She opened the desk drawer. Inside was a black slate, somewhat worn around the edges. She had seen these before, but they had always been accompanied by a stick of chalk. She could find nothing of the sort within the drawer. She did notice more marks in the drawer, though. These were not sporadic as the marks on the top had been; they were deliberately carved in the lower right-hand corner. She brought the lantern closer, its magically created light illuminating the drawer completely. She recognized the carved things as letters, though she had no idea what their significance was.
Skate replaced the slate in the drawer and closed it. She noticed a small washtub, bucket, drying cloth, and privacy shade in the corner. The tub was near a vent in the wall; she felt hot air blowing through, just as Belamy had said it would. The water in the bucket wasn’t hot, but it wasn’t cold either; the hot air had kept it from turning to ice.
Skate hadn’t bathed in weeks. She decided to change that, leaving her filthy clothes on the floor.
The water was cold, so her bath was quick. She dried off with the cloth, then bent over the tub and dipped her filthy rags into the water. When she had swished them around to her satisfaction, she laid them out flat in front of the vent. By morning, they would be dry, and hopefully not frozen.
Skate put the cloth down too and quickly got into the bed; the room had felt fairly warm before the bath, but felt significantly less so now. Snuggling in, she fully shuttered the lantern, extinguishing all light in the room.
Under the warm blankets in the pitch darkness, it did not take her long to fall asleep.
The next morning, Skate saw that her tub and bucket had been taken away. The fact that she had not awoken during what she assumed must have been Rattle’s visit impressed her. She had been trained through several years of company exclusively among thieves to wake at the lightest sound. Whatever Rattle was, it could be very quiet when it needed to be.
Skate’s clothes were folded neatly on the foot of the bed. Her washing had done little to improve the state of them; they had gone from a dark brown grunge to a dark gray splotch. But they didn’t smell as bad as they had before, so she felt fine as she put them back on. She jumped as a voice growled from the vent at the floor. She couldn’t make out what was being said, so she moved closer.
“Hello?” Skate asked, peering into the dark. She could feel more warmth emanating from within but saw nothing but darkness.
“Skate,” the voice said, and she could recognize Belamy’s voice as it bounced through the metal tube to her room.
“Yeah?”
“Are you awake?”
“Are you making a joke?”
She thought she could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “It was an attempt, yes. Rattle is ready to make breakfast. Do you like pancakes?”
“I don’t know.”
She heard Belamy talking, but could make nothing out until his voice became clear again with, “…before. Skate, you’ll love them. Come down whenever you’re ready.”
No more metal-warped words came toward her, so Skate got off the floor and walked down the stairs. Pots and pans were banging around behind the kitchen door. Belamy himself was seated at his desk, apparently entirely stationary through the night. The book in front of him was more than one-third read, and he didn’t show any signs of pausing as Skate made her way toward the fire, which was crackling merrily. The supply of firewood looked as full as ever, though the fire was crackling hotter than it had when she had retired.
“Did you sleep at all last night?” she asked, warming the backs of her legs near the fire.
“I don’t sleep during the night,” he replied without taking his eyes off the page. “Did you enjoy your rest?”
“Yeah, thanks,” she said, turning back toward the flame and warming her hands. “It made me glad I made the deal.”
“Happy to hear it,” he muttered, tapping his finger lightly on a word on the page. “I don’t know who this is.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know who this person is. She just appears in the story without any explanation. She’s not in the story before this point, and I don’t recognize her from other histories on the topic. I don’t know who she is,” Belamy repeated, pulling a smaller open book toward him. He dipped his quill into the inkwell and made some marks in the smaller book before tapping excess ink back into the well and laying down the quill to dry. “Very strange.”
Skate wanted to ask more questions but was interrupted by the kitchen door banging open as Rattle announced breakfast with a clatter of clicks. It brought Skate a plate with flat brown things on top. “Pancakes?” she asked, picking one up before the piece she was holding tore off, dropping the rest of it on the floor. Rattle clicked in irritation at the wasted food and moved to retrieve it. “Sorry,” she muttered after it as it disappeared back into the kitchen.
“Pancakes,” Belamy confirmed, “and they’re very soft, as you can see. If you like them, Rattle will make as many as you please.”
Skate gingerly picked another up, making sure to hold it flat in her hand. As soon as her tongue touched the sweet bread-like food, her eyes went wide. She did like pancakes. She reflected that she was glad to get a nicer place to stay as she took another fluffy bite.
Chapter 6
In which a history lesson is given, an identity is questioned, and a bag of coins is measured.
At the conclusion of breakfast, Rattle flapped in and took Skate’s plate away. She heard it bang into the other dishes as the door shut behind the flying eyeball. Belamy had no plate to take.
“Did you already eat?”
He gave a noncommittal grunt as he continued reading and taking notes. Because he clearly wanted the matter dropped, she persisted.
“If you don’t sleep at night, when do you sleep?”
He gave no answer but continued reading silently. Skate thought she saw a hint of irritation on his wrinkly face despite his best efforts to remain impassive. Rattle began to live even more up to its name as it moved the pans and plates around in a cleaning frenzy behind the shut door.
“You don’t really eat at all, do you?”
“No.”
The frank admission threw her off, but only for a moment. “Same for sleep, right?”
“Right.”
“How? Magic again?”
“The same as before,” he said as he looked up and made a gesture toward where he had been wounded the night before last. “The magic I’ve done keeps me from needing things like sleep or food or even breath.”
Why? she thought but did not ask. Belamy spoke as if she had asked the question aloud anyway.
“Time,” he said, taking a thin wooden slat and placing it between the page of the book. “I did it for the sake of time. Think of how much of it you have to waste each day worrying about food and drink and sleep and exhaustion and soreness. Think of how vulnerable you are right now to a thousand thousand random occurrences.” He waved his hand as he began to list examples: “The air could be sucked out of the room—or it could be flooded—or filled with deadly gas, filling your lungs. The fire might go out and not be able to be lit again. You will get hungry again, and tired and sick. You might get a cough; you might get cold; you might get uncomfortable and need to move around. You could get something in your eye or have to scratch an itch. Think of how much these things must occupy your time and attention. And it only grows worse with age: the body aches, the eyes become cloudy, the hearing fades, and the simplest of tasks become challenges to complete. I could not afford these distractions, so I did away with them.”