The bazaar at dusk was a different animal than the bazaar at noon.

  The legitimate traders were packing up—folding their blankets, locking their strongboxes, casting nervous glances toward the side streets where the lamplight didn't reach. In their place, a second economy was waking up. Dice games on overturned crates. A woman selling unlabeled potions from a bandolier across her chest. Two men with matching scars haggling over something wrapped in oilcloth that neither wanted to show in the open.

  Luca moved through it with his head on a swivel. He wasn't looking for the underworld tonight. He was looking for Dalla.

  Dalla Kesk ran a tea stall near the western fountain—real tea, not the boiled bark most people passed off as a hot drink. She'd been a trade clerk for one of Korrath's import houses before the Fracture, and she'd pivoted into the bazaar economy faster than anyone Luca had met. She didn't sell shards. She sold about shards. Who was buying. Who was selling. Which guilds were clearing which dungeon floors and how often. She charged for the information, and she was worth every copper, because Dalla didn't guess. She listened.

  He found her stall still open—a battered table under a canvas awning, two clay pots steaming over a coal box. Dalla herself sat behind the table on a stool that looked older than the city, a heavyset woman with close-cropped hair and hands that were always moving—pouring, wiping, counting coins, writing notes in a shorthand Luca couldn't read.

  She saw him coming and poured a second cup without being asked.

  "You're here late," she said.

  "I closed early." Luca sat on the empty stool across from her and wrapped his hands around the cup. The warmth helped. His fingers were still unsteady from the Spirit drain, and the heat masked the tremor. "I need to know who's bidding on Stillwater Guard."

  Dalla's hands paused for exactly one beat. Then she went back to wiping down the table.

  "That's not a two-copper question."

  "I know."

  "That's not even a six-copper question."

  "I know that too." He reached into his pocket and set a full silver on the table. His last one. The coin he'd been saving for three days against the possibility of needing to bribe his way past a checkpoint or buy food when the bazaar ran dry.

  Dalla looked at the silver. Then she looked at him for a long moment.

  "You can't afford that shard, Luca."

  "I'm not trying to buy it."

  "Then what are you trying to do?"

  He held her gaze. This was the part that mattered. Dalla wasn't just an information broker—she was a filter. She decided what she sold and to whom, and she had a reputation for not feeding people to the wolves. If he lied to her, she'd know, and he'd never get another answer from her stall.

  If he told her the truth, he was trusting her with something that could get him killed.

  He split the difference.

  "I think the shard isn't what Iron Vow says it is," he said. "Not what the name implies. And I think the wrong buyer is going to spend forty gold and end up with something they can't use."

  Dalla set down her rag. "And you know this how?"

  "I'm good at my job."

  "You're a Common-tier appraiser with a two-copper stall."

  "And every reading I've given has been accurate. You know that. You've checked."

  Another pause. Dalla picked up the silver coin, turned it between her fingers, and set it back on the table between them.

  "Keep it," she said.

  Luca blinked. "What?"

  "I said keep it. You look like you haven't eaten since yesterday, and I don't take payment from people who are about to do something stupid enough that I might feel guilty about it later." She leaned forward. "But I'll answer your question, because I want to hear what you do with the answer. Call it professional curiosity."

  She poured herself a cup of tea and took a slow sip.

  "Three serious bidders. First is Verosh Kaine—independent, Tier 2 Vanguard, been saving for months. He wants a defensive anchor for his build. Thick neck, thicker skull, doesn't ask a lot of questions before he hits things." She waved her hand. "He'll bid forty, maybe forty-five. He can't go higher."

  "Second?"

  "Seraya Valis. She runs logistics for the Ashmark Consortium. She's not buying for herself—she's buying for resale to one of the southern settlements that's desperate for defensive skills. Ashmark would flip it for sixty, maybe seventy gold depending on transport costs and how scared the buyer is."

  Luca filed that away. A consortium buyer. They wouldn't care what the skill did as long as the next buyer believed it was worth more. The mislabel would travel further, but it would still land on someone who expected a shield and got a telescope.

  "And the third?"

  Dalla set her cup down. "That's the one you're going to care about. Maren Tove."

  The name meant nothing to Luca. "Who?"

  "Used to run with a crew out of Saltmere before the harbor went bad. Showed up in Korrath about two weeks ago with what was left—four people, maybe five. No guild insignia. They've been running the sewer dungeon independently, which means they're either very good or very desperate." Dalla paused. "My sense is both."

  "Why would a scout bid on a defense shard?"

  "That's the interesting part." Dalla's eyes were sharp now, the lazy demeanor gone. "She wouldn't. Maren Tove builds around perception and spatial awareness. Her crew calls her the Compass. She reads rooms the way you read crystals—always knows where the threat is before it moves."

  Luca's pulse jumped. He kept his expression flat. "So why is she bidding on Stillwater Guard?"

  "Because she can't afford not to. A Rare shard at auction is a Rare shard at auction—even if the name doesn't fit her build, she can trade it for something that does. Or she's hoping the name is misleading and the skill is broader than it sounds." Dalla shrugged. "She's been asking around. Quietly. She came to my stall two days ago wanting to know if anyone in Korrath had real appraisal ability—someone who could tell her more about a shard than name and color."

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The air between them went very still.

  Luca understood now why Dalla had refused the silver. This wasn't a transaction. It was a introduction.

  "You told her about me," he said.

  "I told her there's a man on the east side who gives accurate domain reads on Common shards for two copper, and that I've verified six of his calls personally. I did not tell her you could read anything higher than Common, because until thirty seconds ago, I didn't know you could." Dalla picked up her rag again. "Now I do. And I'm going to give you some advice you didn't pay for."

  "I'm listening."

  "Maren Tove is smart, she's careful, and she doesn't burn her sources. If you have information that matches what she needs, she'll pay well and she'll keep her mouth shut, because she knows the value of a reliable appraiser better than anyone in this city." Dalla's voice dropped. "But she's also desperate, Luca. Desperate people cut corners. If you walk into a room with her and she figures out exactly how much your skill can do, you're not leaving that room as a vendor. You're leaving as an asset. And assets don't get to set their own terms."

  Luca stared at his tea. The surface trembled—his hands, not the table.

  "Where does she drink?" he asked.

  Dalla sighed.

  "The Boatman's Rest. Back room. She's there most evenings after the bazaar closes." She held up a finger. "One more thing. She doesn't know the shard is mislabeled. Nobody does, apparently, except you. So think very carefully about how much you reveal and what you ask for in return. Because once you tell someone that a shard's name can lie, you're not selling information about one crystal. You're selling the idea that every crystal on the market might be wrong. That's not a secret. That's a bomb."

  Luca pocketed the silver she'd refused. "Thank you, Dalla."

  "Don't thank me. Buy me a proper teapot when you can afford one. Mine has a crack."

  The Boatman's Rest was a dockside tavern that had survived the Fracture through the simple virtue of being too run-down to repurpose. The ground floor was a common room with warped floorboards and a bar made from a ship's hatch. The back room was separated by a curtain that had once been a sail.

  Luca pushed through the front door and let his eyes adjust. Half a dozen people at the bar. A card game in the corner. The smell of cheap grain alcohol and fish stew.

  He ordered a bowl of the stew—eight copper, criminal pricing, but he needed something in his stomach before the Spirit depletion turned into a full collapse—and ate it standing at the bar while he scanned the room. Nobody behind the curtain yet. He was early.

  The stew was mostly broth with pieces of something that might have been fish. He ate it anyway.

  A woman came through the front door twenty minutes later. She was shorter than Luca—wiry, dark-haired, with a scar along her jawline and a careful stride. Two people followed her in: a broad man with a hand-axe on his belt and a younger woman carrying a crossbow case. They took a table near the door. The dark-haired woman went straight to the back.

  The man with the hand-axe glanced at Luca as he sat down. Luca recognized him—the crooked jaw, the leather shard pouch on his belt. He was the boy from the intersection on Chandler's Row. The one who'd grabbed Luca's shoulder and paid six copper for a reading on a white striker shard. He looked different without the three friends behind him. Older, maybe. More composed. At the time, Luca had thought he was just a kid trying to figure out what he'd found. Now he wasn't so sure.

  Luca waited two minutes. Then he finished his stew, set the bowl on the bar, and followed her through the curtain.

  The back room was small—four tables, a shuttered window, a candle guttering in a dish. Maren Tove sat at the far table with her back to the wall, a cup in front of her and a knife resting on the wood beside it.

  She watched Luca enter and said nothing.

  He sat across from her.

  "I'm told you're looking for an appraiser," he said.

  "I'm told you're the only one worth talking to." Her voice was flat, controlled. "Dalla says you can read domains on shards you've never seen before. That's more than standard Appraise."

  "Standard Appraise shows a name. I give context."

  "Context." She turned the word over. "What kind of context did you get on the blue shard Iron Vow is selling tomorrow?"

  Luca respected that, even as the back of his neck went cold.

  "Why do you think I have a read on it?"

  "Because you closed your stall three hours early on the same day Iron Vow paraded a Rare through the bazaar, and then you went to the one information broker in Korrath who knows my name. You're not here to sell me a Common-tier reading, Luca. You're here because you saw something."

  He let a breath pass. Two.

  "Stillwater Guard isn't a defense skill," he said.

  Maren Tove didn't move. But something sharpened behind her eyes.

  "Go on."

  "The name says defense, but the resonance is all wrong. It's a perception skill—spatial awareness, maybe predictive. The kind of thing that maps threats before they reach you." He paused. "The kind of skill a woman called the Compass might want."

  Silence. The candle flickered.

  Maren picked up her cup, took a long sip, and set it down again. When she spoke, her voice was quieter.

  "How certain are you?"

  "Certain enough to stake my reputation on it. I have eleven copper and a stall that only works if people trust what I tell them."

  "You could be running a con. Pump up the shard's value to a buyer you've profiled, take a finder's fee, and disappear."

  "I could. But a con artist would tell you what you want to hear. I'm telling you what the shard is, before the auction, not after." He held her gaze. "If I wanted to cheat you, I'd wait until you lost the bid and then offer to find you something better."

  Maren studied him for a long moment.

  "What do you want?" she asked.

  He'd been turning this over since the pier. The answer had to be small enough that she'd say yes and large enough that it meant something. Not gold—he needed something more durable than currency.

  "Two things," Luca said. "First: if the shard is what I say it is, you tell me what it actually does once you've absorbed it. I need to know how close my read was—the more I can verify, the sharper I get."

  "And second?"

  "A standing arrangement. You bring me shards to read before you buy. I tell you what I see. You pay me per reading—rate negotiable—and you don't tell anyone what I can do. Not your crew. Not your friends. Nobody."

  "You're asking for a client relationship."

  "I'm asking for a wall between me and the people who'd gut me for this skill if they knew what it could do."

  Something crossed Maren's face. Recognition. She was a scout. She understood.

  "If the shard isn't what you say it is," she said, "I will find you, and I will take back whatever I paid you, and then some. And no one in Korrath will deal with you again. Deal?"

  "Deal."

  "And if it is—" She tapped the knife on the table once. "—then we talk terms. Real terms. Not dockside handshakes."

  Luca nodded.

  Maren Tove stood. The knife vanished—wrist sheath, fast enough that Luca didn't see the motion, only the absence.

  "The auction closes at sundown tomorrow. You'll know if I won by evening. If I did, meet me here the same time." She looked at him from the doorway. "Get some sleep, Luca. You look like you're about to fall over."

  She was through the curtain before he could respond.

  Luca sat alone in the back room of the Boatman's Rest and listened to his own heartbeat. His head was pounding. His hands were shaking again—worse now, the adrenaline fading and the Spirit depletion rushing in to fill the gap. The candle guttered and almost died.

  He'd just told a stranger that the System could be wrong about a shard's name. That mutations existed. That he could detect them.

  Dalla's words echoed: That's not a secret. That's a bomb.

  Maybe. But a bomb was only dangerous if you couldn't control who held the fuse.