The city of Harren-Dock was respectable enough on the surface—granite quays, lighthouse spires, and tidy excise offices that smiled upon passing customs inspectors. But its true heart beat somewhere deeper, pulsing in lightless vaults drilled straight through the bedrock and washed by tides of contraband no harbour master could chart.
Fornos Dag reached that heart just past midnight.
He wore no merchant silks this night—only a charcoal cloak stitched with dust-coloured runes that blurred outlines in weak lamplight. Two Architects moved at his shoulders: Wren, a wiry woman whose left eye glimmered silver from an alchemical transplant, and Jerrik, broad-backed and silent, carrying a small iron lockbox manacled to his wrist. Their guide, a dock-rat boy no older than thirteen, tapped hidden bricks in a warehouse wall; a geared panel slid aside, exhaling stale air tinged with myrrh and whale-oil.
"Down three flights," the boy whispered, collecting his pre-agreed silver tongue-bit and scurrying back into the night.
The Bazaar Below
The stairs spiralled into a cavernous cistern lit by hanging cages of mana-glass. Hundreds milled between stall-tables fashioned from shipwreck timber: brokers in plague-masks, desert mystics with bottled star-dust, freebooter captains hawking captured Codices. Coin rang, but most trade occurred in whispers, sealed parchments, and deeds of blackmail.
Fornos breathed in the market's language—a symphony of risk and desperation—and allowed himself a thin smile. Perfect.
Wren steered toward the Ashen Ledger, a stall marked by a burnt-white banner. Its keeper—a hunched elder with skin like parchment—traded exclusively in Relict fragments: slivers of calcified core-bone, vesicles of crystallised mana ichor, sub-cutaneous plates that hummed faintly when near hot iron.
Jerrik opened the lockbox and removed a velvet-wrapped bundle no larger than a dagger handle. He placed it on the counter, then stepped back.
The elder peeled the velvet.
A hush stole over nearby patrons as they recognised the object: a needle-thin shard of Relict rib—pure, flawless, still warm with residual resonance. Few such pieces existed outside royal laboratories; fewer still changed hands without armies noticing.
The elder's eyes glittered. "Opening bid?"
"Information first," Fornos said. His voice was pleasant, conversational—and utterly uncompromising. "Which consortiums here tonight buy in tonnage, not trinkets?"
The elder tapped his bony fingers. "Three you might interest."
He slid three stamped chits across the table:
Saffron Collegium – an arcane guild from the eastern archipelagos, famous for grafting Relict marrow into spell-glass. Their chit bore a sunburst sigil, each ray a stylised scalpel.
Admiralty of Kesh – a sea-power whose ironclad fleets relied on Relict-powered keels. Their seal depicted crossed anchors around an empty throne.
Blank parchment, save for a blood-red wax wolf's head—recognisable to those in the know as the proxy mark of House Ornes.
Fornos pocketed the chits. "Good. The shard is yours—auction it, melt it, pray to it. Your choice."
The elder bowed low; the bazaar's onlookers scattered, already recalculating risk. Few dealers gave away Relict marrow gratuitously. Whoever the cloaked buyer was, he clearly possessed more.
A Quiet Negotiation
Fornos cued Wren with a tilt of his head. She disappeared into the crowd, tasked with tailing Saffron Collegium factors. Jerrik angled toward a knot of sailors wearing Keshan shoulder clips—he would drink with them, speak of phantom salvage sites, and listen.
Fornos himself threaded a course toward the back gallery, where high-stakes trades whispered behind resin curtains. He found the Ornes proxy easily: the man wore a wolf-head lapel pin half-hidden by a silk cravat, and his valet carried an obsidian case just long enough to cradle a collapsible mana-lance.
The proxy's smile was viper-thin. "Lovely market tonight."
"Quite," Fornos agreed, eyes skimming the case. "I hear House Ornes hopes to field city-killers next campaign season. That takes… exotic components."
The proxy's nostrils flared. "We acquire what we require."
"Then you'll be interested in this." Fornos produced a folded chart—embroidered edges, official maritime markings—depicting a string of islands north-west of the Viscus Fault. He let the proxy glimpse coordinates inked in a scholar's hand: possible Relict carcass.
"Unverified," Fornos said, sliding the map just out of reach. "Still, my scouts spotted manganese glass ruptures—the sort only colossal mana discharge can make."
"Price?" the proxy asked.
"A promise." Fornos's eyes hardened. "If you act on the lead, commit your fleets fully. No half-measure observation. I need all Ornes attention there for at least a month."
The proxy's gaze sharpened—realisation dawning that he was being steered. But arrogance painted his smirk. "Done," he said, as if springing a trap he, not Fornos, had set.
They sealed with a grip. Fornos handed over the false chart—coordinates intentionally offset by two hundred leagues. A dead zone. Let Ornes scour empty seas while the Ash Company struck inland.
One rival distracted.
Later, Fornos watched from a mezzanine as Wren facilitated an impromptu auction. She displayed the rib shard the elder had just purchased—now fractured into five finger-segments. Each segment went to a different bidder: the Collegium, the Admiralty, a Freehold thaumaturge, and two shadow buyers who never removed their masks.
Bids weren't in coin. They were in promises—escort rights, chartered holds on fast schooners, crates of sealed condensers. Fornos noted every concession, every shipping lane unlocked.
But one revelation chilled him: the Admiralty buyer let slip that Keshan factories had already received anti-behemoth ballistae—harpoons tipped with crystallised aetherite, effective only against targets fifty metres or taller. Exactly the threat a City-class Relict posed.
So Ornes isn't our only shadow, Fornos mused. Kesh is fitting nets while Ornes collects lances.
He filed the knowledge away, lips tightening.
Before departing, Fornos commissioned a street-scrivener to pen five identical rumors in ten different dialects, each copied onto weather-worn sailor logs and smuggler diaries. The rumors spoke of a "bone-reef" protruding from the eastern rim of Viscus Fault—exit point of a dormant leviathan. Coordinates were almost plausible, except any map-savant would see the approach required crossing lands laced with Mycian plague spores. Suicide for anyone in conventional armour.
The fake logs were "lost" in taverns, tucked in wharf-rats' pockets, or sold cheaply to gossip-mongers. Within days the rumor would grow legs; within weeks rival camps would shift manpower toward the eastern rim—away from the true capture corridor Fornos had charted through the Grinder Tunnels.
Hours before dawn, the Architect cell resurfaced through a rusted drainage hatch four streets from the innocent-looking inn that masked their safehouse. Fornos scrubbed chalk dust from his gloves, mind humming with new calculus:
Saffron Collegium would pay top coin, but demanded exclusivity.
Admiralty of Kesh could move Relict cargoes by sea—payment better measured in escort tonnage than gold.
House Ornes was already committed to counter-measures; their distraction would buy precious weeks.
He would hedge: negotiate provisional sale terms with the Collegium, secure an emergency extraction pact with Kesh, and keep Ornes chasing ghosts across empty oceans.
Back at the desk, Wren laid fresh parchments—intercepted freight ledgers bearing the false coordinates. Jerrik dropped a pouch of Keshan script tokens—proof the Admiralty had accepted his bar-talk as credible.
"Good haul," Fornos said quietly. He opened his ledger, added three new columns of obligations, escorts, and misinformation nodes. Every lie, like every coin, had to be accounted for.
Outside, Harren-Dock began to wake—fishers rang bells, gulls cried, and the respectable world resumed its respectable business. Below, the Ghost Market's lamps guttered out, secrets traded for secrets until night returned.
Fornos closed his notebook. Let them buy the scent of bones, he thought. We'll take the marrow itself.