The Spirit depletion from yesterday had faded and sleep had done its work.

  He sat up. The loft was half-empty—most of the families had already gone down. Through the floor he could hear the Hassin girl talking to her mother and the creak of people moving around the ground level.

  The auction closed at sundown. He had a full day to fill before then, and sitting in the warehouse thinking about it would make the hours worse.

  He climbed down the ladder, nodded to the door-watcher on his way out, and walked to the bazaar.

  He opened his stall at the usual time.

  The morning was slow. Three customers in the first hour—a dock laborer with a cracked white shard that Luca told him was worthless before the man even set it down, a young woman who'd bought a green crystal for six silver and wanted someone to tell her what it did before she absorbed it, and an older porter who came back for a second reading on a shard Luca had appraised two days ago.

  "You told me it was a defense skill that was footing-related," the porter said, setting the white crystal on the cloth. "I tried to sell it at the Exchange and the clerk said defense skills start at four silver. But the buyer I found only offered two."

  Luca picked up the shard. Stone Grip. The same one the big man with the sword had brought him on his first day.

  "The name doesn't tell the buyer enough," Luca said. "Stone Grip could mean a lot of things. If someone's looking for a footing skill specifically, they'd pay more. But a buyer who's just guessing from the name isn't going to take that chance."

  The porter frowned. "So what do I do with it?"

  "Hold onto it. Sell it to someone who actually needs it, not someone browsing at the Exchange. There's always a fighter somewhere looking for a way to stay on their feet."

  The man paid his two copper and left. Luca pocketed the coins.

  He made ten copper by noon. Combined with what he had, that put him at twenty-one copper and one silver. He bought a bowl of grain porridge from a stall two rows over—five copper, up from three last week—and ate it sitting on his cloth. Nobody around him was talking about the auction. The Stillwater Guard sale was guild-level business, and the people at the east stalls had other problems.

  He thought about going to the Exchange early and watching the verification room. But that was the kind of behavior that got noticed. The Iron Vow guards rotated shifts, but they talked to each other. A man loitering near the auction wing two days in a row would draw attention.

  He stayed at his stall and worked. Two more readings in the early afternoon—both Common whites. A kinetic striker and a minor thermal utility. He gave clean reads, took his copper, and kept his head down.

  At mid-afternoon, Dalla walked past his stall. She didn't stop. She was carrying a clay pot in each hand, headed toward the western fountain. As she passed, she said one word without turning her head.

  "Three."

  Kaine, Valis, and Tove—all still joining the auction.

  He closed the stall two hours before sundown and walked to the Exchange.

  The main hall had its usual foot traffic—traders checking postings, Council clerks processing transactions, a handful of people examining shards in the public display cases along the south wall. The auction wing was quieter, the attention in it more focused.

  Two Iron Vow guards stood at the entrance to the bidding hall and two more flanked the verification room. The blue shard was still on its velvet stand behind the glass.

  Luca found a spot along the east wall, near a bench where two men were discussing a trade dispute, and leaned against the stone. From here he could see the bidding hall entrance and the main corridor.

  Verosh Kaine arrived first. Luca recognized him from Dalla's description—big, sword on his hip, wearing clean clothes like he'd dressed for the occasion. Kaine stopped at the bidding hall entrance, spoke to one of the guards, and was waved through. He went in without looking back.

  Twenty minutes passed.

  Seraya Valis came next. Practical clothes, no guild colors, a leather folio under one arm. She showed something to the guards—a sealed letter or a bidding token—and they let her through.

  Forty minutes to sundown. The light through the Exchange's high windows had gone amber.

  Maren Tove didn't come through the front.

  Luca waited. He watched the main entrance, the side corridors, the back hallway that connected to the Council offices.

  Thirty minutes. Twenty. She wasn't coming. She'd changed her mind, or she'd been outmaneuvered, or she'd decided that trusting a two-copper appraiser with her money was a mistake.

  Fifteen minutes.

  Then he saw her. She came from the back corridor—the one that connected to the administrative wing. She must have entered from the far side, crossed through the clerks' offices, and come out behind the auction wing. Alone, no crew. She walked past the guards and into the bidding hall without breaking stride.

  The doors closed behind her.

  The bidding hall stayed closed for an hour past sundown.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Luca didn't move from his spot as the Exchange emptied around him. A guard lit the hall lamps and the building settled into its evening quiet.

  Sealed bids. Each buyer submitted their offer without knowing what the others had written. Iron Vow would open them at the same time, verify the funds, and announce the winner. You wrote a number, and that number either won or it didn't.

  Kaine would bid forty, maybe forty-five. Valis would bid whatever Ashmark's resale calculations supported. If they planned to flip the shard for sixty or seventy gold, they might go as high as fifty. Maren—he didn't know her ceiling. She'd said nothing about her budget.

  The bidding hall doors opened.

  A clerk came out first, carrying a ledger. Then the Iron Vow guards. Then the bidders.

  Verosh Kaine walked out with his jaw tight and his hand on his sword hilt. He crossed the main hall and left through the front entrance without speaking to anyone. Seraya Valis came out next, the leather folio closed under her arm. She paused near the entrance, wrote something in a small notebook, and left.

  Maren Tove was last. She walked out with the same stride she'd walked in with. Nothing in her hands—the shard wouldn't transfer until the Exchange processed the payment tomorrow. But something in her expression had changed, something quieter than triumph or relief.

  She crossed the main hall and passed within ten feet of Luca without looking at him. She didn't need to. They had an arrangement.

  A clerk nailed the results to the Exchange board five minutes later.

  STILLWATER GUARD — Rare (Blue) — Sold Winning bid: 52 gold Buyer: M. Tove (Independent)

  Fifty-two gold. She'd outbid both of them.

  He left the Exchange and walked to Pier Nine. The evening air was cold and the streets were thinning. He sat on the coil of rope with the same view of black water and the harbor's broken outline, and waited for the hour to come around.

  Maren would have the shard tomorrow once the Exchange processed the transfer. After that she'd absorb it, and then she'd know whether his read was right. If it was, she'd just bought a Rare perception skill that nobody else in Korrath knew existed. If it wasn't, she'd spent fifty-two gold on a wasted slot and she would find him.

  He wasn't wrong. The resonance from Stillwater Guard had been clear. But he'd know for certain when she absorbed it and told him what it did.

  When the hour was right, he stood and walked to the Boatman's Rest.

  The common room was half-full. Luca ordered a bowl of stew—eight copper—and ate it standing at the bar while he watched the door.

  The young man with the crooked jaw came in first. Maren's crew. He took a table near the entrance with the woman who carried the crossbow case. They ordered drinks and didn't look at Luca.

  Maren came through the door ten minutes later and went straight to the back room.

  Luca finished his stew, set the bowl on the bar, and followed.

  The back room was the same as last night. Four tables, a shuttered window, a candle in a dish. Maren sat at the far table with her back to the wall. No knife on the table this time. She had a cup in front of her and her hands wrapped around it.

  Luca sat across from her.

  For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Maren said, "Fifty-two gold."

  "I saw."

  "Everything I had. Everything my crew had." She took a drink from her cup. "If this shard does what you say it does, we're set. If it doesn't, my people are broke and I owe debts I can't pay in a city where I don't have a guild backing me."

  "The transfer is tomorrow afternoon," she said. "Exchange opens the processing at midday. Iron Vow hands over the shard, the Council clerk witnesses, and I walk out with it. I'll absorb it tomorrow night."

  "Not right away?"

  "Not in front of anyone at the Exchange. I'll do it somewhere private, with my crew watching the door." She looked at him. "I want you there."

  "Why?"

  "Because if something goes wrong during absorption, I want someone who can tell me what's happening. And because if it works, I want you to see it. You said part of your deal was learning what the skill actually does once I've used it."

  It made sense. It also put him inside Maren's operation in a way he hadn't planned on. Being present for the absorption meant her crew would see him, know his face, understand that he was involved. That was more exposure than a handshake at a tavern table.

  "Your crew," he said. "How much do they know about me?"

  "They know I hired an appraiser who gave me a read on the shard. They don't know what you told me about it. I kept that between us."

  "The one with the crooked jaw. He stopped me on Chandler's Row yesterday and paid me for a reading on a white striker shard."

  Maren's expression didn't change. "That was a test. I needed to know if you were real before I sat down with you."

  "And the reading was accurate?"

  "Down to the detail. He absorbed the shard yesterday—quick-hit striker, close range, exactly what you said." She set her cup down. "That's why I bid fifty-two gold on your word, Luca. Because my guy absorbed a Common shard and it did exactly what you told him it would."

  She'd verified him before the first meeting.

  "I'll be there," he said. "Tomorrow night. Where?"

  "We have a room above a chandler's shop on the west side of the old textile district on the third floor. My guy will meet you at your stall at closing and walk you over."

  "The one with the messed up jaw?"

  "His name is Ren." She said it with a tone that meant she expected him to use it.

  Maren leaned back in her chair. "There's something else. If the shard is what you say—if it's a perception skill and not defense—then the people who sold it don't know what they gave away. Iron Vow thinks they sold a defensive Rare for fifty-two gold, and that's a good price, for a defense shard."

  "It is."

  "But if they ever find out it was something else, they're going to want to know how I knew. And that trail leads back to an appraiser." She held his gaze. "I won't give you up. That's part of our deal and I keep my deals. But I need you to understand that from tomorrow on, we're both carrying something that gets more dangerous the more people learn about it."

  "I've been carrying it since the day I absorbed my shard," Luca said.

  "Then you know what I'm talking about. Same terms as before?" she asked.

  "Same terms. You bring me shards to read before you buy, I tell you what I see, and you tell me how close my reads are once you've used them. You pay per reading, rate negotiable, and you don't tell anyone what I can do."

  She nodded. "Then we have a deal. Except now there's fifty-two gold riding on it."

  She stood and extended her hand. Luca shook it.

  She left through the curtain. Luca sat alone in the back room and listened to the candle gutter. For the first time since he'd walked into the bazaar and felt that mismatch pull at him, he wasn't carrying it alone.