Chapter 6 Summary: Tommo Cinnabar

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter opens with background on the Cinnabar family, once prominent in the crimson pigment trade until illegal price-fixing brought about their downfall. The family's reduced standing made them toxic in the marriage market, and the text notes that when all Cinnabars had no better option than to marry a Grey, the family would be no more. Once in the Greyzone, all fallen hues were rendered equal.

Eddie and Tommo park the Ford outside the Janitor's workshop, where Carlos conducts post-drive maintenance and logs mileage. The workshop is a collection of exempted old technology, including two Ford Model Ts (one for general use, one for hunting ball lightning with a crossbow-mounted copper spike), a forge, lathe, and milling machine powered by an exempted Everspin. The generator room for the central street lamp is locked, and no one has the key.

The centrepiece is the gyro-bike, East Carmine's entry for Jollity Fair's stored energy sprint race. Carlos hand-built the low-slung two-wheeled vehicle with wide tyres and a tight fairing. Jane was originally to pilot it, but with her hearing pending, Amelia Cinnabar—Tommo's first cousin and assistant Janitor—is the backup. Carlos explains that Jamie