Amiya Wil's Arc

Chapter 5 of 8

Saturday morning Amiya woke up unable to speak above a whisper. She drank hot water with honey and tried a scale at the piano. Her voice cracked on the third note. Her phone buzzed on the cutting table. The buyer wanted her in the office at ten to talk about a single. Amiya wrote back yes with one thumb and got in the car. Driving in, she passed a new structure rising at the edge of the district. A mirrored obelisk, three stories tall, lit from inside. A crest at the top held two marks side by side. Hers, and one she recognized from every magazine rack for the last five years. Quincy Brown had moved to Goldenview. The radio confirmed it before she reached the buyer's building. He had set up a compound a few blocks from her studio. Glass front, gold trim, a sign that read Area 19. The buyer slid a gilded tablet across the desk. A branding accord. Joint ownership, shared publishing, co-branding rights. Quincy's team had sent it over at six that morning. The buyer wanted Amiya in the studio with him Monday to cut a single off the launch tracks. She wanted it on streaming in two weeks to ride the press from the show. Amiya tried to answer and the words came out scraped. She pointed at her throat. The buyer said the doctor was already booked for that afternoon. The doctor looked down her throat and told her two weeks of vocal rest or she would tear something that did not grow back. Amiya wrote the words on her phone and showed the buyer in the parking lot. The buyer's jaw moved. Then she said they would push the single four weeks and lock the collab. Amiya shook her head. She typed: I sign nothing on his terms while I can't speak for myself. The buyer read it twice. She said Quincy's people would walk if Amiya stalled. Amiya typed: then they walk. She went back to her studio that night and sat at the desk with the tablet beside her. She crossed out the ownership clause and the publishing split. She wrote in the margin: my masters, my name first on the credit, four-week rest before any session. She sent the marked version to the buyer at eleven. The buyer forwarded it. At two in the morning Quincy's manager wrote back. He accepted the rest period. He countered on publishing at sixty-forty her favor. She wrote yes and put the phone face down. She sat in the dark of the storefront and pressed her fingers to her throat. The collection was still hers. The voice would come back. The deal she had just made was the first one she had signed without flinching. She thought of her mother and wrote a message asking her to come to the runway. She did not send it yet. She saved the draft and turned out the light.