Sparks on the Lower Line

Dawn unspooled itself over the tiers in thin ribbons of light, each level catching some measure of morning like a hand cupping a small, stubborn sun. Etta Halvors smelled the day before she saw it—hot brass from the heaters in the lower workshops, coal-stew steam from a cook-pot two alleys over, and the sharp, honest tang of braided fibers warmed by the first wind. Her bench sat under a lean awning cluttered with coils that looked like knots pretending to be jewelry; Bolt, a tabby that treated every loop of cable as a throne, had wound himself into a comfortable torus and regarded her with lazy judicial disapproval.

She lit the wick in a small lamp, wrapped her palms in the familiar smell of grease and hemp, and picked up a strand to test the weave. The braid answered her touch with a little song: the rasp of stray fiber, the hum of tension, the faint perfume of saltgrass oil the riggers rubbed into older lines. The city was built in tiers along a cliff where the wind had been promoted to a civic element; people arranged themselves by how they handled it. Upper balconies invited light and delayed storms; middle promenades braided commerce and gossip; the lowest lines took the full blast and the slate-gray spray that made teeth chatter and bellies yearn for warm pastries.

“Morning, Etta.” Rana Mallo’s voice came in like a practiced gust, carrying the bright absurdity of a woman who could laugh through smoke. She balanced a tray of kelp fritters and a kettle that sighed steam in regular, soothing intervals.

“You brought breakfast or a naval treaty?” Etta asked, pulling the strand taut and listening to its complaint.

“A treaty that tastes of cumin,” Rana said, dropping a fritter onto the bench. “You should try to socialize with someone above today. Your beard of ropes frightens the tourists.”

Etta’s fingers found a stubborn fiber and pinched it, tugging tight with a motion practiced since childhood. “They don’t frighten tourists. They frighten wind.”

Rana snorted. “Same thing, perhaps. Also: your cat judged me for bringing ketal fritters. It’s important.”

Bolt sneezed and stole an edge of fritter while Etta pretended indignation. The old workshop smelled like a hundred small conversations: oil, char, rope-smoke, and the tang of cliff-berries drying on a rack. Below, the lower line hummed—an honest chord of cables, pulleys, and the faint clink of a market opening. Up on the middle promenades, a bell-maker beat a small, bright chime, and a cart drew a plume of bright spices across the stairs. The city’s ordinary things—its bread, its laundry, the way people thumbed at their hats when a gust came—were not background; they were the grammar of daily life here.

She tested the braid again and frowned. One strand answered thinner than it should have, a whisper where there should have been a note. Above her, a shout cut the morning into sharp halves. The wordless sound of a person slipping, the slap of leather against stone, the distinct, terrified whuff of a fall.