The Lowlight had a way of sounding like it was thinking. Pipes muttered. Water argued with itself in gutters. Somewhere a radio bled a hymn through a wall thin as regret. Kade walked fast enough to look purposeful and slow enough to look uninteresting. In his jacket: the cold‑mirror, warm as a kept promise; the receipt tin, cool as a withheld one.
Brook's clinic door stuck and then surrendered the way it did for people who pushed like they meant to heal what was on the other side.
Mira was sitting upright on the cot, blanket folded with the precision of a child who had learned to be neat because adults were tired. Her hair was braided, but messily, the tail tucked under like she'd done it without a mirror. She looked fine the way a statue looks fine: balanced just past falling.
"You're early," she said, bright.
"Bridge time," Kade answered, because jokes were a kind of truth that didn't frighten people.
She waved him closer. "Smell you."
He bent, and she inhaled near his collar the way she always did, cataloguing the day like an archivist with a favorite thief.
"Storm, copper, someone's kitchen," she said. "And… oranges."
"Lowlight perfume," he said. "Limited edition."
She grinned and then—so small he would've missed it if he were someone else—her left eyelid shivered, a tremor fine as thread. The laugh hiccuped and recovered. Her right hand, the one under the blanket, pressed once against her thigh and then went obedient again.
"You're steady?" he asked, letting the question sound like a brother being fussy, not a man trying to triangulate the slope of a cliff.
"Steadier than Brook's temper," she said.
"Low bar."
"Trip over it and I'll kick you," she said, which was something she only said when her balance felt like a secret.
Brook came from the back room with a tray that had decided to be a battlefield: pills, gauze, a chipped cup of dark liquid that used to be tea and had since evolved into medicine by believing in itself.
"You should be lying down," he told Mira.
"I am," she said.
"You're vertical."
"I'm imagining horizontal."
Brook looked at Kade. It was the look you give a man when you need him to be a door and a wall at the same time.
"The audit notice," Brook said, flat.
Kade didn't let his jaw harden. "How many winters now."
"After your heroics this morning? One and a half," Brook said. "They posted it to the door like a love letter. If we don't pay by sundown tomorrow, they start the reduction schedule."
Mira tilted her head. "Reduction sounds like math," she said. "Is it math?"
"It's what they call mercy when they want applause," Brook said, too quickly, and then softer: "It means fewer hours of light ration for this district. Means more seizures. Means worse ones."
Kade felt the knot in his forearm, newly anchored, loosen its respectful pressure just enough that he remembered what unhurt felt like. He hated that it picked now to be kind.
"How much," he asked.
Brook slid an envelope across the table. The paper was the city's honest kind—fibers you could count, watermark that glowed faint if you angled it toward a doorway like a superstition. The number on the tally sheet wasn't obscene. It was worse: achievable. Someone had calibrated it to be just under what would make you give up.
"We can't sell her morning," Kade said.
"I wasn't asking," Brook said. "I'd bite my own hands off first."
Mira rolled her eyes without moving anything else. "You two make such pretty vows. Put them in jars and sell them. Might pay half."
"You're funny when you're hiding a seizure," Kade said, keeping his voice the kind of light that doesn't throw shadows.
She didn't answer. Because she was good. Because she'd learned to be.
The tremor tried to take her eye again. She closed both, then opened them clean.
"I'm fine," she said.
"Good," Kade said. "I need you to do something very difficult."
"What," she said, reflex‑game.
"Be fine again in five minutes," he said. "For the next two hours."
Her mouth made a small O. Then she understood. "You're going to get money."
"Temporary light," he said.
"Loan," Brook translated, disgusted.
"Loan," Kade agreed, and the word tasted already like citrus peel left too long on the tongue.
Brook set the chipped cup down a little harder than cups prefer. "Who? Not Riven."
"Riven's money is for something else," Kade said.
"Not the church," Brook said. "Vex will smile and you'll owe him sermons forever."
"Not the church," Kade confirmed. "I was thinking… Clement."
Brook swore. Mira wrinkled her nose. Even the clinic door seemed to object.
"Clement will take something you can't buy back," Brook said. "That's his art."
"I'll give him something worthless," Kade said.
"You don't have worthless," Brook said, and immediately looked like he wanted the sentence back.
Mira leaned forward. "I have worthless," she said, cheerful like she could be helpful. "I have the memory of dropping a spoon. It's very boring. Take that."
"No," Kade and Brook said together, and then smiled despite themselves because twins sometimes are invented by the way two people answer the world.
Kade touched the blanket near Mira's knee. "I need two hours," he said. "You'll be okay."
"I'll be okay," she said, letting him have the lie because she was generous with small things he needed more than she did.
He straightened. "Brook, if the Mercies come—"
"I've been dancing with men in white since before you could count your own teeth," Brook said. "Go."
Kade went.
**
The Candle Exchange sat under the spine of the old aqueduct, where stone had decided to be beautiful and then been punished for it by becoming useful. The sign above the door was a rectangle of frosted glass etched with an orange slice. Under it, neat script: CLEMENT · LIGHT LOANS · USAGE ADVICE · DISCRETION.
Inside, the air smelled like burnt sugar and something cleaner that tried to pretend it wasn't bleach. The floor was tiled in black‑and‑white squares so sharply contrasted they made tired eyes hurt less by giving them a game to play.
Clement sat at a table that was exactly the right height to make people feel like their legs were too short. He was the kind of man who looked like an uncle in a city where uncles were a luxury: round face, precise beard, eyes that never narrowed because narrowing was unprofessional. On the table, he had arranged a fan of little paper cups. Each cup held two slices of candied orange peel glistening with syrup.
"Kade," Clement said, as if greeting a doctor he liked. "Or is it No‑Name today? You wear both well."
"Depends who's not listening," Kade said. He didn't sit. Clement gestured to a chair with a tilt of fingers that implied good manners would be rewarded. Kade stayed standing anyway. Men like Clement enjoyed changing your altitude.
"What did you do to your arm?" Clement asked, as if asking about weather.
"Registered it," Kade said blandly.
Clement's smile admitted the lie and forgave it because it was neat. "What can I sweeten for you?"
"A winter and a half," Kade said. "By sundown tomorrow."
"Honesty. Unusual." Clement slid one of the paper cups across the table. "Please. I insist. It's cultural."
Kade didn't reach. Clement picked up a slice himself and bit. His jaw worked, slow. "Taste is memory," he said conversationally. "If you feed the tongue the right jewelry, it will forget the metal."
"I didn't come for your poetry," Kade said.
"Everyone does," Clement said, still pleasant. "They just don't admit they paid extra for it."
He put the cup down and steepled his hands. His fingers had the pale calluses of a man who writes more than he lifts. The skin around his nails was immaculate. Kade wondered if he scrubbed his hands when he went home, and with what, and whether anyone held them dry.
"Collateral?" Clement asked, turning the word over like a coin to show it didn't bite.
"Not her mornings," Kade said. "Not her laughter. Not any syllable of her name."
"Ah," Clement said, delighted. "You think I want hers. It's very touching."
"Your contracts always go for what hurts best," Kade said. "You want the thing I'll be angriest at myself for selling."
Clement beamed as if Kade had correctly identified a bird on a wire. "We are very compatible clients."
He reached under the table and brought up a wooden box with a brass latch. Inside lay rows of slim vials, each with a pale wafer of something pinned neatly to the cork with a tiny brass tack: a dried petal, a strip of fabric, a flake of paint, a thread. The labels were written in that down‑turned municipal hand that made even crimes look like paperwork.
"I could take," Clement said gently, "a Tuesday afternoon. Or your taste for cinnamon. I could take your muscle memory for the three steps you use when you dodge to the left. Small but meaningful. It would make you bleed at the wrong moment and turn your blood into coin for me."
"No," Kade said.
Clement nodded, unsurprised. "Then may I propose something clean." He took out a vial with no token pinned to it. "Your first bite of orange. Ever. Gone. You'll still like oranges. But you'll lose the memory anchor. The taste will become only itself."
Kade stared at the vial. In his mouth, ghost‑sweetness bloomed, uninvited. A small boy in a gray courtyard, a neighbor with a paper cone, the peel stuck under his thumb for the rest of the day. A woman's hand—whose?—wiping stickiness off his chin with the hem of her apron and scolding the vendor for selling too early in the season. Debt tasted like citrus, he thought, and wanted to punch a god he didn't even believe in for letting poets be right.
"No," he said, softer than the first no.
Clement sighed as if disappointed in the world's lack of appetite for elegance. "Very well. Something more technical. A savor mark." He held up another vial, this one clear. "A tongue‑marker used by tasters and certain… professionals. It won't remove anything. It will color your taste for a while. Oranges will taste like copper until the debt is done. Every time you smell or taste citrus, you'll remember to pay me."
Kade let his jaw unclench. "That's all?"
"That's all," Clement said. "Unless you default. Then it becomes permanent, and you will die one day not knowing that oranges are the world's apology for a thousand small griefs."
Kade almost smiled. "You're a monster."
"I have a license for it," Clement said, indicating a little frame on the wall with the Archon's crest and a paragraph of fine print that absolved people like him of sin as long as the tallies matched.
Kade looked at the paper cup of orange peel. He picked up a slice. Sticky. Heavy. It smelled like a hundred afternoons he hadn't had time to miss.
"Do it," he said.
"Excellent," Clement said, bright as a bell in a polite room. He produced a silver stylus with a tip like a tasting spoon and a little bottle with a plug that popped against Kade's ear like a trick. "Open. Tongue up."
Kade opened. The stylus touched the back of his tongue. A bloom of metallic cold spread forward, then down. It didn't hurt. It colonized. Clement worked quickly, precise. When he was done, he offered a glass of water that tasted like a coin that had never seen a pocket.
"There," Clement said, sitting back. "Contract sealed on taste. Payment schedule: every evening for six evenings, then the balance at end‑term. If you miss a day, the mark deepens and your tongue will start confusing copper and sweetness. The world will get worse. Don't miss."
Kade nodded, took the paper cups of peel without being asked, and set them back on the table. Clement looked genuinely wounded.
"Take one," Clement said. "It's cultural."
Kade took one because refusing was a drama he didn't have time for. He put the slice in his mouth.
It tasted like a clean knife.
He chewed anyway, because sometimes respect is force. He swallowed and the cold traveled down like a patient policy.
"How do I pay?" Kade asked.
"Money is vulgar," Clement said, pleased with his own line. "Bring me a lullaby. Not on paper. Not hummed. Remembered. I'll take a copy. You may keep the original. I am not a thief."
Kade's skin tried to crawl off his bones and then decided to stay. "Fine," he said. "You'll get something from Nyx's market."
Clement's eyes sparkled. "Ah. Her key necklace always sounds like rain in a good mood. Tell her to visit me. I pay referral."
"She'll charge you extra for saying that where I could hear it," Kade said.
Clement laughed and slid an envelope across the table—the honest kind, already counted. "Go," he said. "Make your future briefly heavier."
Kade left with the money in his jacket and Clement's mark on his tongue, a small private winter. On the way out, a woman at the end of the counter lifted one of the cups and offered him a slice the way soldiers offer each other fire. He shook his head and she ate it herself, mouth tightening when the sweetness turned to metal.
Outside, the world smelled like oranges and he hated knowing it.
**
He moved fast. He paid three bills—the clinic, the district light levy, a smaller private tally that made a specific enforcer with a specific scar put his pen down and look out a window until the shaking stopped. He stopped by Nyx's stall and traded two coins for a slip of news: the Archives had a shift change tonight that would make one door forget itself for twenty minutes. He didn't tell her about the lullaby clause. She'd ask for a percentage and be right to do it.
When he pushed the clinic door, it stuck like a person undecided. He shouldered it and it yielded with a noise like a soft animal surprised awake.
Mira had not moved.
That would have been good, if stillness were honesty. But the blanket's edge had a bite mark. The chipped cup lay on its side, empty. Her hands were open on her thighs, palms up, a position she used when she wanted her body to think it held something.
"How long," he asked Brook, who was pretending to reorganize gauze.
"Two minutes," Brook said. "Maybe three. She told me to blink and when I did she used them."
Mira smiled at Kade with all her appointment teeth. "I'm fine again," she said. "You said two hours. It's been two hours."
"Eighty minutes," he said gently.
"Bridge time," she said, quick.
He sat. He put the envelope on the table and then pushed it farther away from himself so he wouldn't look like a boy showing off a shiny rock.
"We're paid," he said. "For now."
"For now," Brook echoed, not grateful, not ungrateful; simply refusing to spend the gratitude before the bill came.
Mira glanced at the envelope, then at Kade's mouth. "What did you eat," she asked.
"Oranges," he said.
She wrinkled her nose. "They smell like copper."
"New batch," he said. "The city is learning to cook."
She studied his face. She had always been unfair that way—able to count his pores and decide if the math summed to lie.
"You did the thing where you don't tell me the worst version first," she said.
"Bridge time," he repeated, and she laughed even though the laugh had to climb a hill.
He took out the cold‑mirror and set it on the table without naming it. It sat like a small moon that had agreed to pretend it was a plate. He angled it so it reflected nothing that could hurt.
"Lumi says," he murmured to Brook while Mira pretended not to listen, "we can anchor the knot when I bring her a morning that belongs to me."
"You don't have any," Brook said, not cruel, just precise.
"I'll make one," Kade said.
"How," Brook asked.
"By being here for it," Kade said, and it sounded like something a priest would say to a room that didn't have the energy to hate priests properly.
Mira reached a finger toward the mirror. He would've stopped anyone else. He didn't stop her. The mirror did its beautiful refusal: it showed not her face, but the window she liked, and the sliver of sky she always checked for the imaginary star she'd named. The ache in Kade's chest went from knife to pressure to something like a palm pressed against a bruise until the pain finally remembered it was allowed to leave.
"It doesn't bite," she whispered.
"Only if you point it at the wrong thing," he said.
"What's the wrong thing," she asked.
"The Halo," he said, and she nodded as if that had been obvious all along.
They sat for a while in a quiet that knew how to keep people. Outside, the Lowlight argued with its pipes. Someone ran. Somewhere a baby learned a new kind of crying that parents pretend means teeth. Brook arranged the tray and then disarranged it until the gods stopped minding.
Kade's tongue tasted like a coin every time the door let in the scent of rain.
He stood. "I have to—"
"—steal a lullaby," Mira finished, smug.
Brook choked on nothing. "You told her?"
"I didn't," Kade said.
Mira tapped her temple. "Nyx sings when she's bored. Keys go clink talk talk. Clement pays referral," she said, which meant Nyx had been here, which meant news moved faster than hunger.
Kade picked up the mirror. It warmed. He put it back down. He would leave it here, for now. Maybe the room would learn how to be kinder if something inside it refused to burn.
"I'll be back before the bellless hour," he said.
"Bring a song," Mira said.
"I will," he said.
"And something sweet that doesn't taste like knives," she added, wrinkling her nose.
He grinned. "We'll see if the city remembers how."
He stepped into the hall and the clinic door stuck behind him like a stubborn friend. The air smelled like oranges again and his mouth filled with copper so clean it might as well have been a bell.
Debt tasted like citrus. He swallowed it. It burned a little going down, then sat in his chest the way a promise sits: making room for itself by pushing other things to the edges.
"What you keep keeps you," he said under his breath.
"And what you owe names you," the hallway said back, or maybe that was just the sound metal makes when it decides to be honest.
Kade walked toward Nyx, toward a lullaby, toward a vault that would call him son and try to eat him in one mouthful.
He walked faster.