Coin flew.

  Brief, weightless, the tumbling arc of something thrown with force and without care. Coin struck a stone floor and bounced, skidding across tile until friction caught and spun Coin to a stop near someone's feet.

  The feet stepped back. A servant, judging by the shoes and the quick deferential movement away from the coin on the floor.

  "Pick it up!" The voice was young, high, accustomed to immediate obedience. "I said pick it up!"

  The servant bent. Fingers reached for Coin, careful, practiced at this task. He'd been picking coins off this floor for a while.

  "Now throw it back."

  The servant straightened, Coin in hand, and tossed Coin in a gentle arc toward the child who'd thrown Coin. The child caught Coin, examined Coin for a half second, then threw again. Harder this time, aimed at a different servant near the doorway. Coin struck the servant's shoulder and clattered to the ground.

  "Too slow! You were supposed to catch it!"

  The servant bent to retrieve Coin again. His face, visible for a moment as he crouched, had gone perfectly smooth. Blank endurance. Waiting for this to be over the way people wait for weather.

  The child held out his hand. "Give it back. I want to try the tall one next."

  THE NOTHING.

  ***

  Jingle. Jingle. Jingle.

  The innkeeper's fingers worked through the coins in his apron pocket while he talked, a constant low percussion that accompanied every sentence. He was telling a story to someone at the bar, and the story had been going on for long enough that the someone had stopped trying to leave.

  "—so I told him, I said, you can't charge that for a room without a window, and he looked at me like I'd insulted his mother, which I hadn't, not yet anyway, but give me time I said—"

  Jingle. Jingle.

  His fingers found Coin, distinguished Coin from the others by some unconscious sense of difference, and began working Coin specifically. Rolling Coin between thumb and forefinger, pressing the edge into his palm, sliding Coin back and forth across the other coins with idle dexterity.

  "—and the thing about the window was, there WAS a window, technically, but it faced the wall of the next building over, so you're looking at bricks, and I said that's not a window that's a suggestion—"

  Jingle. Jingle. Jingle.

  The man's hands never stopped. Even when he paused to pour a drink or wipe the counter, one hand stayed in the pocket, working the coins. Calluses covered the man's fingertips, smooth worn patches where metal had been meeting skin for longer than some of his customers had been alive.

  The story continued. The someone at the bar had committed to his drink and his fate and sat with the glazed endurance of a trapped audience.

  "—and my wife, she says to me, she says, you're not one to talk about windows because what about OUR window, the one in the kitchen, and I said woman that window is FINE—"

  THE NOTHING.

  ***

  The cup rattled.

  Coin slammed against tin and copper, thrown sideways as the beggar shook his cup with the vigor of a man whose livelihood depended on volume. The sound was enormous from the inside, a cascading clatter of metal on metal that hit with every jerk of the wrist.

  "Please, good people! Please, mercy! I haven't eaten since the market closed and my children are—" The voice cracked with practiced precision, the break landing exactly where it would draw the most sympathy. "My children are hungry and I've got nothing, nothing at all, just the kindness of strangers between us and the grave!"

  The shaking intensified. Coin struck the rim hard enough to ring. Other coins tumbled over Coin, their dead weight driving Coin toward the bottom of the cup where the impacts were worse.

  Between shakes, Coin caught fragments. The beggar's feet were shod in decent boots, recently repaired. His coat was threadbare in places that faced the crowd and intact in places that didn't. The sobs came at regular intervals, timed to coincide with foot traffic.

  The performance was professional. Coin could respect the craft while despising the experience.

  The cup came down to rest as the beggar paused for breath. In the brief stillness, Coin heard something unexpected. A genuine cough, deep and wet, rooted in the chest. The beggar cleared his throat, spat to the side, and raised the cup again.

  "Please! For pity's sake!"

  The shaking resumed. Coin bounced off tin, off copper, off the curved wall of the cup, off copper again.

  THE NOTHING.

  ***

  The chanting reached Coin before the light did, a low vibration that moved through bronze and into metal.

  Coin sat in a shallow bronze bowl on a stone altar, surrounded by other offerings. Dried flowers, small bread loaves, a clay figure of something with too many arms. Candles burned at the altar's edges, their light steady and warm, and the chanting filled the room with a hum that pressed against everything.

  The bowl was polished. The altar was clean. Someone had placed Coin carefully, centered among the other offerings, positioned with the deliberate attention of a person who believed placement mattered.

  It did not matter.

  A robed figure approached the altar, hands raised, voice climbing toward a crescendo. Behind them, a congregation watched, barely breathing. They'd walked days to be here, and their faces said so.

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  Coin has been worshipped before. The incense changed, the words changed, the names of the gods changed, but the transaction underneath stayed identical across every century Coin had witnessed it.

  The robed figure reached the crescendo. The congregation held its breath.

  THE NOTHING.

  ***

  The warmth hit first, then the moisture, then the understanding that both were coming from skin.

  Coin lay pressed flat against something soft and damp, layered under fabric that trapped body heat like an oven. Sweat had pooled along Coin's edges, filling the shallow relief of the stamped face. Every breath the person took shifted the pressure, expanding and compressing the space, a slow crush and release timed to the heartbeat Coin could feel through the metal.

  A bodice stash. Tucked inside someone's underclothes, saved there for safekeeping. Warm. Damp. Intimate in a way that Coin had not agreed to.

  The person moved. Walked, talked, laughed at something. Each motion shifted the fabric, ground Coin against skin, redistributed the moisture. The heat was constant and close and absolutely everywhere.

  Coin has been stored in vaults built by kings. Coin has rested on velvet in rooms with sparklamps angled to catch Coin's surface. Coin has sat in the best light of the best window of the best shop on the street.

  Coin was now marinating in a stranger's sweat.

  THE NOTHING.

  ***

  Salt air rolled through an open porthole, carrying the sound of water against hull. The ship rocked in long swells, and the sailor rocked with it, seated on his bunk, hunched over the coins in his palm.

  He was rubbing them. All of them, one at a time, working each coin between his fingers with circular motions while his mouth shaped words that were half language and half muscle memory. Old charms, sailors' prayers, superstition that lived in the hands more than the mind.

  Coin got a turn. The sailor's calloused thumb pressed hard against the stamped face and moved in slow circles, grinding the charm into the metal.

  The muttering quickened. The charm was building toward something, a rhythmic crescendo that meant something to someone, somewhere, at some point in nautical history.

  The thumb pressed harder. The circles tightened.

  "Keep us steady," the sailor muttered. The first clear words since Coin had woken up. "Keep us off the rocks. Keep the wind where it sits."

  He moved on to the next coin. Then came back to Coin. Started the circles again.

  The ship rolled. The sailor kept rubbing, kept muttering, still convinced that the friction between his skin and Coin's surface was doing something useful in the grand arrangement of wind and wave.

  It wasn't.

  THE NOTHING.

  ***

  The thumb came first. Wet. The man licked it before each coin, a ritual of moisture and friction, and when his fingers found Coin in the pile the saliva was still fresh.

  He pressed Coin flat against the wood, slid Coin across the counting surface, and stacked Coin with the others. He counted under his breath, silent except for the occasional number spoken aloud when he lost track, which was often.

  The residue was everywhere. Every coin he touched inherited the spit from every coin before it. A full day of licking and counting had glazed the whole surface. The wood was tacky with it.

  The merchant was old, thin, bent over his counting table with the posture of a man who'd spent decades hunched over exactly this. His eyes were good. His hands were steady. His hygiene was a tragedy.

  He picked Coin up again. Examined Coin. Turned Coin over. His thumbnail scraped across the surface, testing for weight, for composition, for whatever it was merchants tested for when they didn't trust their coins.

  Then he licked his thumb again and reached for the next one.

  THE NOTHING.

  ***

  The cloth made its first pass before Coin understood what was happening. Warm oil, viscous, applied with silk so soft it barely registered as contact.

  The hoarder worked in candlelight at a desk covered in neat rows of coins, each one separated from its neighbors by exactly the same distance. He held Coin between padded tongs, turning Coin slowly while the silk worked in steady strokes. Every pass followed the same path, edge to center, rotating a quarter turn, edge to center again.

  His breathing was steady and shallow, timed to the strokes. He didn't blink often enough.

  "Forty-seven," he whispered. "Forty-seven, forty-seven, forty-seven."

  Coin's catalog number, apparently. The hoarder had a system. Every coin in the collection had a number, and the number was spoken during maintenance, repeated like a ward against miscounting.

  The oil was fine quality. Coin would give him that. Whatever this man was, he invested in proper materials. Real silk for the cloth. Padded tongs to prevent marking.

  Professional care applied with deeply unsettling energy.

  "Forty-seven," the hoarder said again. He set Coin down in the designated spot, adjusted the position with the tongs until the alignment matched some internal standard, then leaned back and studied the row.

  His eyes tracked left to right, counting. The whispered numbers followed. When he reached the end, he started over. When he reached the end again, he started over again.

  He picked Coin up again. Adjusted Coin's position by a fraction that couldn't have mattered. Set Coin back down. Counted the row once more.

  THE NOTHING.

  ***

  The crumb was the first thing Coin noticed, pressed into Coin's left edge like it had been there long enough to settle in permanently.

  Then the rest: darkness, fabric on both sides, the distant muffled sound of people existing somewhere above.

  Coin was between cushions. A bench, from the shape of it. Common hall, from the sound. Coin had slipped through a gap or been sat on or simply lost by someone who hadn't noticed the loss.

  The cushion above compressed when someone sat down, then released, then compressed again. Conversations happened. Coin heard none of the words clearly enough to follow and didn't try. The crumb dug into Coin's edge whenever weight pressed down from above.

  Nothing was going to happen here. Nothing had been happening here for what felt like a long time, based on the crumb.

  THE NOTHING.

  ***

  Darkness. Fabric. The stale compression of a pocket that hadn't been emptied in a long time.

  Lint pressed against Coin's face, gray and matted. The coat it came from had seen better years. Other coins sat nearby, copper and tin, dead weight that had never been anything more than currency.

  The pocket swayed. Step, sway, step, sway. Just road, just walking, just lint.

  THE NOTHING.

  ***

  Something pressed against Coin from all sides. Soft, muscular, alive. Everything was wet. It took less than a second to understand what was happening and less than that to decide about it.

  A mouth. Coin was in a child's mouth.

  The tongue rolled Coin sideways, tucked Coin into a cheek, brought Coin back to center. Teeth clicked against Coin's rim. Saliva coated every surface, thick, tasting of old milk and bread crust with something sour underneath.

  The child was sucking on Coin. Actively. With enthusiasm.

  THE NOTHING.

  ***

  The hands picked Coin up before Coin had finished waking.

  Stacked. Unstacked. Stacked again.

  The hands worked without pause, building towers of coins on the table surface, dismantling them, rebuilding them in different configurations. The rhythm was mechanical, automatic, worn into the tabletop itself where months or years of identical contact had left grooves in the wood.

  Top of a stack, then the bottom, then the middle. The hands were quick and precise, selecting coins by touch, sliding them into position. Up, down, apart, together. The stacks rose and fell in patterns that almost repeated.

  The person attached to the hands was muttering. Numbers, maybe. Or names. The words ran together into a low continuous drone that matched the clicking rhythm, rising when the stacks grew tall, falling when they came apart.

  Coin was picked up, placed, picked up, placed, picked up, placed. The hands kept going. The muttering kept going. Nothing about it suggested it would ever stop.

  The stack reached its tallest yet, wobbled, held.

  The hands dismantled it.

  Started again.

  THE NOTHING.