Chapter 186: The Night Before

The Bureau tower roof smelled of hot broth and cold wind, a dozen paper cartons steaming on the pillow fort. Silver threads hung over the Gilded District below, glittering like a huge net waiting for the evening tide to turn.

"Noodles for six and a half, one carton per hero, a fish bowl for Gerald," Pipa announced, passing them around.

Ganzo sat cross-legged inside the fort with his hammer across his knees, slurping a noodle as long as a rope. Bruno wedged beside him with a carton on one knee, holding a thermos his father sent up that very morning.

"My father sent tea and a note that says sorry in six words, I have decided to read it after breakfast," he said.

Ganzo tapped his chopsticks on the carton, "A wise man digests his apologies slowly, like a good stew."

Nilo sat on the parapet with his legs dangling over forty floors of night, the bandolier hooked on the stone. Zinnia took the spot at his elbow, setting down two cartons, her shoulder touching his without a word of comment.

"You carried my notebook all day without reading a page," she said.

"You said keep it safe, you never said keep it open."

"Hand it over for exactly one second, I need to make an entry."

He passed it across, she scribbled a single line, then the cover snapped shut before he could look. When it returned the notebook was warm from her hand, the corner folded over a tally of twenty-two.

"Twenty-two, I didn't even say anything this time," he protested.

"You climbed the stairs with a face that said you are not afraid, I count faces too."

Something shifted in the shadow of the water tank, a patch of dark leaning away from the dark around it. Calla stepped into the lantern light, the plain pale mask first, her violet scarf trailing behind her like a thought.

"I was told noodles exist," she said softly.

Pipa slid a carton across the roof with her foot, "Chat, the Violet has entered the dinner, keep your voices down, she startles."

"I do not startle, I merely arrive in the middle of sentences."

She took the carton, turned her back, and sat on the parapet with her shoulders hunched around it. The noodles vanished at an impressive speed, although nobody saw how or dared to ask her about it.

"Did anyone see where the noodles went?" Nilo whispered.

"Nobody saw anything, which is exactly how she likes it."

Zinnia put down her chopsticks and studied the Viper, a fox deciding whether a fence was a wall. Then she pulled a spare pencil from her satchel, holding it out across the narrow gap between them.

"You steal from him every day, Violet, here is something you may keep without a receipt."

Calla took the pencil, tilting it between her fingers, "That is the kindest thing a Fox has ever said to me."

"It is a pencil, do not turn it into a treaty."

"I am making it a treaty... the first clause is that I stop stealing your scarf."

"I never knew you were stealing my scarf," Zinnia said, one eyebrow lifting.

"Then the treaty is already working."

Bruno wheezed into his thermos as Ganzo thumped his back hard enough to rattle every carton there. Pipa muttered something about a ratings spike, remembered the stream was off, then sulked into her broth.

Ganzo thumped his chest, "Squad Nine does not eat last meals, it eats second helpings."

Bruno lifted his carton like a trophy, steam curling around his horns in the lantern light. One by one the others lifted theirs, even Calla, who raised hers quietly without turning around.

"To the Hall of Mirrors, may it have terrible acoustics."

"To Gerald," Bruno added solemnly, "who has endured more noodles than any fish alive."

"To Tilly, who will bill us for every second of tomorrow," Nilo said, clinking his carton against Zinnia's.

Bruno dug a battered brass token from his coat pocket and pressed it into Nilo's palm. It carried the Steelhorn crest on one face, worn smooth by a family's worth of thumbs.

"If the ceiling comes down on you, throw this at the floor and I will hear it," he said gruffly.

"Does it work on mirrors too?"

"It works on anything a Steelhorn can lift, which is everything I have ever stood next to."

'A coin that rings in a Steelhorn's ear. Everyone is handing me something to come back with.'

For one breath nobody joked, the cold wind carrying faint waltz music from some far balcony. Then Ganzo burped loudly enough to rattle the thermos, dissolving the whole fort into helpless laughter.

'Five friends, eight masks, and one stubborn corner of a face. That's a lot more than I started with.'

Ganzo lifted a fat fist, balancing a dripping noodle on his chopstick, "Squad Nine, tomorrow we walk into a house of mirrors, remember that a Bellow never breaks a mirror, he merely corrects it."

"Captain, that is the worst slogan I have ever heard," Pipa said.

"It is going on the squad banner, I have already paid the stitcher."

Inside the rack, Clangor cleared his throat in the dark, "Young man, I wish it noted that my visor is still dented, therefore I intend to repair it after the Collector."

"You'll have the best visor in the District, Tilly already has a quote written."

'A dented visor, a mended jester, a rain-lined rack. Whatever waits tomorrow, I walk in with my whole wardrobe.'

Calla turned the pencil over twice before she spoke again, her voice dropping to almost nothing, "Nilo, may I look at your face, only the one you wear now."

The roof went quiet, even the wind seeming to hold its breath for a second or two. He set down his carton, pushed the hood back, and turned toward her in the lantern light.

"Go ahead, it won't bite, it barely holds a shape."

"Hold still, I will take the whole minute," she murmured.

She leaned close until the pale mask hovered a hand's breadth from his cheek, staying there while the wind counted. He felt her slowly studying his jaw, the crooked left eyebrow, the plain gray of his eyes, the ordinary mouth.

"It slides, like rain off a window... but I caught one corner of it."

"A corner is more than most people get."

She lifted the pencil, writing three tiny words inside her wrist where no one could ever read them. Then she tugged her cuff down and nodded once, like a carpenter nodding at a joint that holds.

"Tomorrow, if I lose you in that Hall, I will find you by that corner."

"Violet, you are making my chest do something unprofessional—" Pipa whispered.

"Eat your fish."

His phone buzzed against the stone, a single message from a number saved only as Pawnshop. Zinnia read it over his shoulder, her lips moving, the color slipping out of her face.

"It says eat, sleep, stairs, in capital letters, nothing else."

"Tink hates stairs more than he hates Wearers," Nilo said slowly.

Far below in the Lower Town, one window lit up at the top of a very long climb.