“You’ll know what they’re really thinking when their blade is at your throat,” his mentor would say. “Even the women. Especially the women with their little razors and needles. More dangerous than any knight with a ten-foot-long spear.”
Ren walked over to an herbalist’s stall.
“What’s your master want?” the man asked. Not for a second did he think Ren was there for himself. He was just an errand boy to him.
“Got any guhla?” Ren asked.
“Only the best,” the man said, face unreadable, and then added, “Lykola grown.” The traders always added the provenance like it meant something to Ren. All Ren knew was that Lykola was a southern realm that mattered little except it produced wondrous plants.
Ren nodded. “Give me all you have.”
While the man prepared the herbs, Ren scanned the market, looking for signs of house membership, hidden weapons, anything which might seem useful to his lord, and through his lord to his high matron.
“Information is the genuine power now,” his mentor used to say. “And that is something anyone can have… from the lowliest slave to the loftiest priestess. And I say the lowly have it easier now. No one notices us. No one cares. Not yet. Someday we’ll rise. Then who will be the high ones?” His mentor said these things in private, fueled by Yatani smoke and the cheapest, strongest wines. He was bitter, eaten through with regret, and Ren decided early on to listen, but not do whatever his mentor said. Extreme passions bothered him.
He paid the vendor and moved on, stashing the packets in a breast pocket. He moved from stall to stall, gathering the various implements of his work: powders, tinctures, herbs, needles, finger knives, a fake badge for Lor’Sonlyn, a middle-tier house that traded in honey wine, to add to his collection.
“Be prepared, Ren!” his mentor had said the day he passed away from a lung disease. “I’ve shared everything I know. Now go! Try not to get yourself killed!”
That was as tender as his mentor had ever been.
At a vendor with miscellaneous wares, Ren collected a package for his master and slid it into a satchel.
He meandered to the far end of the cavernous market, to a section set aside for crater house stalls. Treasures were on display. Guards lined the back wall and simply dressed servants manned the stalls. Foreigners couldn’t enter this section.
Necklaces, rings, brooches with jewels, chains, and folds of silken cloth shimmering with goddess power were on display. The heirlooms of a house or its most prized art. If one looked carefully and knew what to look for, it was clear which house was selling, but down here no one said a thing. This was the one place where the dignity of these houses was safe. They all sold down here. Even the snooty ones that thought themselves better than the others. Here in this hidden place, the Mornae’s past glories were on display. They sold their heritage, afraid to make known their weakness above.
He strutted amidst their treasures. He had enough chits to buy them. It saddened him by a smidge, but not enough to remove his disdain for them.
A black-as-night pup with tall ears and a long snout whined in a cage. Its fur was feathered at the tips and at the wrists and hocks.
Ren neared it, and the vendor stared at him. The pup was a Kiseyl hound or a descendant of one. Magical creatures born of the Dark. Bred by the Mornae to be hunting and battle companions, but also a true child of the goddess. Goddess-light flickered at the tips of its fine, wispy fur. Ren’s lord would want such a creature.
“How much?” Ren asked.
“As much kithaun as will fit in the cage,” a voice said from the shadows.
Ren masked his amazement. It seemed fair enough, but who would part with so much valuable material? The pup would bound off at the first opportunity. He snickered and winked at the shadow. It was an excellent scam. The pup, even that young, had more command of the Dark than any house that might buy it. It would just wink out one day and make its way back to its rightful master. Because no one really owns such creatures. Like the kithaun plates, slugs, needles, and blades, there was a voice, a mind, in them that was the true master. Only someone with a stronger mind could make the pup see it as the new master. Maunyn could do it, but his lord knew the breeders, and it would be more dignified to buy directly. Not to mention solidifying the alliance between Hosmyr and Vakayne.
No, this was a scam for the stupid, and Ren was no fool. He smirked at the shadowed form and moved on, wandering further in, admiring the fine folds of cloth, the fur-lined cloaks that promised to hide the wearer, the amulets and charms, the minute silver statues of the goddess, the icons and ancient tapestries.
Behind the vendors were more tunnels and sinkholes that fell away into nothingness.
“The city beneath is the actual city they were building,” his mentor had taught him. His mentor always talked about the Mornae like he wasn’t one of them. Like he had other ancestry. “They wanted to build down, deeper into the heart of the earth. That’s where power is. But that didn’t last long. It was harder than they thought. They got comfortable. So, they built up. Like diving into a lake, they’d go down as far as possible and then come up for air.”
But at least they were trying, Ren had reminded his long dead mentor. Not like the people now.
A clang sounded from a sinkhole, and he inched over to it. Far below, in a fathomless void, a light winked and vanished.
“Move along,” said a guard by a table which was clearly of an Ilor’Zauhune branch, though he couldn’t tell which.
He returned to the foreign section of the market, visiting the stalls on the west side. There, he found tiny glass vials holding a purplish-gray powder.
“What’s it for?” he asked.
“If you have to ask, it’s not for you,” said the vendor, a smallish brown woman with piercing amber eyes and curly, bright-gold hair.
Ren pointed at larger flasks holding a familiar gray dust, and said, “No one here will want that.”
The woman’s face grew serious. “Not yet.”
Something clacked at her hips, and she gave him a toothless grin. A chill ran up his spine and he moved on.
“Hair of the Zauhune champion,” said the vendor beside the gold-haired woman. Three silver hairs sat in a small box lined with black cloth. “Got them myself from the tavern he frequents. After a brawl. He killed five men with his bare hands. I saw it myself. Helped him even.”
Ren didn’t flinch. He doubted anyone here would dare get close to that knight, much less help him fight.
“Maybe you picked it up from the floor after he’d had his fill?” he asked.
“Could be,” the vendor said, scowling. “It’s got goddess-light. And that one has his blood.”
“From sheep I’d say.”
The man’s lips tightened. “Move along,” he hissed. The man seemed wounded, and he stared down at those hairs like they held a secret promise.
Ren chuckled. His mentor would say this veneration was a sign of weakness. Everyone blamed the Fall, but the real fall—the slide, he called it—had started sooner. Still, the vendor had given him an idea. What if he collected a sample of the champion’s hair? A verified strand. They said the champion had a chunk of shadowed hair at his nape. Those hairs might be worth something. He needed to do something noteworthy, something that would make his lord see him as more than a servant. He needed a house name, even an adoptive one. Without backing, he’d never be more than he was, and he’d been at this for what? Almost ten veils! That was nothing to crater Mornae, but he was from the border, and a decade was more than enough.
Until now, he’d been content to take orders like stalking nannies and snatching hair from the heads of unsuspecting children. He didn’t ask what the hair was for. What the children were for. He didn’t like the work, but if there was one thing he did right—or tried to—it was following orders. He grimaced as his stomach churned and a painful knot blocked his throat. The time was coming when he’d have to make moves of his own.
