Free Clockwork Heart by Dru Pagliassotti

door.
    â€œYou wanna play pick-up?” The younger boy held up a small, vulcanized rubber ball. “We’re playing for disks, ain’t we?”
    Taya crouched. “I don’t have any disks.” She had, once. Just like these three children, she and her friends had collected chunks of slag from the forges and used them as a makeshift currency between themselves.
    â€œHow about that feather, then?” the older boy asked, pointing to her icarus lapel pin.
    â€œSorry— it belongs to the government.” Taya dug into her pockets and found a few coins. “I’ll play you for pence. Six disks to a penny.”
    â€œFour.”
    â€œFive.”
    â€œDone.”
    The youngest child, a girl who couldn’t be older than four, drew an unsteady circle on the cobblestones with a nub of chalk. Taya and the three children knelt around it, concentrating on the bouncing ball and the bits of colored stone used as markers.
    Taya lost the first five games and then won back three of her pennies as her old skills returned. She laughed, snatching the ball in midair as it bounced off the edge of a cobblestone and angled toward the steps. The oldest boy grinned.
    â€œYou did that on purpose,” she accused, bouncing the ball into the circle for the next player.
    â€œJust testing you, weren’t I?” he replied, cheerfully.
    The little girl’s head snapped up and she looked down the street. “Clockite’s back!”
    Moving fast, the two boys swept up the remaining markers. Taya grabbed her three pennies before the oldest snatched them up — he gave her an unrepentant smirk — and turned. The three children flung themselves on top of the steps.
    Cristof’s steps slowed as he drew nearer.
    Even after meeting him twice, Taya couldn’t help but feel an odd jolt at the sight of his bared castemark. He was dressed much as he’d been last night, in a dark suit and greatcoat, and held a paper-wrapped bundle in the crook of one arm. The autumn wind played through his defiantly short hair, making it stand up in dark, uneven chunks.
    He glanced at her, then fixed his gaze on the three children who stood in a line between him and his shop door. His countenance darkened as he peered at them from over the top of his wire-rimmed spectacles.
    â€œWhat are you three loathsome brats doing on my stairs?” he demanded.
    Taya drew in an indignant breath, but her protest died as she saw that none of the children were upset by the outcaste’s words.
    â€œWe cleaned ’em for you, din’t we?” the girl piped up.
    â€œDid you?” Cristof took a step forward and looked past the children at the steps down to his basement door. “Am I to consider that clean?”
    â€œUh-huh.” The girl squatted, her ragged smock pooling around her feet, and wiped her hand over the step. She held it up. “See, no dirt!”
    Taya bit her bottom lip. The girl’s palm was filthy from playing pick-up on the street. But the steps, although stained, were free from the loose layer of ash that covered so much of the rest of the street.
    â€œI see.” Cristof gave the boys a skeptical look. “I suppose you two made your sister do all the work.”
    â€œNope. We got three brooms.” The youngest boy pointed to the twig brooms stacked at the bottom of the steps. “We all took a turn, din’t we?”
    â€œAnd you all expect to be rewarded for it, no doubt.”
    â€œFair’s fair,” the boy declared.
    Cristof turned his relentless gaze on the oldest boy.
    â€œNothing to say for yourself?”
    â€œSixpence for sweeping, then, and one for keeping your customer here while you was gone,” the boy replied smartly, jerking a thumb at Taya.
    â€œI doubt she’s a customer,” Cristof muttered. He dug into his coat pocket and pulled out a handful of coins, counting two pennies into each boy’s hand and three into the