“That’s stupid.”
“It is simply a matter of perspective,” Ym said, dusting the boy’s feet with powder and slipping back on a pair of the test shoes. “Please walk on those for a moment.”
The boy gave him a strange look, but obeyed, trying a few steps. He didn’t limp any longer.
“Perspective,” Ym said, holding up his hand and wiggling his fingers. “From very close up, the fingers on a hand might seem individual and alone. Indeed, the thumb might think it has very little in common with the pinky. But with proper perspective, it is realized that the fingers are part of something much larger. That, indeed, they are One.”
The urchin frowned. Some of that had probably been beyond him. I need to speak more simply, and—
“Why do you get to be the finger with the expensive ring,” the boy said, pacing back the other direction, “while I gotta be the pinky with the broken fingernail?”
Ym smiled. “I know it sounds unfair, but there can be no unfairness, as we are all the same in the end. Besides, I didn’t always have this shop.”
“You didn’t?”
“No. I think you’d be surprised at where I came from. Please sit back down.”
The boy settled down. “That medicine works real well. Real, real well.”
Ym slipped off the shoes, using the powder—which had rubbed off in places—to judge how the shoe fit. He fished out a pair of premade shoes, then worked at them for a moment, flexing them in his hands. He’d want a cushion on the bottom for the wounded foot, but something that would tear off after a few weeks, once the wound was healed…
“The things you’re talking about,” the boy said. “They sound dumb to me. I mean, if we’re all the same person, shouldn’t everyone know this already?”
“As One, we knew truth,” Ym said, “but as many, we need ignorance. We exist in variety to experience all kinds of thought. That means some of us must know and others must not—just like some must be rich, and others must be poor.” He worked the shoe a moment longer. “More people did know this, once. It’s not talked about as much as it should be. Here, let’s see if these fit right.”
He handed the boy the shoes, who put them on and tied the laces.
“Your life might be unpleasant—” Ym began.
“Unpleasant?”
“All right. Downright awful. But it will get better, young one. I promise it.”
“I thought,” the boy said, stamping his good foot to test the shoes, “that you were gonna tell me that life is awful, but it all don’t matter in the end, ’cuz we’re going the same place.”
“That’s true,” Ym said, “but isn’t very comforting right now, is it?”
“Nope.”
Ym turned back to his worktable. “Try not to walk on that wounded foot too much, if you can help it.”
The urchin strode to the door with a sudden urgency, as if eager to get away before Ym changed his mind and took back the shoes. He did stop at the doorway, though.
“If we’re all just the same person trying out different lives,” the boy said, “you don’t need to give away shoes. ’Cuz it don’t matter.”
“You wouldn’t hit yourself in the face, would you? If I make your life better, I make my own better.”
“That’s crazy talk,” the boy said. “I think you’re just a nice person.” He ducked out, not speaking another word.
Ym smiled, shaking his head. Eventually, he went back to work on his last. The spren peeked out again.
“Thank you,” Ym said. “For your help.” He didn’t know why he could do what he did, but he knew the spren was involved.
“He’s still here,” the spren whispered.
Ym looked up toward the doorway out onto the night street. The urchin was there?
Something rustled behind Ym.
He jumped, spinning. The workroom was a place of dark corners and cubbies. Had he perhaps heard a rat?
Why was the door into the back room—where Ym slept—open? He usually left that closed.
A shadow moved in the blackness back there.
“If you’ve come for the spheres,” Ym said, trembling, “I have only the five chips here.”
More rustling. The shadow separated itself from the darkness, resolving into a man with dark, Makabaki skin—all save for a pale crescent on his cheek. He wore black and silver, a uniform, but not one from any military that Ym recognized. Thick gloves, with stiff cuffs at the back.
“I had to look very hard,” the man said, “to discover your indiscretion.”
“I…” Ym stammered. “Just… five chips…”
“You have lived a clean life, since your youth as a carouser,” the man said, his voice even. “A young man of means who drank and partied away what his parents left him. That is not illegal. Murder, however, is.”
Ym sank down onto his stool. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know it would kill her.”
“Poison delivered,” the man said, stepping into the room, “in the form of a bottle of wine.”
“They told me the vintage itself was the sign!” Ym said. “That she’d know the message was from them, and that it meant she would need to pay! I was desperate for money. To eat, you see. Those on the streets are not kind…”
“You were an accomplice to murder,” the man said, pulling his gloves on more tightly, first one hand, then the other. He spoke with such a stark lack of emotion, he could have been conversing about the weather.
“I didn’t know…” Ym pled.
“You are guilty nonetheless.” The man reached his hand to the side, and a weapon formed from mist there, then fell into his hand.
A Shardblade? What kind of constable of the law was this? Ym stared at that wondrous, silvery Blade.
Then he ran.
It appeared that he still had useful instincts from his time on the streets. He managed to fling a stack of leather toward the man and duck the Blade as it swung for him. Ym scrambled out onto the dark street and charged away, shouting. Perhaps someone would hear. Perhaps someone would help.
Nobody heard.
Nobody helped.
Ym was an old man now. By the time he reached the first cross street, he was gasping for air. He stopped beside the old barber shop, dark inside, door locked. The little spren moved along beside him, a shimmering light that sprayed outward in a circle. Beautiful.
“I guess,” Ym said, panting, “it is… my time. May One… find this memory… pleasing.”
Footsteps slapped on the street behind, getting closer.
“No,” the spren whispered. “Light!”
Ym dug in his pocket and pulled out a sphere. Could he use it, somehow, to—
The constable’s shoulder slammed Ym against the wall of the barber shop. Ym groaned, dropping the sphere.
The man in silver spun him around. He looked like a shade in the night, a silhouette against the black sky.
“It was forty years ago,” Ym whispered.
“Justice does not expire.”
The man shoved the Shardblade through Ym’s chest.
Experience ended.
I-3. Rysn