The city kept its oaths on paper and its lies in gold ink. At dawn, a clerk stamped my borrowed name onto a debt note the size of a dinner plate. By sundown tomorrow, the Guild of Erased Oaths would reclaim it—with interest. Thirty hours to pay for a life that wasn't originally mine.
The name‑sigil on my wrist hummed like a bee behind glass. Every step through Pact‑Street made it throb harder, as if the cobbles themselves were whispering clauses I couldn't afford. Lanterns bloomed open one by one, shedding petals of light over hanging parchments and iron balconies. Pages drifted from upper windows, each one stamped with a seal—agreements signed, lives adjusted.
I tucked my hands into fingerless gloves to hide the glow and counted the coins in my pocket again. Four bronzes. A cracked transit token. A stub of seal‑chalk. If salvation sold for anything less than a miracle, I was rich.
"Negotiations by appointment," said the receptionist at the Office of Honest Remedies, not looking up from his ledger.
"I only need a dishonest one," I said. "Half price?"
He slid a form toward me. The form slid itself back. Good paper knew when it was about to be used against itself.
"Try the pawn‑scribe," he said. "Or marriage."
"Funny."
"Not a joke. A legal shortcut." He finally looked at my wrist, and his politeness arranged itself like furniture. "Your sigil is in arrears. You won't find mercy, miss. Only math."
Mercy would have been cheaper.
I left before his pity turned into paperwork. The street crowd flowed around me: couriers with ink‑stained mouths, advocates in frock coats stitched with runes, a boy carrying a cage full of contracts that scraped their bars like crabs. The city sang in clauses. I could hear it—a talent that wasn't mine, not originally. Transmigration came with side effects.
At the next corner, a public board ticked with new postings: BINDING NEEDED: Witness for a truth‑hearing. PAYMENT: Two silvers and immunity. REQUIREMENT: Untamperable name.
I laughed, because the board had a sense of humor too. My name had been tampered with twice before breakfast.
A parchment fell, brushed my cheek, and tried to stick to my skin. I peeled it off carefully by the margins. Some contracts bit.
MARRIAGE PACT, said the header, as if it were perfectly normal. BENEFITS: Shared assets, shared protections, System access tiered by intimacy. WARNINGS: In the event of betrayal, penalties escalate to erasure.
Someone had scrawled a note at the bottom: ONLY A VILLAIN WOULD SIGN THIS.
The parchment tried to wriggle back into the air. I folded it into my pocket instead, and the hum at my wrist softened—as if the sigil approved of my poor choices.
Thunder muttered. It wasn't the sky. It was the clocktower that governed all guild filings. Thirty hours. Fewer now.
I took the alley that cut between a notary's and a tavern called The Breach. Alleyways in this city were made of words. This one said shortcut if you knew where to look. I pressed bare skin to brick, let the hum in my wrist match the wall's rhythm, and listened.
A clause uncurled like a cat: If one party can't pay, amends may be made through bonded service.
Service to whom? The wall was coy. Of course it was. The city never offered the whole paragraph to beggars.
"Step away from the masonry," said a voice behind me, amused. "It has a reputation."
I turned. The man in the archway wore a long coat cut with simple lines that made other coats feel overdressed. His hair fell careless across his brow. A faint ring of teal hung in his irises, so thin it could be mistaken for reflection. It tightened a fraction when he saw my wrist.
"That's not your name," he said.
"Neither is yours," I said, because I had learned to bluff before I learned to breathe here.
He smiled like a good lawyer at a bad estimate. "You're not wrong. Walk with me."
"I don't walk with strangers."
"You're late for one," he said, and tipped his head toward the clock face peeking between roofs. "The debt collectors arrive with the last bell. They're punctual. It's a branding thing."
He had the patient voice of a tutor and the relaxed posture of someone who never lost auctions. He also had the kind of face that made people tell him truths they couldn't afford.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"To hire you."
"I'm broke."
"That's a qualification."
He walked, and the alley rearranged itself to let us through without touching our shoulders. Walls knew better than to crease a good coat. I followed him into lamplight, where the street opened like a book. Across the way, an archway bore a rune I recognized from whispered warnings and public safety plays: a sigil like a knot, like a snare, like a story that only ends one way.
THE GUILD OF ERASED OATHS, read the sign in honest letters.
I stopped. "No."
"Not even a little?" he said.
"I'm not joining a villain guild."
"You're not. You're fixing it."
"That sounds like a trap written by a poet."
"It is a trap," he agreed, cheerful. "But not for you."
"Who are you?"
He didn't offer a hand. Good. I wasn't sure I would have taken it. He offered two words instead, and every lantern on the street guttered as if the syllables pulled air from their mouths.
"Guild Master."
The words fit him too well. People around us pretended not to hear them. The street slipped into a softer key.
"Relax," he said. "I'm sealed. Legally. I can't force you to sign anything, invite you past thresholds, or kiss you without permission."
"I see kissing is grouped with entry and duress."
"In this city," he said, "it is."
The hum at my wrist intensified, as if my sigil wanted to interrupt. I clenched my fist. "Why me?"
"Because you hear clauses," he said simply. "And because every honest guild refused."
"I wonder why," I said.
"Because fixing us requires a marriage," he said. "A legal one. With you."
I did not drop the parchment crinkling in my pocket. That would have been melodramatic, and I still had my pride.
"You put that ad on the board."
"I put seventeen," he said. "Stupidity is contagious. Caution is not."
"What do I get?"
"A share of the Guild System," he said. "Shelter from debt enforcement. And the satisfaction of telling twelve noble houses that their favorite leash just snapped."
"What do you get?"
"An ally who can sign where I can't."
The clock chimed the quarter. The sound carried clauses with it. If you sign before the bell, the penalty stays numbers. If you sign after, it grows teeth.
"I don't love the erasure clause," I said.
"That's why you," he said. "You hear the teeth. File them down."
"You want me to marry you in thirty hours and fix your guild."
"I want you to marry me in thirty minutes," he corrected, mild. "Thirty hours is how long you have before you're escorted somewhere quiet and rewritten into a better citizen. The marriage gets you past the escort. After that, we do the work."
I looked at his eyes again: not monstrous, just terribly sure. He had the calm of people who kept their promises and the reputation of someone who didn't.
"You sound like a villain," I said.
"I sound like a man with limited time," he said. "Villainy is a branding thing."
"How do I know you won't erase me?"
"You don't," he said. "But you know the city will."
My wrist pulsed, hard enough to sting. The hum rose to a note only I could hear, and inside it was a suggestion, reckless and gold: Say yes, but write it yourself.
"Fine," I said. "Terms."
He inclined his head, patient as a pen held over fresh paper.
"One," I said. "This is a contract marriage. No consummation clause, no intimacy penalties. We can tier System access to acts of trust that aren't…that."
"Agreed."
"Two. I hold joint signatory power over guild filings that affect members' freedom. If a clause takes somebody's life, it passes through my hands first."
"Agreed."
"Three," I said, and the word felt like stepping off a high stair. "If you betray this pact, your seal tightens. If I betray it, mine does. Balanced teeth."
He smiled. Not pleased—relieved. "Agreed."
"And four," I said, lifting my wrist. Rose‑gold light bled through the glove seam. "We write a clause that lets me hear your seal when it's hurting you. No secrets I can trip over later."
That made his gaze sharpen. "You're negotiating care."
"I'm negotiating information."
"Same difference," he said softly. "Agreed."
He held out a pen. Not a quill. A pen‑spear, the kind used in treaty duels—light, balanced, with a nib that could draw blood or ink with equal grace.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Which one do you want?"
"The true one."
"Sign this," he said, tapping the parchment he'd set between us. "And you can ask."
I read. Words rearranged themselves around my attention, tidy and eager. He had given me space to write. I wrote.
When I finished, the treaty seal behind us bloomed into a halo half rose‑gold, half teal. The street inhaled. The clock held its breath.
"On your terms," he said. "Together, then?"
"Together," I said, and touched the pen to my name.
The city bit down. The seals bit back.
The marriage took.
The last bell began to ring.
And something old and patient inside his throat unclenched, like a cuff being unlocked in the dark.
"Your true name," I said, before I could decide to be sensible.
He looked at the glowing ring on my wrist—the crack lighting up like a sunrise—and gave it to me, quiet enough that only a wife could hear.