He put his hand on the door. The wood was rough, splintered, and damp with the district’s perpetual cold sweat. He could feel the memories clinging to it. Decades of desperate hands, angry hands, hands slick with grease or blood. He ignored them. He pushed. The door groaned open into a wall of noise and heat.
The air was thick. It tasted of cheap spirits, unwashed bodies, and the sharp, metallic tang of ozone that always leaked from active memory-tech. It was the smell of a wound that refused to heal. A low, rhythmic hum vibrated up through the soles of his boots, the collective thrum of a dozen different devices running in the cramped space. And under it all, the sound he had come to despise. A rapid, mechanical ticking, like a watch made of ice being dragged over stone. The Ticker’s Rattle. It was the sound of the world coming apart at the seams.
The tavern was a long, narrow room, its ceiling low and stained black with soot. A dozen men, maybe more, were hunched over small, round tables. Their faces were pale in the gloom, illuminated by the weak glow of gas lamps and the faint, pulsing light of the artifacts they traded. One man wept silently into his hands, clutching a child’s worn leather shoe. Another stared at the wall, his eyes vacant, a thin line of blood trickling from his nose after a fresh excision. This was the Rusty Mug. This was the heart of the memory markets.
He scanned the room. His sight, the curse he had spent his life trying to master, cut through the grime. He saw the shimmering auras of memory clinging to every person, every object. A cloud of violent rage around a heavy iron poker leaning against the bar. A faint, sad perfume of lost love emanating from a tarnished silver locket being passed between two men. He was looking for something different. A quiet spot in the noise. A place where the memories were not just present, but managed. Controlled.
He found her in the far corner, in a booth half-swallowed by shadow. She was alone. A mug of something dark sat untouched on the table before her. She was not looking at it. She was focused on a small, intricate device in her hands, cleaning it with a rag and a thin metal pick. Her movements were precise, economical. She had an aura, like everyone else, but it was tight, contained. A fortress. He knew it was her. Anja Kovac.
Sineus moved through the room. The patrons ignored him. They were lost in their own transactions, their own ghosts. He felt their discarded emotions brush against him like cobwebs. A flash of terror from a soldier’s last stand. A surge of bitter jealousy from a spurned lover. He walled it off. He was here for a tool, not to drown in the filth. He stopped at her table.
She did not look up. She continued to work on her device, her knuckles white.
— Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying, — she said. Her voice was low, rough at the edges like a chipped stone.
— I’m not selling, — Sineus replied.
— Then you’re in the wrong place. Get out.
He remained standing. He could feel the impatience of the room, the low-grade hostility of a place that did not welcome strangers. He had to force the interaction.
— I need a guide.
She finally stopped her work. She set the tool down on the table with a soft click. She looked up at him, and for the first time, he saw her face clearly. It was sharp, angular, and pale. Her eyes were a flat, washed-out blue, and they held no warmth at all. They took in his clean coat, his polished boots, the way he stood. A faint, humorless smile touched her lips.
— A nobleman, — she said. The words were an insult. — Your boots cost more than this bar.
— I need to get to the old power station, — he said, ignoring the jibe.
— Everyone needs something. The power station is a bad place. Even for the Palimpsest. It’s hot. The Ordo Umbrarum are crawling all over it. The Unremembered are, too. You’d last ten minutes.
— That’s why I need a guide.
She leaned back in the booth, crossing her arms. The movement was slow, deliberate. A predator assessing its prey. She was enjoying this.
— A guide for a nobleman into the heart of a war zone. That’s expensive. Very expensive.
— I can pay.
Her smile widened. It was not a pleasant sight.
— I’m sure you can. Let’s talk numbers. Twenty thousand rubles.
The price was absurd. It was more than a factory worker made in a decade. It was a test. A way to see how desperate he was. He did not flinch. Lilya’s face, pale and growing colder, was behind his eyes. The money was just paper. Time was the only currency that mattered now.
— And, — she continued, holding up a finger, — anything we find along the way that isn’t your primary objective is mine. Artifacts, tech, information. All of it. My salvage. My rules.
This was the true price. Not the money, but the surrender of control. It went against every principle he had built his life on. To allow this cynical scavenger to pick over the battlefield of his quest, to profit from his desperation. The cost was his dignity. His pride. He thought of the cold, clean wound in his mind where the memory of his sister’s laughter used to be. He had already paid a higher price than this.
— Agreed, — Sineus said. The word was flat. Final.
The smile vanished from her face. She had expected him to argue, to haggle. His immediate acceptance threw her off balance. For a moment, she was the one who was uncertain. He had bought her services, and in doing so, had seized a small measure of control. He saw the flicker of surprise in her eyes before she masked it.
— Half now, — she said, her voice hard again.
— I don’t carry that kind of cash.
— Of course you don’t, — she scoffed. — No one does. You’ll sign a marker with the Combine. They have an office two streets over. They’ll hold the contract. If you default, they’ll collect. From your skin.
The Black Sea Combine. The smuggling ring that ran the city’s underworld. Anja Kovac was on their leash. It was a complication, but an expected one.
— I’m not signing anything with the Combine, — Sineus said. — They are allied with the Chancellery. They would sell my name to Count Orlov before the ink was dry.
— Then you have a problem, — she said, picking up her tool again. The negotiation was over.
— No, — Sineus said. — I have a down payment.
He reached into his coat and pulled out a small, heavy object. It was a cylinder of polished obsidian and brass, about the length of his hand. It was one of his own creations. A chronal damper. It did not erase memories, but it created a small, localized field that prevented new ones from forming on an object. A shield against the plague.
He placed it on the table. It made a solid, heavy sound.
— This is worth more than your twenty thousand, — he said. — It’s a sterile tool. It carries no history. It will never pick up a memory. It will never betray you.
Anja stared at the tool. She did not touch it. Her eyes narrowed. She was a creature of this world, a world drowning in the past. An object with no past was a paradox. A miracle or a lie.
— There’s no such thing, — she whispered.
— Pick it up.
She hesitated, then reached out. Her fingers, stained with grease and dirt, brushed against the cold, smooth obsidian. She picked it up. Her expression changed. It was not the surprise he had seen before. It was something deeper. A professional, almost academic, curiosity. She turned it over in her hands, feeling its weight, its perfect balance. She held it to her temple, a common smuggler’s trick to feel the resonance of an object.
She felt nothing. Absolute silence. A perfect void. In a world screaming with the ghosts of the past, the tool was a pocket of pure, clean silence. The low hum of the tavern, the distant crash of the steam hammer, even the insistent Ticker’s Rattle seemed to fade for a moment.
— How? — she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
— I made it, — Sineus said.
She looked from the tool back to his face. The mockery was gone from her eyes. It was replaced by a grudging respect. He was not just a rich man in a good coat. He was a craftsman. A master of the art she only practiced in the gutters. He had offered her something more valuable than money. He had offered her a piece of his power.
— Fine, — she said, placing the tool carefully on the table. — This is the down payment. The rest you owe me when we get the job done.
She stood up. She was shorter than he was, but she moved with a wiry grace that made her seem larger. She slung a worn leather satchel over her shoulder.
— We leave now.
As they moved towards the door, a wave of ambient memory washed through the tavern. A sudden, sharp spike of panic from a failed back-alley deal in 1905. Sineus felt it like a physical blow, a pressure behind his eyes. He braced himself. He saw other patrons flinch, one man crying out and dropping his glass.
But Anja did not react. She walked through the wave of psychic static as if it were a light rain. She did not even blink. Her focus was absolute, her mind a closed fortress. Sineus noted it. This was not normal. No one was that resistant to the plague’s ambient noise. It was another piece of the puzzle. Another question to be answered later. If there was a later.
She pushed the door open, and they stepped out into the grimy, whispering streets of the Iron Palimpsest. The air was cold, and it smelled of rust and decay.
