Cho Cogsmith's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Cho Cogsmith had sold a matched pair for two hundred crowns that morning, but he would have traded it all for one honest reason to speak with the heiress. She came to his emporium twice a week. She studied his clockwork oddities, said little, and left. Every suitor in the empire had begged for her hand, and she had refused them all. Cho was a tradesman. Tradesmen did not court heiresses. He needed a door, and he had none. He turned the strange gadget over in his palm. It was missing a piece, and he still had no idea what it did. Behind him, on a high shelf, sat the clockwork hand with no body. He had kept it for years, waiting for the rest to appear. Neither object had ever paid him back. Today he wished they could talk. The bell rang. In came Casandra Videncia, the old fortune teller who read cards for half the shops on the row. Her dark blue robe swept the floor. Starry clockwork ornaments clinked in her grey hair. Cho grinned. She always paid in questions, never coins, but he liked her. "You are holding a lock," she said. She had not looked at the gadget. She was looking at the shelf behind him. "And you have kept the key too high to reach." "It's a lock?" Cho set the gadget down. "It's missing a piece. I've asked every shop on the street." Casandra laughed at nothing. She tilted her head, as if listening. "The wrong street." She drew a single card and laid it face down on his counter. "She wears one just like it. On a chain, at her throat. You have seen it and called it jewelry." Cho went still. The heiress. A small brass ornament always hung at her collar. He had thought it decoration. He looked at his gadget, then at the hand on the shelf. Made as a pair, the seller had said. "You mean the heiress owns the other half," he said slowly. "I mean nothing." Casandra's eyes cleared. She turned the card over. It showed two figures reaching across a gap. "But a broken thing that seeks its match is a fine reason to knock on any door. Even hers." Cho's heart climbed. This was it. Not a sale. A shared object, a mystery only she could finish. A reason no rank could turn away. He wrapped the gadget in cloth and slid it into his coat. "If I bring her this," he said, "she has to see me. She has to answer." "She will answer." Casandra gathered her deck and moved to the door. There she paused, and her voice dropped. "But some pairs should stay apart, Cho. A door is opening. You may be the one who knocks." The bell rang. She was gone. Cho stood alone with the wrapped gadget and, for the first time, a way in.