Teerom slid the mortise into the tenon and felt the satisfying, air-tight thud of a perfect fit. No nails or glue needed, just skill and a snug fit.

  "Clean," a voice boomed behind him.

  Teerom straightened, wiping sawdust from his forehead. Mr. Vane, the head of Glamor Builders, was a man who looked carved out of expensive mahogany - sturdy and smelling faintly of cologne and business acumen.

  "This is great timber, sir," Teerom said, patting the frame of the second story.

  "It's your good hands, son," Vane corrected, clapping him on the shoulder. "You've got the touch. most of the lads I hire, they bang the wood like it owes them money. You treat it like a lady."

  Teerom smiled awkwardly; that comment certainly made woodworking slightly weird from now on. He looked around the site. It was a two-story townhouse in the upper district, commissioned by a silk merchant. The crew was efficient, the tools were new, and the pay - Jurie had double-checked the contract three times - was more than fair. It was generous.

  "Take five, everyone!" Vane called out. "Lunch is on the company today."

  Teerom sat on a stack of bricks, unwrapping the sandwich Madella had packed for him. He felt light; all of his worries were distant. He was going to be just a guy earning a living.

  "Hey, look at this," one of the carpenters, a lanky man named Jace, snickered.

  A woman was shuffling past the site. She was older, her clothes a patchwork of gray rags, her back bent under the weight of a sack filled with collected kindling. She paused near the crew, her eyes downcast.

  "Any... any spare copper, kind sirs?" she asked, her voice a dry rasp.

  Teerom's hand went instantly to his pocket. He didn't have anything, but the impulse was automatic.

  "You want some bread or something?" Jace laughed, tossing a crust of his meat pie into the dirt near her feet. "You look like you need a bath more than bread, love. Come here. I'll smack the dust off you."

  He made a lewd gesture, reaching out to slap her butt. The woman flinched, stumbling back, nearly dropping her sack.

  The crew erupted in laughter.

  "Leave her alone," Teerom said. The words came out more hostile than he intended and cut through the laughter like a saw through wood.

  Jace turned, a piece of gristle hanging from his lip. "Relax, new guy. Just having a bit of fun."

  "It's cruel," Teerom said, standing up. "She's just asking for help."

  "She's asking for a handout because she's talentless," another man chimed in, leaning back and picking his teeth. "If she was halfway decent looking, she'd have found a man. If she had a skill, she'd have a job. That right there? That's the smell of failure. Don't let it rub off on you."

  Teerom looked at the only female member of the crew, a stonemason named Entara. She didn't laugh, but she didn't speak either. She just took a bite of her apply, looking at the sky, ignoring the beggar and the scene.

  The woman hurried away, her head bowed in shame. Teerom sat back down, but the sandwich now tasted like ash. The beautiful joinery, the expensive tools, the camaraderie - it all felt mold-infested suddenly.

  Late that afternoon, back in the main office, Vane poured two glasses of amber liquid. The office was plush, adorned with blueprints of the city's most prestigious addresses.

  "You're a natural, Teerom," Vane said, sliding a contract across the mahogany desk. "I want you on the team. Full time. Starting tomorrow."

  Teerom looked at the paper. The salary listed was, as Jurie said, enough to fill the orphanage's pantry for a year with money to spare. It was stability and safety all in one, but he thought of the men laughing at the beggar, and his stomach turned. 'I can ignore them,' he reasoned. 'I can be better. I can stop them next time and give her money.'

  "I... I'd be honored, sir," Teerom began.

  "Excellent!" Vane unrolled a large scroll on the desk. "We've got a big project coming up in the lower district. The city council finally approved the rezoning for a new textile factory. It's going to be a beauty. Modern and efficient and we have to ensure the foundation is solid."

  Teerom looked at the map. He saw the river. He saw the bridge. And he saw the red circles and what lay in them.

  One of them was drawn right over the cottage, the garden Reben had planted, Adimia's training site, their home.

  "This..." Teerom's voice went cold. "This is a residential area."

  "Squatters mostly," Vane waved a hand dismissively. "Old shacks. An orphanage, I think? Run-down place. We'll knock it flat in a day. Don't worry, the city has allocated some discounted housing in the city tenements for the displaced. It's progress son. Out with the old, in with the gold, hahahah."

  Teerom stared at the man. The jovial warmth in Vane's eyes didn't reach the pupils. Did he not care for people's homes? Were they just obstacles for this textile factory?

  "The people who live there," Teerom said quietly. "Do they matter to you?"

  Vane chuckled, taking a sip of his drink. "Why? You got friends there?"

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  Teerom waited for an answer to his question.

  "Teerom, in this business, bricks matter. Coin matters. People? There's always more people. The demand for housing is high, which means our work is valuable. We don't build for shmucks."

  Teerom stood up. "I can't work for you," Teerom said.

  Vane blinked. "Excuse me?"

  "I can't work for you." Teerom placed the day's wage he had received on the corner of the desk, keeping only exactly what he was owed for the hours worked, leaving the 'bonus' behind. "And if you come near that cottage... you'll find it's built stronger than anything you've ever made. By shmucks."

  He walked out before he said anymore.

  The Rusty Flagon tavern was full of a collective groan of the city's workforce. The air was thick with the smell of stale hops and people that hadn't showered.

  Teerom stood at the counter, waiting for a takeout pizza. It was a consolation prize. He was going home unemployed, having rejected a fortune, to tell his family their home was a target. He felt like a failure.

  "Watch out!"

  A heavy body slammed into Teerom's back.

  The box in his hand flew open and the pizza flipped into the air and landed face down on the muddy floor.

  Teerom stared at the ruin of the dinnner. The tragedy of it was so small, yet so heart-wrenching, that he felt tears prick his eyes.

  "Oh, blazes and beards and bobalicks," a voice grunted from the floor.

  A dwarf was untangling himself from a stool. He was broad, with a beard braided into two forks that were currently dipped in tomato sauce. He looked up at Teerom with eyes that were bloodshot and swimming with a sloppy apology.

  "I am... so sorry, lad. Truly. I... tripped." The dwarf hiccuped, the smell of cheap ale rolling off him in a wave. "My friend... he pushed me."

  "Battdur!" a roar came from a table in the corner.

  Another dwarf, this one with a beard grey as iron and a face like a clenched fist, stomped over. He grabbed the one on the floor - Battdur - by the collar and hauled him up.

  "I leave town for one day and they tell me we lost a customer 'cause you had to be a flirt!" the dwarf yelled, shaking Battdur. "That was our first job in weeks! The maiden didn't want to see your 'special hammering techniques', you sodden fool!"

  "I was just testing my chances, Aleisar!" Battdur slurred, trying to wipe the pizza sauce from his beard and failing.

  Three other dwarves sat at the table, looking miserable. Two were identical twins, Sylmo and Bylmo, who were passing a tankard back and forth with grim determination, neither looking happy about it. The last one, Hogroon, was weeping silently into a bowl of nuts.

  "My hands..." Aleisar released Battdur and looked at his own calloused palms. "They're cramping, Battdur. cramping from the quiet. I'm even dreaming of hammers! I wake up hitting my damn pillow!"

  "I'm sorry about your pizza," Battdur said again to Teerom, swaying dangerously. "I have... no money to pay for it."

  Teerom sighed. He crouched down to pick up his satchel, which had also fallen. The clasp had come undone. Spilled out on the floor, next to the ruined pizza, was a collection of joints and a small wooden carving he had shown Glamor Builders.

  Aleisar stopped his tirade. He squinted down, his eyes widening.

  "Did you buy that?" the dwarf leader asked, his voice losing its drunken slur for a second.

  "I made it," Teerom muttered, shoving it back into the bag.

  Aleisar snatched the bag before Teerom could close it. He pulled the bird statue out, turning it over in his thick, trembling hands. He ran a rough thumb over the joinery of the wings.

  "Sylmo. Bylmo. Look at this."

  The twins looked up, their eyes glassy and hollow. They leaned in.

  "Grain flows with the curve," Sylmo rasped.

  "Mortise is blind," Bylmo finished. "Clean for something so small."

  Aleisar looked at Teerom. "You're a sculptor?"

  "I... I'm trying to be a builder," Teerom said, snatching the bird back. "Though apparently, I'm too picky about who I work for."

  "We need a builder," Aleisar said. He looked at his crew - a mess of ale stains and unemployedness. "We're the Bydder Company. Or we were. Before the dry spell." He gestured vaguely at the empty table. "We're good with stone. Metal. But wood? We're shite!"

  Teerom looked at them. They were a disaster. They were loud, they smelled like a brewery, they had no respect for women it seemed, and they were clearly drinking to forget that they were failing.

  "I can't pay you a wage," Aleisar admitted, scratching his beard. "We ain't got a pot to piss in right now. But... we split the jobs. Fair shares. You work, you eat."

  Teerom looked at Aleisar's eyes. Behind the glaze of alcohol, there was no cruelty or calculation or obsession with profit. There was a desperate need for work and perhaps even passion for building.

  "...I'll join you," Teerom said, feeling that it was too impulsive.

  The table erupted. Hogroon stopped crying. Battdur tried to hug him and missed. It was the amplified emotional reaction of alcohol.

  "But," Teerom raised a hand, his voice hard. "One condition."

  "Anything!" Aleisar. "A free round? The finest swill in the house?"

  "No alcohol," Teerom said. "Not for me. You guys do what you want. But you never offer me a drink. You never pour me a glass. you never ask me to toast."

  The dwarves went silent. In their culture, refusing a drink was like refusing to breathe. But Aleisar looked at the young man, saw his jaw's tension, the shadow in his eyes that spoke of a different kind of demon than the ones in the bottle.

  "A dry dwarf is a sad dwarf," Aleisar grunted, joking. "But you're a tall-folk. Maybe your liver is weak." He stuck out a hand. "Deal. Welcome to the Bydder Company. We'll get you a contract a little later."

  Teerom shook it. His hand was swallowed by the dwarf's grip.

  The walk home was long. Without the pizza, Teerom arrived with nothing except a heavy heart and a dubious new career path.

  Jurie was waiting on the porch steps, reading a book by the last light of the day, but she lowered it as soon as she heard his footsteps.

  "You're back late," she said. "How was it?"

  Teerom sat down beside her on the step without looking at her. "I turned it down..."

  Jurie closed her book. "Why?"

  "They were... mean," Teerom said, feeling like a child as he said it. She urged him with her eyes to elaborate. "There was a woman begging. They made fun of her. They threatened to touch her. And I... I just couldn't stand being on the same side of the wall as them."

  He waited for her to tell him he was being foolish and that he should have sucked it up for the sake of the family. Perhaps it was to combat the uncertainty of his future.

  Instead, he felt a warmth against his arm. Jurie had leaned her head on his shoulder.

  "I'm glad," she whispered.

  Teerom turned to look at her. Her eyes were shining, reflecting the first stars of the evening.

  "You are?"

  "Mhm... You're Teerom. If you had stayed there... hung around with those men who mock the poor and..." She thought back to the guards that had groped her, "we could have lost you. I don't want the Teerom I know to be around that. Losing you would be worse than being poor."

  Teerom blushed. He let out a breath he felt he'd been holding the whole day. The tension in his chest unspooled but it was quickly replaced by another, an intense embarrassment and something a little more jolting that made him scoot away from her in a panic.

  "I-I joined a dwarf company instead," he admitted with a sheepish grin. "They spilled my pizza. They smell terrible. They drink. And they pay based on commissions which rarely come."

  Jurie laughed. "That's great!" she teased.

  "Yeah, totally great," Teerom said, looking at the moon rising over their threatened, beautiful home. He looked to her but her earnest and warm expression was difficult for his heart to look at.