The fog had rolled in early that morning, which meant the harbor ships would be late, which meant the monster deliveries would be delayed, which meant Arka Vale was going to have a very bad day.
He stood at the edge of Hunter Alley and watched the crowds move through the Outer Market below. From his raised position on the iron walkway, he could see the whole floor stretching out beneath him. It was a long corridor of cages, crates, and wooden pens filled with creatures that snarled and hissed at anyone who walked too close. Gas lamps hung from the stone ceiling on thick chains, casting yellow light across the wet cobblestones. The air smelled like damp fur and old blood, which was simply what the Bazaar always smelled like.
Arka was nineteen years old, and he had been breathing that smell for most of his life.
He pulled his coat tighter and leaned on the iron railing. His eyes moved across the market stalls below, cataloguing everything automatically. That was what Appraisal Sight did. It gave him information whether he wanted it or not.
A heavyset merchant on the left was trying to sell a pair of iron-fang wolves. Arka could see the faint shimmer around the cages that told him the creatures were E Rank, moderately aggressive, no hidden abilities.
IRON-FANG WOLF
Rank: E | Alive
Threat: Moderate | Value: 40–50 silver
Ability: None detected
The merchant was asking sixty-five. Someone was about to get cheated.
Three stalls further along, a younger hunter was offering a glass jar containing something dark and liquid. The jar had a handwritten label. Arka could read the shimmer around it from where he stood.
NIGHT-CRAWLER BILE
Rank: F Material | Preserved
Quality: Standard | Value: 11–13 silver
Use: Anti-paralysis medicine
Decent quality. The hunter had priced it at twelve silver, which was actually fair. He would probably sell it quickly.
Arka straightened up and walked along the walkway toward the stairs. He had no interest in wolves or bile today. He had a meeting.
His client was a man named Torven, a mid-level merchant who operated a small shop in the Merchant District above ground. Torven supplied a private clinic that treated wealthy patients, and the clinic needed fresh moon-gill extract, which came from a type of amphibious creature called a moon-gill toad. The toad was not dangerous, only rare, and Arka had located a hunter who claimed to have three of them available.
Simple job. Match seller with buyer, take a commission, go home.
He reached the bottom of the stairs and moved through the crowd. People stepped aside for him without being asked. He was not particularly large or threatening-looking, but he had lived in the underground markets long enough that he moved in a way that said he belonged there. Newcomers stumbled and stared. Locals walked with their eyes forward.
Arka kept his eyes moving.
He passed a row of hanging carcasses. Something with too many limbs. Something scaled and headless. A creature about the size of a large dog that had been dried and preserved, its mouth stretched open to show rows of flat grinding teeth.
WHISPERING MARSH GRAZER
Rank: D | Bone Only
Value: 18–22 silver
He had sold three of those last month.
A man bumped into him from the left. Arka stepped sideways automatically, checked his coat pockets with a quick touch, and kept walking. His coin purse was still there. The man had not been a pickpocket, just someone moving too fast.
Hunter Alley opened up ahead of him. It was noisier than the Outer Market, the smell sharper. This was where the working hunters came to sell what they had caught in the wilderness outside the city. The creatures here were fresher. Some of them were still alive, secured in reinforced cages with iron locks and binding runes painted on the bars in red.
Arka found the stall he was looking for near the back wall. It was marked with a green cloth hung over the corner post, which was the signal he had arranged. The hunter standing behind the table was a lean woman in her thirties, with short hair and a scar that ran from her left ear down to her jaw. She had three wooden crates on the table in front of her, each about the size of a bread box, each sealed with ventilation holes cut into the sides.
"Vale," she said.
"Sona," he said back. "Are those them?"
"Three moon-gill toads, alive and healthy. Caught them in the marsh east of the city two days ago. They are fed and stable." She knocked on the side of one of the crates. Something inside made a soft sound, a low wet warble.
Arka leaned forward and let his Appraisal Sight focus on the nearest crate.
MOON-GILL TOAD (x3)
Rank: F | Alive | Healthy
Threat: None | Value: 20–22 silver each
Biological Property: Gill fluid — medicinal grade
He nodded.
"They're genuine. Good condition."
"I know they're genuine. I caught them. What is your buyer offering?"
"Sixty silver for all three, delivered to his shop this afternoon."
"I want seventy."
Arka had expected that. He thought for a moment, not because he was unsure, but because he wanted to look like he was considering it seriously.
"Sixty-five. I will cover the carrying fee for the crates."
Sona looked at him for a moment, then nodded.
"Fine. Sixty-five. When does your buyer arrive?"
"He won't. I pick up the goods and deliver them myself. Less complication."
"You trust me not to disappear between now and then?"
"I trust that you want to keep doing business in this market," Arka said, without any particular sharpness in his voice. It was simply a fact and they both knew it.
Sona almost smiled.
"Two hours. I will hold them."
He moved away from her stall and began making his way back through Hunter Alley. The commission on this job would be eight silver coins, which was not a large amount, but it was clean work with no complications. Arka preferred clean work. Complicated jobs paid better, but they also had a way of turning into situations that required running or fighting, and he was only moderately good at either.
He was very good at looking at things and understanding what they were. That was enough, most of the time.
* * *
He was nearly back to the main corridor when his Appraisal Sight flickered.
He stopped walking.
The ability did not usually flicker. It was passive, always active at a low level, like a background sound he had learned to ignore. But sometimes it surged, responding to something unusual nearby. Something it could not easily categorize.
He stood still and let his eyes move slowly across the space around him. Cages. Crates. People. A large pen on his left held three creatures that looked like oversized lizards with membrane wings folded against their backs.
RIDGE-WING LIZARD (x3)
Rank: D | Alive
Threat: High | Aggressive behavior detected
Standard reading. Not them.
He looked further.
There was a small cage near the wall, partially hidden behind a larger stack of crates. The cage was covered with a heavy canvas cloth, the kind used to transport light-sensitive creatures. It was not unusual by itself.
But his Sight was responding to it strongly.
Arka moved toward it. He was careful about this, keeping his pace casual, his expression neutral, his hands loose at his sides. He stopped about two meters away and let the Appraisal focus.
The reading that came back was wrong.
UNKNOWN SPECIMEN
Rank: ERROR — Cannot classify
Threat: Fluctuating | Biological: Unrecognized
Status: ???
Not wrong in a way he could immediately name. The rank reading was strange, inconsistent, as if the ability could not properly categorize what was inside the cage. The threat assessment flickered between zero and high. In four years of using Appraisal, he had always received a clear reading.
He stood there for a moment, looking at the covered cage.
Then the thing inside made a sound.
It was not a growl. It was not a hiss or a screech or any of the other sounds that filled Hunter Alley on a normal afternoon. It was quiet. It was two syllables.
It said, "Please."
Arka did not move for a long moment. He kept his face still and his breathing steady, because those were the habits that kept a person safe in the underground markets. He looked around the immediate area. The nearby stalls were busy. Nobody seemed to have noticed.
He looked back at the cage.
"Please," the voice said again. It was soft. It sounded young. It sounded exhausted.
Arka reached out slowly and lifted the edge of the canvas cloth. He looked inside the cage.
A girl looked back at him.
She was young, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, with dark eyes and tangled hair and a face that was thin from hunger. She was curled in the corner of the cage with her knees pulled to her chest. Her clothing was torn. Her wrists had marks on them from binding ropes.
She was not a monster.
His Appraisal Sight was still flickering, still sending back that confused reading, still unable to properly categorize her. That was the part that he could not explain. The ability had never failed him before. It had always been clear about what was a creature and what was not.
But she was looking at him with human eyes, and she had spoken in a human voice, and there was nothing monstrous about her face.
"Please," she said for the third time. Her voice was barely above a whisper. "Don't let them sell me."
Arka let the canvas fall back into place. He straightened up and looked around the alley again. His heart was beating faster than it should have been. He kept his expression the same.
Someone had brought a human girl into the monster market.
And somehow, the monster market had accepted her as a legitimate product.
He walked away at a normal pace, back toward the main corridor, back toward the crowds and the noise and the familiar smell of the Bazaar. He walked until he reached a quiet corner near an unoccupied stall, and he stopped there and stood still and thought about what he had just seen.
His commission today was eight silver coins.
Whatever that cage represented was worth a great deal more than that.
And considerably more dangerous.
He stood in the corner for a long moment, weighing the problem. Then he turned and walked back toward Hunter Alley, because he had never once in his life been able to leave a mystery alone, and he was not going to start today.