Lofhearth were buildings out of time and place. Outliving their original purposes, they lingered on in the industrial landscape. Rather than demolish them, Kaihonjin urban planners buried these structures in forgotten places, tucked away in alley complexes or paved canal ways because they served the purpose of concentrating ?frians deemed surplus over the needs of the economy. They also made excellent hiding places for criminals.

  Mildred knew of lofhearth closer to The Silk Pillow, but she ordered Thomas and Sayuri on a forced march several kilometers to a part of the plains called Edgarstún where Mildred had once lived. Cookie-cutter, concrete buildings formed unbroken terrain throughout their journey, and the only sign they were now in Edgarstún was the Ueden battery plant. Her former school was long buried under the new battery plant, which dominated the skyline from every direction with pristine white walls and steep, three-tiered ziggurat shape.

  Ignoring the siren call of sleep and the whining of the Ueichi brat, Mildred passed up closer lofhearth before finding the rearing red-and-black unicorn spray paint she was looking for. This particular lofhearth was a four-story, half-timbered lodge in a courtyard formed by cement tenements. Its shutter windows were smashed open. Its roof was collapsed and replaced by a polyethylene tarp. The building’s former identity was written in the brickwork mosaic in front of the building where old words curled around the faded crest of a griffin:

  Edgarstún Fér-r?den af Yeoman

  Its new purpose was indicated by a young man in blue coveralls sitting on a metal folding chair and reading a thick book in the light of an oil lantern. He looked up at the arrivals with bloodshot eyes under sandy, uncut hair.

  “Y’askin for a stay?” the young man said, slipping a bookmark into the tome and setting it beside him.

  “We are,” Mildred said.

  “Well, who are ya then? And d’ya have anyone who’ll vouch for ya?”

  “I’m Mildred. Daughter of the Drakes of Edgarstún.”

  “Aye, I know the Drakes. You that rape baby of Wulfrun’s then? S’plains the squinty eyes.”

  She bit her tongue and nodded.

  “And the other two?”

  “Thomas Chester. Of the Chesters of Burnehithe. I’ve lived in the Silk District seven years now,” Thomas said.

  “Never heard of ya, but yer a long way from home mate. Why ya’ve come?” the young man asked.

  “Trouble with the law,” Mildred said. “Row with some CP’s.”

  The young man raised his eyebrows, “oh, mushed up some fishsticks did y? Don’t seem tae be’n bad shape for it.”

  Thomas opened one side of his jacket to display a handgun tucked inside. “Bit more than a row.”

  He laughed. “Alright big man. Alright. Put ‘er away. Ya seem the type could fry a fish. Now who’s— wait, there was a third one with ya, weren’t there?”

  Mildred glanced around and was startled to see Sayuri was gone. Years of practice using her face muscles as a work tool kept the surprise from her face.

  “There wasn’t. Sure you haven’t been up a bit long, son?” Thomas asked.

  “I have at that. Tell ya what, ye both seem like good folk, and I cannae fathom a member of the Drake clan consortin’ with undesirable foreign elements. Consensually, any’ow. So, I can let ya in for a night. Can’t allow anyone who tries to come in behind, understand?”

  The young man rapped on the door. A peephole slid open, and a set of equally bloodshot eyes peered out.

  “They’re good ones. Let ‘em in.”

  The peephole slid closed and a rusty eyebolt screeched as the door opened.

  Mildred was anxious to know where Sayuri had gotten off to, but she placed faith in Thomas who seemed unconcerned. As they stepped inside, she caught a glimpse of the book the man had been reading. Embossed on the leather cover was: An ?frian Translation of ‘On Property, Vol. 2’ by Tomohiko Saito. Of course it was, she thought. Zooks didn’t read anything but Saito.

  The bottom floor foyer was a dark wooden hall stuffed with salvaged furniture. Reclining on half-rotted couches and chairs were men and women either already asleep or nearing the end of nightly journeys by the discarded pipes and needles lying about them.

  The man who let them in was the same size as Thomas and dressed in blue coveralls. “You can lay down anywhere with an open door. If it’s closed, it stays closed, got it?”

  Milly watched Thomas try to return the man’s serious expression while swaying on his feet. He’d been up for almost an entire day at this point, she realized.

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  “Got it. Let’s get you to bed, Tommy.”

  As they walked, she swore she heard three sets of footsteps, but whenever she turned around, the hallway was empty. Could Sayuri turn invisible? Kinkawa couldn’t do that, could it? The last thing she needed was for rich people to be able to buy magic powers.

  On the ruined fourth story the tarp roof whipped like a sail in a storm and did nothing to keep out the chill. The only light came from a candle in its death knells beside a middle-aged man slumped in a chair. He snored softly, scorched pipe clenched in his fist and burnt wax staining his fingers.

  Mildred and Thomas gave the man a wide berth and settled themselves in a corner at the front of the building where half the wall remained as a bulwark against the wind. As soon as they sat down, there was a moment where Milly felt herself affected by the Shroud before Sayuri appeared beside them.

  “Loothsa fuck me!” Mildred said in a low, breathless voice.

  “That word again…”

  At her loud voice Milly jerked her head towards the opening in the tarp and whispered, “Did you forget why you went invisible, you daft little girl?”

  “Thou shalt referest to me not as a little girl!” Sayuri whispered back

  Which was, Milly thought, not the kind of think she heard from the mouth of grown women. She looked to Thomas to see what he made of this little girl, but he’d already fallen asleep.

  The woman’s uncanniness disconcerted Sayuri. Her genetic mixture was an indeterminable slurry, and her features roused in one a profound sense of discomfort.

  It was undeniable, self-evident fact that talents conveyed themselves through the medium of body and mind, and that body and mind were genetically determined. Though normal distribution curves might explain superlative anomalies across all genetic populations, one was obliged to look at a people or nation in totality to grasp the median endowment of natural gift which could be greater or lesser. This median predisposed groups to higher or lower roles. What was vexing about konketsujin such as this woman was that one was never sure to which set of duties and responsibilities they belonged, nor to which side of natural gift. Though, in this case, it was clearly the Afujin side.

  One could not treat such genetic admixtures with the gentle guidance one did with Afujin, but nor could one assume the rationality belonging to Kaihonjin. The result was a state of uncertainty as to proper relations.

  “Once the sun rises, we’ll paint over your kinkawa,” the woman said, pulling from her pack a bottle of pale cream. “And no more ‘eth,’ no more ‘est,’ and definitely no more ‘thee’ and ‘thou.’ ‘Lady Ueichi’ is right the hell out.”

  Language correction was a perfectly achievable objective. Linguistics was Sayuri’s third favorite area of study after history and political economy and she had a natural talent for it. Without seeking to acquire them, passable versions of the continental languages spoken by her father’s foreign business partners found their way to her tongue, and her grasp of ?frian, though possessing lexical gaps, was fluent. Sayuri had ascertained well before meeting Chester what parts of her speech were outdated. In fact, it took deliberate effort to keep a modern ?frian dialect out of her mouth.

  “Thou sayest t’would put me at risk, though t’be the duty of Mr. Chester to fell those who would render harm unto me?”

  The woman rubbed her forehead. “Sayuri, ‘fell’ isn’t a word. At least not the way you’re using it.”

  “‘Tis!” she said, “‘tis the transitive form of the verb ‘to fall,’ as one felleth a tree by ax.”

  “Transitive? You’re talking like a lunatic. Listen, you don’t want to be a burden to Mr. Chester, do you?” the woman said, patting the sleeping man’s boot.

  “Nay— No, I do not.”

  “So don’t force him to ‘fell’ anyone.”

  Sayuri looked out the ruined wall towards the gray light creeping across the alleyway. There was, perhaps, a kernel of Kaihonjin rationality in the woman after all.

  “I can try,” she said, the glided palatal “y” slippery and loose in her mouth.

  “Good. Now, while we wait for light, let’s get you some clothes to change into.”

  The girl blushed furiously. “He-here? Right now? In these… circumstances?”

  Mildred looked at the addict snoring in the corner and Thomas drooling on his pinewood pillow.

  “The circumstances are as good as they’re gonna get.”

  The girl glared. “Fine. Give me your clothes.”

  Mildred produced a woad-dyed linen gown, a dark blue cloak with fringes of burnt orange, and a pair of moccasins and set them down in front of Sayuri who, glancing at Thomas and the unconscious addict across the roof, realized this was as good an opportunity to change as she would receive and hastily did so.

  “Must they be so antiquated?” Sayuri asked, smoothing the woad-dyed gown.

  They didn’t have to be. Mildred’s wardrobe was ample enough to accommodate a myriad of tastes. She’d picked a traditional ?frian outfit because she thought it would be funny to make Sayuri wear one. And she’d been right.

  “Why are you giggling?”

  “Thought of a funny joke.”

  “What is it?”

  “You wouldn’t get it.”

  Soon, silvery-blue light cut through the gaps in the tarp giving Mildred enough light to work on Sayuri’s face. She had the girl kneel in front of her. Her face had a tight, almost nervous anticipation. Difficult for a proper make-up job, but the stark white foundation was meant to be bluntly functional, not aesthetically pleasing. Pouring water over a make-up sponge and squeezing it dry, Mildred wiped up bone-white foundation and dabbed it along Sayuri’s nose and cheeks. The girl winced.

  “Something wrong?”

  “No, just… cold.”

  Or the makeup was being applied by a konketsujin. Mildred continued dabbing along Sayuri’s face, getting pleasure from painting over and burying the intricate lines of gold threads flowing across it.

  “What did Mr. Chester do to you?”

  Milly stopped. “What are you on about now?”

  “When we first showed up you seemed wroth, and the other women in your hotel said things which insinuated you didn’t wish to see him. He didn’t— didn’t… t-transgress against you?” Sayuri said with genuine alarm.

  Milly burst out laughing. “Not in the way you’re thinking. He did worse.”

  “W-What could be worse!?”

  “He asked me to marry him,” she said, running the brush down Sayuri’s neck, making sure to get any spot under her chin where an errant beam of light might catch a trace of gold. She felt the girl’s sigh of relief as it pushed out her throat.

  “Oh, you frightened me! Pray tell why marriage is such a bad thing?”

  “It’s not that bad, I’m joking. But I’m not someone who gives up her freedom. Nothing else is more important to me.”

  “So why—”

  “If you keep moving your jaw I’m gonna smudge.”

  Outside, dawn crawled over the horizon and cast golden hues over the alley. Only in a place so rotten, forgotten, and polluted could the golden rays of dawn look so maddeningly pretty. In an hour, the Shroud would wipe any desire to witness it.