Gemma Silvestre's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

Three days after Edna's carts rolled off, a stranger came up the path. He drove a sleek black coach. Gemma stood on the balcony steps and watched him climb down. Edna sat beside him, ledger on her knee. She had found her buyer. The stranger wore a grey coat and counted coins as he walked, letting them clink one by one. "The mirror gem," he said. "I pay well for curious things." He fanned a thick stack of notes. Behind Gemma, her students went quiet at their benches. The Mirrorstone warmed against her chest. Gemma did not reach for it. She had learned what the stone did. It showed a person their true heart. A buyer who hid behind coins would not like what he saw. "Before you pay," she said, "look." She lifted the stone free and turned it toward him. The face in the glass sharpened. It did not match his smooth smile. It showed greed, and a hunger that never filled. The stranger stepped back. His coins slid from his hands and scattered on the grass. "That thing is cursed," he said. He climbed into his coach and did not look back. Edna stayed. She clutched her ledger. "You chase every buyer off," she said. "But the debt stays. I will find a buyer who does not care what he sees." Gemma came down the steps. She had planned for this. "Then let me pay the debt myself," she said. "Not with the stone. With work." She led Edna past the house to a small hut wrapped in willow strands. Green light fell through the leaves onto the door. "The healers here need cut gems for their charms. My students cut them. We trade the work for coin. I will pay your ledger in pieces, month by month." Edna's eyes narrowed. "You have no coin now." "I have students," Gemma said. "Watch." Inside the hut, a bright white bunny in a polka dot bowtie sat on a stool, foot tapping. He held a candied moonpear, its shell glossy as glass. A student had cut a facet into a plain stone, and the bunny pressed it into the pear's shimmering skin as a charm. The healers paid in coin for each one. Gemma set the first stack of coins on Edna's ledger. "The first payment," she said. "Cross nothing out. Just write it down." Edna looked at the coins a long moment. She lifted her pen. For the first time, she wrote a number beside Gemma's name that reduced the debt instead of growing it. "One payment," she said. "You miss one, and I come back selling." The coach was gone. The buyer was gone. The Mirrorstone stayed on Gemma's chest. But now a clock ticked. Every month she owed Edna coin, or lose the stone her whole school depended on.