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from the soft, pink pad before it could melt. She felt oddly
envious of the snow.
    “We should be getting back,” she reminded
him softly. With a reluctant nod, Nicholas righted his head before
grinning at her.
    “I know it must seem foolish. You see these
things all the time, it’s just—”
    “No,” Mary rushed to assure him, wrapping
her hand over his arm again and clasping him firmly. “No, it isn’t
foolish. It’s wonderful. I feel lucky to have been . . . the one
escorting you today.”
    She had wanted to say something else,
something more personal, but pulled back at the last minute.
Because he was the Lamplighter. And she, despite her brand-new
title and status, was still only a novice in his eyes. And a
possible successor, it seemed. She wondered if she would have a day
like this, after a decade or so. A day when even a few blocks’ walk
in the open air would seem like an adventure in the untrammeled
wild.
    Nicholas cocked his head, pursing his lips.
“Silly. Who else would I have possibly wanted here for this?”
    He started them back down the street, back
to the security of the guild hall, his free arm now too full of
packages to hold her hand. But Mary felt giddy anyway, in a way she
thought was probably very unwise to examine too closely.
    It was a walk to the shops and a wondering
at snowfall, that was all. That was all it could be. And nobody
knew that better than the Lamplighter, unless it was Mary
herself.

Chapter Three

    Taking luncheon to the Lamplighter had
fallen to her in the first place, Mary had long assumed, because
she was new. Because she was young. Because her mental tools, while
many and varied, did not lend themselves to the studied avoidance
of onerous duties. She was a good girl, dependable and diligent by
nature and habit.
    So each day at noontide she left her
apprentice’s workbench and appeared at the kitchens to accept the
covered tray. She carried it through the echoing limestone
corridors of the guild hall until she reached the lift, where she
placed the tray on the floor so she could haul back the lever that
released the counterweights. She had learned to brace herself for
the jolt as the platform began its descent.
    The first time she’d had no warning, and
wound up sprawled in a terrified heap over the tray, her heart
pounding even louder in her ears than the ratcheting, clanking
mechanism of the lift as it dropped her down to her destination.
The other apprentices had looked for the bruises upon her return,
snickering at her abraded palms.
    That had been seven years ago, and most of
those laughing children lingered for years more in the apprentice
shop while she had moved up almost right away. But it still stung.
She was still set apart. And she was still the new girl, only she
became the new girl among the journeymen. And then, with
unprecedented speed, among the masters. The youngest too, by far,
at not quite nineteen.
    The Lamplighter, who was also set apart by
the nature of his duties, seemed the only sympathetic ear at times.
Over the years, she had come to think of him as a friend, and
though it would have been easier to let an apprentice carry the
tray for her, she relished her visits with Nicholas too much to
share with anyone. So she still took the tray to the Lamplighter
herself. She still let people think the task was a burden, lest
anyone offer to take it upon themselves.
    Amberherst kept doing the dinner trays now
to cozy up, she suspected. Not that it would make a lick of
difference. The guild had clearly already slated him as a potential
successor, alongside Mary, and their relative aptitudes had long
since been studied, quantified, evaluated. And now Nicholas was
being phased out, it seemed. A formal announcement could not be too
far away. And Mary had every reason to hope her future was already
secured, because she had seen Amberherst more than once in the
intimate company of a lithe young journeyman named Jocelyn. If they
had any sort of connection