It was a work day, and Master was worrying with a piece of fine sandpaper at a lump of some sort of golden sap-like stone. Clara was watching over his shoulder, close, but not quite draping herself over him, not while he was busy with his hands. Still, he seemed to like that. And Clara was passing curious.

“It’s got a little of your color, hasn’t it?” Master held the

She pointedly glanced at the back of her wrist. “Little light for me, maybe.”

“This piece, perhaps. There are darker shades.” He nodded, not noting that Clara had flipped her hand over and was now frowning. “Amber, yes. That’s what you are. Tiger eye’s too common, they practically pick it out of the fields here.” She quickly returned her attention as he looked up. “What do you think? Amber?”

“Call me whatever you like. I live to serve you.” Clara shivered with thrill as she surrendered her own name. Again. Maybe she could convince him to change her name again, every few months or so...

The door chimes clamoured. “Ah, that must be my other client.” He set his new project aside and swept to his feet. “Do mind the shop, would you? I’m not ready to show you around just yet.”

“I will,” she agreed, but unhappily. “Hurry back,” she pleaded to his back, already hurrying downstairs to the foyer and shopfront.

She looked again at the a scab on her palm. Recent—no more than a day old. Had she cut herself, and forgot? Was it the Am-Ne-Sha again?

Did she need the sapphire? Master was busy, though. Well, maybe it worked without him and she could heal herself, and he did just leave it in the drawers, unlocked and unguarded. She started searching, one at a time and slowly so the two downstairs couldn’t hear.

On the third drawer, she found the dirk.

She sat in Master’s chair, dirk in her hands, feeling faintly poleaxed. She remembered this weapon. She’d found it on the desk, hadn’t she? And then she’d hidden it from Master, so he wouldn’t have to worry. And then she had forgotten, when he’d given her the sapphire, so she’d remember.

Remember. Hmm. The sapphire helped her remember but she’d also forgotten. Had Master intended her to forget things? Was he brainwashing her?

Clara rubbed her temples and snorted. Well, of course she’d been brainwashed, years and years ago. Everyone knew an intensive course of mind magicks was the flesh market’s alchemy: whores and debtors to high quality product, and thus to gold. Not for her the mines, where the animumators might have been satisfied with breaking her to the yoke and sending her to be devoured by the Earth. They worked on her for months or more, night and day, rubbing out with patient thoroughness everything that made her willful or rebellious, anything that would make her a danger to her buyers. For Master to have to magick his own bedwarmer would have been a shameful failure, grounds perhaps for compensation.

Unless this was what erected his mast? That made as much sense as anything else, she decided. To be wanted not for her body, but for a mind he could play with...

Master’s feet clumped up the stairs. Clara dropped the dirk back in and slammed the drawer shut just as he reached the top. Too late, too loud. He stopped at the head of the stairs and looked askance.

He cocked an eyebrow. “I should hope you’re not thinking of stealing,” he needled, “Or what am I to do with you?” He snorted at his own jest. She chuckled, to hide growing unease. That did not had the tone of an innocent joke. Had she been a thief, a lifetime ago? Had she stolen from him? She shivered. The very thought made her nauseous, and more confused than before.

Master had not looked away from her, with growing, undisguised alarm. Was he afraid of her? She felt herself hunch and bow her head, making herself smaller, cowed. Her hands shook. Tears threatened to spill. Why was he afraid of her? What was she missing? What was she not remembering? What had the Am-Ne-Sha taken?

“M-Master.” Something akin to grief dulled her voice. “Could I hold the sapphire again? I’m...confused again. Out of sorts. I’m…” She shivered again, despite herself. “...I’m forgetting things again.”

“Of course, my little thief. Excuse me.” He pushed past her with unseeming haste.

The sapphire. Yes. She needed to walk the labyrinth again, to be taken out of her twisted and confused head, to sift her self for sense. To make herself harmless again. She was forgetting things again and she needed to remember. Everything will be so much more clear.

Master pressed the sapphire into her palms. It twinkled in the midday light, and she was sitting, relieved. So thankful he listened to her...