The city streets resembled the few customers who had already braved the cold to call on him at his store in the early hours of the morning. To much drink and merriment had left a heavy mark this side of the fifth ring. The streets were lined with bodies, most of them still warm. Someone had been kind enough to toss rough dirty blankets over some of the revelers during the night. Most of them exhaled white plumes, the ones who didn't would be picked up when state workers arrived to clear the streets.

Sebastien did his best to steer clear of them all. His foothold in the city was tenuous at best and while he may have the respect of the herdsmen and menial workers in the bottom three the state workers wouldn't think twice about picking up a foreigner, especially one as scrappy looking as him.

The market was nearly empty. Only merchants lined the cobbled road. A few, familiar, called out. Sebastien sedately greeted each, stopping to purchase a loaf of flat bread and two bruised coin fruits as he passed through.

Near the end of the way he found the widow, unmarked by the rest of the city's lethargy. She smiled at him from her stool. No crates or flat mats held her wares. A simple bag hung over her shoulder and marked her as a very specific type of merchant.

“You late.” She addressed him in clipped northern, her wizened face crinkling around the edges. Sebastien grinned sheepishly.

“I've a business to run as well Auntie.”

“No drink juice yesterday night?”

“Ah, then how would I pay you this morning?” He held out a thin purse, its leather blackened from use. The old woman counted the coin carefully.

“You miss one. Good pay twice.” She pocketed the coin and pulled out a bundle wrapped in ratty cloth. His name had been written across the front in careful eastern script.

He accepted the package and clutched it tight to his breast. The pages inside had cost him every spare penny he had made this last week. Usually it wouldn't have been such a burden but the weeks after the carnival had been announced had been sparse for all the merchants.

Now that it had arrived perhaps things could return to normal soon.

The shop was empty besides his young sour faced apprentice. The boy looked up from his seat near the door when he entered and accepted one of the bruised fruits before Sebastien released him for the day, breathing a sigh of relief when the door closed behind him.

Agrin was a good boy, but unsuited to working with customers. Luckily he would be old enough to learn a trade soon, leaving Sebastien to find a new apprentice. This one would be based on merit.

He unwrapped the stack of rough pulp papers and took a seat against the wall, setting them aside with aplomb. He would have time for the story after. There was likely to be very little interruption after the breakfast hour and he should use the time to seed some of the more complicated beads in his collection.

Each bead, as it had been explained to him when he had first arrived in Oragime, was a container created specifically for use by a Ilumanie. The Ilumanie were essentially healers who worked their magic without contact with a body. Sebastien etched each bead with pictographs known as Marks.

The beads were a popular alternative to visiting the clinics that dotted the inner rings. They were cheaper and could be bought in advance but their potency was impacted by the type and condition of the bead as well as the skill of its crafter.

Sebastien had inherited the shop from Aar, the woman who had taken him from the street and given him a place in her home. At her knee he had learned the few marks passed down to her from her own father. Marks were jeliously guarded by those who knew them. Men and women who worked in the clinics were contracted for life and lived under constant guard within the compound itself. They were not allowed to bind or reproduce. Their entire lives were devoted to their craft. Others, like Aar and himself lived off the few marks passed down to them through generations of Ilumanie.

Marks were more then simple sketches they were combinations of sounds and pictographs that created something more. Something lost long before the Great Kingdom split. With marks a man could create and kill, raise crops and ward off ill wishers. It was said in the east that some of the oldest familys still carefully guarded marks that allowed them to communicate with the dead.

Sebastien had inherited a mishmash of common marks for healing cuts and bruises and a few less common agricultural and domestic marks that kept him in business during the leanest months. Aar had also handed down a fistful of dubious marks that had been added to the pile by her own grandfather, a 'foot soldier' in his youth for one of the five gangs that kept the peace in the lower three.

The bead he wished to seed now would take several hours worth of work. The material alone, a bulb of processed ore no larger then his thumb nail had cost nearly a weeks profit but when it sold would quadruple his investment.

If he could find a buyer.

Sebastien laid his tools out on the bench and pinched the knob of precious metal between his fingers and brought it close to his face. Every flaw would effect his mark, every lump and divot would need to be accounted for. Healing was a precise art but held nothing on Modification. The mark he planned to seed would provide its user with unusually sharp vision over distances. Unlike most seeds it would not be destroyed in use and would instead be implanted under the skin, a dangerous technique very seldom practiced. If his mark was off the seed could cause irreparable damage.

Luckily there was little chance of that, as he would have to spend hours etching it into the bead to wear the troughs deep enough before he could seed the mark. He fixed the bead into a small vice rooted into the table and took up a silver gray needle mounted into a cylinder of wood and began his work.

As it turned out his skills were to be in high demand. He was interrupted twice before noon and three more times before he pulled the heavy veil over his doorway that hid the interior from view. The sun was setting over the metropolis but instead of stilling the city was coming to life. People poured outwards from the rings, trickling into the makeshift tents and half formed fairways of the carnival.