Chapter 52: PRICE

The descent took longer than Sio expected. From the canyon rim, the black market had looked like one enormous settlement carved into stone, but once they entered it, the place broke apart into layers that refused to behave like normal streets. A stairway would descend past three balconies, split around a workshop, then end on a bridge hanging two levels above the road Sio thought they had been following.

"This place is ridiculous," Sio said after Arch led them down another narrow flight of steps. Angle glanced at him and reminded him that he had already said that twice, which Sio considered unfair because the market had become more ridiculous each time.

Up close, the canyon felt less like a market and more like several towns stacked on top of one another. Merchants sold food from windows cut into the rock while metalworkers hammered in open workshops below sleeping quarters, and pulley platforms moved crates between levels without ever touching the crowded roads. Some bridges had proper railings and guards; others were little more than planks and rope stretched over drops that Sio deliberately stopped looking at.

The goods became stranger the farther they descended. One stall displayed broken Wayfarer weapons whose damaged surfaces still carried faint traces of abilities, while another kept suppression cuffs arranged beside locks thick enough for prison doors. Farther along, preserved organs floated in cloudy jars beside dried pieces of creatures Sio could not identify and had no intention of asking about.

The juvenile, naturally, loved everything. Sio caught it leaning halfway off his shoulder toward a weapons stall and pulled it back by one limb. "No. We are not touching mysterious knives in the criminal canyon." The creature twisted around him anyway, extending toward a short sword lying across a merchant’s cloth.

Before Sio could stop it, the juvenile stretched far enough to close its mouth around the flat of the blade. The merchant went completely still while Sio stared first at the creature and then at the man behind the stall.

"That is a sword. It is not food." Sio pried the creature loose while it clicked in protest, and the merchant watched with the uncertain expression of someone deciding whether this counted as damage to merchandise. Sio placed the sword exactly where it had been and offered what he hoped looked like a responsible smile. "It’s still learning."

The merchant looked at the wet mark left across the metal and asked what exactly it was learning. Sio considered the question for a moment, decided there was no answer that improved the situation, then picked the juvenile up with both hands and walked away before the conversation became financial.

Angle waited until they were several stalls farther before pointing out that Sio had already told the creature not to follow random things. Sio adjusted it back onto his shoulder. "I didn’t realize I also needed to explain not eating weapons. My expectations were too high."

Arch had continued walking, but Sio caught the faint movement at the corner of his mouth. Apparently the market had already done more for Arch’s mood than several days of running from bounty hunters.

That thought reminded Sio of something else: people were looking at them. Not everyone, and never for long enough to make it obvious, but Sio caught a man near a gambling table comparing his face with a folded notice. Two women outside an armor shop did the same with Angle before quietly returning to their conversation. A bounty board stood beside one of the larger intersections, and Sio’s own face occupied a very irritating amount of space near its center.

He slowed beside Arch. "Should we be concerned that everyone here knows exactly how much money we’re worth?" Arch told him they had known before the group entered, without even turning around.

"That feels like information you could have shared at the top of the canyon." Sio looked toward a group of armed men drinking beside the road. One of them openly watched him for several seconds, then raised his cup and returned to his game instead of reaching for a weapon. "Why is nobody trying anything?"

Arch stopped near the entrance to another bridge and pointed toward a brass plaque fixed beside a merchant’s doorway. The writing listed compensation rates for damaged goods, bridge closures and interrupted business, with numbers large enough that Sio checked twice to make sure he had read them correctly.

"Violence is allowed," Arch explained. "It’s just expensive. Damage a stall, interrupt a broker, block a cargo route or scare away enough customers and the market collects from whoever caused it. If they can’t pay, they collect differently."

Sio looked back at the armed men, who suddenly seemed less restrained by morality than by accounting. "So capitalism is protecting me." Arch resumed walking and told him that, for the next few minutes, apparently it was.

The equipment district occupied a broader shelf cut into the eastern canyon wall. Here, the stalls gave way to proper shops with reinforced doors and deep interiors, their windows filled with Scar-compatible metals, specialized restraints, insulated layers and equipment designed around abilities too destructive for ordinary materials.

Arch spent long enough comparing fabrics that Sio began suspecting he had secretly become interested in tailoring. The merchant eventually brought out three possibilities: a cheaper flame-resistant cloth that could survive ordinary fire, a layered inner material designed to keep a Wayfarer’s own heat away from whatever they wore over it, and a much more expensive weave that dispersed heat across its entire surface instead of allowing it to concentrate in one place.

Angle touched the last material and immediately looked at the price. His hand came away when Arch told the merchant they needed enough for a full set. "You don’t need the expensive one."

Arch barely looked at him. "You burned through your clothes while sleeping." Angle’s expression tightened as he muttered that he had noticed.

Sio leaned closer and rubbed the material between two fingers. "I support the expensive one. Mostly because I don’t want to wake up beside a naked Angle every morning." Angle looked at him with such exhausted irritation that Sio decided the joke had done its job.

Arch purchased enough material for the merchant’s tailor to make a shirt, trousers and an inner layer, then arranged for the finished clothes to be collected later. While Arch discussed fitting and timing, Sio wandered only a few steps away and found Angle staring through a glass display beside the counter.

A pair of gloves rested inside. They were darker than most of the equipment around them and visibly older, with reinforced layers over the knuckles and flexible material running through the palms and wrists. They did not look particularly impressive, which made Angle’s attention unusual enough that Sio stopped beside him.

The merchant noticed too and explained that the gloves were not part of the clothing order. Angle asked to see them anyway, and after a moment the man unlocked the display. "Old construction. Heat-resistant fibers through the palms, layered reinforcement across the hand. I’ve had them for years."

Angle pulled one on. For a moment, nothing happened, then Sio noticed that the faint heat distortion that had followed Angle since the frontier fight became less obvious around his fingers. Angle flexed his hand once, frowned, then let a tiny flame appear above his thumb. It stayed small, and more importantly, Angle did not look as though he was wrestling with it.

He closed his fist, the flame vanished, and he asked the merchant how much the pair cost. The merchant gave him the price, and the interest on Angle’s face immediately turned into hesitation. He slowly removed the glove, looking once toward Arch as the older man paid for an entire set of specialized clothing.

Sio noticed the glance but said nothing as Angle placed the glove carefully beside its partner and told the merchant he would think about it. He had hesitated over money before, but this did not look like someone deciding whether he liked a piece of equipment. It looked more like someone walking away from something he did not understand.

As they left the shop, another customer stepped aside to let them pass. She looked only a few years older than Angle and dressed plainly, though the narrow chain at her throat looked far more expensive than anything else she wore. A small silver ear cuff curved along one ear like a thin crescent, and her attention drifted briefly from Angle to the gloves behind the glass.

Sio barely noticed her because the juvenile had discovered a jar of preserved insect eyes in the next window and was already stretching toward it. He caught the creature before it reached the glass and informed it that its browsing privileges had officially been revoked, while behind them the woman entered the equipment shop.

Arch led Sio and Angle farther down the market, where the roads narrowed again and curtains replaced signs above many of the doors. Guards stood outside businesses that displayed no merchandise at all, and conversations became quieter despite the crowds. Buyers showed tokens before entering certain passages, while runners carried sealed messages between brokers who apparently preferred not to be seen together.

Sio glanced back toward the brighter equipment district. Somewhere above them were the normal stalls, food, loud arguments and merchants willing to explain what they sold. Down here, even asking what something was seemed capable of becoming a bad decision.

"This is where we turn around, right?" Sio asked. Arch studied the lower road for several seconds before saying they would turn back soon, which sounded different enough from yes that Sio immediately looked toward Angle.

Angle adjusted the sleeve of Arch’s oversized spare shirt. "Maybe you made the face again." Sio was preparing a defense when the juvenile suddenly twisted around on his shoulder and stared back toward the levels they had just left.

Sio followed its gaze but saw only bridges, moving cargo and people disappearing into the equipment district. Inside the shop behind them, the woman with the crescent ear cuff stood in front of the glass case while the merchant finished counting Arch’s payment.

She pointed toward the old gloves and asked their price. The merchant named it, expecting the usual argument, but she did not bargain.