“When I was a boy, you could toss a match in this river and it would catch fire.”
Powder sat on the dock beside Silco, feet kicking as they looked down into the murky depths. There was still a faint sheen on the crest of ripples, it caught the light and showed green and violet.
“You could die in it, just breathing the fumes it put off.”
She looked up at the man, at his frightening black eye. He returned her look blankly, so unreadable, she sighed and leaned against him. He stiffened, but did not push her away, and she returned to looking out over the dark waters.
“I almost died here, after the Enforcer’s crushed our uprising.”
It hurt.
Powder jumped at the low hiss in her ear, it was Mylo, she squeezed her eyes closed and hunched over slightly, willing the voice to go away.
When you killed me.
An image flashed in the blackness behind her eyelids, a rusted metal pipe stuck in brick, with Mylo’s skinny frame impaled through the chest. It only lasted a second before the ceiling collapsed.
An arm came around her back, a hand rested on her shoulder, and Mylo’s muttering grew quieter.
“What is happening to you Powder?” The name was strange in his voice, usually she was just ‘child’ or ‘girl’ if he was in a bad mood.
“How did you almost die?” She asked instead of answering his question, Mylo was gone now anyway. Her voice was a hoarse croak, and she cleared her throat as she resumed swinging her legs.
“Vander tried to drown me, because he didn’t like the way the battle for the bridge went.”
She turned wide eyes up at him and he was already looking down at her. She was afraid of his eye, but seated next to him the arm around her shoulders was comforting, and she wasn’t afraid of him.
“There’s a lot you don’t know Powder, about the world, about Vander.” She chewed the corner of her lip, she didn’t like when he talked about Vander.
You were never supposed to be there.
She closed her eyes, afraid that Silco’s face would change, become Vander’s and continue reminding her that she killed everyone she cared about.
“I think I died.”
She said it quietly, eyes still closed, and the voices fell silent.
“Everything was so dark, I could see things, way way up above me. You, and Sevika one time, but it was so far away.”
She hadn’t spoken so many words in weeks, Silco just stared at her, but she still had her eyes closed and couldn’t know that.
“My friends were there, only… they weren’t friends any more, they don’t like me now.”
She stopped there, her breathing accelerated, and Silco was uncertain what to do. It was a shockingly unfamiliar feeling, the unsurity. He was decisive to a fault some would say, but he was paralyzed with apprehension in the face of a sad little girl. For a few seconds, seconds that felt like hours, he dithered before tightening his half-embrace ever so slightly.
She took it as some form of invitation to cozy up, returning his hug with one arm around his back and the other his front. It was in some ways exactly what he feared when he initiated contact in the first place, but in more ways it was exactly the point of said contact. He simply sighed and let himself be hugged.
“If you died, then how can you be here?” He asked, trying to get her back on that train of thought, because he was genuinely curious what this little girl could possibly mean by that.
“I wanted to get away from them, Mylo and Clagger and Vander and … so I climbed out. Only… they followed me, and when I made it out of the well, I looked back down and I was still down there, alone.” Her voice broke on the last word, but it was followed up with an immediate fit of giggles, so discordant to her tone of voice that it almost made him laugh.
He didn’t though, not here, not in sight of the spot where he too had climbed to freedom and turned back to gaze upon the death of his former self.
“Who are you then?” He asked, tone low and serious, and it quelled her mirth. She blinked up at him with big blue eyes, confusion plain. “If Powder was too weak to make it out alive, then who are you?”
He watched the question wash over her, and oddly a smile began to grow on her face. It was not deranged, like her random fits of laughter, it was genuine. Odder still, Silco was sure he knew the reason for that smile, sure that this child was like him, and they both knew it.
“Jinx.”
Part 2
Silco leaned back in his chair, letting the motion spin him a quarter turn away from the door. Jinx was seated cross legged on his desk, tightening a screw on a bright pink canister with his letter opener clutched in a small fist.
He was relieved to see it. Relieved enough not to comment on the creases her boots left in the pages beneath her. Ever since their trip down to the river she'd begun tinkering, and he had to assume it was a good sign. Her gadgets never seemed to accomplish much, but it was amusing to watch her conceive of them, and he could usually deduce what they had been intended for by how she deployed them.
There was a short staccato knock at the door. He pivoted back to facing forward and Jinx hopped off the desk, unasked, with a giggle.
"Come," he called and the music from the bar swelled briefly as the door opened.
Sevika, Renni, Singed and Smeech filed in and the door shut behind them. Silco clipped the end off a fresh cigar and puffed it to life as his subordinates shuffled into a silent line before his desk. Jinx had slipped into the corner, he didn't turn to look after her but from the corner of his eye he could make out her figure in the shadows.
"How's production at the river plant?" He opened the meeting after a second pull of smoke. Renni straightened, her gaunt features tightening as almost every pair of eyes in the room flicked to her.
"We have the reagents you asked for, sulphur content has been much higher than projected in the past weeks, our filtration system needs updating-"
"You'll get your sulphur sinks," Silco interrupted in exasperation, he was well aware of the issue, she'd whinged about it at the last meeting too. "Ready the benzene and methyl acetate for transport tonight, Sevika, get a security detail together for it."
He turned to the doctor. "Three days?" He clarified and the scarred man nodded.
"I can begin distillation as soon as we finish here, I'll need the acetate no later than the fourth hour…" He droned on, placating and promising in equal measure as he laid out his schedule for Shimmer production.
Silco dragged on his cigar, letting Singed's words wash on deaf shores. Jinx was slinking along the back wall, two cylinders in hand. Everyone was pretending to listen to the doctor, himself included, but no one else was facing the right way to see the trap being laid.
"... forty gallons by the end of the week-"
"Alright," he interjected, cutting the scientist off. "Sevika, give me a report after you move the chemicals. Singed I want to see the first batch when it is done, that is all."
He would be lying if he said he wasn't eager to end the meeting. Jinx had positioned a canister at either side of the door, a bright red tendril of yarn connecting them. The trickster in question was now to the right of the room, humming to herself as she scratched crude stick figures onto the wall with blue chalk.
Renni tripped the wire.
It was not exactly an explosion, more an aggressive pop! Renni and Sevika stumbled back though, flailing wildly as paint splashed across their bodies. Their entire front sides were splattered, pink and blue respectively.
Jinx roared with laughter, she fell to the floor where she stood and clutched her sides in her glee. Sevika took an angry step toward the girl and Silco sat forward in his chair. Everyone in the room stilled, save the child, and the rest watched him apprehensively.
. The smoke from his neglected cigar drifted up between them, lit by the windows, it undulated in the air. The corner of his mouth twitched up in a smirk.
"Do be more careful next time," he advised, dismissing them and their grievances.
Renni went quickly. Sevika glanced at Jinx, who's laughter was dying enough that she could begin sitting up, and then turned and stalked out. The rest followed without issue and then it was just the two of them again.
"D'ya see that?" She asked, unable to contain her smile. "It worked!"
He gave a solitary chuckle, his lingering smirk shifted a hair toward a real smile.
"Yes I did, well done Jinx."
She giggled in self-satisfaction as she pushed up to her feet. He pulled on his Cigar again as she skipped over to return to her perch atop his desk, knocking a pen to the floor in the process.
"Next time I'm gonna put nails in it!"