Chapter 55: HOUSE RULES

The hunter reached the bottom of the stairs as pale light gathered beside the railing. A coat formed first, then narrow shoulders and the smiling face of the information dealer from the frontier settlement.

"There you are, Karkas. My people found the purple scar and sold you the freshest sighting in the building." The broker looked toward the galleries below. "I was beginning to wonder whether you planned to make them collect the bounty too."

Karkas walked through the edge of the projection, scattering one shoulder into static. "You talk a lot for a man nobody can find." The broker’s shape repaired itself while Karkas stopped at a brass strip crossing the floor.

"That arrangement has worked wonderfully." The broker nodded toward the dark Exchange seal worked into the metal. Two guards stood beyond it, and one had already angled his body toward Karkas.

Karkas kept both hands away from his weapons. "One day somebody is going to find the room you’re hiding in. If they get there before me, I’ll be annoyed."

"Still planning to kill me first? I’m touched." The broker tipped his head toward the boundary. "You paid for the location. My organization delivered. Go do your work."

Karkas stayed on his side of the strip. "I like getting paid tomorrow too. Eclipse owns too many doors for me to kick one in today."

"That almost sounded cautious." The projection began dissolving from the shoes upward, and Karkas watched the light crawl past the broker’s chest. "You should try caution without hiding behind a hologram."

The broker laughed before his face broke into pale fragments. "Buy another update when patience starts hurting."

Several levels below, a courier held a numbered brass tag between two fingers while Sio’s holographic profile rotated above her palm. His purple scar showed clearly, along with the small creature wrapped around his shoulder.

LAST VERIFIED SIGHTING: PRELIMINARY VIEWING LEVEL

REPORT AGE: 1 MINUTE

The creature pushed one soft limb through its floating copy. Sio caught it before the limb reached the courier’s tag. "Please don’t interfere with the business currently selling my privacy. I have a feeling they charge for damages."

The buyer handed over several coins without noticing that Sio stood less than ten steps away. The courier closed the projection and moved on, leaving Sio to scratch beside one of the creature’s smaller eyes.

"I should probably stop calling you baby every time I need your attention." The creature answered with a wet click, stretched across his shoulder and caught two strands of his hair.

Sio peeled the sticky limb away from his cheek. "You cling to everything like gum. Gumm, then." Several eyes blinked before Gumm pressed against his jaw, and Sio nodded. "Good. Complaints can wait until you learn paperwork."

"Sio." Angle’s voice came from behind him, and Sio turned fast enough for Gumm to tighten around his collar. Angle approached with his red scarf crooked and an Exchange slip folded between his fingers.

"I was finding you," Sio said, raising the battered map. "The route became unnecessarily ambitious."

Angle looked toward the corridor behind him. "The equipment district is the other way." He let Sio blame a rotating bridge and a closed lift before asking, "Where’s Dad?"

Sio stopped refolding the map, and both checked the nearest stairs. "I thought he was with you." Gumm reached toward Angle’s scarf, and Sio caught the limb. "We found each other, at least."

"That sentence guarantees he’s having a terrible time." Angle unfolded the slip. "I found where the gloves went."

Sio looked from Angle to the slip, but Angle turned the lower half of the page toward him before he could ask. Beside the equipment description, Angle had copied the System message that flashed when he tried one on: 〔 SCAR-EQUIPMENT COMPATIBILITY: 100% 〕.

"That appeared when you wore it?" Sio asked. Angle pressed his thumb into the center of his palm and held his other fingers barely an inch apart.

"I made a flame this size. It stayed there until I put it out." Angle rubbed his palm once. "I stopped correcting the heat and it still didn’t climb."

Sio could still see the black glass beneath Angle’s feet, his sleeves burning while the warnings climbed, and Arch waiting several steps away because his own son was too hot to approach. He handed the slip back without making light of it.

Angle folded the page along the same crease. "I put the gloves back because I wasn’t planning to buy anything else. They’re in Main Exchange appraisal now, and I want to know what that hundred percent means before somebody walks away with them."

"Fair. We find out what they are first." Sio tapped the folded slip. "Buying them can become tomorrow’s financial disaster."

A voice from the bench beside them cut in. "Auction access becomes today’s disaster before money does." Both turned toward a young man sitting with a catalogue across one knee and a patron pass hanging from one finger.

"How long have you been listening?" Angle asked. The stranger closed the catalogue around one finger instead of standing.

"Long enough to know you shouldn’t discuss registration beside strangers." His eyes moved once toward the nearest guard, then the stairs behind Sio. "Main Exchange won’t take a bid without patron access."

Sio pointed at the pass. "And you have that?" The young man glanced at the seal as though he had forgotten it was there.

"My family has a private box." He shifted his catalogue, exposing a thin wire reel tucked beneath one cuff, and Sio’s gaze dropped to it.

"You’re a Wayfarer?" Angle asked. The stranger shook his head. "No Scar. No Claim."

Sio looked at the wire, then at the bench he had chosen with both exits in view. "You compensate aggressively."

"Money helps." The young man covered the reel and reopened his catalogue.

Movement near the western entrance drew Angle’s attention. The silver-cuffed woman from the equipment shop crossed the gallery with two Exchange workers behind her, and guards opened a secured stairwell before she reached it.

"That’s her," Angle said, touching Sio’s sleeve. The crescent along the woman’s ear caught the light as she approached an older man waiting beside the stairs.

His dark coat was fastened with a black clasp split by a narrow silver strip. A staff member whispered near his shoulder, and the older man pointed toward the eastern gate.

Workers shut it at once. A merchant trapped behind the barrier slapped the rail and started protesting, but his voice dropped when the older man turned toward him; he pulled his hand away and joined the longer route.

Sio glanced toward the young patron, whose catalogue had lowered onto his knee. "You know them?"

"I know the officers my family deals with." He watched the silver-cuffed woman exchange a few words with the older man. "Those two aren’t officers."

Across the market, the retrieval operative stepped back into the equipment district after the Grand Exchange records gave him nothing beyond the original transfer. He entered the shop where the gloves had sat that morning and placed his metal token on the glass counter.

"Looking for something?" the shopkeeper asked. His hands slowed when the operative described the dark gloves and reinforced knuckles.

"You’re late. Sold them this morning." The merchant pushed a wooden tray aside while the operative placed a coin beside his token.

"I know who bought them. I want the paperwork from before today." The shopkeeper glanced toward the neighboring stalls before taking the coin.

"Old mixed salvage. Years back. The seller used two names on the same invoice." He rubbed the coin between thumb and forefinger. "Nobody asked about those gloves for years. Then the red-scarf boy tries them, the silver-ear woman buys them, and now you walk in."

"Who else remembers the shipment?" The operative kept his voice level, and the merchant’s thumb stopped moving over the coin.

"Depends what remembering is worth." The shopkeeper leaned one elbow on the counter as a bell rolled through the canyon. The operative stayed where he was, and the merchant slowly closed his fist around the payment.

Back in the Exchange, Arch appeared through the crowd moments after the same bell vibrated beneath Sio’s boots. He spotted Angle’s red scarf first, then Sio beside him, and increased his pace until he reached them.

His eyes moved over Sio, Angle and Gumm before settling on the stranger with the catalogue. Sio lifted the battered map. "Good news. Everyone has now been recovered."

"By whom?" Arch asked. Sio folded the map against his chest and replied, "That part became complicated."

Angle handed over the Exchange slip and explained the compatibility reading and the fingertip flame. Arch interrupted only once. "You stopped correcting the output completely?"

"Yeah. It stayed where I put it." Angle flexed his fingers once, and Arch returned the slip.

"We get the appraisal. You don’t wear them again until we know what the System measured." Arch’s attention shifted when Sio nodded toward the upper railing.

Karkas stood beyond the brass boundary, watching them openly. Arch lowered his voice under the gallery noise. "He bought your last two sightings."

Sio glanced toward the numbered couriers. "Can we buy his?"

"Yes. They’ll sell either side." Arch nodded toward the boundary above. "He already knows where you are, and he still hasn’t crossed."

The young patron shut his catalogue and looked from Karkas to the guarded entrances. "Then the Exchange is doing more for you than that map."

Sio pressed a hand to his chest. "The map has been trying."

A second bell began deeper in the building as guards opened the inner barriers and buyers produced passes. The young man lifted his patron seal. "My family has unused seats. Registered patrons can bring guests."

Angle studied him. "Why would you bring us?" The stranger checked the stairs, then the upper railing where Karkas still waited.

"Because I’ve watched him check the stairs twice, the outer bridge once, and you every time the crowd moves. He still hasn’t crossed the entrance behind Eclipse guards." The young man slipped the pass back between his fingers. "And I want to see what made those gloves worth this much trouble."

Across the canyon, the merchant in the neighboring stall called through the equipment shop’s half-lowered shutter. No answer came, so he ducked beneath it with one hand braced against the metal and nearly stepped on a fallen display hook.

The shopkeeper sat behind the counter with his back against the cabinet where the gloves had been displayed. One hand still gripped the coin he had taken, blood had soaked into his collar, and the metal token that had been resting on the counter was gone.