I walked toward Sawada's place with one hand on a pizza and the other hand on my gun. His store was on Livery, which was a nice quiet street, but to get there from Valiant I had to go through some very poorly lit areas. Empty buildings and gaping alleyways were filled with shadows so stark they seemed solid. I did my best to keep eyes moving and head clear.

I'd left Nino's after making Dezhda my offer and giving her my number. She'd been rather taken aback, and while I hadn't gotten a hard yes it hadn't been a no, either (It was, in fact, an "Oh, wow! I need to think about this!"). Since home was on the way, I stopped there to drop off the saw and change clothes then moved on toward Livery.

I made it mostly without incident, only being accosted by a shin-high dogroach who'd smelled the food. I'd shoved it a few times with my boot until it made an affronted hiss and scuttled off. Hey, I'd probably be offended too.

Like I said, it was a pretty nice neighborhood. The buildings were low, only three or four stories, and most were set up like town houses rather than apartments. Many of the people I saw walking around were on the older side, or younger ones playing ball or tag with their kids. There were even wire-and-foil sculptures of Sun-Age trees lining the sidewalks. Place was almost pastoral compared to Valiant or Alba. The occasional taxi or bulk hauler groaned by, but the fact was there just wasn't much of a reason to drive here.

Sawada's looked the same as always. It was a two-story building of thick, acid-streaked concrete, trapezoidal in shape and brutalist in form. The door was a propped-open plate of heavy steel, and above it burned that familiar neon sign: "SAWADA'S SUPPLIES - SUNDRIES - SECRETS." Which meant, according to the man himself, whatever he could find and put a price tag on. I headed in.

The interior was divided by rows of shelves and gridded by heavy cement pillars. Lights of every shape and type but uniformly low intensity hung from the ceiling, giving the place an intimate feel. Sawada had some of his old archeological recordings playing, full of soft acoustic wind instruments only weirdos like him could even name.

I only spotted two customers. One was was a harried-looking woman in a knee-length dress, with buzzed hair and odd gray eyes. She was going through a stack of as-is laptops and powering them up one by one, her mouth pressed into a thin line.

The other, perusing the bookshelves of all things, was a burnout tribesman with woad-dyed ritual scars straking up his cheeks and a strip of black plastic protecting his eyes. He had skin the color of ash and wore nothing but a headlamp, a short pair of breeches and a loop of gut cord across his narrow chest, from which dangled ancient coins and scrimshawed bits of chitin and a huge khukuri with a well-worn grip. There was not an ounce of fat on his body, like he'd been twisted together out of old rope.

Burnouts eked out a living in the dark zones, starved for lifelight. As one would expect they tended to be strange, crazy, and often dangerous. While I wasn't sure about the first two categories, considering that this fellow wasn't currently peeling the scalp from my head I could probably leave him out of the third.

He gave me a grave nod as I passed him and I returned one of my own, bemused. Moving toward the back of the store, I passed shelves full of mostly-functional appliances, racks of ancient data storage media on weird little cards and shiny discs, used clothes in every size, bags of jerky made by Hrosz down the street, and the home furnishings which were Sawada's bread and butter: water catchers and purifiers, acid-proof tarps, refillable camp stoves, that kind of thing.

Sawada wasn't at the counter, so I sauntered around it and headed into the back. It much resembled the front but was even less organized, with plenty of workbenches scattered with gutted machines and bins of unidentifiable spares. I heard somebody clunking around somewhere in the mess.

"Dad? I brought Ninos!" I called. "Hey Da-aaaaad..."

"Ellery! It's good to see you!" Sawada popped out from behind a stack of aircon units, a big smile on his face. "How's it going?"

I couldn't help but smile back. He was the only one who called me that anymore. I'd always thought it was kind of a silly name he'd picked for me, but it was unique and I'd never been able to muster a lick of resentment about it. He told me it meant "happy."

"I'm...pretty good, Dad. You want some pizza?"

"Does a roach like garbage? Does a cat eat mice? Let me just make some room here..."

I balanced the pizza atop an old curvy refrigerator and helped him clear a bench. He was on the smaller side, about Walker's height but skinnier. He wore dark-blue coveralls, ratty sneakers, and a thin steel chain around his neck. His forearms were cobwebbed with blurry blue ink: old tattoos of playing cards, wrenches, names in script, and bracelets of flame around each wrist.

"That ought to be good," he said, hands on his hips. He squinted up at me with mock-suspicion, dark eyes beneath a pair of magnifiers perched on his forehead. "You didn't grow again, did you?"

"No," I answered airily. "I think you just shrunk."

"Ha! Maybe you're right. The top shelves seem to be getting farther and farther away, lately..." he muttered as he grabbed a slice.

We joked about it, but the man was getting older. Though red still showed at his temples, his ponytail had gone iron-gray years ago. His skin had picked up the thin, translucent look of rice paper. That smile still came easily, though, and a spark of mischief still danced in his eyes.

"Mm! I needed this!" he said as I joined him. "It's kind of cold, though. Couldn't you have gotten it here faster? Do I get it for free, now?" He gave me that stupid smirk, complete with cool-guy mustache, that must have killed the ladies when he was younger. Just made me crack up, though.

I coughed, trying to swallow and laugh at the same time. "I walked here from Valiant, Dad! And you weren't paying for it anyway!"

Sawada pulled another slice free, looking at me. "Valiant, huh? Place is a hole. Why not Brokenbark?"

"I was in the neighborhood," I said, keeping my voice extremely nonchalant.

"What the hell did old Dag need there?"

This was it, I supposed. "Well, Dad...I'm not working for him anymore, actually."

He looked surprised, and a little concerned. "Really? What happened?"

I looked down. "We had a fight. I mean argument," I added quickly when I saw him blanch. "An argument over stuff people leave in the vics. We both got pretty heated and he fired me."

"Aw, crap. That sucks to hear, El." He gave my shoulder a squeeze.

"I found something new already, though," I said, trying to reassure him. "Won't be out on the street."

"Well, that's great! What is it?"

"Oh, uhhh..." Think, Sharkie. "I'm running errands. Moving things around. Ran into this guy last night leaving the bar who said he could use the help, so here I am."

He knew I was holding back but chose not to press. "Well, I'm glad you're bouncing back fast." He offered me a kind little smile.

"Same. Landlord was stalking me like a pergato."

His smile shrank. "Ellery, you know that if you ever need help with rent or anything-"

"Thanks, Dad, but I promise I can handle it. I squared up with them and it's all good." Best to nip that in the bud quickly. The man had done enough for me already; I wasn't going to take anything more from him. Plus, I realized, I definitely didn't need his help now.

"Of course. Good. Of course." He stood quietly for a moment, staring at the cracked concrete floor. "Oh!" He jumped up like he'd just been plugged in. "Guess what?"

"You're getting married?" I joked, glad to change the subject.

For a moment he looked so nonplussed that I burst out laughing.

"Man, what the hell do you take me for? No, I don't-I mean, well come on-" He cut himself off and I laughed more. It was so easy to get him discombobulated.

"If you're quite finished..." he finally managed, and I got myself under control. "What you were meant to guess is that I found another one."

"Another wh-Ohhhh." There was only one thing he could mean.

"Yeah, now you get it. Come look!" He barreled back into the depths of his workshop, affecting a weird prancing high-step to avoid piles of junk on the floor.

He led me to a steel cage room that sectioned of one of the back corners, then unlocked the gate and slid it aside. Among the boxes and crates piled in there was a steel trunk that had apparently once been used by Thayer for shipping prototype bionics. Sawada unlocked that and let the lid rise up on its precision struts, allowing a hiss of enviro-controlled air to escape. Just what you'd expect from Thayer corpotech.

"Here's the one you've already seen." He reached inside and pulled out a square plastic sleeve, a bit bigger than a floor tile. Inside was a thin disc of black plastic, slightly wavy and scored with concentric grooves. A jagged crack ran from the outer edge inward to a small hole in the middle. This thing was capital-O old. Older than the building, older than the city, so old it was outdated long before the Sun Age ended.

"An ailepai. Ancient music storage," he said reverently. "Only a hundred songs or so, it's thought. Might not even be electronic. I've never even heard of someone finding a playback device, though this one's cracked anyway." He reached into the trunk again. "The new one, though..."

It was entombed in the same kind of case, but this disc was perfectly flat, with no cracks or scrapes. There was even a round paper label in the middle, though it was faded to white illegibility.

"Holy shit, Dad...where'd you find that?" I made sure not to ask what it was worth. That was emphatically not why Sawada collected this stuff. I'd always helped him fix and refurbish stuff, but I never got into the history of it like he did.

"Northmarch brought it to me. Found it scavenging in Chasm."

Wow. I had lots of questions. "First of all, who in the world's Northmarch?"

Sawada raised an eyebrow. "Pale, skinny, wears a blindfold? Packs a knife that makes you look small? Who do you think's been watching the store for me while I'm back here?"

"The burnout? Really?"

"That's not what they call themselves, but yes. I know what you're thinking, but the man's more civilized than half the 'normal people' in D-block. Almost erudite, in fact."

I could accept that. Burnouts were weird, and a burnout you could call 'erudite' definitely fell under that purview.

"And you said he went into Chasm?" That was the more shocking part. Chasm was a dark zone almost the size of D-block. It separated the north edge of D from the southwest of K, jagging toward the center of Savlop just like the crack in Dad's ailepai. Some catastrophe had gone down ages back, cracking open the ground and knocking out the lighting grid. It had been dark ever since, and nobody knew who or what was in there now. If this Northmarch strolled around in there, he was a hard motherfucker.

"So he claims. And I believe him. Where else would you find something like this?"

I frowned. "And he just gave it to you?"

Sawada looked up, scratching his chin. "Well, I paid him for it. Not nearly what it was worth, but I paid. He said in exchange, he wants to work here. Help catalogue old stuff and do research. Compare notes."

I didn't think burnouts were much for note-taking, but maybe this Northmarch was. "You believe him?"

"If he was after money, El, he could have just kept the ailepai. Shit, if he was after money he could have bought a shirt. He's definitely odd, but I think he's sincere."

I considered that a few seconds. "Just...be careful, okay?"

He looked to the side. "You too, kid. I'm not gonna bother you about this new job of yours, but...you be careful too."

This man really loves me, I thought with a pang of emotion. An oversized street kid he'd found sleeping in an Airshark compressor crate, no memory of who she was or how she got there, and he loves me. Never hit me, or yelled for no reason, or did anything gross. Just fed me, educated me, even taught me how to fight. That was just the kind of guy he was.

"Dad..." I said, voice thick. "Can I ask you something?"

"Anytime." He waited patiently while I gathered my thoughts.

"What if there was something you were good at, something you got paid for and you even enjoyed, but it maybe wasn't a good thing?" I bit my lip. That was about as euphemistic as I could get. "Would you keep doing it?"

He sat on a crate for a few seconds, thinking quietly. "I think that everybody, El, everybody has a task that best suits them. Something that's their greatest talent. Some people figure out what it is and stick with it, some people bounce around forever without ever finding it. But...a talent, I guess, it's not good or bad on its own. Just like a tool, what matters is how you use it. I think you're a good person, Ellery. I think whatever your talent is, you're going to use it in a way that lets you sleep at night. And that's fine."

"Dad..." I was gonna get tears on the pizza if this went too much longer.

"At the same time," he continued, "what you're good at doesn't define you. Remember that. And remember that I'll love you no matter what. Right?"

I grabbed him into a huge hug. "Love you too, Dad. Thanks." This didn't mean I was a hundred percent cool with what I was doing, or my own reactions to it. But it was reassuring, to say the least. I felt like a lead vest had just dropped off my shoulders.

"Kings' blood, you're gonna squeeze me flat!" Sawada clapped me on the back and I let him go.

"You could spend eternity with your beloved ailepai’s, then," I managed.

"Ha! What kind of songs would I play?"

"Short ones."

He looked disgusted. "For being so tall, you sure like the low-hanging fruit."

Now it was my turn to gag. "Awful."

"That's what you get." He put his relics back in the Thayer trunk and sealed it. We left the cage room together.

"Thanks for showing that to me, Dad, but to be honest I'm pretty beat. I ought to get going."

He smiled at me. "Come over anytime, El. You know I like seeing you."

"I will. Love you." I gave him another hug, gentler this time, and he returned it.

"Love you too. Stay safe, my girl."

"I will." I gave him one last wave and headed back through the store. The woman was gone, but Northmarch was still by the bookshelves, reading something with the cover torn off. I went over to him.

"Northmarch, right? Sorry to interrupt." No point being needlessly antagonistic.

He looked up and smiled a little. "Right." His voice was surprisingly smooth and deep, coming out of that narrow chest. Narrator material. "I suppose you're Ellery? Mr. Sawada mentioned you." He spoke very well, though his accent was strange.

"Yeah, I'm kinda hard to miss. Most people call me Sharkie, though." I stuck out my hand and he took it. He didn’t do that thing I’d noticed a lot of men did, trying to squeeze as hard as they could to prove I wasn’t that strong or something. No, he shook without any posturing, but I still felt like I was introducing myself to a bench vise. His hand was iron-hard, calloused beyond his years.

"Sharkie, sure.” He nodded and let go. “What can I do for you?"

"My dad-Sawada-told me you're working for him now, that you have an arrangement."

He was still smiling, but the black strip over his eyes made it a little unnerving. "That's correct."

How to put this? "I guess-I guess I just want to say, please don't take advantage of him. He's a nice guy, a trusting guy. A trustworthy guy. He doesn't deserve it. So...be honest with him, is all I'm asking." I left the implied threat as an implication. Dad wouldn't like me shittalking his new employee.

He gave a little laugh, the sound rich and echoing despite its low volume. "I'm sorry, I'm not laughing at you. It still strikes me as funny that you need to say things like that, out here."

Yeah, odd wasn't the half of it. "What d'you mean?"

"I'm what you call a 'burnout,' yes? I was born one. Grew up in the black. The first thing my parents, that my tribe taught me was this: you fight the dark alone, you always lose. Only working together can you fend it off. No one in there can spare the effort for a betrayal." He rubbed his chin, thoughtful. "In a way, you're blessed to live in a world where you can afford the luxury of mistrust."

I guess I kind of agreed with that. Seemed to me that even in the dark, there'd always be someone scheming or looking to grab an advantage, just like out here. Maybe more so. But hey, it wasn't my life, and maybe I'd just grown up this way, living in the light.

"You know, I never actually thought about it that way."

"Different perspectives are always valuable, even uncomfortable ones." He cracked a grin. "Not that I'm a big-brained philosopher or anything. Besides the distrust, I also like the pork dumplings."

I was startled into laughing. "You aren't alone there. Have a good night, Northmarch."

"And you, Sharkie." He was looking back to his book when a whim took me.

"Oh, one more thing!"

"Yes?"

"We call you burnouts. What do you call yourselves?"

He grinned again, teeth white beneath his blindfold. "Tornagena. The people of torches."

That was almost poetic. "I like yours better."

"Same. Stay safe out there, Sharkie."

I flipped him a wave and left the shop, a new spring in my step. In half an hour or so I was back to the stacks. The denars I'd made weighed heavy in my pocket as I unlocked the door, and I wondered how much longer I'd even stay here. I caught a quick shower in the water cubes, put a new bandage on my arm, then went to bed. My sleep was deep and dreamless.