Her appearance was carefully crafted to impress the other races. The sighted races, that is, who made judgments based on such things.
The entire Vein race was born blind. Created in the image of their Divine Alchemist, Lindent Vein, who regarded vision as a lie. He and his people relied on more physical sensations for situational awareness, along with a sense of perception that bordered on telepathic. Their blindness was the primary gift that Lindent Vein had bestowed upon his people during Recreation.
A young Cutter child learning about the Vein for the first time might not understand how the absence of vision was a gift, but Lindent Vein’s people were preternaturally sensitive to sound, touch, and scent. Lindent Vein had made for himself, even before the Cataclysm, two pairs of arms. The outer, attached at the shoulder, were stronger and made for broad tasks, such as lifting and aiding in navigation of an unfamiliar place. The smaller, attached at the sides of the ribs, beneath the pectoral muscles, were long-fingered and sensitive, as much antenna as tool. With these they performed the most intricate of circuitry or jewelry design, with fine motor control that the most steady-handed Rakkar would envy.
Talis was pretty sure there was even more to it than that. She suspected the Vein could perceive electrical impulses as easily as the sighted races could see color. They had an industry based on backward-engineering pieces of arcane ’tronics that others, like Talis, lifted out of the flotsam, and they had a particular fondness for anything predating the Cataclysm. No doubt they had a knack for alchemy as well, but their economy was based on the technological advances they made and the patents they immediately filed.
Zeela’s House of Antiquities offered apothecarial concoctions, collectibles ranging from vintage to arcane, and mechanical device repair. It was a sensible business model for a Vein entrepreneur. The shop displays were full of such fragile, irreplaceable, and expensive items that Talis had always assumed she couldn’t afford to walk in the front door. It hadn’t been on her list of possibilities, but it was a sensible stop for someone trying to sell an ancient and mysterious item.
Talis instinctively checked for the pouch she wore over her heart. Confirmed that it hadn’t been dislodged in all her crawling.
She inhaled, opening her mouth to speak, but Zeela inclined her head in a barely perceptible tilt toward a customer at the counter who had yet to complete her purchase.
Understanding the warning, Talis closed her mouth again. As the young clerk who had helped her out of the crawlspace picked cobwebs and insulation out of her hair and off her shirtsleeves, Talis scanned Zeela’s showroom.
The shop had no widespread lighting. Scented candles were lit, casting their minimal illumination across the narrow space—just enough to keep a sighted person from bumping into anything. The candles were more for atmosphere and communication, however, than for lighting. Talis inhaled deeply. Lavender and sage. Relaxing, calming. If she remembered correctly, that scent signaled to customers that a fresh delivery of healing herbs had arrived. As the scented air hit her sinuses, warmth spread through her upper body. The panic melted from around her heart.
Banks of tiny drawers lined the shop’s walls, in black lacquered cabinets carved with unique Vein language marker code. It wasn’t the mathematical and systematic marks of their written alphabet, but more arcane symbols, able to communicate an elaborate idea with a single character carved into the drawer and painted over in black. Only the shopkeepers would understand what each drawer held.
The parquet floor swirled with more elaborate patterns, formed from veneers of wood in varying thicknesses, giving both sighted and unsighted customers a level of craftwork to enjoy. Not enough to trip over, but enough to feel through the sole of a thin leather slipper.
A second young assistant parceled up the purchase of the customer, a petite Rakkar woman who wore an open brown cotton jacket over a well-used leather apron and ankle-length skirts. The girl folded a sheet of parchment neatly around the bundle of individually wrapped items, no doubt ingredients meant for some dangerous alchemical process, or medicines to treat the damage thereof. She cut a piece of string the length of her larger arms’ span—a quarter again longer than Talis’s own—and webbed the package in a complicated series of crossovers. Then she strung a tiny copper bell onto the end and secured it with a bow.
As she handed it across the counter to the woman, Talis noted that the young clerk’s smile was more deliberate than natural. The Vein did not smile as a matter of instinct. They relied on audible expressions of happiness and pleasure. The smile was meant for their sighted customers and needed practice. The veil of simulation dropped as soon as the customer, whose own chitin-plated face was half expressionless itself, uttered a brisk ‘thank you’ and turned to leave.
The woman passed through the shop’s archway, which was hung with two layers of beaded curtains. The interior curtain was strung with what looked like pearls, which shuffled softly as she departed. The exterior curtain clinked more noisily, made of dark beads that might have been metal.
“Welcome, please, Captain,” Zeela said, more animated now that they were alone in the shop. “We have a fresh tincture that has just finished fermenting. It would be of great use on that scrape.”
Talis looked down and rubbed the outside of her left hand. She hadn’t noticed it was bleeding. “Bit of a rough route to get here.”
“You must pardon the deception,” said the businesswoman. She produced Talis’s stolen purse from beneath a
