It's voice echoes through the halls...
Aennin's trek to deliver the ticking parcel was a quick one, despite the fact that he had managed to get lost along the way. He felt a sense of urgency well up at this point and was tempted to run, but Katim's specific instructions not to suppressed that urge. He was now in Pewter Lane, a Worker caste neighborhood several levels beneath where he had come from. This was unusual in that he knew Katim rarely dealt with workers. Although he gleefully allowed them to patronize his bar and would sell his drugs to them there, this was the first time the boy had ever been bidden to make a delivery this far away. He had never been there before, a fact which contributed to his growing confusion, but he knew better than to ask for directions. Any work he did for Katim had to be on the wrong side of the law, and he knew the guards couldn't be trusted to help him.
What was more, he wasn't particularly interested in talking to the locals either, as workers tended to be among his most hated classmates back in school. While he did not particularly feel any disdain for their way of life, he had been on the wrong side of their ire on too many occasions. He supposed that he ought to let this hatred go since the fact that his parents were gone and what remained of his family had no business to call their own made him consider himself less attached to his own caste. But as he glanced at the faces of the people around him as he walked, he could sense that the workers knew he didn't belong there. Let them have their frontier pride and move along, he told himself bitterly.
Aennin glanced at the note that Katim had attached to his package to refer to its directions once more, but sighed as he found them less helpful than the last time he looked. Wherever he was now, he couldn't recognize any of the landmarks that his employer had described. He had been close to dumping the package and formulating an acceptable lie when he felt an icy hand close around his wrist. He looked up with a start to find himself face to face with a brunette woman he had recognized from the pub. The boy had only seen this person a handful of times and thus had never learned her name. But she regarded him with an expectant look all the same.
"Is that the package bound for Pewter Lane?" she asked sharply.
Aennin nodded slowly. "Where else would I be taking it? Do you think I'd choose to wander this tunnel-dweller street for the pleasant company?"
"Watch your mouth!" the woman hissed angrily. "This is my home you are talking about, and your slurs are not welcome here."
Aennin sighed and gave her an apologetic shrug, figuring it best not to provoke her further. "Sorry! I'm just frustrated because I've never been here before and I keep getting turned around."
"Well, you can stop wandering around so conspicuously and hand the package over," the woman responded coolly. "I will complete this delivery."
This was worded as an offer and delivered in the tone of a request, but Aennin could tell that it was neither, but a command. This visibly startled the boy, with whom Katim had made it clear that he was not to let go of any of his parcels until he reached the place to which they were bound for delivery.
"I've seen you around the pub, so you probably know full well that I can't do that," Aennin replied with a stoic expression that bravely concealed the unusual fear that he felt in this woman's presence. "I'll finish my job if you can just tell me where to go."
"You've run out of time!" The woman snapped impatiently. "If you don't give me that box now, you will almost certainly die."
The bluntness of her threat sapped the courage he had been so careful to maintain, but no matter how scary she was, he feared Katim more. "And who should I say has it when Katim asks?"
"You can tell him that Thea generously decided to help you out," the woman replied coldly. "Now give me the box and go back to Bronze Street where you belong!"
The force of this reiterated demand overruled what remained of the boy's resistance. He handed the box to Thea, taking some comfort in the notion that he could pass the responsibility for this seemingly important delivery to someone else Katim knew. Without a word, she turned on her heels and walked away briskly. With nothing else to do, Aennin made his way back up the steps to the familiarity of Bronze Street to complete the delivery that Landah had arranged instead. This was a more routine journey that was punctuated by an unexpected encounter with Nazan. The man had been skulking through the street outside Katim's in a hooded cloak. Before he could go back inside to report his qualified success, the man grabbed him roughly by the shoulders and pinned him to the outer wall of an ingot dealer's store.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" the man hissed in fury. "Do you know what you've just done?"
The boy shook his head wildly as he struggled to identify the man. After a moment, Nazan pulled off his hood and stared hard into his eyes. His head had been shaved and tattooed with a sickle pattern around his crown, giving him what looked like a black diadem, but his face was instantly recognizable.
"Nazan?" Aennin sputtered in confusion. "What are you doing here?"
The man sighed and released the boy before saying, "You were just in Pewter Lane, right?"
Aennin felt his skin go cold as he responded with a nod, then added, "I was delivering a package for Katim. He has me and Kana working for him since our mom died and father ran off!"
Nazan rubbed his temples wearily for several long moments. He seemed to be contemplating something, and months in Katim's company had taught him never to disturb such concentration. Finally, Nazan kicked the wall and hissed, "That fucking bastard!"
Aennin's eyes widened with alarm and he asked, "What?"
Nazan looked solemnly into Aennin's eyes. "Your father is dead. He was killed by an explosion."
This news should have shocked Aennin, but hearing of Morrin's death didn't feel the same as watching his mother die. Thinking back, he remembered the new type of weapon he had once read about. One that used the inner workings of a clock to combine petrified maulan skin and kerunite for a powerful explosion. This sort of bomb, known as a chaos buster, was used frequently in Resta although the maulan skin had become exceedingly rare in the many years that had passed since the Wave of Death. The boy clutched two fistfuls of his own hair as he thought back to the now-sinister memory of the ticking box.
"The thing he had me delivering sounded like a clock, but it could have been--"
"He used you!" Nazan snapped venomously. "And I thought I had plenty of reason to hate him before!"
"I can't keep doing this!" Aennin whimpered. "He's making me dismantle everything I cared about! You have to get us out of here!"
Nazan shook his head. "I want to help you, but I can't yet! Katim has eyes everywhere and if we're going to avoid them, we need to do this the right way!"
"When, then?" Aennin asked with a fearful expression.
"Just keep your head down and do your job," Nazan said quietly. "I'll come to you when I figure this out."
Aennin nodded shakily and watched as Nazan replaced his hood and disappeared into the crowd. For Aennin, the next thing to do was returning to work and pretending as if nothing had happened. He had never pictured himself having a harder time with that, however, a second difference between the deaths of his parents made itself apparent just then: he was partially responsible for Morrin's demise.
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