Chapter Two: Esselle

Lemon rays of light penetrated the attic window of my bedroom, gleaming through particles of dust. The same parrot of emerald feathers and the smoothest terracotta beak made for a dependable alarm. Even more-so than the cracked glass pocket watch I kept along one side of my tri-fold.

With Diamond Theater's tavern hours running as late as early morning, I never stirred till midday—and even then abided in the stillness of noontide, allowing the cool breeze to amble through the cracks of my window. I just loved the way it kissed the skin of my toes, which always hung out of the linens of my tri-fold.

Peace. It was my one moment to lay still.

The granite walls that encompassed Chester's shop had a way of echoing every creaking step throughout its chambers. I could hear Chester below, his footfall slow and that cane of his crashing against countless surfaces—each of them projecting different dings and clanks and chimes.

I heard him curse when what sounded like glass fell to the floorboards below. It's what told me to get up and help him stock the shelves, or dust them off—whatever he was doing to generate such a fuss.

"Good morning!" I greeted him—my bare feet descending the twisting steps that screamed beneath my weight. He was sitting at his desk, one eye pinched through his monocle, trying to make out the etchings on the bangle I had stolen yesterevening. It was gold-filled, coated in platinum, and worthy of the fore of our glass display, which sat beside his desk. That way he could keep an eye on its contents throughout every hour.

"Morning…" His voice was croaky at this hour, not that it lessened throughout the day. Somehow, it always grew more hoarse by dusk. I could find him in a choir whilst having on a blindfold.

I rested my forearms at his desk, watching him roll out his little drawer of tools—taking from it a brush and scrubbing at the edges of the bangle. His lens-less eye shot to me—a sign that he was ready and waiting for whatever escapades I had to rehash from the evening prior, as was our routine.

And while I had nothing to say of the nobs at the theater—nagging, snappy, a bit much as always—I wasn't eager to confess to the wagon ride snafu. The urge to get it off my chest bested me, and like everything else, I bore it all anyway.

"The coachman thought me a courtesan last night," I said, tracing one finger along the long edge of a wooden plank embedded in his desk—an attempt at appearing indifferent when the memory still made me flush in embarrassment.

Chester spared one glance but occupied most of his might shining the bangle. "The coachman's a schmuck," he offered so matter-of-factly.

"Do I look like one?"

He sighed and extended one arm to study the bangle. And whilst standing to unlock the glass display, croaked, "Yer pretty as a picture and livin' west of the Cleft." With a blink, he added, "You know what rich folk think of girls like that…"

Of course I did. They'd think that I'd do anything to get my hands on their glittering gold. "He was such a nob about it—acted like I should've thanked him…" My voice was a venomous timbre, for my head recounted the ways in which the coachman looked me up and down.

"Can't tell ya I'm surprised. You'll just have to ride back on another cart path from now on." But I'd always taken the south-most cart path to and fro Ristic. It was cheap—a shilling per two burgs. And while every other cart was quicker in trip, with sturdier wains and stronger shires, they were also twice the levy. I did the novice math in my head.

Four shillings steeper. "We can't afford it."

"By the Gods, we can," Chester muttered with the click of a twisted lock. The bangle was restored to mint condition, free of the tarnish that only a keen eye might detect. Now even the sharpest orbs were no match for Chester's honeyed tongue. He'd have some punter swindled on the piece in no time.

"It should not be my burden to dodge such a man and pay four extra shillings to do it," I argued. Attitude laced each word—not for Chester, for I knew he would agree—for the coachman. I grew more hostile just picturing his face.

"You shouldn't have to pay to be treated like a strumpet, either!"

"Delightful," I said with ample satire, "Either I subsidize a rich pig with what little coin I have, or I pay an arm and a leg so that I might just be ignored." Pale—a lovely city, indeed…

Patting the top of the jewelry display with his palm in three quick pecks, Chester gathered every ounce of his might to lift his all but four-foot-eleven-inch body from the seat of his hickory chair. At the same time, the bell of our front door chimed. A customer was now in our midst.

Our shop—twee, and swimming in anything built in past or present—was neither greatly small nor greatly large but packed in rows of shelves that made its walkways narrow. It possessed a pinched-in feel with shadowy walls and the dim lighting of a dungeon, or a castle, or an old library somewhere. And yet, nowhere else felt more like home in all of Pale.

Chester greeted our wandering shelf-searcher and said, "Now, Essie." He cleared his throat. "If that sore-eye givin' schmuck gives you a hard time ever a-gin, you come an' tell me. I'll send Mogul his way."

I nodded at the old man—smiled at his flare.

Mogul was Devon's alehouse king and a brawny beast of a man—who happened to consider himself my personal watchdog. He owned The Rusty Beaker, down the muddy path a ways—similar to our shop in its prevail. It was the only alehouse, other than those basement taverns filled with brawling ruffians and thugs, that sat west of the Cleft—where a wharf could afford a beaker of spirits without slumming with the city's trouble or breaking the bank. It's where I met Chester, in fact.

He had been sitting nearest the fire pit—more like a hole in the ground with embers that shined brightest if you blew on them. And a mere six years of age hadn't given me much confidence—nudging my way through Devonites and beggars in search of someone I'd never met—someone whose name I didn't know.

As soon as we had locked eyes, it was he that knew first. And judging by the way his staggering gaze bore a hole through me, I knew it was him, too—the man I had been searching for. My grandfather.

"You looked just like your father, rife with trouble," he had said to me, years later. Though I knew it was my father's features that had me standing out so. The wavy reddish hair—a deep burgundy, almost like the chocolate cosmos growing out in Ristic. "You have his eyes, too," he admitted, "He got those from his mother—big ole orbs, those are. Plus you're knee-high, like a rat." At the time he said so, I was still only nine, though time wasn't of much help in that department. I'd only grown an inch-or-two since—bringing me to a whopping five-foot-one. Mammoth.

"I'm still taller than you," I retorted, to which he'd only laughed. It was a foreign, gurgling sound I hadn't known yet that I'd grow to love.

"Well that ain't hard. I shrunk a foot-or-so drinkin' this here ale!" At the time, he'd lifted his tankard, nodding to Mogul at the bar. "Ain't that right, Mogul?"

And the burly keeper—roughly twelve years my senior—laughed along with every other wharf squished into that miniature place. I had beheld my luck to settle with such people. They were good people. But far from trusting.

My place was earned in toil, proof of piety, and time. Chester confessed he'd thought himself ill-fated at the sight of my brick hair the night we first met.

I believe his exact thoughts were, no way in hell will this lil tot be stickin' 'round. "Till you opened this ole sack of bangles and brooches," he had laughed, "Hell—that's when I stuck yer tri-fold right in that tiddly room upstairs."

It took a while for me to warm up to him, too—considering Father's stories. I should have known better than to trust in Father's stories.

Though Chester may have first appeared as a grouchy graybeard who begrudged the youth and only cared for coin, I came to learn that he was no such man. Time had a way of greasing the bolts nearest his heart and freeing up room for me.

Like a cookie, he was crispy on all sides. But at his core, he was a gooey mess. Anyone willing to do a bit of biting could see that.

And now, after thirteen years of just the two of us, one could not deny that he'd grown to care far more for me than any sum of coin I brought to his pockets. Even whilst shining an apron-full of loot, he made it clear to me that coin was hollow, so long as it meant I had to ride atop the wagon of a cad.

I grinned to myself knowing that in a city of sin and greed there was one man who valued me above the rest. The feeling was certainly mutual.

Chester was the one good thing I had.