Quicksilver Summary & ending explained

The iron was barely worth the risk. A fistful of bent scraps from the Hub, where the rich of Zilvaren kept their shade and their water. In my city, stealing metal could hang you. I'd been doing it since I was a child.

I almost made it. Then a shadow fell across me, and a Guardian in gleaming gold armour was standing in the alley, sword drawn, deciding how to kill me.

So I lied. I told him I'd come up from the Third Ward.

Everyone knew what lived in the Third Ward. Fever. Sores. A quarantine wall and the Queen's soldiers making sure nobody climbed it. The Guardian recoiled as if I'd spat on him, tore off the golden gauntlet that had touched my arm and flung it to the dirt.

He was still swearing when I snatched it up and went over the wall.

Up on the rooftops, with the glove hot against my ribs, something strange happened. The metal hummed. Not a sound, exactly. More like a voice just below hearing, whispering in a language I almost knew.

I told myself it was the heat.

Elroy, the old glassmaker who had taught me everything about fire and metal, went pale when I set the gauntlet on his bench.

"That's the Queen's gold, Saeris. They'll tear the ward apart for it."

"Then they'd better hurry. Melt it and we eat for a year."

He wouldn't touch it. So I went to find my brother.

Hayden was younger than me, all charm and bad decisions, and when I found him his face was swollen purple. He owed money to Carrion Swift, the smuggler who sold everything in Zilvaren that the Queen didn't want sold. Carrion had collected in his usual way.

I gave Hayden the gauntlet to hide. It was the stupidest thing I ever did.

When I woke the next morning, my brother was gone. So was the gold. And from the street outside came the sound of boots, hundreds of them, marching into the Third Ward.