My parents didn't want me to walk about the city anymore as the climate of these Gypsies arriving today had turned violent in the city. The carriage strolled the streets of Braxmond, flanked by two of our household guards on horseback. The city unfolded with iron and soot. Children with coal-smudged faces chased after carts, laughing through coughs. Men pushed barrows of brass shavings, their backs bent like bows. Women in patched dresses carried buckets of gray water from the communal pumps. Every surface was stained: walls with soot, skin with grime, eyes with fatigue.
Yet the aristocrats paraded untouched. Carriages rolled past with crests shining, glass windows revealing plump faces behind lace curtains. I caught whispers from the sidewalks as they recognized me. Some muttered respect. Others muttered curses. Both sounded the same beneath the city's chunking. After today, the factories will go still, and machines will turn off for the week that the carnival is here. At the academy my classmates would gossip about how their families overworked their workers right up until today, but my father didn't. Lord Gregor did not see the need as many of the new airships were ready for shipment.
On a brick wall near the factory quarter, I saw a pamphlet pasted in red ink. Its title screamed in block letters:
MORTAL INSTRUMENTS ORDER – REASON ABOVE SUPERSTITION
Gypsies poison the mind. Magic weakens industry. Knowledge is salvation.
The page showed an hourglass drawn in crude lines, its sand depicted as black grains spilling through jagged cracks in the glass. My blood turned to ice water in my veins when I saw it. The drawing was rough, hasty—as if sketched by someone who had glimpsed something terrible and needed to capture it before the vision faded.
"Rabble-rousing trash, my lord. They'll be torn down before sunset," one of the guards spat on the cobblestones as his horse scoffed. A frantic whinny came after as the guard straightened himself. "Bloody fanatics is all they are."
The image of the cracked hourglass lingered like smoke, black sand leaking from its jagged fissures with a sinister intent. The hastily drawn sketch triggered a tightness in my chest—too familiar with restless dreams where I'd seen that hourglass, sometimes whole, sometimes shattered, with sand shifting from golden light to darkness. I'd wake, heart racing, as the grains felt almost real. "Why do I keep seeing it?" I pondered while moving through grimy streets, questioning if I began noticing it after my first dream or if it had always been present. A chill ran down my spine, prompting me to glance back, yet all I saw were guards and curious stares. Perhaps Father is right—maybe I'm allowing foolish superstitions to cloud my judgment, but the sand in my dreams feels so tangible, I can taste its grit.
The Mortal Instruments Order had grown bold in Braxmond. They were not a guild, nor a noble house, but they carried themselves with the arrogance of both. Philosophers, engineers, and disillusioned clerks—they claimed to stand for progress untainted by sorcery or superstition. Yet their methods were anything but pure. I saw their colors down the street: gray coats, red armbands bearing the sigil of a skull crossed with bones in a broken gear as if to say, "the city was poisoned." They distributed pamphlets to the crowd, their rhetoric sharp as knives.
"Industry must serve men, not magic!" cried one. "The Covenant rules in shadow, leeching from our labor. The Gypsies whisper lies into the ears of our children. The Mystics burn forests in sacrifice. And the Alchemists bleed workers dry in order to power their abominations!"
Some cheered. Others booed. The guards wanted to push forward, but I signaled them to hold. The Mortal Instruments hadn't broken any laws—not yet anyway and I was curious to hear them out.
One of them, a thin but wiry man with fiery eyes, caught my gaze through the carriage window. He smiled, glided his hand across his slick backed hair and spoke with an educated and clipped voice. "Even young Kuznetsov finds merit in our words. Tell me, Lord Rhylorin—when your father forges his machines, what debt does he carry to the Alchemists for their assistance in every invention?"
The assembly whispered among themselves. My guards tense. I raised my hand to signal a return to motion, sensing that query was unworthy of a response. But as the escort moved, a reflection shimmered on a soot-streaked window, I swore I saw grains of sand trailing behind my wagon.
Once on the move, I asked the one of my father's countless knights chosen to ride beside me in the wagon, "that man spoke of nonsense but seemed refined enough to address me with respect— do you know who he is?"
"Mortal Instruments Order zealot and goes by the name Rajnish is the gossip of the commoners, my lord," he answered. "Braxmond Runners have disturbing reports of people coming up missing with folks speculating they're the ones behind it."
Before we were able to make the corner turn to the scholar district of the city, Brass Square had swelled with commotion. The rally members of their order had caught up to our stalled wagon and swiftly joined forces with other Mortal Instruments Order. Pamphlets burned quicker than oil, speeches flared and vanished with smoke. But Braxmond had no patience for sparks—here, sparks found coal, and coal burned hot. The radical lot swelled the square, gray coats and red armbands forming a wall. Their chants rose with smoke:
"Reason above superstition!" "Steel above trickery!"
I stepped out of the carriage for a better look with the knight's disapproval but reluctantly ordered the escort to follow as I joined the spectators. Ripples passed through the crowd as wagons rolled into view. Bright-painted, lantern-strung, creaking on silver-rimmed wheels.
The Gypsies had come.
Children ran ahead, bells jingling from their wrists, their laughter a sharp contrast to the apprentices' jeers. Musicians followed with fiddles and drums, their rhythms quick, defiant. Behind them came dancers, scarves of indigo and crimson trailing like living flame. At last, the wagons—painted with star-charts, moons, and sand-hourglasses—entered the square.
The Mortal Instruments booed. Pamphlets ripped through the air like thrown knives. One slapped against a dancer's leg, leaving a streak of red ink across her bare skin.
"Frauds!" shouted a voice I recognized—the sharp-eyed Mortal Instruments from before, Rajnish. He stood at the front now, raised above the others. His voice cut through the chants with practiced precision. "They come to poison you with lies. They read the ashes in your hearth and call it fate. They take your coin, then vanish into the smoke. They are parasites. They are the shadow behind your suffering!"
The crowd roared with approval.
One of the Gypsy elders raised his hand, palm open, voice calm. "We bring trade, stories, and song. We steal from no one. Braxmond has always welcomed us."
"Not this Braxmond," Rajnish spat. "Not while the Mortal Instruments Order guards' reason against deceit."
The Mortal Instruments surged forward. The Gypsy musicians struck harder notes on their fiddles, not to fight but to drown the shouts. The air thickened, sound against sound, smoke against song.
I should have turned away. Heir of Kuznetsov, I was not meant to step into street riots. But my mother's message rang out in my ears from the breakfast table, soft as the night before, pressed against my thoughts.
"Smoke always hides fire."
And at that moment, I saw the fire breaking. The first punch came from a worker emboldened by the Mortal Instruments' chants. It landed on a Gypsy drummer's jaw. The drum fell silent.
Screams erupted. The square dissolved into chaos. Mortal Instruments shoved forward, Gypsies braced, and workers joined whichever side their hearts burned for.
Rajnish leapt from his crate, pulling a dagger from his coat—not to strike, but to brandish, to claim authority. "Drive them out!" he bellowed.
The guards at my side stiffened. "My lord, we must go—"
"No." My voice surprised me. It shook, but it did not falter. "We stay."
The square was chaos with fists, smoke, and fear. Gypsy illusionists flicked sparks into the air—phantom flames, harmless but dazzling. Mortal Instruments tore through them with iron poles, shouting that no trick would drive them back.
I saw a Gypsy child cornered near the fountain, three Mortal Instruments closing on him. He couldn't have been older than nine. He raised his hands, a toy deck of cards slipping from his fingers like fluttering birds.
Without thinking, I moved.
The guards shouted at me, but my legs carried me into the crush. An elbow struck my side, a knee glanced my thigh, but I forced my way through. I grabbed the child's arm and pulled him behind me.
The Mortal Instruments froze when they saw my face "what is he doing?"
I opened my mouth—but no words came. My chest tightened. Sand seemed to rise in the corners of my vision, glimmering faintly in the smoke.
The child whimpered.
"Reason teaches us: weakness must be cut away," one Mortal Instruments sneered. His arm raised, dagger flashing. "Best do it quick!"
"No, the Runners will have your head if you strike nobility," another stole away the blade. "It is a crime to even threaten them."
The world shifted. as if the day suddenly turned night. Stardust poured across the square, spilling from the fountain as though its water had turned to golden sand. The voices of the crowd muted, muffled, until only the rasp of my own breath remained. The Mortal Instruments froze—not in reality, but in my vision. Their eyes turned hollow, their mouths stretched in silent screams as chains of brass wound their throats. Above them, the shadow loomed again—faceless, teeth of razer metal grinding.
"Now, we find ourselves daydreaming," it whispered. "It would seem your power is awakening boy."
"No," I choked. My hand shook. The sand thickened around the Mortal Instruments' feet, rising to swallow them whole.
The child looked up at me—not frightened, but wide-eyed. In the dream-sand his eyes glimmered blue, the same shade as my mother's.
"Rhylorin," her voice traveled through him—not the shadow's on this occasion. Gentle. Assured. Mother's voice. "Do not allow smoke to suffocate the heavens."
The dream snapped as I stood shaken to my core. the dagger being fought over by the two men had gone still. Their hands faltered, griped slack with a clatter against the cobblestones. They stared at me as if I had pulled the blade on them and stabbed them through the heart. Absolute horror in their eyes, but then they stumbled back into the riot. Had I just entered their mind and turn their thoughts into nightmares?
The child fled, weaving into the Gypsy crowd.
The mystical sand had vanished when I turned toward the fountain's weathered basin, searching for any trace of what I'd witnessed. Was any of it real? The carved cherubs stared back with blank stone eyes, offering no answers, while water cascaded undisturbed as if the supernatural display had been mere hallucination. What in the name of righteousness is happening to me? I pressed trembling fingers to my temples, my pulse hammering against my skull. The golden dust that had swirled around the Mortal Instruments, the dream-chains binding their throats, the shadow's rasping voice—all dissolved like morning mist. Mother's voice through that child... impossible. Yet her words still echoed: Do not allow smoke to suffocate the heavens. Only brass taste lingered in my mouth, metallic and bitter.
Guards found me and escorted me back to the wagon before the mob could swallow me whole. A painful headache hit me, and I attempted to squash the throbbing by massaging my temples. Behind us, Rajnish's voice rose above the chaos.
"You see?" he shouted, pointing toward me. "The air is bewitched! They've poisoned the lord already! This is the Gypsies' trick!"
All eyes turned on me. The square's fury pivoted not on illusions, not on reason, but on my face.
My guards formed a protective barrier, leading me from the square. The Gypsies pulled back, their wagons drawing into defensive circles while their melodies shifted to mournful laments. Mortal Instruments stoked the crowd's rage, scattering leaflets like cinders. Above the tumult, Rajnish's accusations rang out, marking me as prey to mystical deception—though he remained ignorant that my tormentor wasn't among the caravan folk, as far as I could determine. Some force was tampering with my thoughts, and I intended to discover its identity and purpose.
Just in time, the Braxmond Runners arrived wielding their cudgels, and the tumult scattered like birds. Under decree from the House of Lords, the Gypsies were permitted to remain—a token of trade with Tundrathan's coal—and the riot dissolved as swiftly as it had ignited.
But Rajnish's words clung to me like ash from the furnaces, coating my lungs with every labored breath. Bewitched. Poisoned. A Gypsy's trick.
I could still hear his voice reverberating off brass walls, still feel the eyes of the crowd fixed on me—fearful, fascinated, mothers clutching their children as if I carried contagion in my blood.
And I knew with a cold certainty, like winter fog settling in my bones, that his words would not fade. They would spread through Braxmond's districts like sparks in dry tinder, until I was no longer heir to House Kuznetsov, but something far more dangerous.
Something they would whisper about in the shroud of the underworld of this city.