Mick looked back at me and spoke quietly. “Watch yourself, Mr. Solomon. Whatever grievance takes you to trial is not a trifling thing. But as yet, you look a trifling man.”
The king rat’s shadow bore the gold rim of a thanatist. Up close I could see a cloudy film in his eyes, but it didn’t prevent him from piercing me with his gaze.
Cassius broke the tension. “So, then, help us untrifle him. To start, he needs a lantern.”
Mick finally let go of my hand and sat behind his table of offerings again. “What do you know about flame, fresh fish?”
“A little,” I said.
“Your shadow is raw but potent to my eyes,” said Mick. “So tell me, what do you see insidemyshadow?”
“You’re a thanatist, and you seem content . . . but with a good many sizable occlusions in the pattern?—”
Mick laughed like a buzzsaw. He reached back and pulled a brass lantern from a shelf behind him and set it on the table between us. It was heavily dented but compact and clean. It had no wick, only a clamp and harness inside the glass, with brass rods framing the glass on the outside. It also had a pistol grip at the center of one of the rods—similar to those I’d seen on several thanatist lanterns by that point.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a copper-colored stone about an inch in diameter. “Ghost stone,” he said. He opened the lantern, fastened the stone with the harness, and closed it again. He then whispered, “Burn,” and the stone flared a deep amber color. With a flourish, he produced a short violin bow from a clip on his belt.
“You ever used a lamp and bow?” Mick asked. “Once,” I said.
Mick held the catalysts out to me. “Let’s see yer form.”
Trying to remember everything I’d read and everything Brach had shown me, I took the lamp first, grabbing it by the pistol grip at the center of one frame rod. The finger grooves felt worn and comfortable. And the lantern was well balanced—heavier than I might have thought, but all the better for bashing someone in close quarters. Then I took the bow and attempted a revelatory stroke. The ghost stone sputtered and died. I tried a blinding stroke. Barely a dull glimmer. In frustration, I pulled hard for a bracing stroke, which only managed to knock Mick’s pipe to the floor. “You play like a half-hour gentleman.” Mick laughed. “All that fancy technique’ll get you killed in an alley fight.”
Mick grabbed the lamp and bow from me and whipped out a bracing stroke using just a bit of the bow turned on its edge. He flashed a blinding stroke by pulling the lamp at the same time he pushed the bow—happened in half the time and left spots in my eyes for several seconds.
He showed me some other bow techniques, running them off the way a guitar player demos a new six-string. It reminded me of the difference between street fights and boxing.
Then he drew the bow across one lantern rod in a long pull. The thanaturgic light brightened from amber to nearly white. “Nowtell me what you see.”
His pattern of gleam notes lit in slow, dull succession. Six notes up, then six down. They scanned like an elegy. And they played as if across a wrinkled sheet of music, wet with tears. One scar was far larger than the rest, but for some reason, I couldn’t see anything inside the occlusions themselves. Somehow he was toying with me—I should at least see something.
“That’s what I thought,” said Mick. “But don’t get poked up by your mediocrity.”
Before he stopped bowing, I instinctively hummed a few of the notes I saw in his shadow. And in the same way my song had brightened my own occlusion like an ember touched by wind, the image behind Mick’s scar started to clear.
“White flowers . . . ,” I said.
Before I could bring it all together, Mick held up a small hand lantern and washed away his shadow.
“That’s called playing defense.” He shut down both lanterns. “Good trick to learn, so’s lampmen don’t go looking where they oughtn’t.”
“Like looking at lilies on a grave marker?” I asked.
Mick’s face went slack. “No, son. At least, not for most of us. I’m not sure how you were able to see so deep, but you ever mention my lilies again and it’ll be the last time. Ya follow?”
Mick’s long bow-pull was known as the revelatory stroke because it yielded light by which a thanatist could peer deeper into a soul’s shadow. But it seemed it was the few notes of song I’d added that had made the difference.
There’d been nothing in the books about music as any kind of catalyst, and I didn’t want to get into it. So, I finally just nodded.
Mick tipped back his derby. “Regardless how you did it, you’re still going to need a lamp to light the shadow first, not to mention a lamp bow. And in case ya haven’t heard, lamp bows aren’t just so much horsehair. Rather, shadesmane are they. Expensive stuff.”
I’d read about shadesmane—a catalyst hair harvested from rare Strata-creatures known as shades. It could pull sound from any surface you bowed it with, not just strings. “How much for both?”
Before he could answer, a man in a tailor’s apron careened through the door and crashed to the floor. Behind him came three dark-clad thanatists, lanterns and bows hanging from their belts. Crescent moons tattooed on their cheeks.
Mick put down the lantern and pointed at the tailor. “It’s very simple, Owen. We keep you safe; you make it worth our while to do so.”
“I don’t have?—”
