Chapter 2: The Market of Masks and Whispers
Chapter 2: The Curio Market and the Masked Merchant
The Harmony Gear weighed little in Girl’s velvet sack, but as Theo, Girl, and Blacksmith hurried from Raven’s Spire, its absence in the city’s mechanisms made every step seem heavier. The city’s confusion only deepened—vendors argued with their own malfunctioning clockwork pets, sniffling children clung to each other—yet the threads of hope shimmered faintly as news spread that the three were on a hunt to mend the city’s heart. Theo felt those invisible lines of expectation, delicate and strong, knitting him to hundreds of neighbors, strangers, and stories. He would not let anyone down.
Their destination was Curio Market: a great web of tangled alleys, shifting stalls, and a thousand ticking clocks, smoke curling lazily between globe lamps hung on copper wire. The market was famous for unpredictability—it might stretch for blocks or fit into a single narrow lane, depending on its mood, and vendors often swapped places, stalls, even faces. Gears rolled across the flagstones like living things; mechanical birds chirped coded warnings from awnings. Spools of music-box melody spun up from hidden corners, blending with the scent of oil, cinnamon bread, and ozone.
As they passed beneath an archway fashioned from old tram rails and gilded pipes, Girl nudged Theo. "Stick close. Last week, this place turned into an upside-down penny arcade halfway through shopping hour. Got stuck juggling flying toffee while a mob tried to sell me their granddad’s blueprints."
Theo’s optics brightened as he scanned the flux of signals. "The Merchant keeps the next Harmony Gear, we think? But… nobody’s ever met them face to face?"
“There are stories,” Blacksmith rumbled, his brow furrowing deeper than usual as he scanned the crowd. “The Merchant deals in trades of consequence—not just coins, but bargains. Old debts. Promises you don’t want breaking.”
Before Girl could reply, they were beset by a windup monkey-tamer in a ruffled suit, accompanied by a barrel of winding, clacking monkeys all wearing tiny top hats. “Fortunes for a feather? Clues for a song?” The monkeys danced and whirled, forming patterns that looked like the riddle-marks Theo had seen on the Engine.
“Let me,” Girl whispered, eyes glinting in the haze. She flicked her scarf and grinned at the tamer. “I’ve got a tune for your troupe. But you must answer first—what’s the tune you monkeys never play?”
The tamer gaped, stammering as one of the monkeys pirouetted and pressed a music box into Theo’s hands. Girl winked. “One trickster recognizes another.”
Theo examined the music box: copper, etched with motifs of city plazas and smoky trains. When he wound it, the melody that drifted out was fractured, a bit out of tune—just like the city itself. His fingers tingled with that odd resonance from before. He closed his optics, letting his programming attune to the pattern. The hidden notes spelled out a message in the old automaton code:
“Follow the masks whose eyes never meet, speak the word of memory’s heat.”
Theo relayed it quickly, and Girl nodded, tugging Blacksmith’s arm. “Mask row—it’s that way. The Merchant’s always near the biggest commotion, or the quietest secret.”
As they moved deeper, the market’s atmosphere shifted. Stalls shaped like giant teapots competed with vendors balancing towers of ticking gears. Along Mask Row, dozens of mask peddlers hawked their wares: cat visages winking, clocks with spinning mustaches, bird beaks that chirped with each spoken word. At the end of the row was a stall that seemed at once faded and out of place, curtains of silver mesh drifting in a breeze no one else felt.
Within, a single figure waited: draped in patchwork garments, face hidden behind an elaborate clock-mask that ticked but never tocked. Their voice, when they spoke, was even—the gender and age impossible to guess.
“Seekers of the Harmony. You come baring hope—and debts unpaid.”
“Merchant,” Blacksmith boomed, respectfully. He removed his cap, eyes cast down. “We have come for the second Gear, as city and destiny demand. But I recall our old bargain. Name your price.”
The Masked Merchant’s gaze flicked to Theo, then Girl, then back. “To earn the gear, you must pass three veils: Riddle, Trust, and Memory. Succeed, and the lost will find their way. Fail—and Curio Market will become your maze forever.”
With a flick, the Merchant produced three clock-masks—smiling faces, but the eyes were empty voids.
“The first riddle: Each mask tells a story, but only two reveal the truth. Which is the lie?”
Girl peered at the inside of each mask. One was etched with a festival—children flying mechanical kites. Another showed a weeping automaton watching trains depart. The third mask was blank but for a single, intricate clock spring.
Theo touched the second, humming as he felt its faint vibration. “This one. The sorrow’s real, but the watcher isn’t—a clockwork can grieve, but it cannot weep real tears.”
The Merchant nodded, pressing a token into Theo’s hand—warm and pulsing with faint promise.
“For the trust trial, place these on yourselves and walk blind through the archway of endings.”
Reluctantly, Theo, Girl, and Blacksmith fastened the empty-eyed masks to their faces. The world seemed to dissolve in a swath of mechanical humming—disorienting, echoing. Voices blurred: the market’s noise, girls giggling, somber melodies from distant lullabies. Girl reached out and grabbed Theo’s hand, squeezing hard.
“Don’t let go, whatever happens,” she whispered.
Theo’s processors whirred. “Trust.” He walked, step after step, senses reduced to the tremor of hands held and the steady certainty of Blacksmith’s presence. The archway seemed endless—but at last, they emerged, masks dissolved, facing the Merchant once again.
“For the final veil—memory, as forged in regret,” the Merchant murmured. “What do each of you most wish you hadn’t forgotten?”
Blacksmith, silent and uncomfortable, finally whispered, “My promise to protect my brother, whom I lost when the city first spun into chaos. I failed him—and sometimes, I cannot forgive myself.”
Girl hesitated, running a thumb along her scarf. “The face of my old friend, Marnie, who moved away after my tricks got us both in trouble. I wish I could say I was sorry—one last time.”
Theo searched his memories, finding patches and archives, one flickering brighter. “The lullaby a caretaker used to sing when my gears clanked or I lost faith in myself. The words… I’ve almost forgotten, but the comfort remained.”
The Merchant was silent for a moment, and then nodded. From beneath the counter, they drew the second Harmony Gear: this one silver, whorled with patterns of sleeping children and braided timelines.
The Masked Merchant’s eyes, hidden by the mask, seemed softer. “You did not come empty-handed. Take this—restore what was broken. And Blacksmith, debt forgiven. Remember, to repair a city, sometimes you must let go of who you once were.”
Girl whooped, clutching the gear—but her joy faded as a chill swept over the stall. From the far end of the row came a sound, thin and terrible: an old lullaby, warped, sung in a cracked voice.
Bandages trailed along the ground; eyes glinted behind cracked lenses. Mummy revealed herself fully—her brass joints exposed and twisted, her smile fixed and sad. Buried beneath the wrappings, gears ticked out of sync, too long unrepaired.
“You think to reforge what you abandoned?” Mummy’s voice echoed, half-grown with static, half-drowned by old grief. In a blur, she dashed forward—inhumanly quick, gloved fingers darting. The Harmony Gear was plucked from Girl’s hands.
“Only I remember how it once was! Only I can guard the Engine forever!”
With a rush of wind and darkness, Mummy darted into the labyrinth of twisting market alleys, the gear glinting in her grasp.
Theo sprinted after her, Girl and Blacksmith close behind. They tore past crowds and collapsed stalls, through back-doors and down steam-hissed steps, plunging deep into the city’s hidden underbelly—the old service tunnels, where Curio Market’s dreams and memories settled and rusted.
Mummy’s bandages fluttered just out of sight; her laughter—both triumphant and desperate—echoed from every blind corner.
“We’re not done yet!” Girl gasped, determination bright in her eyes.
Theo felt the city’s sorrow and rage swirl together in the tunnels ahead. They had lost the gear, but not the hope it embodied. Together, they pursued the shadows—straight into the underbelly, where the city’s deepest secrets were about to resurface, and where the final confrontation with Mummy would begin.