Chapter 152

swinging open. Above it, a bell, but it doesn't ring. It goes ka-CHING.

Inside: a covered hall as long as a cathedral, under a roof of old green glass. Shelves climb to the ceiling, with ladders on brass rails. On the shelves, hundreds of thousands of glass jars, each with a soft light moving inside it, each with a tag on a string. The whole hall hums very faintly, like a hive full of people talking in their sleep.

filing in behind Vigolas, heads tipped back, staring up. Mingus sniffs at a low shelf, tail going.

At the far end of a long polished counter (he owns the counter), leaning on it, because he is always leaning on something he owns. Young, beautiful and bored. Platinum hair cut perfectly, one lock catching the light like a new coin. Pale skin. A cream silk shirt, an emerald brocade waistcoat, and over it a long coat stitched together from a hundred currencies: banknotes, coin-mail, pearl-strings, scrip, IOUs, the scales of a fish a whole island once used as money. It chinks and rustles when he breathes. A ring on every finger, ten in all. A gold coin spins in the air above his right hand. He isn't looking at it. His speech balloons have a thin gold ruled border, like a receipt.

LEVLA · DRIFTING-3 · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist #1,000 (purchased)

pale gold like coins, with emerald rims. As he looks the crew over, a tiny price tag flickers up in each iris, a number on it, then another, then another.

pricing aloud as he goes. A ghostly paper tag winks into the air over each thing he looks at, a number on it, and fades:

Rougeina's eight blades: "Eight. Mirror-steel? Forty each. No. Thirty-eight."

Drekk's axe: "Twelve. Sentimental, so fifteen." DREKK: "…It's worth more than fifteen." LEVLA: "Not to anyone but you."

poked awake by Kali, crown askew.

stopping in front of Smurjan, head tilted. A swarm of seventeen tiny ghost-tags flickers over Smurjan's chest.

Behind Smurjan, his shadow rises: the third shadow, the huge one that is all mouth, climbing the shelves to the glass roof, darkening a thousand jars. A voice like a cellar door:

stopped dead in the air above his hand. A long beat.

already perched on top of a jar-shelf twelve feet up (nobody saw her get there), looking down at him.

He opens his mouth to price it. The tags in his eyes spin, and spin, and come up blank. For the first time the bored smile slips.

under the rings, rubbing the inside of his wrist where an emerald mark sits half hidden. Kompis watching.

Ghost-tags wink over the lining, one for each shard sewn into its little pocket: thirty-five numbers. Over one shard, the black one, furred with frost, the tag comes up empty and cold, and fogs like breath on glass.

not listening to any of it, pointing back over his shoulder at the window.

Vigolas lunges for the window display, grabs the jar with both hands — and without looking, Levla flicks one ring. ka-CHING. A glowing paper tag on a string snaps out of nowhere and loops round the jar's neck, a number on it too long to read. It lands inside a single heartbeat, before Vigolas's fingers have finished closing.

on the jar. He heaves. It won't lift. It won't slide, won't tip, won't so much as rock, as if it has been nailed to the bones of the world.

Vigolas draws back his fist, wrapped in green lightning, and drives an Emerald Knuckle straight into the jar. KRA-KOOOM. Thunder rattles every shelf in the hall. The jar doesn't so much as ring. The tag on its string swings gently, once.

"COMPACT!" Space folds: the velvet display stand, a slice of the window frame and a potted fern crumple inward into a fist-sized cube that drops into Vigolas's hand. And the jar hangs in the empty air on its tag, exactly where it was, the tiny red ship still sailing round inside it.

Vigolas spins and comes at Levla across the counter, open palm first, black-green script flickering over his knuckles: REMOVE.

Levla flicks a second ring without even turning his head. ka-CHING. A tag appears on his own silk shirt, over his heart. Vigolas's palm stops one inch from it, as if against a pane of glass. Green lightning crackles uselessly against nothing.

He hums, under his breath, the three notes he always hums. The box's three notes match. He stops where it stops.

and Vigolas staring into it. A laughing woman with grey braids. A stranger. His eyes go to the tag, and back to the face, and back to the tag.

(He doesn't.)

in Vigolas's fingers. He laughs, wet.

one panel later, still holding the tag, frowning at it like it's in another language.

quietly, not unkindly, for a salesman.

at the top shelf, looking at the clean ring in the dust.

(He doesn't like remembering it.)

watching Vigolas's back, Mingus leaning on his leg.

LEFT, Vigolas's Greed-sight: the hall glowing by value. Most jars glow faintly. The little red-sailed jar hanging in the window burns bright gold, the brightest thing in the whole market. Except for the crew standing behind him, who burn brighter.

RIGHT, Levla's Appraisal: the same hall hung with price tags, numbers everywhere, every jar and shelf and crewmate tagged and totalled. And where Mingus stands, sniffing a shelf: nothing at all, a blank in the numbers. Levla hasn't looked that way yet.

walking back down the hall to the jar that hangs on its tag in the empty air. He doesn't touch it.

and for the first time he smiles like he means it: a salesman's smile. The coin drops into his palm. He doesn't look at it.

The tag on its string turns over by itself, and new words write themselves across it in gold ink, letter by letter: