Zip lands in Veridia.

Starkraft Brewhouse, orbital ring X-14 · 3725 Rainmoon 20

The ring turns once every longhour, so the Brewhouse gets a sunrise every longhour, and Zip has stopped looking at them. Zip is mopping. Something with four stomachs had an opinion about the house tea.

The regular in the privacy robe sits in the corner booth, same as always. Hood up. Orders water, drinks tea nobody poured, says nothing. When the robe leaves, the green circle on the table goes red. Payment declined. Not enough funds. On the table is a scrap of paper with an address and four words: Meldan. Ask for the door.

Zip's watch buzzes. It is a cheap watch, with no reputation attached to it, and it has never buzzed for money before.

Zip has been paid in a lot of things. Never in money somebody set on fire. Zip reads the scrap again. Zip never shies away from a challenge.

Service pod, descending · 3725 Rainmoon 21

The service pod is for kegs, not people. Zip fits because Zip is mostly knees. The last person to go down from X-14 to Veridia did it twenty years ago, and nobody on the ring remembers why.

Below, the world is white and green. Snow on the forest, forest to the horizon, and in the middle of it a city that seems to be hiding in its own trees. Meldan. The pod lands in a clearing in the Elenar Forest and opens like a tired mouth.

It is cold. Zip owns one jacket and it has the Brewhouse logo on it. Zip walks toward the lights.

Meldan, Veridia · 3725 Rainmoon 22

The hotel door has a green circle. Zip taps the watch on it, the way you tap a keg to see if it is empty.

Zip has no reputation in Veridia. Zip has no history here at all. In this country you do not show your name, you show a proof, and Zip has nothing to prove except that the mop was clean when he left.

A robot brings tea to a stranger on a bench and rolls away. Nobody tips it. Nobody talks to it. Zip watches this for a long time and understands two things. First: in Veridia, the only money that works for a nobody is the kind you burn. Second: nobody here has ever been poured a drink by a person.

Greater Plum Harbor, Meldan · 3725 Rainmoon 25

Behind a grey and purple wall there is a city inside the city, and inside that city there are tea shops, and inside the tea shops there are booths, and in every booth hooded people talk about taxes like they are weather.

The shop on the corner has a robot that has stopped working and an owner who has stopped caring. Zip walks in, picks up the robot's tray, and pours. It is tea. Zip has poured worse for things with more teeth.

By the third day the regulars ask for the barback by name, which in Greater Plum Harbor is a scandal, because nobody asks for anyone by name. By the fifth day Zip knows the rules of the place. Every name is a door. You burn at the door to prove you are worth opening it for. The bigger the burn, the louder the knock.

"Privacy for the weak, transparency for the powerful." Snowmoon, ch. 32. Zip is not sure which one a barback is. Zip wipes the counter.

Edge of Greater Plum Harbor · 3725 Windmoon 2

Zip opens a place. It has a door, a counter, a cellar, and a name painted on the step: THE DOORSTEP. It is the first brewhouse in Veridia with a human behind the counter, and the only one where the drinks are poured before the proof is checked.

The house rules are painted next to the name, because a barback who has cleaned up after a zerganon zegladoid knows what happens without rules.

The keg goes into the cellar and the cellar gets zipped for the season. While it is zipped nobody can tap the keg, not the regulars, not the robe, not Zip. Only the tips come up the stairs. Zip tells people this at the counter, and people in Veridia, who trust nothing they cannot prove, go and check, and come back, and stay.

The Doorstep · 3725 Windmoon 9

The robe comes in with the snow. Hood up. Corner booth. Water.

Zip pours tea nobody ordered and waits. The watch buzzes, and this time every watch in the room buzzes with it.

"Now you know I am someone to talk to," says the robe.

"You could have just said sorry," says Zip.

The robe takes the hood down. It is nobody Zip has seen before, which in Veridia is the point. They talk until the ring has gone around twice. The old tab from X-14 is never mentioned. It does not need to be. It was paid the moment it was set on fire.

Meldan, Veridia · 3725 Bloomtime 1

Spring in Veridia is the sound of snow leaving the roofs. Zip has a reputation now. It is not a number. It is a line of people outside a brewhouse at the edge of Greater Plum Harbor, hoods down, waiting for a pour from the only barback on the planet.

Up on the ring, the Starkraft Brewhouse has hired a robot. Zip hears it does fine.

Zip is not going back. Veridia is one long challenge with good tea, and Zip never shies away from a challenge.

And besides, the door is open.