Chapter 124: Lantern Street

Lantern Street hadn’t changed at all.

It was still narrow and quiet and mostly empty, the windows boarded and the doorways full of old leaves, and halfway down, the tall dark building that had stood empty for twenty years still stood empty. There was no light under its door. Aren stood in front of it in the cold for a long breath, then knocked once.

Before his hand had left the wood, a small bell rang somewhere inside.

"Please," said the soft, faraway voice. "Come in, investor."

The shop was exactly as he remembered it: the narrow room, the blue lamps that gave no heat, the shelves of breathing stones and whispering jars, the mirror under its cloth. The air smelled of cold metal and the deep sea. The Faceless Merchant stood behind his long counter in his grey robe, his long pale hands resting motionless on the dark wood, and his smooth face turned slowly toward the door.

Then it tilted, very slightly, just as it had the first time.

"You have been somewhere cold," the merchant murmured. "And somewhere hungry. And you have come back without your mask." The face tilted the other way. "How interesting. You used to be so careful."

"I’ve changed masks. The old one was starting to fit."

"Yes. They do that." The long fingers stirred on the counter. "What did you come to buy?"

Aren didn’t answer right away. He walked along the shelves instead, slowly, looking at the jars. Some held smoke and some held light, and some held nothing he could see at all, only a faint movement behind the glass, like breath on a window. Each one had a small paper label in a careful, narrow hand. He couldn’t read the writing. He wasn’t sure it was meant to be read.

He stopped in front of one near the end of the top shelf, and his breath caught.

It was small and round and quite ordinary, and inside it, something glowed. It was orange, he was almost certain, warm and soft as a hearth fire, and running through the orange, faint and fine as hair, were threads of white and gold.

He didn’t touch it.

"Mira Hale," he whispered.

The merchant didn’t answer at once.

"She came to me in the winter," the merchant answered at last, "on the night of the first snow, with a letter in her hand and her eyes red. She asked me where you were. I told her." The smooth face didn’t move. "Then she asked me for something that could stand in front of anything at all. Anything. Even a hole in the world."

"And you gave it to her."

"I sold it to her. There is a difference." The long fingers tapped once on the wood. "She paid with the thing she held most tightly. I told her so before she agreed. I told her she would not get to choose, and that she would pay the first time she used the new fire, and that afterward, she would never be able to buy it back." He paused. "She thought about it for as long as it takes to put down a letter, and then she agreed."

Aren looked at the jar.

"She held me most tightly."

"She held you more tightly than anything I have ever weighed," the merchant replied simply. "More than her father, or her mother, or her own name. I was quite surprised. People don’t usually love other people that much. They love the idea of them."

Something went through Aren’s chest that he didn’t have a name for.

He had stood at the bottom of the Abyss with a white thing curled under his ribs and lost the color red forever, and he hadn’t felt like this. He had lost the name of a stone cutter and the first word a girl had taught him, and he hadn’t felt like this. He stood in front of a small jar in a shop that wasn’t always there and understood, finally, what he had been to her, and that she would never know it again.

’Eight years old, and she sat down next to me in the mud. And I never once told her thank you.’

"I want to buy it back!"

"It isn’t for sale, investor."

"Everything in here is for sale!"

"Everything in here is for sale eventually." The smooth face turned toward him. "Not yet. Some things have to be held until they are worth what they cost. A memory traded away is still a memory, investor. It is simply waiting for its owner to become someone who can afford it."

"Then name a price, any price."

The merchant was quiet for so long that Aren thought he wouldn’t answer.

"There is a key," the merchant murmured at last, "with no teeth, that opens nothing. It crossed the Narrow Sea a hundred years ago, and the people who hold it have never understood what it is for." The pale fingers lifted from the counter and pointed, very gently, at the left side of Aren’s chest, where the Familiar lay coiled. "Your friend there knows what it is for."

The Familiar went completely still.

"Bring it to me," the merchant murmured, "and the jar is yours."

"A key that opens nothing!"

"Yes," the merchant agreed. "Exactly. That is what makes it so expensive."

Aren stood there with the blue light on his face and tried to understand what he had just been offered.

Before he could ask, the small bell over the door rang again.

The merchant’s face turned, slowly, toward the sound. Then back to Aren. One long hand moved, a tiny gesture toward the heavy curtain at the end of the counter, where the back room was.

Aren stepped behind it without a word, his heart hammering.

Through the gap at its edge, he watched the door open.

She came in out of the cold with snow on her shoulders and her brown hair tied back, in a travelling coat that was too big for her and boots that had walked a very long way. She was thinner than she had been on the ice, and tired, and she looked around the narrow room as if she had been here before in a dream and wasn’t quite sure it was real.

’The convoy. Sixty riders with fresh horses go a great deal faster than one man hiding in the pines. She probably beat me home by a week.’

Then she looked at the merchant, and her face changed completely.

"You," Mira said slowly. "I know you!"

"You do."

"I don’t know how." She came up to the counter and put both hands flat on it, as if to steady herself. "I came all the way home from the North with the convoy and then a salt caravan, and I don’t remember why I went. I don’t remember why I was on that lake. I only remember this street, and this door, and your..." She gestured at his smooth, blank face. "You. I made a deal with you, didn’t I?"

"You did."

"What did I buy?"

"A fire," the merchant answered gently. "To stand in front of something terrible, and keep the people behind it safe."

Mira let out a long breath. Some of the tension went out of her shoulders, and Aren, behind the curtain, saw her almost smile.

"Then what did I pay?"

The merchant didn’t answer right away. His smooth face turned, very slightly, toward the curtain, and then back.

"Someone. You paid with someone."

"Who?"

"That is the part you paid with."

Mira stood at the counter without moving. Then she took her hands off the wood, and Aren saw them shaking.

"Was he worth it?" she asked quietly. "Whoever he was?"

Behind the curtain, Aren closed his eyes and pressed his fist against his mouth.

"You thought so," said the merchant. "You didn’t hesitate at all."

Mira nodded slowly, and she didn’t cry. That was so exactly like her that it hurt. She stood there a moment longer, looking at the shelves, at the small round jar near the end of the top shelf with its soft orange glow, and for a heartbeat her eyes stayed on it, puzzled, as if it reminded her of something.

Then she turned and walked out into the snow, and the bell rang behind her, and she was gone.

The merchant waited until her footsteps had faded down Lantern Street. Then he turned his blank face toward the curtain.

Aren didn’t move at first.

When he finally stepped out into the blue light, his face was dry, and his hands were steady, and something behind his eyes had set hard, as Perfect Marrow had set in his bones at the bottom of the Hollow’s throat.

"The key," Aren said. "Tell me everything you know about it, every last word."

The merchant’s blank face didn’t change, but somewhere in the dark at the back of the shop, a hundred jars began to glow a little brighter, as if something in every one of them had leaned closer to listen.

"Sit down, investor," the soft voice invited. "It’s a long story, and it begins a very long time before you were born."