In Albion, bargains were made every day. Some bought titles, some bought trinkets, and some, for the price of a memory, bought the means to change others’ lives. The 1113 Trainer remained a whisper in the city’s underbelly—exclusive, costly, and honest. And somewhere between the palace’s marble and the theatre’s straw-strewn floor, Evangeline walked on with hands that knew how to heal and a heart missing a small, sun-warmed piece of its history—yet fuller, too, for the lives she mended along the way.
Evangeline found him in a backroom of the Travelling Theatre, where puppeteers traded secrets and discarded hopes. The Trainer stood at a small wooden table, proffering a deck of carved ivory cards. Each card hummed faintly, and when Evangeline touched one, she tasted rain on iron and felt the tug of years she hadn’t lived. “Choose a lesson,” the Trainer said, its voice the pleasant dissonance of clockwork and memory. “One trade. One cost.” fable 3 1113 trainer exclusive
The Clockwork Apprentice