Beads graded from pearl grey through smoke to black, strung in order, with engraved silver-tone spacers marking the turns. Nothing is random in it; the gradient is the design. It is the last numbered piece of the first edition.

It belongs to Guard. In the old cities the central axis was the line everything else was measured from; a building that sat on it was in order, and one that did not was corrected. Tradition gives banded agate to those who want their affairs to sit on that line, and smoky quartz to keep them there.

For the person whose work is putting things in order and keeping them so. Worn on the right, the gradient runs from light at the pulse to dark at the bone.