Chapter 183: Anti-Mirror Lamps

By midday the floor twelve office looked like a workshop that lost a long argument with an entire lamp shop. Tilly stood on the long table amid the wreckage, a wrench in one hand, her debt notebook in the other.

"Listen up, I have forty-one lamps, nine hours, one rule, nobody touches the glass until I say so."

Pipa lifted a drone to the light, "Chat, this is the Anti-Mirror Lamp, it makes reflections cry, subscribe for more."

"They don't make anything cry, they make the glass confused, the Collector needs a clean picture to cut, and every shade here holds a pane of rain that smears it into soup."

"The rain came from my tears, didn't it?" Nilo asked.

"Canal water and the jar you left in my stall, waste not, I'm billing you per milliliter," Tilly said, snapping her notebook open.

She flicked a switch, the nearest lamp flaring, painting the wall with ripples as if the room sat underwater. Every polished surface in the office dissolved into shifting smears, from the teapot to Bruno's freshly buffed shoulder pauldron.

Bruno turned in a slow circle, "My reflection has become a puddle... this is the first time in my life I have felt humble."

She pointed her wrench at him, "Congratulations, Steelhorn, I'll have the lamp framed."

Ganzo unrolled a sheet of crumb-dusted paper across the table, pinning its four corners with four chipped tea mugs. The map showed a vast oval hall ringed with sixty mirrors, a grand staircase curling down from a balcony.

He marked the exits with raisins, the hammer's route with one triumphant stripe of strawberry jam through the middle.

"Plan Hammer is simple, the Collector appears, I hit him, the Hall becomes a lesson in structural engineering."

"Plan Hammer has no step for the mirrors, Captain, the mirrors will cut you into a—"

"Then I will be a very sturdy coat," he said, tapping the table with one finger.

The table split into neat halves along its grain, a clean crack running from edge to edge. Tilly wrote a number in her notebook without looking, the number rising with every second he smiled.

'He wrote a battle plan in jam. Somehow that is the most reassuring thing I have seen all week.'

Bruno hauled a ceiling brace across the floor, planting it under the light fixture with a satisfied grunt. The brace was a full-scale model of the real one, already denting the poor floor tiles beneath it.

"I will hold the ceiling, my father's engineers sent the calculations by letter... it is the first letter he has written me in a year."

"Sixty tons, then?" Nilo asked.

"Sixty tons, a fine number, I intend to carry it with my face looking bored."

Bruno folded the letter into his breastplate, the paper creased from being read so many times. Nobody mentioned it, the squad granting him the kindest silence they could manage that whole afternoon.

"Chat, please look away from the Steelhorn, he is currently experiencing a feeling," Pipa whispered.

Pipa knelt beside a row of drones with a can of matte paint, whispering apologies to each one. Their eyes blinked in protest as the paint dried, each one forgiven with a kiss on the lens.

"A drone nobody can see cannot be hung, chat, so I'm painting them the color of regret."

Through the supply room door, Zinnia stood on a stool while Dot and Fen pinned a plain coat. She wore the expression of a queen being fitted for a funeral, though she held her arms level.

'She looks like a queen at her own trial, yet she is still counting my lies.'

The ceiling vent clicked open, Calla dropping onto the table with her arms full of small stolen objects. She dumped them in a rattling pile, each one tagged with a neat receipt in the quartermaster's handwriting.

"Rule three, returned with interest," she said, dry as dust.

"A watch, a horn polish, a lens cap, the Captain's lucky teaspoon, forty-one buttons, none of them his."

Ganzo plucked a battered hat from the pile and set it on his head with enormous dignity, "I have been bareheaded for three days, my skull felt drafty."

She set a single coin on top, "Your Drifter's coin, it was slightly cursed, I kept it warm."

"You stole my coin?" Nilo asked, pocketing it.

"Borrowed, there is a difference, ask your quartermaster, she wrote the receipt."

Tilly slid off the table and walked up to Calla, looking her over from violet scarf to quiet feet. They stared at each other like cats on a fence, one holding a wrench, the other holding a knife.

"You're the one who steals from my brother."

"Fifteen percent interest, payable in silence."

"I like her, she can stay," she told the room, writing something in her notebook.

Nilo opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again, since the safest option seemed so obvious. On the rack Cadenza sobbed into her feathers, overcome by two dangerous women agreeing with each other.

Tilly turned toward the supply room and shouted, "Quartermaster, the fitting is done, come show them the ugliest coat in the city!"

The supply room door opened, Zinnia stepping out in a plain gray coat without a single button or buckle. Every lamp in the office rippled across her, yet the coat stayed matte, drinking in the glow like ink.

"It has no buttons, nothing that gleams, not even pockets, it is the ugliest garment I have ever loved, I intend to be buried in it."

'A coat made to be forgotten, yet she is the one person in this room I could never lose.'

Tilly hopped off the table and dragged Nilo into a corner, her voice dropping below the noise. Under the bluster her hands shook slightly, buried in her pockets before he could properly notice them.

She gripped his sleeve, "Nine hours is plenty for lamps, it is not plenty for me to stop being scared, so you walk back out of there, hear me?"

"I'll walk out with her, I'll walk out with all of them, I'll even owe you for the privilege."

"You already owe me for the privilege, I'm just rounding up the total... and you are not allowed to round down."

The office door opened without a knock, Crown entering the room with Captain Rook two steps behind her. Every lamp in the room dimmed a notch, as though the light itself wanted to stand at attention.

Crown's voice cut across the room, "The Court has sent its observers, six carriages with no horses, they stopped at the Foxes' gate an hour ago."

Crown crossed slowly to the window and stood with her hands behind her back, watching the covered mirrors far below. Far down the avenue six black carriages stood in a silent row, their lanterns burning the wrong shade of gold.

"I cannot cross Guild ground uninvited, you are the invitation, the Bureau will watch from the gate."

Rook folded his arms, "They asked for rooms with good windows... one of them asked after the boy with the blank mirror before anyone mentioned a boy."

In the rippling glass of forty-one lamps, nobody's reflection looked back at him.