In a city where mirrors sometimes lag, the Mirrorwrights have made themselves indispensable. Their Court occupies a converted warehouse in the upper Market Tiers, its interior transformed into a maze of workshops where silver is applied to glass with techniques passed down through generations. The air smells of mercury and secrets.
What They Make
Most mirrors produced here are ordinary — sold to merchants and households throughout the city. But the Mirrorwrights also craft pieces they call "true mirrors": looking glasses that show accurate reflections regardless of Venturia's peculiarities.
The process is expensive. The waiting list is long. Certain city officials, the Watch, and wealthy families pay premium prices for mirrors that won't deceive them.
Their Other Work
The Court is occasionally consulted in legal matters — disputes about identity, accusations of impersonation, cases where someone claims not to recognize their own reflection. Senior Mirrorwrights serve as expert witnesses, though they're careful never to explain exactly how they know what they know.
Some say the craft requires looking into mirrors for so long that you learn to see what others can't.
Character Hooks
- Artisan trained in the true mirror techniques
- Someone whose reflection once showed something wrong
- Former apprentice who discovered the Mirrorwrights' real secrets
- Client who needed a true mirror for deeply personal reasons
- Watch consultant called in to settle identity cases
Connections
- Cosimo Verdigris — Names this location in its connections.
- Isidore Verdigris — Names this location in its connections.
- Thalia Verdigris — Names this location in its connections.
- The Market Tiers — Lists this location among its notable places.
- The Metals Guild — Names this location in its connections.
- The Verdigris Family — Names this location in its connections.
How the Court Closes a Question
From Hired Into Silence.
A journeyman of the Court pulled the hand-records looking for a match to an unregistered piece of optical work and found none in four decades of samples. He then asked a senior about it openly in a corridor, in front of two other journeymen.
By the following morning a certified woman was waiting at his bench, before he arrived. She did not say what part of the Court she came from. She told him his records request had been noticed upstairs, and offered him the junior assessor's post two years early: certification authority, his own bench, a generous stipend. The standing rule attached to the post is that an assessor does not investigate unregistered work — he reports it, and the Court handles it.
Nobody threatened him. Nobody had to. Whoever sent her also knew how many diagrams had been pinned on his shutter before two of them were thrown into a bin in a closed room the night before last.