The moment they stepped into the main bazaar building, the smell hit like a chemical slap to the face. Spilled tinctures, alchemical brews, sweat, and burning gas lamps. The air was dense with the crackle of haggling voices, the wet slap of meat cleavers, and the dry rustle of brittle paper as scribes peddled forged documents in shadowed alcoves. Everything here was for sale: loyalty, poisons, teeth in jars, and even the last breath of a dying man if you knew the right vendor.

  Gael barely paid any attention to any of the stalls, but Maeve, predictably, got distracted. Her eyes immediately locked onto a stall near the entrance stacked high with tattered leather-bound books. The vendor, an old woman with cataract-clouded eyes, was flipping through a tome made from stitched human skin.

  Oh no you don’t.

  Don’t be going all fish outta water on me now.

  The poor girl looked overwhelmed—-glancing warily at vivisected carcasses hung up for sale and crates filled with living, twitching, half-dead wraitheels—but he grabbed her hand and yanked her into the tide of bodies.

  The climb up the five-story tall building was a bit of a struggle. The first floor was where vendors hawked cheap shit and normal wares, but the second floor was where the air burned with the scent of charred resin and embalming fluid, home to plague curatives and body augments. The third and fourth? A mess of contraband, black-market weapon-making kits, and peddlers selling human remains like they were pearls. Oh, and the mutated pets. Lots of people buying two-headed lizards, flocks of legless sparrows, and drugged-enhanced rabid bunnies in cages too small for their own good.

  But the fifth floor was where the real game was played.

  The moment he dragged Maeve off the final flight of stairs, a sheer wall of bodies clogged the top level. Men and women dressed too clean for the slums, their silk-lined coats at odds with the rot-stained floor. Gael knew the look. All of them were investors, debtors, or people who had something to prove.

  Maeve frowned, tiptoeing to see over the crowd that was already pushing them forward from behind. “Why are there so many people?”

  “This floor’s run by Rot Merchant investors exclusively,” he said, nodding at the shadowed storefronts lining the walls of the floor. There were twenty of them, each operating under a sign that outlined what sorts of deals they made, but his eyes were on the most crowded storefront at the very end of the floor. “People with dreams, grand ideas, and wares to peddle come here and talk to the investors for funding. The Rot Merchants like you, they make your dream come true. They don’t like you, they’ll make sure you never have a dream again—and that store I’m looking at is where we’re headed.”

  A massive carved insignia loomed over the entrance of the store twenty meters away: a ladybug with bleeding holes on its back instead of normal black spots. Juno’s shop. And it wasn’t just a storefront. It was the entrance to an impossibly vast storage of artefacts and information behind the shop counter, so it’d be accurate to say she sold futures—and judging by the size of the line in front of her counter, there were plenty of people willing to gamble theirs.

  Maeve scowled at the line. “We’ll be here all day.”

  Gael grinned, sliding a small glass vial from his coat. “No, we won’t.”

  Before she could even blink, he pulled the cork free and twirled the vial around, letting a wave of thick, putrid gas fall and billow out. The smell probably hit like a hammer—he was told it smelled like rancid meat left to sweat in the sun, bloated and bursting—but of course, he was extremely tolerant or downright immune to most forms of health-deteriorating chemicals, so he had no idea.

  Coughs and curses erupted through the crowd almost instantly, though. Gagging men clutched their coats over their faces, scrambling away from the invisible miasma of suffering, and even Maeve doubled over, retching through her mask.

  “You… what did you—”

  “A shortcut.” He patted her back, cheerfully watching the exodus. Another fine example of the medical arts at work. “We don’t gotta be here all day anymore, hm?”

  As he dragged the coughing and hacking Maeve straight ahead, through the sea of parted men, even the dozen or so well-dressed Rot Merchants standing guard before Juno’s store looked wary. Their bioarcanic pistols twitched in their holsters, but behind the counter of the dark-paneled store, Juno didn’t flinch. The scent barely seemed to reach her. Her back was still turned towards them as she polished a small wooden idol with a tablecloth, ignoring the chaos Gael had unleashed behind her.

  “... Sit this one out, Exorcist,” he murmured to Maeve. “Don’t go so far you yank on my chain, but go browse the lower floors. Buy something shiny. I’ll handle this.”

  She didn’t argue. She was too busy rubbing her eyes, and she was probably glad for the excuse to get away from the fumes, so he approached the store alone as she slipped off with the rest of the crowd to the lower floors.

  Nearing the store, the Rot Merchant guards started reaching for their pistols, but Juno sighed and shook her head slowly.

  “Stand down,” she drawled. “Let the wannabe Raven through.”

  The guards obeyed without question, stepping aside. He sauntered forward, tapping the counter and leaning against it as he surveyed the glinting artifacts on the shelves. Mechanical lockets, bloodletting knives, preserved organs sealed in wax. All beautifully illegal. All horribly priced for him.

  “Nice wares,” he mused. “How’s business, Ladybug?”

  Juno—the Black Bloom Bazaar’s ‘Ladybug’ in the high-collared, gold-lined scarlet jacket—didn’t turn to face him. She continued polishing her idol as if she couldn’t even bother.

  “What do you want, Gael?” she said curtly.

  “The smell don’t bother you?”

  “The same way it doesn’t bother you. What do you want?”

  He let out a long-suffering sigh before slamming a pouch of Marks onto the counter, the heavy jangle of coins cutting through the tension. “I’m here for a Vile Eater.”

  “I know.” Juno didn’t even blink. “Word in the pipes is, you broke into the old baron’s mansion in Fellstar Cemetery last week and cured him of a curse that should’ve left him rotting inside his own skin. Now your clinic’s looking less like a corpse pit and more like a place someone might actually stumble into voluntarily.”

  He grinned. “I don’t know where you get your information, but I fucking hate that shit.”

  “I keep tabs on anything remotely interesting in the southern ward, and if you’re actually trying to turn that disaster of a church into a real clinic, then the next logical step—after securing funding from the old baron, I presume—is to obtain a Vile Eater,” she said smoothly. “Naturally, you came to me. After all, I’m the only Rot Merchant in this entire bazaar who’ll bother entertaining a wannabe Raven like you.”

  “Flattered. And still slightly unnerved,” he said cheerfully, tilting his head. “Aight, let’s get this over. I want a thirty-meter-range model, easy to install, no warranty, preferably no bloodstains.”

  “Sure. That’ll be a hundred thousand Marks.”

  Silence stretched between them.

  Gael rolled his shoulders. He’d expected robbery, but this was highway butchery.

  “Now,” he said slowly, tapping the counter, “that don’t sound like the usual going price for a Vile Eater in this fine, upstanding establishment.”

  Juno, still turned away polishing her idol, didn’t reply.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  He shrugged, continuing. “At its absolute steepest, a thirty-meter range Vile Eater should only run for fifty thousand. But—and here’s the kicker—I happen to know that for the past four months, you’ve had an absolute glut of the things in the back. Stacked like crates of spoiled fruit. You haven’t been selling any Vile Eaters. No one’s buying, so market price should be, what? Forty thousand, give or take?” Then he gave her guards his best wide-eyed, good-natured grin. “I was hoping we could talk that down to, let’s say… five thousand?”

  Juno didn’t laugh so much as exhale a quiet chuckle. “Tough luck, doctor. Market’s changed.”

  “That so?”

  “Mhm.” She continued polishing her idol, voice easy. “The Repossessors finally put a lid on Blightmarch last month. Cleared out all of the weaker gangs. Now they’re securing their territories by clearing the air around their bases, and they need Vile Eaters for that.”

  “How many are they buying?”

  “All one hundred I have for fifteen million Marks,” she said casually. “And they’re paying me upfront, too, so tell me, Raven—why in the world would I entertain your little five-thousand-Mark dream?”

  His tongue clicked against his teeth. “Can’t say I wanna bid against the Repossessors, so you don’t gotta sell me a working Vile Eater. Even a broken one’ll do.”

  Juno hummed, amused. “I do happen to have one that’s only half-working. The Repossessors weren’t interested in it, so I suppose you can have it for fifty thousand.”

  He let out another long-suffering sigh. “I’m the one fixing it. Drop it down to five.”

  “It’s not that damaged. Forty.”

  “Six. But give me some time to run back to the clinic for an extra bag of coins.”

  “One of my contacts in the upper city got petrified by a Nightspawn a few weeks ago. A Basilisk Mosquito. I’ve been trying my absolute hardest to find a new contact with enough balls to send me Vile Eaters from Vharnveil, so do you know what that means?”

  “I can get you a prescription if you can’t sleep.”

  It was her turn to let out an irritated sigh. “I’m not in the mood, Raven. Thirty thousand. Take it or leave it.”

  He opened his mouth to press his luck when a shadow darkened the counter, and a voice—smooth, weighty, threaded with amusement—cut through the space beside him.

  “Is there a problem here?” Lorcawn asked.

  Gael’s jaw ticked.

  Golden-haired, bloodshot-eyed, mouth hidden behind a patchwork leather mask, and dressed in robes too fine for a man who made his living amputating his enemies, the boss of the Repossessors stepped up to the counter with all casual ease, resting his arms on the plank of wood. His five bodyguards in similar masks that only covered their mouths—the ‘Five Fingers’ to Lorcawn’s ‘Palm’, if Gael recalled their titles correctly—fanned out behind him, forming a loose half-circle.

  Juno, however, still didn’t turn.

  Tch.

  Play it cool now, Gael.

  Like the boss of the Rot Merchants, Lorcawn didn’t even deign Gael with a disinterested look. He tilted his head toward Juno instead. “Deal’s still on, Ladybug?”

  Juno hummed softly. “Of course. A hundred Vile Eaters to be delivered to the doorstep of all your bases by the end of the week, as promised.”

  She said it like that was supposed to be Gael's final nail in the coffin, and in a way, it was. No man with a half-functioning brain would dare to haggle and push his luck with the literal boss of the Repossessors—his bidding rival—standing right next to him.

  He could try to negotiate with Lorcawn directly, but then he quickly looked at his hands and countered his fingers. He had ten of them. How many would he trade for a Vile Eater right now as opposed to just saving up Marks for a few more months before coming back to Juno?

  The answer was none.

  Sighing, he turned around to walk away—

  And then his ankle chain rattled as he walked right into Maeve, her arms stacked with books that immediately scattered everywhere as they both fell over.

  A long, awful silence followed as pages fluttered, covers slamming against the ground.

  As all eyes turned toward them, Gael let out a sharp breath through his nose and crouched down, scooping up Maeve’s fallen books with brisk, irritated movements.

  He kept his voice low and hissed, “The hell you doing?”

  Maeve, still kneeling and trying to stack the heavy tomes back into a neat pile, looked up at him as if she hadn’t done anything remotely disruptive. “I found some of the new horror chronicles you told me to read,” she whispered back. “They were cheap.”

  Gael squinted at her. “How much?”

  “Four hundred and fifty for all fifteen volumes.”

  He smacked her on the head, making her scowl. “You should’ve haggled, idiot.”

  “They seemed cheap,” she grumbled back.

  “Four hundred and fifty ain’t cheap. That’s another highway butche—”

  Before their squabble could escalate, Juno craned her head back, ear physically perking. “And who… is that lady by your side, Raven?”

  Maeve froze, straightening her dress and brushing dust off her knees as she finally seemed to realize the Rot Merchants and the Repossessors were all staring at her.

  Gael, unfazed, stood up and grinned at Juno.

  “My wife,” he said cheerily, nudging the stack of books aside with his feet as he pulled Maeve up. “A Symbiote Exorcist. We’ll be running the clinic together from now on.”

  Juno didn’t respond right away. Her hands stilled over the idol she’d been polishing, and for a brief moment, he wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have brought Maeve to the bazaar at all.

  Then he remembered he literally couldn’t be more than thirty or forty or however many meters apart from her, and his fingers started itching around the handle of his walking cane.

  Just as he was about to consider just walking away in stride, Juno cocked her head to the side.

  “Is that right?” she drawled. “Come closer, Caser. Come to the counter.”

  Maeve hesitated.

  “What’s a Caser?” she whispered in Gael’s ear. “And you’re… a Raven?”

  “That’s you and me,” Gael whispered back. “It’s what we call you Exorcists with morphing briefcase weapons and Plagueplain Doctors with raven masks. Now get going.”

  The request was simple, but the weight behind it was impossible to ignore. Her grip on her briefcase tightened slightly as her eyes flicked toward Gael, but he didn’t say another word. He just tilted his head at Juno, silently telling her to do as she was told.

  Come on.

  Can’t disobey the hag when we’re surrounded by both the Rot Merchants and the Repossessors.

  Exhaling through her nose, Maeve forced her feet to move, each step painfully slow and deliberate as she closed the distance to the storefront.

  But, just before she reached the counter, a voice slithered in from the side.

  “Pretty arms,” Lorcawn murmured, his tone laced with something oily and amused. “Such pretty skin.”

  Gael’s stomach turned a little as he saw Maeve make a face of visible disgust, but thank the Saint she was sensible enough to keep walking, only stopping once she was standing right in front of the counter.

  And for the first time since Gael started talking to her, Juno turned to face Maeve directly, and the Exorcist locked up as if something cold had clamped down around her spine.

  Of course, Juno’s clothing was impeccable. The high-collar scarlet jacket was just the sort of elegance expected from a woman who controlled a trading gang, but the right half of Juno’s face was a grotesque contradiction to that refinement. Sharp crystalline growths jutted out of her flesh, gleaming pink and purple under lantern light, while the left half of her face was beautifully framed behind a chiselled golden mask. The contrast was striking—half a pretty lady, half a monster.

  But there was no shame in the way she carried herself, nor an attempt to hide her disfiguration.

  She simply stared at Maeve, and Maeve refused to look away.

  The Exorcist probably couldn’t move.

  The silence stretched long and taut, thin and painful, and then—for whatever—Juno curled her grotesque lips.

  Her voice was light with amusement as she smiled up at Gael.

  “You’ve found yourself a pretty lady,” she said, her crystalline eye glinting. “Tell you what. I’ll sell you the broken Vile Eater for thirty thousand, and you can pay it off in monthly five thousand Mark installments. Also, you’ll owe me a light favor when I come calling for it.”

  Gael grinned, clasping both hands on his cane. “That’ll do,” he said easily, but his eyes were lightly narrowed. “But may I ask what changed your mind?”

  Maeve, of course, didn’t wait to find out. As soon as Juno’s attention shifted back to Gael, she took several quick steps away from the counter, returning to his side. Lorcawn’s hidden gaze followed her, the ghost of a smirk still lingering on his lips.

  Juno, already turning back around to attend to her idol, didn’t seem to care that Maeve was terrified of her. “I heard a couple of Myrmurs died around here recently. One roaming the streets. One in that old baron’s mansion.” She paused for a moment, then flicked a glance back at Maeve. “If that was the Caser’s doing, keep doing it. Fewer Myrmurs means fewer people getting their skeletons eaten. That’s good for business.”

  …

  Even Maeve didn’t look entirely convinced, but Gael would rather leave before the Repossessors staring at her decided her pretty limbs were worth killing over. While Maeve picked up her stack of books, he grabbed her other hand and quickly hurried back the way the two of them came.

  Juno called out to them. “I trust you remember the Rot Merchant Decree, Raven?”

  “Gold before blood, and let no falsehood rot the tongue,” he called back. “Don’t worry, you’ll get your monthly payment on time. Even I ain’t stupid enough to break a promise with you guys.”

  “Then I’ll have the broken Vile Eater sent to your clinic by the end of the day,” she said. “I’ll be interested to see if you can fix it. None in my employ could figure out what’s wrong with it.”

  Gael just waved a hand over his shoulder. “Oh, ye of little faith. I’m sure I can fix it up in no time. How fucked up is it, anyway?”