin wobbles and holds its edge. He squints. "So you like cowards."
A laugh gets out of him before he can put it back. He pockets the coin, not because it told the truth, but because it tried.
On another scrap he writes House Fund, then a number that is not impressive even to him. He circles it. He adds a target that is not a target, more a dare to the week: Two silver by month's end. He does not add why. He does not need the reason on paper where anyone might tidy it for him.
Downstairs, a chair scrapes and stops. Lyria's voice carries in gentle syllables. Tamsin's laugh answers like a lid going on the right pot. The tavern is learning its day without him for five minutes. That feels like a luxury.
He tucks the milk-coloured card back into its lining. Knife goes in the drawer. Lens on the sill. Cookbook under the pillow, because he trust-tests things in silly ways and likes the idea of sleeping on someone else's sensible notes.
He takes one long breath and lets it all out where only the shutter can hear it.
"Right," he says to the room. "Back to being charming."
He pockets the coin and the small pouch. He leaves the paper open with the word Passage looking at the ceiling. On his way down, he remembers to mind the dip in the stair because Tamsin said so, and because he has decided to start doing exactly what sensible women tell him. For a while.
The House of Honest Noise is waiting, warm as a kitchen, when someone remembers to stir the pot. He rolls his shoulders and steps back into it like a man who knows which way the ladle points.