Memory Magic

The System waited until half the bridge fell into the canal to offer me a climbing skill.

My right hand caught the iron railing where it met the stone bank. The rest of me kept going.

For a moment I hung there, boots scraping wet timber, with my delivery satchel pulling its strap tight across my throat. Somewhere below, the broken boards struck the water. Spray hit my face.

The railing jolted. Its base held against the stone. My hand was doing considerably worse.

A window opened beside my face.

“You couldn’t have mentioned this at breakfast?”

The window stayed where it was. My fingers slid another inch.

Okay. Fine. Apparently we were doing business.

I selected the skill.

The preview hit all at once.

Nell and I were eleven, standing on the roof of her uncle’s workshop. She’d made a kite from blue paper and two crooked sticks. I’d spent most of the afternoon telling her it was never going to fly.

“You’re holding it wrong,” she’d said.

“Nell. It’s crooked. There’s a difference.”

She’d pushed the string into my hand anyway.

Then the wind caught it.

I felt the string burn across my thumb. Nell grabbed my sleeve and laughed so hard she nearly pulled us both over.

The kite dipped toward the yard. I let out more string, and it climbed again. Higher this time. Nell stopped laughing just long enough to shout at it.

“Look!”

I was looking. I couldn’t seem to stop.

Below my boots, something cracked.

The canal came back. The strap across my throat. The wet iron slipping through my fingers.

One afternoon. That was all the System wanted.

I still had other afternoons.

“Confirm.”

The kite vanished.

I activated the skill. Heat ran through my right palm, and my fingers stopped sliding.

My left hand found an upright. I braced a boot against a crossbeam and hauled my chest over the edge. Once my weight was on the boards, I released the grip and dragged myself clear. A nail tore through my trousers. I barely felt it until I reached the stone steps on the bank and sat down.

There. Alive. Package intact.

I rubbed my thumb. The skin was unbroken.

I couldn’t have said why I’d checked.

I opened the receipt again. First Successful Flight. The description named a kite and the roof of Nell’s uncle’s workshop.

There had been a kite... hadn’t there?

I knew Nell. I remembered her stealing my breakfast last week. The workshop roof, too. We’d been up there a dozen other times.

But that afternoon...

I tried to find it.

Nothing.

The receipt was still there. I could read every word.

A man stood at the bottom of the steps, watching me. His dark coat was dry, which irritated me more than it should have.

“Your kite was blue,” he said.

I stopped rubbing my thumb.

“Do I know you?”

“No.”

“Then that’s a fucking strange thing to say.”

He looked down at his hands.

“I dreamed it. The rooftop. Your friend laughing.” He swallowed. “I could feel the string cutting my skin.”

He held out his palm and shared a small status window.

I checked my receipt.

Same number.

“You bought that?”

“No,” he said. “Someone put it there.”

I got to my feet slowly. My knee hurt now, and I could feel blood sticking my trousers to the scrape.

“That’s mine,” I said. “Give it back.”

He nodded.

“All right.”

That stopped me. I’d been ready for an argument.

“All right?”

“If it’s yours, you should have it.”

“Excellent. We agree on one thing.”

He drew the window closer and expanded the imprint record. A second line appeared beneath its number.

He hadn’t asked my name. It was already there, under something installed in his head...

“There’s a release option,” he said.

“Then use it.”

He selected it.

I looked from the window to his face.

“That means me?”

“It should.”

“Comforting.”

He confirmed.

The letters turned red.

We both stared at it.

He tried again.

Same answer.

“It’s right there,” I said. “You’ve got it.”

“I know.”

“So why can’t you—”

I stopped. He was reading the message again, his mouth moving without sound.

“What?”

“It’s treating the source as gone.”

“I’m standing right here.”

His eyes met mine.

“I know,” he said again.

This time I heard him.

His hand moved toward another option.

“What’s that?”

“Discard.”

“Wait.”

He stopped.

I could feel my pulse in the scrape on my knee. The package was digging into my side. Neither seemed particularly relevant anymore.

“If that’s the last copy...”

I couldn’t get past that.

He lowered his hand.

“I won’t delete it.”

“Thank you.”

That came out small. I hated that. Still meant it, though.

He closed the extra options, leaving the number between us.

“When did you get it?” I asked.

“Just now. I was sitting over there.”

He pointed to a bench beneath the tea shop’s awning. An open book lay facedown beside a cup.

“You said you dreamed it.”

“That’s what it felt like. I wasn’t asleep. I was reading, and then I was on a roof.” He looked at my thumb. “The string hurt.”

I folded my hand.

“Did you see me?”

“No. I was...” He hesitated. “I think I was you.”

A cart rattled past on the road above us. Someone shouted across the canal. I could hear a woman asking whether anyone else had fallen.

Everything kept moving.

I wanted it to stop for a minute.

“How did you find me?”

He pointed to the courier tag on my satchel. My name was stamped below the guild number.

“The record gave me your name. I saw you climb out, then saw it on your tag.”

“Right.”

“What’s your name?”

“Iven. Iven Holt.”

“Do you work for one of the exchanges?”

“I used to work at Southbank Registry.”

Of course he did.

“And you didn’t think to lead with that?”

“You asked me to give it back.”

Fair. Annoyingly fair.

“Who sent it?”

“I don’t know. There’s an authority seal.”

He showed me.

I read it twice.

“Where you used to work.”

“Yes.”

“How convenient.”

He didn’t argue.

I opened my receipt. Below the payment details, in lettering small enough to miss while dangling over a canal, was a dispute option.

I selected it.

Twenty experience points for complaining.

Well. I’d finally found something I was qualified for.

“Will they give it back?” I asked.

“They’ll want to take the imprint into evidence.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”

I pulled the route book from my satchel. Its leather cover was wet, but the pages had survived. I found a blank corner beneath today’s deliveries and wrote down the two records, the seal, and the exact wording of the refusal.

My handwriting was atrocious.

I knew how to read it, though. That was enough.

“Do you mind if I write your name?”

“No.”

I added it.

The last entry on my route was still waiting. So was the payment I needed for groceries. Somewhere between surviving the bridge and discovering a man with a piece of my childhood in his head, I’d apparently remained employed.

Wonderful.

“I need to finish this delivery,” I said. “Then I’m going to see Nell.”

“Your friend?”

“The one from the roof. She can tell me what happened that afternoon.”

He glanced at the registry seal.

“Before you go there?”

“Before I hand over the evidence.”

I tucked the book away.

“Will you come with me?”

He looked back toward the bench. The abandoned cup. The ordinary morning he’d been having.

“Yes. But I need you to understand something.”

I waited.

“I was reading about plants. Then I was eleven, on a roof, with someone’s hand on my sleeve. I didn’t choose any of it.”

He rubbed the side of his thumb.

“I don’t want to carry it.”

For a moment I had no idea what to say.

He’d been careful with every word. I’d been treating that as something to be suspicious of.

“I’m asking you to come with me,” I said. “We can ask how to get it out safely.”

“Without discarding it.”

“Please.”

He nodded once.

“And when we get to Nell’s, let me ask her first. Don’t tell her about the kite.”

“You want to check whether we remember the same thing.”

“I want her answer before she hears yours.”

He nodded.

I adjusted the satchel strap and climbed the remaining steps. My knee protested every one.

At the top, I turned back.

“Iven?”

“Yes?”

“If you feel any of it changing... tell me.”

He closed the imprint window.

“I’d like it out of my head, Mara.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’d like it back in mine.”

He went to collect his book.

I waited.

By the time we reached Bellmarket, I’d checked the receipt four more times.

Consumed never changed.

Iven caught me looking at his hand.

“Still there,” he said.

“I didn’t ask.”

“I know.”

I closed my window. There was nothing new in it, and I wasn’t going to get answers by walking into a lamppost.

The streets of Dunmere were filling with carts. Someone was unloading sacks outside the baker’s. Two apprentices argued over a handbarrow, each apparently convinced that the other had been born exclusively to make pushing it difficult.

I’d been one of those people half an hour ago. Not pushing a handbarrow. Just... going somewhere. Worried about being late.

Tovan’s shutters were open. A hammer rang somewhere behind them.

I climbed the front steps and tried not to bleed on anything expensive.

Tovan took one look at my trousers and reached for the parcel.

“Is it wet?”

“Lovely to see you too.”

“The parcel, Mara.”

I set it on his counter.

The waxed cloth had held. The paper underneath was dry, the seal unbroken.

I’d learned Dry Wrap I when I made Level Two. Useful for light rain on a parcel. It cost Focus every time I used it. Waxed cloth cost two coppers and some swearing when I folded the corners.

I’d used waxed cloth. Tovan inspected every folded edge as if I’d personally arranged for the canal to attack his hinges.

Four hinges. That was what I’d nearly died delivering.

He slit the seal.

“You’re late.”

“The bridge collapsed.”

He looked up.

“Which bridge?”

“The one that used to be between here and Southbank.”

Outside the shop, Iven shifted his book from one hand to the other. He’d offered to carry my satchel on the walk. I’d said no before he’d finished asking.

I was keeping track of the things I could still say no to.

Tovan came around the counter.

“Sit down.”

“I’ve got another stop.”

“Sit down while I find your payment. If you fall over, you’ll damage the fittings.”

There he was. The warm heart of Bellmarket.

I sat.

He put two silvers in my hand, then set a clean length of linen beside them.

“For your knee.”

“Does the linen come out of my fee?”

“No.”

“Just checking.”

He tapped the delivery seal. A small window opened above my wrist.

Fifteen points.

Forty-three more to the next level. Another skill point. Another chance to decide which piece of my life I could do without.

I closed the window.

Tovan was watching me.

“Anyone else on the bridge?”

“I don’t know. There were people on the bank asking.”

He called to the boy sorting washers by the back shelves.

“Go find the crossing watch. Tell them to shut the approaches if they haven’t.”

The boy dropped three washers, caught two, and ran out.

Tovan turned back.

“Take the north road home.”

“I’m going to Nell’s.”

“Then take the north road to Nell’s.”

“I know the roads.”

“I know. Take that one.”

I thanked him for the linen.

It felt important to get one thing right.

Nell’s workshop smelled of cedar, hot glue, and the onions she insisted improved every meal.

The onions were new. The other smells had been there as long as I could remember.

I stopped with my hand on the door latch.

I could remember being thirteen and getting glue in my hair. Nell had cut it out while I threatened to shave her eyebrows if she laughed.

I could remember the first table we’d carried down those steps. We’d wedged it sideways in the doorway and argued for ten minutes before her uncle came over and took the legs off.

Those days were still there.

I tried to find a kite among them.

Nothing.

Iven waited on the pavement.

“Before I go in,” I said, “will you write down what you saw?”

He looked at his book.

“On something I can keep.”

“Of course.”

I gave him a blank page from the back of my route book and the pencil I kept tied into its spine.

“Just what you remember. The roof. The flight. Anything that seems worth putting down.”

“I haven’t done this before.”

“Neither have I.”

He bent over the page, using the closed book as a desk.

I watched a delivery cart pull up farther down the road. A woman lifted out a basket, and another woman came down the steps to help.

A normal stop. A normal morning.

I wanted mine back.

When Iven finished, he signed the page and folded it.

I tucked it into my route book without reading it.

“Wait here?”

He nodded.

I pushed the door open.

Nell had a chair upside down on her bench and a narrow strip of wood between her teeth.

She took it out.

“What did you do?”

“Good morning to you too.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I noticed.”

“How?”

“The bridge collapsed.”

She put the wood down.

For a second she didn’t move.

Then she was around the bench, taking my elbow.

“Which bridge?”

“Apparently I should start charging for that answer.”

“Mara.”

“Southbank crossing. I’m all right.”

She looked at the blood on my trousers.

“I have a generous definition of all right,” I added.

She sat me on the stool beside the wash basin and fetched water.

I let her.

The scrape looked worse once we could see it. A long red patch below my knee, grit along one edge, the beginnings of a bruise spreading underneath. Nell cleaned it while I held my trousers out of the way and tried to keep my mouth shut.

“Ow.”

“You made it almost three seconds.”

“I was proud of those three seconds.”

She glanced up, but the smile didn’t stay.

“Were you alone?”

“When it fell? Yes.”

“How did you get out?”

“I bought Anchor Grip.”

Her hands slowed.

“What did you pay?”

“A memory.”

“I know how it works.”

“I know you know.”

She waited.

I stared at the basin. A curl of cedar floated on the water.

“I need to ask you about something first.”

“All right.”

“We were eleven. Up on your uncle’s roof. Tell me what comes to mind.”

Nell sat back on her heels.

“Several things come to mind. Most of them explain why he stopped letting us up there.”

“Pick one.”

She studied my face.

“The kite?”

I kept my hand flat on my thigh.

“Tell me.”

“It was blue. Horrible paper. The rain got into the shop cupboard and Uncle said I could have anything that hadn’t stuck to the shelf.”

Blue.

I knew that word already.

Iven had given it to me.

“The frame was crooked,” she went on. “You said it looked like a pigeon that had lost a fight.”

That sounded like me.

It sounded so much like me that I nearly laughed.

“Did it fly?”

“Eventually. You told me it wouldn’t.”

“That also sounds like me.”

“You offered to make me a proper one.”

“Generous.”

“Obnoxious. You’d never made one either.”

I could picture her eleven-year-old face because I remembered it from other days. I could put her on that roof.

But whatever picture I made...

I was making it now.

“What happened when it went up?”

“You held the string. It was wrapped around your thumb. I told you to let it out, and you told me to stop giving instructions.”

She glanced at my hand.

“Then the wind took it. You were trying so hard to look as if you’d expected that. I laughed, and you looked at me like...”

She stopped.

“Like what?”

“Like you were going to laugh too.”

I waited for it.

For a face. A sound. The tug of string. Anything.

Nell set the cloth down.

“Mara?”

“I paid with that afternoon.”

“Oh.”

One word.

She stood slowly, took the basin away, and came back with a fresh strip of linen.

I hadn’t told her about Iven yet.

I needed a moment in which this belonged to us.

She wound the linen below my knee.

“Can you remember any of it?”

“No.”

“Do you remember the roof?”

“Yes.”

“Me?”

I looked at her.

“Nell.”

“I know. Sorry. I...”

“I know you. I know this shop. I know that you put onions in everything, including food that has done nothing to deserve it.”

She let out a short breath.

“That was one time.”

“There shouldn’t have been a first time.”

She tied the bandage.

Her fingers stayed there for a moment.

“I thought I could afford it,” I said.

She nodded.

I wished she would tell me I was an idiot. I knew what to do with that.

Instead she said, “You came back.”

I couldn’t answer.

She got up and pushed the kettle nearer the heat.

We listened to it for a while.

I told her about the stranger on the bank.

The number in his record. The release that had failed. The discard option.

By the time I finished, she’d forgotten the kettle.

It began to hiss.

Nell moved it off the heat without looking away from me.

“Where is he?”

“Outside.”

“You left a man who has your memory outside my workshop.”

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

She rubbed her forehead.

“Fair enough. That’s a fairly specific problem.”

“I wanted to ask you before you heard his version.”

“You’ve heard his version.”

“Some of it. I asked him to write the rest down.”

I took the folded page out of my book.

She reached for it, then stopped.

“Do you want mine written first?”

“Please.”

Nell used the back of a chair order. She wrote for several minutes, crossing something out near the end and looking up at the rafters while she thought.

I sat with both feet on the floor.

The new skill rested in my list. Anchor Grip I.

I knew how to activate it now. The knowledge was there as plainly as the way to open a contract.

I couldn’t remember learning to fly a kite.

Nell signed her account and handed it over.

“You can read them.”

I unfolded Iven’s page.

He’d written in a small, careful hand.

A flat roof above a narrow yard. Two uneven sticks. Blue paper with a pale patch near the lower corner. String around the right thumb. A girl gripping the left sleeve. Laughter.

Below that, he’d added a sentence.

I wanted to tell her it was a good kite without admitting I’d been wrong.

I stared at it.

Nell was beside the workbench, watching.

“He remembers thinking like you?” she asked.

“Apparently.”

“What a terrible morning for him.”

I laughed.

It escaped before I could stop it.

Then I was laughing with one hand over my face, and Nell was there, one hand on my shoulder, and none of it felt particularly funny anymore.

I got myself quiet.

“Sorry.”

“You’re allowed.”

I wiped my face with the clean edge of Tovan’s linen.

Nell looked at the two accounts.

“I remember the pale patch. It was where the paper had dried against another sheet.”

“You didn’t write that.”

“I didn’t think of it until I read his.”

I put my pencil between the pages.

“Then put it underneath. That you remembered after reading.”

She did.

I couldn’t tell whether I was being sensible or finding small jobs so I didn’t have to think about the large one.

Either way, the jobs helped.

“I’d better bring him in.”

Nell opened the door herself.

“You can come in now,” she told him. “Mind the chair on the left. It’s waiting to collapse.”

He looked at my bandage.

I raised a finger.

“Don’t.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.”

Nell shut the door.

He stayed beside it until she pointed out a clear stool.

When he sat down, she gave him a cup of tea.

“What do you remember about me?” she asked.

He looked at her.

“What I wrote. Your sleeve was rolled twice. There was glue on your wrist.”

Nell touched the edge of her cuff.

“Usually is.”

“I don’t know you now.”

“Good place to start.”

She sat on the edge of the workbench.

“Show me the record.”

He opened the window and shared it.

Nell read the number, then the origin.

Her expression changed at my name.

“Is that all?”

“There’s a routing entry.”

He expanded a line I hadn’t seen.

Nell leaned forward.

“I’ve put that on cases.”

I looked up.

“What cases?”

“Southbank orders. Brass-lined boxes for record glass. R4 is the case pattern.”

“Memory glass?”

“Some of it. Registry keeps other records on glass too. I make the boxes. They load them.”

She got down from the bench and opened a drawer.

Paper scraped paper.

“Here.”

A work order.

Twenty-four fitted cases. Pattern R4. Southbank Registry.

“Delivered last week,” she said. “Same pattern they’ve ordered twice before.”

“Where?”

“White Quay receiving shed.”

Iven looked at the order.

“Returns depot.”

Nell turned to him.

“So I was told.”

He put his cup down carefully.

“I thought they only used that site for damaged record glass.”

“Well,” I said. “Maybe mine got damaged by being consumed.”

Neither of them laughed.

I looked at Nell’s drawing. Hinges. Brass lining. A shallow bed shaped to hold a thin plate.

Tovan’s four hinges flashed through my mind.

I was going to spend a while being angry about hinges.

“Can I take this?” I asked.

“The original stays here. I need to be paid.”

“Right.”

“But I’ll copy it.”

She did, including the receiving mark and the delivery date.

The quarter bell rang. I’d been sitting for more than half an hour. My Focus had crept back to full. My knee was working to a different schedule.

“Ask about the batch,” Iven said. “At the registry. Before you give them anything.”

“That’s the plan.”

Nell handed me the copy.

“What happens if they refuse?”

“I haven’t got that far.”

She took my empty cup and put it on the bench.

“Come back here.”

“Even if they give it back?”

“Especially then. I want to see your face when you remember being wrong about my kite.”

I looked at her.

She held the look.

There she was.

I put the two written accounts and the copied order into the dry part of my satchel.

Then I stood.

My knee hurt. I could walk on it. I tried both facts out before deciding I could get to Southbank.

At the door, Nell caught my hand.

“Do you remember when we got that table stuck?”

“Your uncle took the legs off.”

“We argued for ten minutes first.”

“At least.”

She squeezed once.

“Good.”

Outside, Iven gave me room to choose the direction.

I turned toward the registry.

In my satchel, Nell’s handwriting rested against Iven’s. Two accounts of an afternoon I could learn every detail of and still not remember.

I wanted to sit on the workshop steps and read them again.

I wanted to go back inside and ask Nell to tell it slowly. Maybe if she used the right words. Maybe if I listened harder...

I stopped at the corner and took out the copied order.

Iven waited.

Twenty-four fitted cases. Brass lining. A bed shaped to keep a glass plate from shifting.

Beneath the drawing, Nell had written the delivery date.

Last week.

“You called it a returns depot,” I said.

“That’s what it was.”

“And you don’t know what’s going through it now.”

“No.”

My receipt called the afternoon consumed. Iven’s record called it installed. Nell had been paid to make boxes that would keep record glass safe.

I didn’t know how those things fit together yet.

But someone had ordered those boxes.

“When we get there,” I said, “we ask about the batch before you agree to anything.”

“I can do that.”

I put the order away and turned toward Southbank.

The System had given me a receipt saying my afternoon was gone.

I was going to find out who was keeping it.