Rain in Eidolon is never just water. It falls with a thin, pearly sheen - like a memory refusing to fully dissolve - and leaves your hair smelling faintly of oranges if you stand in it long enough.
Kade didn't stand in it. He moved through it as if the rain were someone else's story.
The bridge above him hummed with traffic: carts, battery bikes, a minister's convoy that made the concrete vibrate like a held breath. Down here, where the bridge's ribs showed, light collected in shallow puddles the color of cheap gin. Someone had painted a circle on the asphalt with chalk and salt. Inside the circle, four men waited without talking.
The woman they'd brought to trade sat just outside the chalk line, on a milk crate, clutching a bundle to her chest. The bundle whimpered once. The nearest man hissed at her to shut it up. Kade pretended not to hear.
He set his case on the crate of rusted bolts the market used for a table. The latches clicked like good manners.
"Reclaimer," said the man with the scar over his left eye. "You late."
"I'm on bridge time," Kade said. "It slows for sermons."
A small grin cracked the scar. "You brought the vial?"
Kade opened the case. Inside, nestled in black felt, lay a glass ampoule the size of a thumb. It held an inch of pale gold light—the color of a forgotten afternoon. The rain made it look like the ampoule had a pulse.
The man's three companions leaned in at once. The woman leaned in, too, in spite of herself. The bundle shifted; a tiny hand pushed through the blanket and closed on nothing. Kade tried not to look at the hand.
"Proof first," Kade said. "Say the name."
Scar tapped his temple as if that's where names lived. "Wedding day, sixteen years past, abandoned in audit. Groom: Rallin Deme. Bride: Lysa Pane. Location—"
"Don't add the address," Kade said softly. "She's here."
The woman's breath rattled and steadied. Her eyes met Kade's for the first time. They were the gray of unpolished mirrors.
"Show me the photo," she whispered.
Scar nodded to the skinny one with the ledger. The skinny one fished out a cracked frame wrapped in oilcloth. He held it so the rain slid off the glass. A couple stared out: new, exhausted, laughing with their faces, not their mouths. In the corner, a minister's hand hovered as if hesitating to bless them.
"That's them," the woman said. She didn't touch the frame. Her fingers tightened on the bundle instead. The tiny hand found one of hers and held on.
Kade took the ampoule from its nest. Even through the glove, he felt the faint ache of it—the tug of somebody else's beginning. He had learned to ignore that tug before he learned to shave.
The trade was simple. Almost all trades were simple until they weren't.
"You know the rule," Scar said. "No full pour. She'll drown in it."
Kade nodded. "Three drops. Enough to anchor the edges."
He knelt on the chalk, ignoring the salt pricking through his trousers. He balanced the ampoule against the frame, tilted it until the neck touched glass. The first drop slid down like a soft bell sound. The photo's gray deepened. The minister's hand steadied. The second drop made the bride's veil show the pattern of lilies it had been too bright to catch. The third drop made the laughter settle into the mouths, not just the eyes.
The woman made a sound like someone remembering how to breathe. "Lysa," she said. "Lysa, you kept laughing after the bread fell."
Scar shifted, embarrassed for the intimacy. The ledger boy looked away. The bundle quieted.
Kade lifted the ampoule. One last glimmer clung to the glass lip—tempting, useless, dangerous. He tapped it back in with his finger. The ache in his glove went up his arm and down again like a passing thought.
"Debt settled," Scar said. He set a coin on the rusted bolts—heavy, stamped with the Archon's profile—and then another, and a third on top like a small metal tower. "For the Reclaimer."
Kade closed the case without looking at the coins. "I didn't do it for you."
"No," Scar said. "You never do."
The minister's convoy above changed pitch: the hum becoming chant, the chant becoming a friendly thunder. Sermon on the move. Scar's men started repacking the circle: broom across chalk, salt kicked into drains. The woman tucked the photo into her coat like a heart and rose, swaying. Kade reached without thinking. The bundle bumped his wrist. The tiny hand caught his thumb and squeezed hard, as if testing the quality of him.
"What's his name?" Kade asked, before he could stop himself.
The woman looked at him like he'd asked for her blood. "Names cost."
"I know," Kade said. "Keep it, then."
He meant to leave it there, light, harmless. But the word keep tasted like metal in his mouth. Something old pressed against his ribs from the inside, the way a memory presses when it wants out.
He closed the case. The latches clicked again. Above, the convoy's speakers bloomed with a calm man's voice:
"Good citizens. Pain ends in light."
Kade didn't look up. He never looked up during sermons. He could feel their heat on his cheekbones anyway, the way you can feel a fire that you refuse to warm your hands at.
The skinny one with the ledger lingered. "Hey," he said to Kade, tentative. "You the one they call No-Name?"
It was meant to be a joke, or a jab. The ledger boy was young enough to think those were different things.
Kade shrugged. "Depends who's calling."
"My aunt says you don't drink from the street altars," the boy said. "Says you think the Halo can hear if you say thank you."
Kade's mouth did the crooked half-smile it wore when he wanted not to show his teeth.
"I don't think that," he said. "I know that."
"Superstition," the boy said, relieved to find his footing in mockery. "The Archon says the Halo is a mercy machine."
"Machines can remember better than people," Kade said. "That's why you keep their names off your skin."
The boy frowned, not understanding. He touched his own bare forearm as if to confirm it had no writing. It didn't. Good kid. He'd live if he learned to be a little unkind in time.
Scar called the boy. The boy went. The woman went. The rain stayed. Kade waited until the chalk circle was a smear and the salt was gone. He pocketed one coin—the top of the little tower—left the other two. He told himself that wasn't charity. It was ballast. The Lowlight ran better when it thought it had cheated you.
He walked under the bridge until the traffic hum faded into an ache behind his teeth. The clinic sign was a triangle of tin with letters punched out: BRO K. The O had fallen, the second O had never been nailed back. The door stuck the way doors stick that have been opened by the same tired hands for ten years.
Brook looked up from his table. He always worked standing, even when the work didn't require it. "You late," he said.
"Bridge time," Kade said.
"You bleeding?"
"Not yet."
"Good," Brook said. "I'm saving my gauze for people with a future."
He meant it to bite. Kade let it. He set the case down. Mira sat in the far cot, a blanket over her knees, chin tucked, eyes unfocused in that way that meant the seizures had skipped her but left their echo. She turned her head like a flower that had learned about angles.
"Kade," she said. "You smell like oranges."
"Bridge rain," Kade said. "How's the head?"
"Not mine," she said cheerfully. "Borrowed. Do we have enough to pay?"
"For?" Kade said, as if he didn't know.
"The light," she said, whispering like a child telling a secret. "They did an audit. We owe a winter."
Brook didn't look up. "A winter," he said. "They always audit right before you could almost save."
Kade took the single coin from his pocket and placed it on the table as if setting down a truce. Brook looked at it. He didn't touch it.
"You could sell something," Brook said. "An afternoon. The name of a street you don't walk anymore."
Kade looked at Mira. She was watching his hands, the way people watch card tricks. He realized she had been counting his fingers since she was five, to make sure they were all still there.
"I'll sell a memory I don't use," Kade said lightly. "I have so many of those."
Mira smiled. It made her face not younger, but true. "Don't sell the orange rain," she said. "I like that one."
"I'll keep it," Kade said.
The word keep tasted like metal again. He swallowed it harder.
Brook finally took the coin. He dropped it in the little tin box under the table. It made a lonely sound. He shut the box like closing a small mouth.
"Archon's sermon today," Brook said, as if it were weather. "He says mercy has teeth."
"Teeth make it real," Kade said. "Gums are for saints."
Mira laughed, then winced. The laugh didn't fit her skull right yet. She reached a hand out without looking. Kade took it, like he always did. Her fingers were cool and certain.
"What did you reclaim?" she said.
"A wedding," Kade said.
"Was it nice?"
"Not nice," Kade said. "True."
"Good," she whispered, eyes closing. "True things keep."
He looked at Brook over her head. Brook's face had the expression of a man who wants to punch a god and knows where to aim.
"She needs a cold-mirror," Brook said. "The little one. I heard a Luminist heretic has one that works."
Kade didn't look away. "Where."
Brook nodded toward the door without moving. "Under the bridge, where the rain smells like oranges. Ask for Lumi."
Kade squeezed Mira's hand once. He let go. He picked up the case, and the case felt heavier or his arm felt older. The door stuck again on the way out, and he shouldered it instead of tugging because sometimes force is respect.
Outside, the rain had thinned to threads. On the bridge above, the convoy passed like a patient comet, the speaker's voice softening:
"Pain ends in light."
Kade looked up for the first time that day. The Halo glowed behind high cloud—gentle as a hand, merciless as a blade. He could feel it looking back, and the feeling wasn't superstition. He knew the difference between fear and recognition.
"What you keep keeps you," he said under his breath, as if testing the shape of someone else's wisdom.
The rain tasted like oranges. He walked toward the place where heretics kept mirrors.