I paused mid-step.
…Oh. Right.
Was today the day I was supposed to meet Yule? I stood there for a moment, genuinely uncertain, running through the last two days in my head like a man searching his pockets for something he already knew wasn't there.
Was it today? I think it was today.
I had no idea where to look for him either. My best guess was the perfumery — or rather, the catastrophic wreck of a building sitting on top of it. I turned and started walking in that direction, hands in my pockets, the morning air already carrying that particular smell of the neighbourhood waking up: horses, coal smoke, someone's breakfast burning two streets over.
It wasn't a long walk. But somewhere between Falan Road and the 4th Ways Crossing, I heard it.
A crowd.
Not the usual market crowd — this one had a specific energy. Concentrated. Gravitational. The kind that meant something, or someone, was at the centre of it.
I slowed.
…Women. It's entirely women.
I looked closer.
There, in the middle of it all — perfectly at ease, practically glowing — was Yule. Charcoal frock coat, silver waistcoat, hat slightly tilted. Talking to approximately seven women at once with the calm confidence of a man who had never once in his life felt out of place.
I stared at him for a moment.
Of course.
I walked up.
"Hey, Yule."
He turned immediately — like he'd been expecting me — and addressed the crowd with a small, apologetic bow, that same easy smile never leaving his face.
"My sincerest apologies, ladies. It appears my very late friend has finally decided to arrive."
He said that loud enough for me to hear. On purpose.
"Is it time already?" he added, turning to me with a sigh that carried the full weight of a man being pulled away from something genuinely pleasant.
"…Were you just going to stand here all morning?"
"Not all morning." He fell into step beside me. "Alright, let's go."
We walked together back in the direction of the perfumery. The street was busier now than when I'd left the house — stands fully open, carriages rolling through steadily, the sound of the city in full motion. After a few minutes of walking without particular urgency, we silently arrived at the same conclusion and flagged down a carriage.
We got in.
The cab smelled faintly of cedar and old leather. Yule settled back in his seat with the ease of someone who spent a considerable portion of his life in carriages.
A beat of quiet passed.
"By the way," I said. "You're paying."
"…Yeah, yeah."
He said it with a sigh so resigned it almost had its own punctuation.
Another beat.
"Yule."
"Hm?"
"You know it's your fault I'm in the Bureau, right?"
"I'm fairly certain you agreed to it."
I lifted my foot and gave his leg a weak, thoroughly unenthusiastic kick. It conveyed everything I needed it to convey.
He didn't even flinch. Just looked at me with the expression of a man who had already won this argument before it started.
"…Even so," I said. "I still don't know where the office actually is."
"What?" Yule turned. "Did you not get the address?"
"No."
"…How did you not get the address."
"No one gave it to me."
He let out a breath and looked at the ceiling briefly. "Fine. I'll pick you up next time and bring you there. Or ask Astin — he knows the location. Either way, you're still technically a civilian. Not a Veridian yet, not formally a member. So it's not urgent."
The carriage rolled on. Outside the window, the street gave way to a quieter stretch — older buildings here, the kind with moss growing between the stones and window boxes full of something half-wilted and half-thriving. A cat sat on a ledge, watching the carriage pass with complete indifference.
"Yule."
"Yeah?"
"Since you're the one who pulled me into this — can you at least tell me more about the job? What we actually do. What I'm walking into."
"For regular members or Veridian members?"
"Both."
He made a face — not reluctant, just thoughtful. The face of someone organising a lot of information into a shape that would make sense out loud.
"Well," he started, "Fate Providence isn't exactly a huge operation. It's slightly bigger than your average branch, but not by a dramatic margin. Sixteen members total, including me. Eight of those are Veridians."
I processed that.
"…Eight is considered a lot?"
"Eight is considered decent compared to significant branches but is considered a lot for minor branches." He smiled. "I know how that sounds. But think about it — finding a static relic is already hard. Successfully assimilating one without going static is even harder. Most branches our size have four or five Veridians at most. We're doing relatively well."
"What happened to your stock? If you have eight Veridians, you must have found relics before."
Yule's expression shifted — not darkening exactly, but settling into something a little more careful.
"We did. The last one was about two and a half years ago." He paused. "One of our non-Veridian members had been on standby for a relic for a long time. She'd put in her application to headquarters, gone through the whole process. By the time she was approved, Fate Providence didn't have anything in stock. There was one branch willing to share — but it was far, and more importantly, the relic itself wasn't right for her. Compatibility was low. High chance of something called overlapping."
He trailed off and looked out the window.
I waited.
"Overlapping wh—"
"There she is."
He pointed.
I followed his gaze.
On the pavement across the road — walking at a brisk, purposeful pace that suggested she always had somewhere to be — was a woman who looked, at a glance, like she had wandered out of a detective novel and simply never gone back. Tan double-breasted trench coat, belted at the waist. Pleated plaid skirt beneath it. A deerstalker cap sitting neatly over long, silvery-platinum hair, with a small decorative braid worked into one side. Bright green eyes that caught the light even from a distance.
She was smiling at nothing in particular — wide, open, the kind of smile that looked like it had a lot of energy behind it.
I watched her for a moment.
"…That's your coworker?"
"That's her," Yule said. There was something in his voice. Not obvious. But present.
I turned to look at him.
He was still watching her through the window — just a second too long.
"Hey, Yule."
"Hm?"
"You're smitten, aren't you."
"What— no. Absolutely not. We're coworkers."
I grinned.
"There's nothing wrong with workplace dating, you know."
He turned to me with a pout that was doing a very poor job of hiding everything it was supposed to hide.
"…Are we going to meet her?" I asked.
"Later." He turned away. "You'll meet her properly when you come to the office."
CLOP. CLOP. CLOP.
The carriage slowed.
I stepped out onto the pavement. The sun had begun its descent — the sky running from warm gold at the rooftops to a deeper, bruised orange higher up. The street here was quieter than the main road. Older. The buildings had that particular stillness of places that had been standing long enough to stop noticing the people around them.
The perfumery's ruined exterior greeted us exactly as I remembered it. Peeling paint. Weathered walls. A door that looked like it had given up years ago and simply hadn't gotten around to falling off.
"So," Yule said, coming to stand beside me. "What's the plan?"
"Business idea."
He turned. "…What?"
"I have a proposal for the owner."
"You're— you just signed with the Bureau, and you're already running a side business?"
"It's not a side business yet. It's a proposal."
"Tell me."
So as we walked — through the outer room with its curled fat shavings and skeletal flower stalks and complete absence of any detectable smell — I laid it out for him. The air freshener concept. Two versions: a liquid spray, like a perfume but for a space rather than a person, and a solid hanging version that released scent slowly over time. Both aimed at the single greatest problem Lorden's Crossing had, which was that it smelled like the inside of a stable that had caught a mild fever.
By the time I finished, we were standing in front of the shop's inner door, warm light leaking through the cracks at its edges.
Yule stared at me.
"…That's actually brilliant."
"I know."
"You could've just bought perfume like a normal person."
"Where's the fun in that."
He pushed the door open.
The Ephemeral Bloom received us the way it always did — immediately and completely. The shelves, the glass bottles, the warm wood panelling, the scattered light. The scent, layered and complex, each fragrance keeping its distance from the others in a way that still didn't quite make sense to me. A few customers moved quietly between the displays.
Gant appeared almost immediately.
"Welcome back, Mr. Thran. Mr. Yule." A measured smile. "The boss is expecting you."
He led us through the store, past the main counter, further into the back than I'd been before. The interior narrowed into a short hallway — darker, quieter, the floorboards older. Polished dark wood panelling ran the length of it, and a single lamp cast warm amber light across a row of framed labels, old ones, the kind that had been up long enough to become part of the wall.
Gant knocked once on the door at the end.
"They're here, boss."
"Send them in."
He stepped aside.
I walked in expecting — I'm not sure what I expected. Something that matched the shop. Refined. Composed. Maybe a woman in silk going over ledgers with a fountain pen.
What I got was someone who looked like she'd retired from a life at sea and hadn't entirely let go of it.
She was broad-shouldered and built like someone who had spent years doing work that required it. Bronze skin, weathered and warm. Dark hair hacked short with no ceremony. A jagged scar running across her bicep, visible where her sleeve was rolled up. She sat behind a massive mahogany desk absolutely buried in old nautical maps, brass compasses, and unlabelled clay jars — and between her fingers, a thick cigar, trailing a slow curl of smoke that had thoroughly colonised the upper half of the room.
She looked less like a perfumer and more like someone you'd negotiate a cargo price with on a dock at midnight.
"Yule." She leaned back in her chair. "I ought to thank you properly for bringing someone with an actual brain to my shop."
"If you want to thank me," Yule said pleasantly, "a lifetime supply of perfume would do nicely."
"You've got three unpaid purchases on your tab. I'm still waiting."
"We're acquaintances. Can't you loosen the leash a little?"
"…Fine. I'll leave it for now."
Yule smirked and murmured a thanks.
She turned to me, studying me the way someone does when they've already made up their mind but want to see if you confirm it.
"So. You're the Thran that Gant won't stop going on about." A pause. "Air freshener. Not a bad idea. I'll admit, I didn't think of it." She rolled the cigar to the other side of her mouth. "Forgive me — I haven't introduced myself. Karina. I run the Ephemeral Bloom. Now." She set both hands flat on the desk. "Tell me the rest of it."
"It's a simple enough concept," I said. "Two products to start. A liquid version — a spray, designed for rooms and spaces rather than people. And a solid version, something you can hang or place somewhere and leave. Both using scents strong enough to displace whatever's already in the air."
"Your neighbourhood, for instance."
"Among other applications."
She was quiet for a moment. The cigar smoke drifted.
"And what are you looking for out of this?"
"A partnership. You produce, I contribute the concept. In terms of royalties —" I paused. "Ten percent. Combined, across both products."
Karina's expression didn't change. But something behind her eyes did.
"Three."
"Seven point five."
"Four."
"Seven."
"Five."
"Six point five."
"Five point five."
I smiled. "Deal."
She held my gaze for one more second — sharp, amber eyes reading exactly what kind of negotiation had just taken place — and then the corner of her mouth pulled into something that wasn't quite a smile but was close enough.
"Smart kid," she said, and pulled a fresh sheet of parchment from somewhere under the nautical maps. "Let's get this written up before I change my mind."
"Would either of you like something to drink?"
"Nothing for me," I said.
"The usual," said Yule.
She wrote. The scratch of her pen was the only sound in the room for a while. Outside, faintly, the noise of the street carried through — a carriage, someone calling to someone else, the distant clatter of a market stand.
The contract was thorough. I read every line of it before I signed — old habit, and in this case a reasonable one. Nothing suspicious. She'd been fair about it, which I appreciated more than I would have admitted out loud.
I signed.
Almost immediately, the door opened. Gant entered carrying a tray.
I looked at it.
…Is that hot chocolate.
It was. A generous cup of it, dark and steaming, topped with what was unmistakably a small pile of marshmallows.
"The usual," I said, looking at Yule.
"Don't judge me."
He's had this multiple times. He has a standing order. In a perfumery.
Karina glanced at the cup, then at Gant. Her expression shifted.
"Wait. Didn't we nearly run out of chocolate?"
"Yes," Gant said, with the tone of someone confirming a minor tragedy. "That is the last one. We'll need to restock."
A beat.
"Yule." Her voice was flat. "I'm adding that to your tab. I was saving that for tonight."
"You can't be serious—"
"Do I look like I'm not serious."
Yule looked at the cup. Then at Karina. Then, slowly, back at the cup.
He took a long sip.
I pressed my mouth together to keep from laughing.
I must have been staring, because Karina turned to look at me directly.
"You're surprised."
"A little," I admitted.
"That I like sweets."
"Given the… general presentation, yes."
She let out a short breath that was almost a laugh. "I grew up a commoner. Spent years at sea — that's where the scars came from. Hard work, rough seas, the kind of life that takes things from you before it gives them back." She turned the cigar between her fingers. "When I retired from that, I found that what I wanted most was something soft. Sweets were the first thing. The smell of them, specifically — I still remember the first time I walked past a bakery after years of saltwater and ship timber. Couldn't move for a full minute." She glanced around the room, at the shelves, the maps, the jars. "I couldn't start with sweets. So I started with scent. Built this place from nothing — one cheap perfume, a few old contacts, and a lot of patience. It grew faster than I expected."
"For a shop this elegant," I said, "I wouldn't have guessed that."
"Never judge a cover by its—" Yule started.
"Book,"
Karina said. "The phrase is never judge a book by its cover."
"That's what I said."
She looked at him.
"It wasn't."
He wisely said nothing further.
"Well." Karina stood, which made the room feel slightly smaller. "As a show of goodwill for bringing me this idea — take something before you go. On the house. Within reason."
I thought for a second.
"I'd rather wait for the prototypes. But — actually." I paused. "I have a cousin. She's still young. Would you have something that might suit her?"
Karina called to Gant without hesitation. A brief exchange, quiet and efficient. Gant nodded and disappeared back upstairs.
"And yourself?" she asked.
"Whatever he brings will do."
"Then it's settled." She extended a hand. "Good doing business, Thran."
I shook it. Her grip was exactly what you'd expect.
"And you. Karina."
"Just Karina, yes." There was a faint approval in her voice at the lack of formality. "Come back when the prototypes are ready. I'll have Gant send word."
Gant met us near the front with two small parcels, wrapped neatly and tied with dark ribbon. He led us back through the shop — past the shelves, the warm light, the quiet customers — and out to the street via the back.
The titanoughts were waiting.
I stopped.
Every time.
"They still get me," I said.
"They get everyone," Yule said cheerfully. "Come on."
We climbed in. The carriage moved — that same smooth, unreasonably fast motion that had no business belonging to something this size. Outside, the last of the day's orange had deepened, the sky going dark at the edges. Lamps were coming on along the street. The city was doing its nightly shift change, day crowd filtering out, evening crowd filtering in.
I looked down at the two parcels in my lap.
Elris is going to be unbearable about this.
She's going to love it.
I leaned back.
"Yule."
"Hm?"
"Good day."
He looked over, and for once, the smirk was genuinely warm.
"Yeah," he said. "Not bad at all."
CLOP. CLOP. CLOP.
The carriage rolled on through the dark.