Chapter 182: Zinnia's Choice

The Bureau rooftop garden held a dozen potted lemon trees, all stubbornly alive in the wind. Nilo paced between them with his hands in his coat, wearing a trench through the gravel.

"Young man, you have circled the same lemon tree eleven times, the poor thing feels hunted," Clangor said from the rack.

Wind pulled at the lemon leaves, carrying a faint smell of smoke from the barricades along Silk Row. Four days since the fitting, each one longer than the last, each one ending with a worse report.

'She is down there with the ledger and the man who signed her away, I am up here bullying fruit.'

The roof door opened, Zinnia stepping out with ink on her thumb and no tears on her face. She walked to the railing, set both elbows on it, and stared down at the glittering Gilded District.

"He is going to the tower cells with Captain Bellow and a muffin, I forgave nothing, I merely ran out of questions."

Far below, shopkeepers draped cloth over their windows one by one, hiding every pane from the morning sun. The Hook Curfew turned the richest district in the whole city into a long avenue of shrouded mirrors.

Nilo stopped beside her, "You don't have to be fine, you can shout at me, I'm very available," he offered.

He leaned on the rail, "What did he say to you in there?"

She watched a cart crawl along the avenue, "He apologized nine times, I stopped at nine, it was turning into a performance."

"I can stop three hundred and six people from losing their faces, that is what I intend to do with my afternoon."

Nilo went still, finally reading the set of her shoulders, the stance she took before every single duel. It was the posture of someone who finished the arithmetic twice, then hated the only answer it gave.

"No."

"I have not said anything yet."

He crossed his arms, "You were about to say you'd walk into that Hall alone at the fifth midnight, so the answer is no."

Zinnia's mouth twitched at the corner, the closest she came to a smile when she was being read correctly. She tucked the notebook under one arm and squared up to him like a duelist choosing the proper distance.

"You read me correctly, that saves us both a speech."

She tapped her notebook against the rail in the rhythm of a metronome, counting off her points in advance. Her arguments came out in numbered order, each one laid down like a card on a very crowded table.

"One, the contract opens only for the heir, so the Hall will not open without me."

She raised a second finger, "Two, Calla says the Collector hides until a door is promised, I am that door."

"Three, I am the only person in this city who can cut a reflection back, I learned it from his own weaver in Silk Row."

Nilo shook his head, "He can cut your reflection out of a teapot, you could be hung before you reach the door."

Her chin lifted, "Then I will carry nothing shiny, I have already asked Tilly for a coat with no buttons and gloves that do not gleam."

He winced, "Tilly will bill you for that coat, with interest, then she will put the interest on my page."

"I have already asked her to, it is the first debt I have ever been glad to owe."

Nilo drew a sharp breath, "Four, I would rather he hang me than—"

"Than hang me, I know, but he wants you more, that is why he will keep you for last."

Nilo gripped the railing so hard the paint flaked, searching for an argument that did not exist. Behind them the lemon trees rustled loudly, as though the wind itself held opinions about the quarrel.

"I'm not letting a tailor hang you on a hook."

"You do not decide that, it is my reflection, my name, my father's mistake."

The rack buzzed against his chest, every mask pressing forward with opinions that nobody on the roof requested. Jingles's crack glowed gold, a nervous little flicker, as though the lemon trees were the last safe thing.

"Young man, a lady's courage is not yours to veto," Clangor said gently.

Cadenza sighed from the rack, "Darling, stop arguing and hold her hand, the audience is leaning forward."

Zilch's voice cut flatly through the noise, "She is right."

"I do not like this plan, I like the lemon trees, can we please stay with the lemon trees?" Jingles squeaked.

"Everyone on this rack is fired," Nilo muttered, though his voice came out thin.

She glanced at the rack, the corner of her mouth twitching, "Please keep Sir Clangor, he is the only one of you who understands chaperones."

He lifted his chin and tried the smile that fooled everybody else, "Look, I'm calm about this, I'm not scared for you at all."

Zinnia opened the notebook without a word, writing one line in the careful script he knew by heart. The pen scratched once across the paper, as loud in the silence as a door closing somewhere distant.

"Twenty-one," she said.

"That was a perfectly good lie."

"It was a terrible lie, you are shaking, I have stood next to you through a gala and a collapsing building."

He looked down at his own hand on the rail, the gloved fingers trembling like a dropped coin. She covered it with her palm, ink smudging his glove, the whole garden seeming to hold its breath.

"I'm scared... that I'll be a second too late," he admitted.

"Then be early, that is the whole plan."

She unhooked the gold ribbon from beside Jingles, winding it twice around his wrist in a very precise knot. Her fingers lingered on the knot a heartbeat longer than the ribbon needed, a detail neither of them mentioned.

"This is for the tally, so you remember who is counting."

"Promise me you will come through the glass, whatever mirror it is, however many of him there are."

"I promise," Nilo said, with no joke attached to it at all, not even a small one.

"Good, a promise from you costs more than a lie, I have checked the exchange rate."

The wind dropped for a moment, the lemon leaves falling still as if the whole roof was listening. Somewhere below, a shopkeeper tugged a cloth tighter over a window, the sound carrying like a turning page.

"Then I will be early, I have never been early in my life, I intend to be legendary at it."

She pressed the notebook into his hands, the leather still warm, a page marked with a scrap of ribbon. Then she walked slowly toward the stairs, her back straight, not once glancing at the window glass she passed.

"Keep it safe, page forty has your face on it... I do not trust the glass with it."

Nilo opened the notebook to page forty, where a crooked-mouthed boy grinned up at him in pencil.

'He drew me with nothing inside, she drew me with eyes, I know whose page I believe.'

Far below, in the shrouded windows of the Gilded District, one cloth twitched as if something behind it breathed.