CHAPTER NINETEEN
The City of Silk and Smoke
The jet touched down just before dawn.
From the air, the city looked like a handful of jewels scattered across black silk—emerald lights clustered near the harbor, veins of gold winding through the hills, a glimmering ruby at the heart where the palace sat like a predator.
The heat hit her first. Not oppressive—seductive. A heat that curled around the skin and whispered in the ear. The air smelled of cardamom, salt, and engine fuel.
The man waiting at the foot of the stairs wore a linen suit and sunglasses, despite the hour. He carried no sign, but when she stepped off the jet, he bowed slightly and said, “Welcome to Samarkand.”
She did not correct him that Samarkand was landlocked, centuries away from this glass-and-gold skyline. The name was a password, not a map.
The car was a vintage Mercedes, white leather interior, chilled champagne already uncorked. They drove through streets still slick from the night’s brief rain. Markets were waking—women in silk shawls arranging trays of pomegranates, men hauling crates of spices so pungent they made the air hum. Above it all, the call to prayer spiraled through the dawn.
He did not tell her where they were going. She did not ask.
The building, when they arrived, was unmarked—its façade a faded colonial relic squeezed between two towers of smoked glass. Inside: marble floors, fans turning lazily, the faint trickle of water from an unseen fountain.
They led her upstairs to a suite. Cool, dark, filled with the smell of sandalwood. On the table: another file. This one thinner. More deliberate.
She poured herself a drink before opening it. The whisky was older than the country they were in.
Inside the dossier: photographs. All women.
One smiling in a red dress at a casino table.
One stepping into a black car outside an embassy.
One lying on a divan, her throat bare, her eyes closed.
Beneath each photo: a name, a title, a date.
At the bottom of the stack: a man. Not the stranger. Not Alistair. Someone else. His smile was wrong, too white, too easy. Beneath his photo, only a line of type:
“You will be introduced at the Moon Bazaar. Two nights from now.”
She sat back in the velvet chair, fingers on the rim of her glass.
They wanted her to enter the Bazaar. To meet him. To do something—seduce, steal, destroy. The file didn’t say. It didn’t need to.
She looked out at the city, its colors sharpening in the morning sun. She could feel it already—this place was a labyrinth in disguise, its threads spun from money, beauty, and ruin.
The new game was simple:
Play until she owned the board.
Or until the board devoured her.
She opened the wardrobe.
Inside: a single dress. Midnight blue. Silk that looked black until the light caught it, and then it shimmered like oil on water.
It fit perfectly.
She raised her glass to her reflection.
“To the Moon Bazaar,” she murmured.
And somewhere, in some room she could not see, she knew the stranger was smiling.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Moon Bazaar
The Moon Bazaar did not exist on any map.
It emerged only when the moon was high and the tides of the harbor whispered to the right ears. It began in an alley between two shuttered cafés, a narrow slit of darkness lit by a single lantern. Step through it, and the city shifted—air thickened, light deepened, and the smell of spice, metal, and something faintly animal wrapped around the senses.
It was not a market. It was an ecosystem.
Silks hung like waterfalls from balconies above. Gold glinted in the mouths of merchants and the teeth of their scales. Perfume drifted in clouds from glass flasks, curling through the air like memories. And everywhere, the sound of deals being struck—some with words, most with glances.
She wore the midnight-blue dress. It caught the lantern light as she moved, transforming her into something dangerous and uncatchable—oil on water. The crowd parted for her without knowing why.
Julian’s contact was supposed to find her here. The man from the file. The one with the wrong smile.
But she was in no hurry.
She let herself be absorbed by the place:
A stall selling knives with ivory handles carved into the shapes of extinct birds.
A jeweller fitting an emerald necklace around the throat of a woman who never stopped looking at her own reflection.
A fortune-teller with glass eyes who reached for her hand, then froze.
“You’ve already chosen,” the fortune-teller whispered, voice like the edge of paper. “The rest is consequence.”
She did not ask what that meant.
A bell chimed. Not loud, but enough to hush the nearby stalls.
She turned.
He was there.
The man from the file—tall, elegant, his suit light grey, perfectly cut, a flower in his lapel the color of old bruises. His smile was as wrong in person as it was in the photograph.
“You found me,” he said, as though she’d been the one hunting.
“Did I?”
He gestured toward a tea house draped in red silk, its doorway guarded by two boys with faces too beautiful to be real. “Shall we?”
Inside, the tea house was lit entirely by candles floating in shallow pools of water. The scent of cinnamon and rose clung to the walls. Musicians played something slow on instruments she couldn’t name.
They sat on cushions at a low table. The tea arrived without being ordered—black, thick, poured from a silver pot that looked stolen from a palace.
“I’ve heard about you,” he said.
“Then you’ve heard lies.”
He smiled again. Too white. “Not all of them.”
“Who do you work for?” she asked.
He tilted his head. “Everyone. No one. The people who pay me.”
“And what do they want?”
His smile widened just enough to be a threat. “You.”
She set her cup down slowly. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“I don’t have to be anything,” he said. “That’s your role.”
She was about to reply when the air shifted. A prickle along the spine.
She looked up.
And there—at the far corner of the tea house—was him.
The stranger.
No suit this time. Just a black shirt, sleeves rolled, leaning against the wall like he’d been there for hours. His gaze met hers, steady, unreadable.
The man in grey followed her eyes, and his smile faltered—only for a fraction of a second, but enough.
“Friend of yours?” he asked.
She didn’t answer.
Because she knew, in that instant, that the Moon Bazaar wasn’t about money or goods or pleasure.
It was a board.
And she was standing between two players who had already begun the game.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Wager
The man in grey rose first. Smooth. Unhurried. His shadow swallowed the candlelight as he crossed the floor toward the stranger.
“I don’t recall inviting you,” he said.
“I don’t recall needing permission,” the stranger replied. His voice was the same as before—low, precise—but it carried through the room like a blade sliding free of a sheath.
The tea house grew still. Even the musicians stopped, their last note hanging in the air like smoke.
The man in grey glanced back at her. “You didn’t tell me you had… company.”
“You didn’t ask,” she said.
A table was brought—black lacquer, no larger than a chessboard. Two seats, facing each other. The man in grey gestured for the stranger to sit.
“You know the rules,” he said.
“I invented them,” the stranger replied, taking his place.
She didn’t know the game, but she understood the theatre. The table was the altar. She was the offering.
A dealer appeared—no cards, no dice, just a bowl of polished stones, each marked with a different symbol: a crown, a blade, a key, a mask, an eye, a coin.
The man in grey drew first. A crown. He placed it in the centre of the table. “I can give her power,” he said.
The stranger’s turn. He drew a key. “I can give her freedom.”
They played in silence. Each draw, each word, was a claim on her:
A coin—I can give her wealth.
A mask—I can give her safety.
A blade—I can give her vengeance.
An eye—I can give her truth.
She listened. Watched. The Bazaar beyond the silk walls had gone utterly silent, as though the whole place was holding its breath.
By the sixth round, the bowl was nearly empty.
The man in grey leaned back. “Well? Which will you choose?”
She let the question hang. Then she stood.
She walked to the table. Slowly. Let them both follow her movement with their eyes. Then she reached into the bowl.
One stone remained. Blank.
She placed it between them.
“I choose what you can’t give me,” she said.
The man in grey frowned. “Nothing?”
“No,” she said. “The ability to take without asking.”
And then she swept every stone from the table into her own hands.
The stranger smiled—not triumph, but recognition.
The man in grey’s expression did not change, but the tension in his jaw betrayed him.
“You’ve just made enemies,” he said quietly.
“I make them every day,” she replied.
She turned from the table, from both men, and walked out of the tea house into the shifting light of the Bazaar.
The crowd parted again. This time, she knew why.
The game wasn’t theirs anymore.
It was hers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When the Market Closes Its Fist
The moment she stepped beyond the red silk of the tea house, the Bazaar had changed.
It was subtle at first. The lanterns burned lower, their light a deeper, hungrier gold. The music had shifted—faster, sharp-edged, threaded with something almost metallic. And the crowd… the crowd was watching her now, though their eyes slid away when she met them.
She told herself it was nothing. Just theatre. Just the ripple of having stood between two men in a game no one here would forget.
Then she noticed the stalls.
The jeweller’s glass cases were now empty, the velvet beneath them stained dark. The fortune-teller’s booth was gone entirely, replaced by a narrow doorway that led only into shadow. The spice sellers’ trays lay overturned, their saffron staining the cobbles like spilled sunlight.
And the air—thicker, heavier—smelled faintly of burning.
She kept walking.
The alleys narrowed, pressing her between silks and shadows. Shapes shifted just out of sight: the glint of a blade, the glimmer of teeth, the hiss of words she couldn’t translate.
Somewhere behind her, footsteps matched her pace. Too light for a man. Too deliberate for chance.
She turned a corner—and the Bazaar closed its fist.
The crowd had shifted. No longer merchants and patrons. They were something else now—faces she didn’t recognise, bodies angled inward, forming a ring without touching her. Every set of eyes locked on her like a predator deciding whether to play with its prey or swallow it whole.
The man in grey was nowhere.
The stranger was nowhere.
A voice rose above the silence. Not loud, but commanding.
“You took the stones,” it said.
She couldn’t see the speaker. The ring of faces was unbroken.
“I won them,” she replied.
“You took them,” the voice insisted, “and now the market will take you.”
The first figure stepped forward. A woman draped in gauze, her skin painted with gold script from neck to ankle. She carried a bowl filled with black sand. Slowly, she began to pour it at the edges of the ring, and wherever it touched the ground, the cobbles began to sink.
The second figure emerged from the opposite side. A man in a mask shaped like a falcon’s skull. He held a chain. At the end of it, something moved—a flash of claws, the ripple of muscle under fur.
The circle began to tighten.
She didn’t run. Running meant prey. Running meant they were right.
Instead, she stepped forward, toward the falcon-masked man, her gaze locked on the thing straining at the chain.
It froze. Snarled once. Then lowered its head.
The murmuring in the crowd shifted—confusion, irritation.
“Tell your market,” she said, her voice carrying, “that I don’t trade in fear.”
The chain slackened. The gold-scripted woman’s sand hissed to a stop.
Somewhere above them, unseen, a bell rang. Once. Twice. Three times.
The crowd dispersed as quickly as it had formed, leaving only the smell of smoke and spice behind.
When she was alone again, she realised the Bazaar had changed back. The lanterns brighter, the music gentler, the stalls filled with impossible treasures.
But she knew it now.
It wasn’t a market.
It was a test.
And she had passed—barely.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Merchant Who Sells Nothing
She had almost reached the lantern-marked exit when she saw it—
a narrow archway she hadn’t noticed before.
It wasn’t inviting.
It wasn’t threatening.
It was there, and the fact that it was there meant she had to go through it.
Inside, the light shifted—no lanterns, no candles, just a soft glow like moonlight filtered through water. The air was cooler here, scented faintly with myrrh and old paper.
The space was neither a shop nor a stall. It was a single table, and behind it sat an old man.
No—old was wrong.
Not aged, not frail.
He looked finished, as if time had completed him.
His skin was the colour of parchment that had been written on and erased a thousand times. His eyes were pale, but not blind. They saw through.
The table before him was empty. Not a single object for sale.
“You’ve been expected,” he said. His voice had the dryness of pages turning.
“I didn’t come to buy anything,” she replied.
“That’s good,” he said. “I don’t sell anything.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To keep the accounts.”
She almost laughed. “What accounts?”
“All of them.”
He reached under the table and brought out a ledger so large it seemed impossible he’d been holding it. When he opened it, the air in the room changed—denser, charged, as though the ink itself was magnetic.
Every page was filled with handwriting, but none of it stayed still. Names shifted. Dates slid out of alignment. Transactions erased themselves and then reappeared.
She saw her own name once—twice—then a third time, each entry under a different column.
“What is this?” she asked.
“The market is not made of goods,” he said. “It is made of debts. Every choice writes a number in a book, somewhere. Every promise is collateral. Every betrayal accrues interest.”
“And what do I owe?”
He looked up, and for the first time, his eyes sharpened—bright, exact, pinning her like a specimen.
“Everything,” he said.
She opened her mouth to protest, but he closed the ledger, and the air softened again.
“You can’t pay it back,” he said gently. “But you can change the currency.”
“How?”
He smiled. “You’ve already started.”
The light dimmed. The room seemed to fold around her, and when she looked again, the old man was gone. The table was gone. The archway was gone.
She was standing back in the heart of the Moon Bazaar, the music swelling, the air rich with spice and gold.
Only one thing remained from the encounter:
A single coin in her palm.
On one side—a crown.
On the other—a blank face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Coin With No Face
She didn’t look back.
The Bazaar’s music and perfume trailed her like the aftertaste of something intoxicating and faintly poisonous. The lantern-marked exit was ahead—its glow a promise of night air, of space, of breathing without being watched.
She stepped through the archway.
And straight into the stranger.
He caught her wrist before she even registered his presence. Not roughly—just enough to feel the strength there, the control.
“Where did you get that?” he said.
She looked down. The coin was still in her palm, its surface warm now, as if it had been in the sun.
“From the Merchant Who Sells Nothing,” she said. “He gave it to me.”
The stranger’s jaw tightened. “Then you’ve just changed everything.”
They moved quickly, away from the alley, through streets still slick with rain. The city outside the Bazaar was quieter, but no less watchful—neon signs flickering like coded messages, unmarked cars idling where no one was inside.
They ducked into a back entrance of what looked like a shuttered hotel. Inside: dark corridors, the faint hum of machinery behind the walls, the scent of old tobacco.
He didn’t speak again until they reached a room with blackout curtains.
“That coin,” he said, “isn’t money. It’s jurisdiction.”
“Jurisdiction over what?”
“Over who writes the ledger.”
She thought of the old man, the shifting names, the debts that couldn’t be repaid.
“The market is run by collectors,” he continued. “Merchants, brokers, assassins—everyone who trades in secrets. But the one who writes the ledger decides which debts exist at all. With that coin, you can erase someone from the book. Or put them in it.”
“And the blank side?” she asked.
“That’s the dangerous part,” he said. “It means you can create a name that’s never existed. A ghost creditor. A phantom debtor. Entire wars have started over less.”
She turned the coin over in her fingers. Crown. Blank face.
“And what happens if I keep it?”
“You won’t,” he said flatly. “The man in grey will come for it. The Bazaar will come for it. And if they can’t take it—”
“They’ll kill me.”
He met her gaze. “They’ll do worse. They’ll write you into the ledger. And you’ll spend the rest of your life paying off a debt you never agreed to.”
Silence.
Finally, she slipped the coin into the lining of her dress.
“Then I suppose I’ll have to spend it before they get the chance.”
The stranger smiled—not approval, not warning, but something that told her he’d been waiting for her to say exactly that.
“Good,” he said. “Because once you use it, there’s no going back.”
He turned toward the window, pulled the curtain aside just enough for her to see the street below.
The man in grey was there.
Looking up.
Smiling.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Ledger’s Shadow
They left the hotel through the roof.
The stranger’s hand was firm at her back as they crossed the slick tiles, the city stretching out below them in a maze of alleyways, glowing markets, and blacked-out high-rises. The air was wet with the promise of rain. Somewhere far off, a siren wailed once, then cut short.
“He’s already moving,” the stranger said.
“The man in grey?”
He didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
They dropped down into a narrow alley where laundry lines criss-crossed like snares. From there, the stranger led her through a series of courtyards—each one stranger than the last.
A fountain where the water flowed upward.
A garden of white orchids that smelled faintly of sulphur.
A wall painted with hundreds of eyes, all watching her as she passed.
“They’re his,” the stranger murmured when he saw her glance. “Every set of eyes in this city is a contract. He’s calling them in.”
By the time they reached the riverfront, the streets had emptied. Too empty.
She spotted the first tail—a man leaning against a shuttered tea stall, smoking without exhaling. The second—a woman in a red scarf walking too slowly, her eyes hidden. The third was just a shape on a rooftop, but the gleam of a rifle scope caught the moonlight.
“How many?” she asked.
“All of them,” the stranger said. “Every player who owes him a debt, or thinks they do.”
They ducked inside a warehouse by the docks. It smelled of rope, oil, and wet wood. In the dark, she could hear the slow, steady hum of the tide against the pilings.
“This won’t hold,” she said.
“It’s not meant to.”
He pulled a map from his jacket—hand-drawn, the streets winding like veins. “Three exits out of the city that won’t put you straight in his hands. But all of them go through contested ground. You’d need leverage to pass.”
She tapped the lining of her dress. “The coin.”
He looked at her sharply. “Not yet. The second you use it, the ledger changes. And every other player will know you’ve moved.”
“Then when?”
“When the only way to win,” he said, “is to end the game entirely.”
The sound of a latch turning echoed through the warehouse. Not from the door they’d used.
“They’re here,” he said.
He drew his gun.
She kept her hand on the coin, feeling its heat against her palm, and realised it wasn’t just a symbol or a key.
It was a summons.
And everyone in the city could feel it.
Outside, rain began to fall—soft at first, then harder, until it drowned the city in a hiss.
She smiled faintly in the dark.
Let them come.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Night the Streets Turned Liquid
The warehouse door blew inward with the wind.
Figures poured in—shapes in the dark, too many to count, their movements silent except for the hiss of rain on their coats. The stranger’s hand was on her shoulder for half a heartbeat, then he was gone, a shadow splitting into two.
“Move,” his voice called from somewhere ahead.
She ran.
The rain turned the streets into mirrors. Neon bled into the puddles, red and green, like wounds that couldn’t decide if they were fresh or old. Every step was a splash that felt too loud.
Behind her: footsteps. Close.
Above her: the faint scrape of boots on the roofs.
The stranger appeared again at her side, breath steady despite the pace. “Rooftops,” he said, and before she could object he’d pulled her toward a fire escape slick as glass.
They climbed.
From up here, the city was a fractured map—tiles glittering wet, cables humming, the harbour glowing faintly in the distance. Rain lashed sideways, blinding her in bursts.
They ran.
Leapt between buildings where the drop would have been fatal if the wind caught them wrong. Passed windows where faces appeared for a second, then vanished.
At one gap, she faltered. The stranger caught her wrist mid-air, yanking her onto the next roof. “Don’t look down,” he said.
“I wasn’t,” she panted.
“Good. Don’t look back either.”
But she did.
The man in grey was there—three rooftops away, walking, not running, his coat unmarked by rain. And behind him, more shadows fanning out like the teeth of a closing trap.
They dropped into a narrow lane, the water already up to her ankles. The current tugged at her legs as they waded through. The lane emptied into a canal, black as ink.
Two gondolas waited—empty, swaying in the rain. The stranger shoved her into the first and loosed the rope. He pushed them into the current with one smooth thrust of the oar.
Halfway across, a shape landed in the second gondola without a splash.
The man in grey.
The coin burned against her ribs. She could feel it watching.
“Use it,” the stranger said.
“Will it stop him?”
“It will stop everything.”
Her fingers went to the lining of her dress, found the coin, felt the crown on one side, the blank on the other.
The rain fell harder. The man in grey stood in his boat, perfectly balanced, eyes locked on hers.
She closed her hand around the coin.
The canal narrowed. A bridge ahead. The stranger’s boat would pass under first.
Her heart pounded once, twice.
And then she decided.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Debt That Never Was
The bridge loomed ahead, stone slick with centuries of rain. The stranger’s oar bit into the current, pushing them under the arch.
She closed her hand around the coin.
Crown. Blank.
The metal was hot now, too hot to be natural. Her pulse seemed to sync with it—three beats, then a pause, like a code being tapped into her skin.
The man in grey’s boat slid alongside, the water between them boiling with tension.
“You can’t outrun what you owe,” he said calmly.
She smiled. “I don’t owe anything.”
And then she flipped the coin—blank side up.
It didn’t fall.
It hung in the air between them, spinning slowly, the rain stopping mid-drop around it. The city’s noise cut to silence. Even the water froze, ripples locked in place.
Light bled from the coin, pale and cold, unfurling into threads that wove through the air like spider silk. They touched her, the stranger, the man in grey—then spread out into the streets, the rooftops, the harbour, the mountains beyond.
She saw everything.
The ledger was no longer a book in an old man’s hands—it was a map in her mind. Every name, every debt, every chain of cause and consequence glowed before her, threads of gold and black stretching across the world. She could see which debts bound which throats, which oaths had teeth, which histories were fabricated and which were simply purchased.
And she saw her own thread—bright, taut, knotted into the stranger’s and the man in grey’s.
She reached out, and with a flick of her fingers, she erased the knot that tied her to the ledger. Her name dissolved like ink in water.
The man in grey’s smile faltered. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
“I’ve made myself uncollectable,” she said.
But the ledger-map still hung in her vision, and she realised the blank side of the coin hadn’t stopped working.
She could write.
She could create a debt where none had existed before.
Her gaze settled on the man in grey. Slowly, deliberately, she pressed her thumb into the coin and thought his name.
The thread binding him to the ledger blackened. Thickened. Tightened.
His breath caught, just once.
“You—”
“—owe me,” she finished.
The coin dropped into her palm. The rain fell again. The current pulled the gondolas apart.
The man in grey’s boat drifted back into shadow, his eyes locked on hers with something colder than hatred.
The stranger was watching her too—not with fear, but with calculation.
“You’ve changed the board,” he said.
“No,” she said, slipping the coin back into her dress. “I’ve taken it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Weight of the Crown
The rain softened as they drifted downstream, the city’s glow fading into a dark horizon. Neither spoke for a long time. The stranger kept his hands on the oar, steady, unhurried, as if they weren’t being hunted anymore.
They weren’t.
Not tonight.
“You felt it too,” she said finally.
He didn’t look at her. “Yes.”
“What did you see?”
He paused just long enough to make her think he wouldn’t answer. Then:
“Enough to know you’ve stepped into something you can’t step out of.”
She leaned back against the curved edge of the boat, letting the rain trace slow paths along her collarbone. “I thought that was the point of winning—choosing when to walk away.”
“You didn’t win,” he said. “You changed the stakes. The moment you rewrote his debt, you put a crown on your head.”
“Not much of a crown,” she murmured.
His eyes met hers then—steady, unreadable. “Every crown is invisible until someone tries to take it.”
The current eased, carrying them into a wider stretch of water where the only sound was the drip of rain from the oar’s blade. She studied him in the dim light—sharp profile, hands that never fidgeted, the faintest scar along his jaw.
“You’re not afraid of me,” she said.
“I was never afraid of you.”
“Then why help me?”
For the first time, something flickered across his face—not hesitation, not exactly, but the ghost of an unguarded truth.
“Because I was there the first time you asked for power,” he said. “I knew what it would cost you. I just didn’t think you’d be willing to pay all of it.”
The boat bumped gently against a low stone quay. He tied it off with practised ease, then held out his hand. She didn’t take it.
“You think I’ve lost something,” she said.
“I think,” he said, “you’ve traded something you can’t get back.”
“And you?”
He smiled faintly. “I lost that a long time ago.”
They stepped onto the quay. Somewhere beyond the narrow street ahead, the city was stirring again—footsteps, murmured deals, the smell of food and smoke. But here, in the pocket of stillness between water and stone, she slipped her fingers into the lining of her dress and touched the coin.
The crown side burned faintly, like it was waiting for her to use it again.
She looked up at him. “If I asked you to follow me into this—into all of it—would you?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he stepped closer, close enough that she felt the heat of his breath against her cheek.
“That depends,” he said. “Are you wearing the crown for yourself… or for me?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Quay That Burned
The question still hung between them when the sound came—
a faint click in the dark.
Not the snap of a lighter.
The whisper of a rifle bolt sliding into place.
The stranger moved before she had time to think—one arm across her chest, pushing her back against the wet stone wall.
“Keep your head down,” he murmured.
The first shot hit the quay where she’d been standing a heartbeat ago, stone chips stinging her cheek. The second hit the mooring rope, sending their gondola drifting uselessly into the current.
Figures emerged from the mouth of the alley—a half-dozen, dressed like dockworkers but too deliberate, too symmetrical. The man in grey’s agents.
The stranger pulled her along the wall, keeping low. “They’ll try to box us in.”
“And if they do?”
“Then you use it.”
They darted into a narrow side street, puddles glowing with reflections of distant neon. The rain had turned the cobbles slick, forcing her to match his pace or fall. Behind them, bootsteps echoed—measured, confident.
A shadow dropped from a balcony in front of them. Another agent. She barely saw the knife before the stranger’s gun barked twice, the figure crumpling into the water.
The street opened into a small square—empty, too empty.
She froze. “It’s a trap.”
“I know.”
A truck roared into the square from the far side, headlights cutting across the rain. More agents poured from the back, moving to close the gap.
The stranger stepped in front of her, scanning the angles. “We’ve got one shot at this. Literally.”
“I could use the coin—”
“Not here,” he cut in. “Too many eyes.”
“Then what?”
He smiled without humour. “Run through them.”
The first agent lunged, blade glinting in the wet light. She ducked under his arm, felt the stranger’s hand at her back propelling her forward. They moved together—striking, dodging, never stopping. The square became a blur of wet stone, steel, and shouts.
Somewhere in the chaos, she caught a glimpse—
the man in grey himself, standing at the far end of the square, dry as ever, watching.
Not joining.
Not stopping them.
Just smiling, like the outcome had already been decided.
They burst out the other side of the square into a maze of alleys, the shouts fading behind them. Her pulse was a drum in her ears, the coin hot against her ribs again.
Only when they reached a covered passageway did the stranger stop.
“You all right?”
She nodded, breathless. “Why didn’t he take the coin himself?”
The stranger’s gaze was still on the rain-dark street behind them. “Because he wants you to spend it first.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
The House of Mirrors Without Glass
They moved quickly, avoiding the main streets.
Through service corridors smelling of bleach and rust, over courtyards where laundry snapped in the rain like surrender flags, into a district where the architecture grew older, heavier—stone walls blackened by centuries of storms.
The stranger finally slowed before a doorway so narrow it looked like a mistake in the masonry. A single lantern burned above it, the flame tinted green.
“This is it?” she asked.
“It’s not safe,” he said. “It’s just safer than out there.”
The passage beyond twisted downward into cool, dry air. The sound of the city dulled behind them until there was only the faint whisper of voices—not in conversation, but in exchange.
The space they entered wasn’t a room, not exactly. It was a warren of alcoves, each curtained in different fabrics—velvet, muslin, beaded silk—each containing its own occupant. Some lounged on cushions, others bent over low tables cluttered with maps and ledgers.
No one looked up, but she could feel the weight of their awareness as she passed.
“This is a neutral house,” the stranger murmured. “Deals happen here. So do betrayals. Never confuse the two.”
Their alcove was small—three walls of faded brocade, one low table, two chairs. A single lamp burned with a steady, yellow flame that made no shadows.
Before they could sit, a woman arrived. Tall, thin, wearing a coat cut from something that shimmered like insect wings. Her eyes were colourless in the lamplight.
“I heard you coming,” she said to the stranger. Then, to her: “And I heard about you.”
“I doubt it,” she replied.
The woman smiled. “You’re carrying something that’s rewriting the market.”
The stranger’s hand drifted toward the table. “We’re not here to trade.”
“Then you shouldn’t have come here at all,” the woman said softly. “Because in this house, possession is just another form of negotiation.”
When the woman left, the stranger leaned in.
“She’s already told half the room we’re here.”
“Then why stay?”
“Because it’s not just the man in grey looking for you now. If we move too fast, we’ll have every collector in the city at our backs. Here, at least, they have to pretend the rules matter.”
A sound carried faintly through the curtains—a string being plucked, slow and deliberate. She realised it was the same note, played again and again.
“Someone’s signalling,” she said.
The stranger’s eyes flicked to the curtain. “Not someone. Him.”
The string plucked once more.
And then the man in grey’s voice, calm and close:
“You can’t hide in a house without mirrors. Not from me.”
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