THREADBARE Part III: “Silk and Blood”
The market bled noise. Steam hissed from busted vents, wires sizzled where they met open flame, and people shouted over the grind of gears and the groan of tether lines as if volume could drown out how close everything always felt to collapse.
Elsha moved through it like a shadow. Eyes sharp. Shoulders down. Hands tucked inside the sleeves of her threadbare coat. She hated this part. Begging. Bartering. Stealing, when the odds tilted that way.
She needed silk.
Not the cheap, rat-gnawed kind they used for patchwork sails, but high-drift silk. The kind smugglers rolled into fake prayer flags or stitched into the hems of counterfeit clergy robes. The kind you only found in the deep stalls. The kind people killed over.
She headed toward the Needle Row, where sellers didn’t ask where you came from, just how much you could bleed. The air here was heavier, tainted with dye fumes and hot metal, and Elsha tasted iron just breathing it.
A wrinkled woman in a shawl of mismatched fabric blocked her path with a cracked grin. “Looking for thread, birdie?”
Elsha nodded once.
“Lift-grade?”
Another nod.
The woman’s smile widened, and her gums were black with rot. “Then you’ll want what I don’t have. And I’ll want what you can’t afford.”
Elsha reached into her coat and pulled out the coil of copper wire she’d pried from the elevator rig three nights ago. Still warm from her body heat, still braided tight.
The woman’s eyes lit up like she’d been offered fire.
“Go to stall thirty-three,” she rasped. “Ask for Bex. Don’t touch anything you don’t intend to buy. And don’t lie. He’s got ears.”
Elsha moved quickly, boots whispering over damp planks, stepping over buckets of dye, dodging swinging cages filled with threadmice and silk gnats. Stall thirty-three sat in the corner like it had been dropped there by mistake—no signage, just a gray curtain and the stink of oil and something sweeter underneath.
She stepped in.
And froze.
The man behind the counter was not what she expected. Tall. Clean. Eyes too blue. Hands too smooth for someone selling scrap in the smoke belt. He didn’t look like he belonged anywhere in Low Drift, let alone here.
“You’re not Bex,” she said.
He tilted his head. “Bex is dead. I’m leasing the name.”
She didn’t ask.
“I need lift silk. Grade three or better. Enough for a dual-sack.”
“Crested or plain?”
“Plain.”
He didn’t move, just stared at her like she was a formula he was solving.
“You building?”
She didn’t answer.
“Let me guess,” he continued. “Your father disappeared. Left you a map. You think you’re special.”
“I think I’m broke and in a hurry.”
He nodded slowly. “That’s better.”
He reached under the counter and pulled out a bolt of dull gold fabric, folded and sealed in oilskin. “Grade four. Fused weave. Enough for your build, maybe more.”
“What’s the cost?”
He tapped his chest. “Message delivery. Take a parcel to Midway.”
Elsha narrowed her eyes. “I don’t work for smugglers.”
“Everyone in Low Drift works for smugglers. Whether they know it or not.”
“What’s in the parcel?”
He leaned in. “Don’t ask that, Elsha.”
Hearing her name from his mouth made her skin crawl.
“I never told you who I was.”
“You didn’t have to.”
She hesitated. She thought about turning. About walking out. About going back to the gondola and sewing another patch from her mother’s curtains and hoping it would hold. But she was tired of hoping.
“Where in Midway?”
“Spire Thirty-Two. Look for the woman with white gloves and a red scarf.”
Elsha nodded once.
He passed the silk and a wrapped parcel across the counter. It was light. Too light for comfort.
“You go up,” he said as she turned to leave, “you better be ready to see down.”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t turn.
Just pulled the curtain aside and stepped back into the choking air of the market.
She had what she needed. Silk.
All it cost was trust.
And maybe a little blood.