It was while perusing a second of those profiles that YeoWoo heard the swish of several bodies in formation displacing the air as they moved across the room behind her. She paused in her perusal and turned unhurriedly, elegantly, to meet the deferential gaze of the behindkind who must certainly be the den mother. Tall and elegant, with a carefully sculpted sleekness of face that might have meant plastic surgery in a human but suggested fae in behindkind, the den mother was dressed in blocks of black and white, her long earrings silver and onyx and her tight-waisted blazer black on one side and white on the other. For an instant meeting YeoWoo’s eyes, her gaze moved past seamlessly and rested on a more respectful spot just beyond YeoWoo’s left shoulder instead. The den mother stopped, her willowy figure coming to a more gradual, graceful stop after her feet ceased to move.

  Behind her, all of the contracts stopped obediently and kept their eyes on the ground; they were by and large Korean in appearance, besides their behindkind characteristics, but one or two of them had the look of a different race, in particular the sallow, yellow-that-was-almost-green-haired mermaid who was at the end of the line, carefully not looking in the merman’s direction. Each of them had a subtle, orangey mark just below their ears that labelled them as the contract café’s property.

  “Good afternoon,” the den mother said. “I was told that someone was asking for seakind, but I didn’t expect our guest to be someone so distinguished. It’s an honour to meet a gumiho of your…reputation.”

  She gave an elegant, flowery bow more in the behindkind than the Korean style—which, along with the fact that the bow came after the words instead of before them, made YeoWoo distinctly suspicious about the verisimilitude of the words.

  “Is distinguished what they’re calling me now?” she wondered, letting the full sarcasm of the words come out in her carefully amused voice. “That’s nice, I suppose. Is this what you’ve got?”

  “It’s not much, but we’ve been struggling to keep seakind alive here,” the den mother said. “We have to keep sending them off to Incheon to salt them up when the tanks aren’t up to the task. Half of these are riverkind, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes, I thought so,” YeoWoo said. “That won’t do.”

  “You can go,” the den mother said, tilting her chin at the entire left side of the catalogue that was spread out before them.

  The riverkind turned as one, relief and worry mingling on their faces. Likely none of them wanted to remain in the café, but none of them knew what the next master or mistress would be, either.

  YeoWoo didn’t have the leisure to meditate on their fears: she went back to studying the other side of the line as if really considering which one of them might be most suitable for her use. The den mother, apparently used to that, made them pass before her again with an almost invisible gesture that the contracts were evidently well used to.

  YeoWoo let her eyes flick over each of them and didn’t try to ease away the small frown that dug into her brow. If the sea nymph she was looking for wasn’t in this group, where was she? Was YeoWoo already suspected of looking for that one in particular, or had someone taken her that day?

  At last, she looked away from the line of contracts with a sharp, irritated intake of air.

  “There was another one in the mirrors, wasn’t there?” she said. “One with what looked like very nimble fingers and a salty sort of face. What about it? These ones…aren’t right.”

  The den mother’s lips tightened, which worried YeoWoo. Had she given herself away so easily?

  “That one hasn’t been house trained yet,” the den mother said.

  Ah, thought YeoWoo, relief flickering down her veins. So the displeasure had been directed at the nymph, not at herself.

  “I don’t want a troublesome one,” she said coldly, and hissed out another short, irritated breath. “I’ll look at these ones again first.”

  Now that she knew the nymph was still here, she could start by trying to get some information from other contracts in the den. It was no good drawing attention to herself by focusing only on contracts that she was actually interested in. She had already shown she was interested in the merman, so she might as well keep talking with him, and work out something to bargain for his bond. Peregrine probably wouldn’t approve of her actually buying a contract, but Peregrine had already dictated enough when it came to YeoWoo, and he would take what he was given if he was set on using her before he gave her information.

  She would certainly not neglect the nymph, either, however: the den mother had said she hadn’t been ‘housetrained’, which meant that the nymph was causing trouble. The contracts taken against their wills usually still had quite some of that will left, with which they could push and fight back. YeoWoo was fairly sure that it was something that was squashed out of contracts as soon as it could be, and it would likely be best to get to the nymph first, before that happened. If ManKi was right about the contracts who were kept out of sight having less rigorous protections against talking about their owners, the nymph would by now be in a prime position to talk.

  If no one tried to purchase her, of course. YeoWoo would simply have to engage to buy one of the other contracts and come back to discuss the terms of the bond. She would have a chance to slip away at some stage or other, and so long as she knew where the den’s solitary holding was, she could try to get in and out with no one being any the wiser that she had been to see the nymph.

  The den mother, nodding and beckoning the lead contract to walk through again, said, “I’m sure we can find you something suitably accommodating. The first one is really very good with obeying orders, and although our third is missing a finger, they are very good with locks and other fiddly things.”

  “I was hoping for something with skills that are a bit more…modern,” YeoWoo said, her eyes flicking across the faces of the behindkind passing through and then glancing off the missing finger on the third. Had that been part of house-training? she wondered. Mutilation wasn’t allowed by law when it came to keeping contracts in line, but accidents were said to happen. She added, “The merman over there—he mentioned he’s competent with human systems when I spoke with him. These ones are not bad, but they don’t really fit what I’m looking for.”

  “I can’t really let that one go,” the den mother said regretfully. “Not presently—and certainly not completely; he’s making himself useful around here. But we can let him out on loan on a per job basis. Those will have to be negotiated with the contract himself, and you’ll compensate us for the number of months or years taken off his bond.”

  YeoWoo took a moment to look as though she was considering it. The more often she had to come back to the den, the better. A contract negotiation on a case-by-case basis was the exact thing she would have chosen for that: far more complicated and usually requiring several sessions just to define terms, case-by-case negotiations meant an ongoing relationship that could be re-established at any time—which meant that YeoWoo could continue going to the den so long as she could find reasons to take up the merman’s time.

  When it seemed as though she should have taken long enough to think it over, YeoWoo said judiciously, “I think we can work something out.”

  “Delightful,” the den mother said crisply, waving the other contracts away. She put two fingers in her mouth and gave a piercing whistle across the space that drew all contract and server eyes to her at once. She dabbed downward in the air with her hand, a fluttering motion that first seemed to confuse and then worry the merman, who had sprung to attention with everyone else.

  He set his tablet down on the floor carefully, the cord still extending from it and into the shifting wall, then wheeled himself across the room. YeoWoo, who watched him across the floor in the same cool, predatory way that she had looked around the room, fancied that his ears became redder the closer he came.

  Was he stressed out, or was he the sort of person who liked to be around commanding and domineering women?

  “Mistress,” he said to the den mother, lowering his head slightly in the uneasy way that foreigners usually did by way of a bow.

  YeoWoo could hear the difference in his voice now, though his words still translated into Korean for her via the medium of Between. It was an Italian accent he had, she was fairly sure.

  The den mother said pleasantly, “Didn’t I tell you it’s a good thing to be so pretty? Look what a nice mistress you’ll have if you bargain well!” To YeoWoo, she said, “I’ll leave you alone to work things out amongst yourselves. You can set up further discussion appointments with the receptionist so that we’ll have a room for you when you’re ready to begin.”

  She did the same flowery bow again and sashayed back across the floor, the bow at the top of the slit in her pencil skirt twitching from left to right as she did so. All that was missing, thought YeoWoo irritably, who had been around when such a thing was at the height of its popularity for women, was an enamel or silver cigarette holder. The den mother had likely been alive then, too; she had probably used one at the time.

  YeoWoo twitched her gaze back to the merman, who dropped his eyes and tried to pretend that he hadn’t been watching her openly.

  “Well?” she said.

  “My name is Marazul, and I’m in charge of the integrated electronics and Between interfaces.”

  “You’re not in charge of anything,” YeoWoo said. “You’re a contract. You’re working off a debt, and anything you do here won’t be able to be taken with you when you go. All right; you’re Marazul. What does integrated electronics and Between interfaces mean, apart from what you said before about combining Between and human electronics?”

  Marazul’s face stiffened. “Perhaps I’m not the one in charge of it, but I’m the only one who knows anything about it,” he said. “If I’m not there to run it, they won’t be able to access at least ninety percent of the features and one hundred percent of the contents.”

  YeoWoo arched a brow at him. “Telling a future mistress that you’re inclined to weaponise your owners’ stupidity isn’t the most sensible move, is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, his eyes dropping. “Maybe I thought you didn’t look as cut-throat as the den mother.”

  “You’re wrong,” YeoWoo said flatly. “I don’t play with knives, but I’ll tear your throat out if you set a foot wrong, so you’d best remember that.”

  She hoped she was wrong, but YeoWoo thought she saw very faint traces of a smile, though Marazul’s head remained down. He said, “You didn’t tell me what I’m supposed to call you.”

  “You can call me Sajang-nim,” YeoWoo told him. She would be his boss, after all; she didn’t particularly like the thought of Marazul becoming too free and easy with his smiles, and the repetition of Sajang-nim would be a good reminder not to address her too casually. She added, “And I still want to know what integrated electronics and Between interfaces mean.”

  “Eye-bye,” said Marazul obediently; and it took YeoWoo a few moments to realise that he had shortened the entire phrase, in an almost Korean style, and was using that shortened word instead of the entirety of the words. “It’s an acronym for the entire system. IE-BI systems are a fusion of magic and electricity, where the magic acts like electricity—until it doesn’t. It’s a transformer between human interfaces—like computers—and the behindkind interfaces—like portals.”

  YeoWoo asked dryly, “Is that why the receptionist is having trouble with his computer?”

  Marazul darted a look up at her and then away again almost at once. “No, he’s having trouble with his computer because he’s irritating and incompetent,” he said, winding up a small, thin cord between his fingers and tucking it into a pocket of one of the bags that hung from the arms of his wheelchair.

  “I see,” said YeoWoo, making a mental note to remember that particular foible of Marazul’s. The merman was surprisingly insubordinate for a contract; she wondered how he’d survived as long as he had while being so. Perhaps he had experienced a change of heart recently—or perhaps he had only been in service a little while and had managed to hide his insubordination better than the sea nymph she had come here searching for.

  In either case, it would be better not to trust him too much.

  PERFUME ON THE BREEZE

  The place was empty. Not empty in the sense that it had been cleared of every item—far from it—but Harrow’s house was entirely empty of humans.

  When Athelas had made his way through the back streets of Gongdeok and into the more residential university area around Ahyeon, traversing the undulating tarmac that swelled over undergrowing roots and around haphazard curbs, and avoiding the clutches of the occasional vine growing out of an unlikely garden and into the street, he had expected some kind of upset. He had not expected anything so complete.

  His walk had been claustrophobic, producing a sense of menace that seeped into his consciousness and preparing him to come across something unpleasant. The roofs around him were low and crowded down on the tall property walls that lined the streets, encroaching on the sky and trying to turn the alleys into warrens. The higher roofs that were visible were dark blue, making the sky heavier. Athelas felt the crawling of Between around him and knew that if he wasn’t very firm with them, the streets would absolutely swallow him into Between. Since it was no part of his plan to be wandering Between when he was already within sight of where he ought to be, Athelas was very firm with the streets, and escaped from that cleverly twisting mass of tiny backroads a moment later.

  He found himself in a straight, red-brick-lined road that was wide and familiar, plants and gardens waving pleasantly above the walls and the second stories in red brick peeking coyly over the fences and through the greenery.

  This was the road they had walked Harrow to the other day, and the gate further along, nearly halfway down, was the place they had left him with his unpleasant father. Athelas trod lightly down the tarmac’d road, enjoying the lack of incline that made it an easy walk, and reflected that even on the most uncomfortable days, when Between seemed to crawl down one’s neck, it didn’t necessarily mean that anything untoward was afoot.

  The gate, he saw, wasn’t closed. Nor was it fully open, so as Athelas approached it wasn’t immediately obvious that there was a slight hang to it. The tongue of the latch had just missed slotting into place, but the gate still kept within the indent in the wall, and it wasn’t until he was very nearly in front of it that he saw the slight difference and realised that the gate had been left open as if for him.

  When he did notice it, he paused where he was for a moment, motionless, before moving forward again with a murmured, “How very interesting.”

  Athelas glanced once more at the blue, white-lined placard that announced the house number and road name; finding them correct, he reached out and lightly swung the gate open. He was prepared for anything, his feet precisely balanced and his weight very slightly on the back foot—but nothing happened.

  Behind him the road remained straight and wide; ahead of him, the garden path disclosed by the open gate simply continued in the same motionless way, absent any threat—or any movement at all, he was interested to note.

  It would be enlivening to see if the gate had been left open for him, or if it had been left open because someone had entered—or left—in a hurry. Athelas trod the path toward the house, feeling beneath his feet the uneven pathway of bricks that had grown askew due to the swelling of overgrown grass, but nothing in the way of Between. If the street had felt as though it was a normal and safe sort of place, the yard felt positively human, if aged.

  No one had bothered to give the front door a push to close it: it stood open, flung wide so that the inner house could be seen from the second curve of the garden path. Athelas took his usual precautions, but nothing emerged from the house, or the red paint beneath his feet as he climbed the stairs. He was not accosted at the door, either; he proceeded inside with the smallest of pauses, avoiding the expensive brown-plaid scarf that trailed across the floor. Two or three jumpers had been left in a pile by the shoe-well beside the coat hooks, too; and as Athelas proceeded cautiously into the house, he found that this kind of discarding was a constant motif.

  Things that wouldn’t otherwise have been out of drawers or off hangers were here and there throughout the house, and several areas that featured drawers or cupboards had had their contents tumbled over the floor and then, presumably, turned over for whatever the person who had done so was looking for.

  It was as though someone had gone through the house looking for several, specific somethings—or while haphazardly packing a bag and pulling out things every so often to make way for something that had freshly occurred to the mind of the person packing as more important than what they had already packed.

  Most of the items tumbled around the place were name-branded, and a decent few of them were unbranded but well-made and luxurious. Athelas didn’t particularly care for name brands, but he did care rather significantly about the quality of his clothing when it came to comfort and making sure his things were well-cut and quietly presentable; from his quick study as he went through the house, the owners or renters of this particular house had exactly the opposite taste.

  He passed through the front areas of the house and into the dining room before moving into the kitchen, discovering more and more haphazard piles as he went. When the unmistakeable chill of iron-touched metal radiated from one of those piles, he shifted it carefully with the toe of his shoe. Someone had left an iron knife beneath the pile nearest the kitchen; bedded on silk scarves and surmounted by coated canvas in shades of brown motif, it was also a rich, gold and silver chased piece that had a very specific use—namely, dispatching fae.