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It’s only part-time—you can always quit if you don’t like it. That’s what you told yourself when you were hired, and that’s what you tell your friends, too, when you meet down at the pub to buy them all drinks, for once, because apparently the Dark Lord pays on time and by direct deposit. Which, honestly, is more than you can say for your last couple jobs.

This is what happens when you have pirates in the family: you end up inheriting all kinds of junk when they die.

The package promised “a different you in five shades!” Candice had bought it on a stupid whim. A month ago, she would’ve been more likely to wear clown makeup than lip gloss. But to win Audrey’s heart, she’d convinced herself she needed a perfectly painted smile.

Princess Severna, in her personal preparations for the Kingmaker Hunt, discovered the pleasures of raw meat. First gobbets of beef from the kitchens, barely seared over flames; then larger hunks, carefully cut, raw and dripping. Soon she grew used to blood’s heavy, coppery tang, and she would run to the returning hunters, greedy for their latest kill, heedless of the mud that gathered on her slippers.

Dear sir, This is a matter of utmost urgency and I do hope you can help me.

The train car stunk. Lakeishanna crinkled her nose at the scent of urine and someone who hadn’t seen a bar of soap in a month of Sundays.

The light from the Weaver’s aurora illuminated the dirty smoke rising from Chinatown; the snaps of the dhobis slapping linen against river banks cut through the early morning mist like rifleshots.

There are two types of androids available in the market. Organic robots, made for couples who want to see their artificial babies grow, and static ones, made for commercial use, always stuck with the same original appearance. Soriano is the later, and his middle-aged exterior has intrigued me since the first day we met: outstanding blue eyes, a receding gray hairline, a hooked nose, a face full of lines.

Henrietta’s mother is an engine driver and wants her daughter to become one too, but Henrietta prefers the buffet car. She can see her future self there, all grown up in a waistcoat with her hair cropped short, smiling as she dispenses tea and spoonfuls of powdered milk.

I can’t stay long at the Sea Palace. I have little enough funds, despite having taken a couple of reading jobs. Still, it’s good to have a bed and a door that locks after fleeing the Amber City, so I sit on the deck, eating lightly fried, gently spiced seaweed, feeling the warmth of the rising sun on my skin.