Skein of Shadows by Marsheila Rockwell

houses floated in the background—one each for Cannith South, Cannith East and Cannith West. The House had fractured after its ancestral forgehold in Cyre was destroyed on the Day of Mourning and the House patriarch was killed, leaving no direct heir.
    Tellingly, the crest portrayed one house larger than the other two. Sabira was sure that must be Cannith South, headed by Merrix d’Cannith and controlling the family’s holdings in Breland, Zilargo, Darguun and now, apparently, Xen’drik.
    As they entered through the gates, Greddark paused.
    “It’s very … blue.”
    Sabira snorted. It was that. Everbright lanterns in the shape of dragonshards adorned virtually every curved cornice, rounded windows blazed with light, and the undercarriages of magically-powered lifts similar to those in the City of Towers glowed even in the noontide sun. And they were all a bright, blinding blue.
    “Maybe it’s Merrix’s favorite color?”
    The Burnished Bull was on the left, but Sabira’sattention was caught by a House Cannith monitor challenging a group of three warforged just to the right of the enclave gate. Though she couldn’t hear everything, it seemed clear that the warforged were unhappy at being treated as mere laborers—or worse, virtual slaves—and were taking out their frustrations verbally on the hapless human. Sabira decided she didn’t particularly want to be around when the argument moved from heated words to unsheathed blades.
    “This way.”
    She led Greddark over to the tavern, passing beneath the sign that spun between two dragonshard-tipped horns. The motif was carried throughout the entire establishment—and indeed, the whole district—with the ends of steam pipes fashioned to look like snorting bulls and posts and poles on every edifice echoing the curvature of a gorgon’s horns.
    The Canniths liked to style the Burnished Bull as an open-air establishment in the same vein as the Bogwater over in the Phiarlan enclave. But where the Bogwater was spacious and open to the sky, the Bull was dark and cramped, huddled under a wooden building supported by heavy vertical timbers, with some tables situated in the resulting shade and others open to the elements on a small patio. Posters were tacked up on some of the posts and on the patio walls, advertising everything from repair services for warforged to custom goggles for artificers. One small sheet showed a picture of an iron defender and offered grooming services, but Sabira was fairly certain it was meant as a joke.
    The still was actually the most remarkable thing aboutthe tavern. Like everything else in the ward, it glowed blue. Pumping pistons and shifting gears moved around its central vat, but Sabira was fairly sure they were only there for show, to make the tavern’s tinkering patrons feel as if they’d never left their cluttered workshops.
    Despite Loghan’s assertion, there were only two warforged in the tavern, one of whom was the barkeep. The only other patrons were a halfling woman in a teal dress, a female elf with dark hair lounging against a post and reading a book, and another elf—blond and male—sitting on the patio admiring the view. None of them looked like artificers to her, a fact which the second warforged was loudly lamenting. She was beginning to wonder if Loghan might have misled her.
    Greddark, who’d been content to follow her lead since they’d met in Sharn, stepped around her and walked up to the bar, taking the seat beside the complaining warforged.
    “I understand you’re in need of an artificer? You’re in luck, friend. Darkgred d’Kundarak, Artificer and Other Things, at your service.” He stuck out a hand to the warforged. “What seems to be the problem?”
    The warforged turned to him, the violet crystals of his eyes glowing. Though the metal construct’s face wasn’t capable of expression, he appeared to be sizing Greddark up. Seemingly satisfied with what he saw, he took the dwarf’s hand and