Chapter 17: Time To Work

Chapter 17: Time To Work

Forten did not stay long in the silence.

He set Walter on the cot, checked the seams with two fingers, then wrapped the bear in his scarf and tucked him against his chest beneath the coat. If keeping him close had helped in the infirmary, maybe closeness mattered here too. It felt like a story a child might tell to make sleep come faster. He held to it anyway.

He lit the stove with the last of last night’s oil, left a cup and a crust on the table in case Sylvia walked in hungry.

The letter’s words echoed in his mind this whole time - a stipend, ten coins a moon, once he reported to the Academy. But three moons might as well have been a year. Rent was due now. Oil was low now. And if Sylvia’s cough turned fever again, medicine could not wait on protocol. Whatever the Guild gave him later, it would not matter if she froze first.

So, Forten stepped back into Ferria with the coat held tight and the latch set twice. His ribs argued. He promised them there would be coin by dusk.

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The afternoon air cut thin and blue. Vents hissed, rails shrieked, skybridges held their breath. He kept to the lower ring where the wind was less cruel, and the work was more likely to pay with coin rather than promises.

The first job came easy.

A salvage crew by the tramline needed crates hauled from a barge to the depot. They saw a wiry boy, not his ribs, not his name. Or pretended not to.

“It’s you again,” the foreman said, squinting. His eyes dropped to the bulge under Forten’s coat. “And you brought that thing into my yard.”

“He isn’t contagious,” Forten muttered.

The foreman’s mouth twisted. “Everything’s contagious. Luck worst of all. You need coin?”

“Work,” Forten said. “Two hours. Maybe four.”

The man jerked his chin at a stack of crates rimed with frost. “Load those into the cart. Three blocks to South Loop, side lanes only - main’s jammed. Bring the receipt back, I give you three coins. Break the cart, you buy the cart.”

“Deal.”

Forten shifted Walter tighter under his coat and bent into the work. Each crate was heavier than it had a right to be. Heatstones, the cheap kind that burned fast and dirty. He loaded, checked the knots, then pushed the cart into the lanes. The front wheel sang against the metal, a thin, high note. Twice Walter twitched against his ribs. Twice Forten forgot to breathe.

By the time he dragged the empty cart back, his gloves were blistered through and his ribs howled. He laid the receipt on the counter. The foreman slapped three coins into his palm. Cold, heavy. Honest.

But the man didn’t let go right away. His thumb pressed the coins into Forten’s hand, his voice low. “Word is your mother’s been walking the city, asking after you. Pale thing in a scarf, coughing through the alleys. People talk.”

Forten’s jaw tightened. “Where?”

The man shook his head. “If anyone knew, you wouldn’t be standing here, you’d be with her. Not sure what she's chasing. But you're the same, aren't you?” He finally let go of the coins. His eyes flicked over Forten - ribs bound wrong, coat too thin, jaw set like it could hold the whole city up by itself.

“Go find her, boy. Or don’t. That’s your mess. But don’t bring your Tower luck into my yard again.” He hesitated, then added, quieter, “If you’ve really got the Guild’s leash, use it. Better a Trailblazer than a gutter rat.”

Forten stepped back, coins clutched in his fist. The urge to tear through the streets burned hot in his chest - to search every corner, every queue, every alley. But where? He had no trail. No scent. Sylvia was everywhere and nowhere, and the city would swallow her faster than he could run.

Coin at least was solid. Rent didn’t wait for lost causes. Neither did cold.

So he turned away from the depot, ribs aching, and looked for the next job.

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At the brassworks, forges breathed hot, hammer strikes ringing like iron bells. Sparks leapt from the anvil as the blacksmith bent over his work, arms thick as the tongs he held.

Forten waited for him to quench the steel, then stepped forward. “Need a hand? I can haul ore, stoke the fire, run deliveries - anything.”

The blacksmith turned, eyes narrowing. For a moment he said nothing, just looked. His gaze fixed on the way Forten held himself - chest tight, coat crooked, one arm pressed unconsciously against his side.

“You’re bound up,” the man said at last.

Forten stiffened.

The blacksmith jabbed a finger at Forten’s ribs. “Those are cracked, maybe worse. I can hear you breathing shallow over the bellows.”

“I can manage,” Forten said, too quick.

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The man's mouth pulled in something like pity, but sharper. “No, you can’t. Metal with a fracture don't carry weight - They break. Same with you. I’m not hauling a boy’s corpse out of here because he thought he was iron.”

He turned back to the anvil, dismissing him with the hiss of iron meeting water.

Forten stood in the doorway a heartbeat too long, jaw locked, then stepped out into the cold. The forge’s heat fell away behind him, leaving only the bite of wind - and the blacksmith’s words, heavier than any load he might have carried.

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Rumours said the mines in the north had frozen at the mouth and the Guild had declared the shortage temporary, which meant the shortage would last until people forgot what abundance felt like.

By the water barrels, a boy younger than him sold trap glyphs scratched on brittle plates. The etching was poor, the sort that could explode in your fingers if you fed it wrong.

“You want one,” the boy said, eyes flicking to the bulge under Forten’s coat with a curiosity too old for his face.

“No,” Forten said, then, because the boy’s hands were shaking and the plates would not sell, “Maybe tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is a long way away,” the boy said, and went back to convincing a customer that his etching meant he understood danger. Forten almost laughed. Instead he walked, the sound lodging in his chest with the rest of the things that did not belong anywhere else.

He tried Gresko next, because habit is stronger than advice. The engine yard breathed hot and harsh, the air full of metal dust that scoured the tongue.

“You again,” Gresko said without turning.

“Need anything carried? Anything swept. I have an hour or two.”

“You have a body that needs a bed,” Gresko said. “And a mind that refuses to listen to men who are right.”

Forten set his jaw. Gresko sighed like a valve releasing.

“Fine,” the man said. “You can sort the scrap bucket by hand. Slotted bolts here, cracked there, plate in the third bin, anything with rust pitted through goes in trash. I pay one coin for the lot if you do not mix my piles. Two if you find me anything valuable I can sell.”

Forten sorted. Metal cut his glove twice and once he tasted copper without seeing blood. He found a plate with old glyphwork on the underside, real etching, the kind that took patience and training and a teacher who cared about the difference between a line and a mistake. The pattern made his eyes ache. He passed it up to Gresko without thinking.

“Where did you learn to see that,” Gresko asked, genuinely curious for the first time that day.

“I did not,” Forten said. “The plate wanted to be found.”

Gresko snorted. “Plates do not want things.”

“Neither do boys,” Forten said, too soft for the man to hear. Gresko tossed him two coins and a look that said go home before you embarrass the rest of us by falling over.

Coins weighed his pocket now. Enough for fuel, and a small piece of wheat square he would call dinner. He watched two Guild trainees jog past in crisp coats and neat boots. Kids his age. One wore the smugness of someone who had never had to count coins to know where the heat would come from. The other looked at the world like it might bite and was deciding whether to let it.

Someone hissed his name from a doorway. He turned. Marlo’s narrow face watched him from the crack of a tarp.

“You carrying,” Marlo asked.

“Not today.”

“Not asking if you want. Asking if you can.”

Forten hesitated. Marlo’s errands were quick coin and quicker trouble. Sylvia would call it the wrong kind of hunger. He found the memory of her voice and set it against the ache in his ribs.

“Another time,” he said.

Marlo shrugged, the kind that meant I will ask someone else and hope you live long enough to regret saying no.

By late afternoon, the light flattened, that particular dull Ferria colour that warned of frost later. He bought fuel and a heatstone that the seller swore would produce enough heat. He did the math in his head and found that he could spare one more coin without sinking the stove, so he bought a small fold of dry wheatbread.

Walter twitched again when he stopped to rest in the shadow of a pipe. The twitches were not regular, but they were there. The seams looked a touch finer where he had tucked the scarf under the arm. Forten pressed his palm against the bear’s chest as if pressure could ask for miracles.

“Do that again,” he said. “The right way, this time.”

Nothing came. His palm cooled on the cloth. He hated the hope as much as he needed it.

He passed the signage post by habit. New fliers had been nailed over old, promises thin as paper. A missing beast notice curled at the edges. Under it someone had scrawled a warning about the ice beasts east of the Wall, three drawings of tusks that might have been memory or imagination or both. Overheard talk drifted past him from two dock hands. The Guild had sent a party to the Tower yesterday and three had not come back. Names did not travel as fast as numbers. Numbers were easier to carry.

“Did you hear the Academy took in Byrin's kid,” one said.

“Heard he failed and they took him anyway,” the other replied. “Heard he has some kind of weird bond. Never thought he could command automatas.”

“Nah, it's probably just puppeteering,” said a third voice from somewhere above them.

Walter twitched faintly against his ribs. Forten’s hand pressed down hard, as if to still him, as if to silence the words. His jaw locked until it hurt.

Forten did not turn. If you look like a rumour, it grows. He kept his back straight, and his breath even, and his hands calm.

By the time he reached home, dusk had started to argue with the lamps. He climbed slow, every step a negotiation. He set the heatstone in the stove, poured fuel with a care born of fear and arithmetic, and fed the flame. The room warmed by mere degrees, the air changing from knife to glove. He hung the paper bag on the hook to cool so the fat would not flood the stovetop like last time. He set Walter on the cot for a moment and studied the seams again. The edges had drawn in another fraction. It could have been the light. He decided to believe otherwise.

He lined everything up because Sylvia liked order when the world refused to give it. Bowl, spoon, cup, folded cloth, a second bowl if pride lost to hunger. He laid the letter on the table face down, then turned it over and placed a coin on the corner, as if money could weigh down fate.

He stood at the window and watched the street below shift from work to night. A man sang under his breath as he shovelled slush off the walkway. The sound did not match the work. A child counted something with a rhythm that said the counting mattered. Farther off, a tram groaned as it changed lines, the hooks showering sparks. Over all of it, the tower’s voice held steady, the same note it sang every hour he had been alive.

He had just set the bowls on the table when-

SLAM.

The door ricocheted, hitting the jamb so hard the latch rattled and the stove coughed. Cold air shoved into the room like an accusation. Sylvia stood in the doorway, hair wind-tossed, scarf askew, coat open over a dress too thin for the day. Her eyes burned with a heat no stove could make.

She took one step in, then another, the door snatching itself closed behind her with a whisper of wood. She looked at Walter, at the stove, at the bowls set too neatly, at her son standing there with his ribs wrapped wrong and his jaw set wrong and that letter trembling under a coin on the table.

For a moment she said nothing, only breathing hard through the cold, the silence shaking more than any shout could.

“Where. Were. You.”