Riverbend Street stood where the canal curved, one of the few neighbourhoods in Kandelburg that managed to be both respectable and down at heel. The houses were fine houses, with carved stone porticoes and wrought-iron balconies, but most of the people inside had retreated there from better streets: gentlemen whose families had fallen on hard times, widows living on their late husbands' pensions, aging spinsters selling off their possessions to get by.
Choosing such a street for a pawnshop was an act of exquisite cruelty.
The Magpie Pawnshop occupied the finest premises on the corner. Its display window had been polished to a crystalline shine, but instead of the watches and silverware found in ordinary pawnshops, it held an assortment of peculiar little objects: an empty birdcage, a bow without a violin, one tiny infant's glove, an empty picture frame. Beneath each lay a small label written in beautiful copperplate.
Sharlo stood at the window for three minutes, reading the labels one by one, a chill spreading layer by layer across his back.
The label beneath the empty cage read: A promise of freedom. Excellent condition. Priced to sell.
The bow: A certain person's talent. No longer required by owner. Urgent sale.
The infant's glove: A farewell that never took place. Not for sale. Display only.
"This isn't a pawnshop," he murmured. "It's a butcher's window, and all of that is meat."
"Mind your expression," Viola said beside him, her voice barely audible. "There's a reflector behind the glass. Once we're inside, remember the story: I'm here to pawn something. You're accompanying me. The item is in here."
She lifted the small valise in her hand. It held the "bait" the Bureau's Properties Division had worked through the night to produce—a packet of old letters, forged from a real case file, tracing the love correspondence of an engagement that had died young. The aging of the paper was flawless. Even the ink matched the purported year.
The doorbell was a string of real silver bells, and their chime sounded like laughter.
The pawnshop's interior ran much deeper than it appeared from outside. Its counter was dark mahogany. Instead of an exchange chart, the wall behind it displayed an embroidered hanging: a great tree crowded with magpies, each bird holding some small object in its beak—a ring, a key, a droplet shaped like a tear. The needlework was so fine it made Sharlo's scalp prickle.
A woman sat behind the counter.
She was about fifty, her silver-grey hair arranged without a strand out of place. She wore a black wool dress with a white lace collar and a magpie brooch pinned at one cuff. When she looked up, her smile was warm, composed, and perfectly judged—the kind of smile that called the word grandmother to mind.
"Good afternoon," she said. "I am Mrs. Margot. Have you come to pawn, redeem, or browse?"
At the first sight of her, Sharlo almost failed to keep his expression in place.
Two sets of words hovered above Mrs. Margot's head.
One was amber, faint and fine, like the fate-lines of every ordinary person in the city: 【After closing, she will polish the little glove, as she does every day.】
The other lay over the amber script. Scarlet and ornate, its strokes resembled burning copperplate—the same breed of writing that had hovered over Juliet, though this was more fragmented, like a porcelain vessel shattered and glued together again:
【The Scarlet Queen will gather love until love fills her.】
Two scripts, one person. The amber set belonged to Mrs. Margot's own life.
The scarlet set belonged to the thing infesting her: the fragment of the crown Mr. Bassoon had carried away had found a host.
The bell rang again.
An elderly gentleman entered, close to seventy. His overcoat was made of good cloth, though it had worn shiny, and the seams at the cuffs had been altered more than once. A model Riverbend Street resident: fallen fortunes, intact dignity.
He was plainly a regular. He removed his hat on entering and inclined his head to Mrs. Margot.
"A pleasant Wednesday, Mr. Arthur." Mrs.
Margot brought out a tiny velvet tray from beneath the counter. "The usual?"
"The usual." The old gentleman counted three silver candles from his pocket onto the tray, his movements carrying an almost ritual solemnity.
Mrs. Margot turned to the pigeonholes behind her, took down a palm-sized ebony box, set it on the counter, and pushed it toward him. The old gentleman drew a deep breath and raised the lid—
Standing two paces away, Sharlo could see perfectly well that there was nothing inside. The box was empty.
Yet the moment the lid rose, the old gentleman's face lit. The wrinkles across his age-spotted features eased one by one, and a light fifty years younger shone in his eyes. For a full minute he gazed into the empty box, his lips moving faintly as though speaking to someone, or counting a measure only he could hear.
Then he closed the lid, pushed the box back, put on his hat, and bowed.
"Until next Wednesday, Mrs. Margot."
"Until next Wednesday, Mr. Arthur. Take care—the step is slippery."
The bells chimed, and the old gentleman's back disappeared into the fog. Sharlo stared at the ebony box as it returned to its pigeonhole, his throat rather dry. "What was that gentleman... redeeming?"
"Half a dance." Mrs. Margot wiped the counter, her tone as casual as if she were discussing the weather.
"Fifty-three years ago, at a winter ball in the capital, he danced half a dance with a young lady. Later, each married someone else, and each buried someone else. Three years ago, he pawned the memory to us. His children and grandchildren are undutiful and waiting to divide his house. He feared that senility might loosen his tongue and stain the lady's reputation for the rest of her life."
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She straightened the ebony box in its niche, as gently as though laying a sacred relic to rest.
"He pawns it with us and redeems it for one minute every Wednesday. Three silver candles to look once, then we put it away again." Mrs. Margot looked up and smiled.
"That, sir, is the pawnshop trade. We do not steal, rob, or coax. We merely look after the things people can no longer afford to keep themselves."
Sharlo made no reply.
He understood, and understanding was far worse than ignorance. Three silver candles for one minute—the old gentleman's pension would last only a few years. When his money ran out and he could no longer redeem it, that half a dance would belong to the pawnshop forever.
This was not safekeeping. It was hunting by enclosure, using the gentlest possible blade to shave away the final gleaming fragment in a person's heart, one minute at a time. And until the day he died, the man being carved away would remain grateful to her.
"Pawn," Viola said, her voice mixed in precisely the right proportions: three parts shame, seven parts resolve. "I heard... that you take letters."
"We take anything people cannot let go, my dear." Mrs. Margot's voice was like warmed milk.
"A pawnshop has no use for things their owners can relinquish. Such things have no value."
She accepted the valise, opened it, and removed the packet of letters, but did not read them. Her fingertips passed lightly over the paper, like an old tailor feeling a length of cloth. Sharlo held his breath.
The Bureau's forgeries were excellent, but they were still false. Would a true gatherer of love know by touch?
Mrs. Margot brushed her fingers over the final page. She raised her eyes, her smile unchanged.
"Six years of longing. Three years of resentment. For the last two, she has truly been letting go."
She squared the pages neatly and returned them to the valise. "My dear, I will give you an honest price: two gold crowns for the packet. But I advise you not to pawn it."
Viola started. "...Why?"
"Because it is nearly healed," Mrs. Margot said gently. "A wound itches most when the skin is almost closed. That is when people want to cut off the entire arm. Give this sorrow another year and it will fade on its own. It is not worth pawning. We are merchants, but we do not deal in guilty consciences. We accept only the things that would crush their owners to death if they kept carrying them."
She turned to Sharlo, and her smile deepened by one degree.
"This gentleman, for example. You have something for which the pawnshop would pay a handsome price."
"Do I?" Sharlo kept smiling. "I'm a pauper."
"Paupers have the finest stock." Mrs. Margot said.
"You carry a very heavy attachment, sir. An older relative, am I right? Missing for more than half a year, neither seen alive nor found dead, and you do not even know why he left. That attachment has nowhere to rest. It is like a lock without a keyhole."
Sharlo's smile did not move by a hair. His palms were drenched in sweat.
"Pawn it to me," Mrs. Margot said softly, her voice warm enough to melt a man. "Two hundred gold crowns. You may redeem it whenever you wish, at a premium of only ten percent. Redeem it for a day when you wish to think of him; leave it on deposit with me when you do not. Sir, this is not selling. It is safekeeping. Let professionals look after what you cannot bear to carry."
The pawnshop was so still they could hear droplets of mist against the display window.
"A seductive offer," Sharlo said slowly. "Unfortunately, there is a problem, Mrs. Margot. You can assay an article without even touching it. In that case, you should also be able to tell that this 'attachment' of mine is made of two parts. Half of it wants to find him. The other half wants to find whoever made him disappear."
He leaned over the counter and spoke in a voice only the three of them could hear.
"The latter half is not for sale. No buyer can bid high enough."
Mrs. Margot regarded him. Her smile did not change, but something flickered almost imperceptibly in the depths of her grey-blue eyes. Sharlo saw the scarlet script above her head shudder violently, like flame teased by a gust.
"What a pity," she said at last, becoming the kindly grandmother once more. "Then do visit us often. We receive new goods every Thursday, and the window display changes. Young man, the fog lies thick on Riverbend Street. Mind your step on the way home."
* * *
"Did she see through the forged letters?" Viola asked in the carriage on the way back.
"No. She truly believed your 'sorrow' was nearly healed, because the Properties Division copied a real case file, and the person in that broken engagement really has moved on. She wasn't touching the paper. She was touching what was on it."
Sharlo slumped against the carriage wall, feeling as though he had just run ten miles. "Raven, this is more than one step above the Wick Mercantile. The Mercantile harvested love-debts by using gambling debts to coerce people and songs to coax them. This woman does neither. She reasons with you until you consent gladly—and think her a good person besides."
"What is she, exactly?"
"Two things," Sharlo said. "Underneath is a real Mrs. Margot, an old woman who polishes one infant's glove every night after closing. Riding her is a fragment of the Scarlet Queen's crown. The fragment gathers love through her; she gives the fragment a human face. I cannot tell which words belong to which. Perhaps she cannot either."
He paused, watching Riverbend Street recede beyond the carriage window.
"There is something else. Something worse. She recognized me."
Viola's head snapped around.
"She doesn't know who I am, but one glance told her everything beneath the surface: my uncle, his disappearance, the lock without a keyhole. The crown fragment saw me on the night of the premiere, Raven." Sharlo's voice lowered. "The fragment remembers the Curtainbreaker."
* * *
That evening's briefing continued late into the night.
Grey listened to the entire report without speaking at once. He pinned three sheets to the blackboard: the old file on the Wick Mercantile to the left, the new file on the Magpie Pawnshop to the right, and an arrow between them.
"The conclusion first. We cannot touch the Magpie Pawnshop," he said. "First, the law gives us no purchase. Every transaction is a 'voluntary deposit,' with papers and signatures. The victims walk in of their own accord and walk out smiling. Arrest Mrs. Margot, and the public-order court cannot even issue a summons. Second, tactically, we have even less room to move."
He tapped the arrow in the middle.
"The Wick Mercantile was a fishing rod. It could be pulled up overnight. The pawnshop is different. The pawnshop is a warehouse. Forty-nine pieces of 'merchandise' have to be stored somewhere. Most likely they are inside that building, or pass through it. If we move now, we startle the fish. The stock is moved overnight, and all we have left is another empty shop and a false seal. I only pay for the same lesson once in my life."
"Then we simply wait?" The operations captain frowned. "Watch her collect more every week?"
"We don't simply wait. We keep accounts," Grey said. "Starting tomorrow night, replace the covert posts around the pawnshop and keep them manned around the clock. Record every customer who enters or leaves. Appraise every transaction. Tail every box that goes out until the trail breaks—and if you lose it, do not chase. Press too hard and you'll flush the quarry. I want a complete running ledger. Once we understand where the merchandise flows, we'll see the person collecting it."
After the meeting, Grey held Sharlo back a moment.
"What she said today—two hundred gold crowns for your attachment." The old inspector looked at him. "Were you tempted?"
"I was," Sharlo said readily. "For one moment. Not by the money, but by the words, 'Let professionals look after what you cannot bear to carry.' Chief, what makes that sentence terrifying is that it's true for everyone. Who in this city doesn't have one thing they cannot bear?"
Grey nodded. His face showed nothing, but in the lamplight his old eyes seemed to deepen.
"Remember what you said today," he told him. "The Dirge Society has endured four hundred years not because of candles or black arts, but because of that sentence. People suffer. When they have suffered long enough, they will follow whoever offers them a ladder—even if the ladder leans out over a cliff. Those of us who carry lamps were never meant to tear down the ladder."
"Then what are we meant to do?"
"Stand beside it," Grey said, "so the people who want to climb can see there is another road."