“Alright. Say I do take option C — you get claim on eight large plates plus an organ, in exchange you spare no effort or expense. Do you want first-pick on the organs?” Krahe asked.

  Shavren thought it over for a moment, perhaps trying to decide if that specific wording was acceptable, and, apparently deciding that it was, he responded: “Assuming there’s nothing volatile, best to break down the carcass first and figure it out from there. Besides the plates, there’s nothing on the beastie I really want, the organ pick is just standard practice. Y’know, just in case. I should explain — my usual package, that is to say five plates and up, includes dissection, butchering, storage, hell I’ll even find you buyers for the parts if y’wanna sell. All part of my standard package, I’m just givin’ it to you on the cheap. I oughta let y’know, I’m not doing this for the love of the game, I’m doin’ it for the same reason as you.”

  “A self-grafter? I know you are not required to be certified if you only operate on yourself, but surely…” Casus interjected.

  The saurian huffed with faux indignation. “Please, d’you think I’m some barbarian stitching soulbeast limbs onto my stumps whole-cloth? Look at me! You think I hatched like this? High Grafter Fidelia wrote a case study on me, that’s how deformed I was. Near enough half of this is all my own work, baby.” he said, audibly pleased with himself.

  “Alright, say I put aside my doubts and take you for your word that you’re giving me a good deal. Why?” Krahe interjected, trying to bring things back on track. She actually didn’t think Shavren was lying, in fact she was fairly certain this was all to do with Garvesh somehow, but she wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

  And indeed, without missing a beat, the tracker answered, “Because Garvesh asked me to. Well, that and because you broke my brood-brother out of the Old Street Butchershop. Garvesh knows how to pull on someone’s strings when he wants to.”

  Krahe mulled it over for a moment, considering the deal, taking Shavren’s measure, mostly just to turn up the pressure a touch in case something had slipped her notice. Some people could keep up a perfect lie only to burst at the very end. Shavren didn’t, presumably because he indeed wasn’t bullshitting. However, there was… A discomfort to the tracker’s bearing. She knew that look. It wasn’t one of a liar, but of one who had found themself in a predicament, of one who had walked into the heart of peril, the lair of a terrible beast, and just now realized it. Shavren, the man, the head, the face, the eyes, didn’t betray it. It was the snake that was his tail, its tongue flicking, its head turning over, slowly, carefully, as one turns over a hand with wirecutters after realizing one was about to sever the wrong wire. The snake looked around, and saw the warding everywhere, just barely, just enough to realize that the walls within which it dwelt were built not to keep dangers out, but also to trap those unwelcome who were fool enough to enter.

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  In short, Shavren was uncomfortable because he realized that Krahe had built her fortress into the best approximation of a fortress-killbox she could. If anything, the gaps in her knowledge, the imprecisions, made it all the more blatant that this was not the result of a bored warding-master, but a direct reflection of her mindset.

  “Well alright, let’s go over the contract then,” Krahe said. Shavren pulled out the contract and set it down with a quickness that made it clear he had been waiting for the prompt. Simply reading it over took up an order of magnitude more time than the rest of the negotiation up until that point, but that was just how things went sometimes. In the end, neither Krahe nor Casus detected anything amiss. The contract stood out solely in the frankness of its wording, clearly written with some legal awareness, but not with the assumption that it would be picked apart by some sociopathic lawyer — as redundant a term as that was.

  When it was clear that the contract had held up to their scrutiny, the tracker spoke again.

  “I can prepare everything within the week. We will join up with one of the Beyond Frontier expeditionary caravans the day of our departure from the city, after that we will have ten days to hunt the beast. Call it superstition if you so wish, but the omens are clear. Ten days. The beasts have been antsy, and so have the caravaneers. Those in the know have consistently observed omens that something big will take place within a little over two weeks, so that is our limit for this attempt.”

  “Sounds good,” Krahe said. They signed the contract then and there, and Shavren, reiterating that he really had a dissection to get back to, made his leave.

  “Oh, you forgot one thing,” Krahe called out just as he opened the door. Shavren turned back smoothly, giving a questioning head-tilt, but his snake froze in dread. “Yes, what would that be?”

  “The soulbeast’s name. I kept looking but your dossier doesn’t say anything of the sort.”

  “Ah, that is an oversight. Hm…”

  For the few seconds of thought that he gave it, his tension dissipated.

  “Zirhayna?” he finally decided. There was a faint pleading tone. Just the slightest touch of it. Krahe could almost see him ever so slowly shifting through the door.

  “Sounds good, not too long. That’s all I wanted,” she agreed, and, with a thumbs-up, the tracker vanished out her door.

  “You ought to better-conceal your defenses,” Casus complained the moment Shavren was gone. “I’ve never seen a snake so mortified.”

  “Zirhayna, what language is that?” Krahe deflected, idly picking up a volume of Rampage to pick up where she’d left off.

  “Khovian. I believe it means armor-mirror,” Casus said, and did the same.

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