7

  On Big Rock island, soaring over the Ocean of Storms:

  It wasn’t the first dark night. Not entirely. A silvery crescent of moon dreamed its own thoughts, overhead. But it was close enough, with tatters of cloud veiling that watery light. Made for a stutter-y, flickering marketplace; sometimes there, often gone.

  The Flying Cloud had extended their shore leave, but Kaazin didn’t figure on needing much time. After the skin-changer’s arrival, he and Tess swarmed back up the scaffolding to a valley that cut through Big Rock’s high, frozen rim. Up here, the waterfalls didn’t. Rather than cascading over the island’s sheer sides, three cataracts hung in long, slender daggers of ice.

  Whenever that narrow moon shone through a gap in the clouds, the valley was rocky and barren, except for snowberry, moss, and a few hardy ferns. Once the moon disappeared, though, two worlds bumped then connected, bringing the market to noisy life. Booths, shops and tents burst out of nothing, packed with the goods of a hundred exotic realms.

  Everything was on offer, from magical weapons and noble beasts to freshly cut sentient timber for ships’ keels. Invisible cloth rattled and snapped in the wind, obscuring tent-poles and merchandise. At one booth, dragon pearls were piled up for sale, glowing seductively.

  At another, lich phylacteries hung in long rows, carved of tarrasque bone or deep-water clam shell. Kaazin found the supplies that he needed at Herma’s Healing Haven; golden ants, ease-tincture and bone sealer. His purchase was quick, made in the moments of darkness that permitted that ephemeral market to thrive. The booth’s proprietor wrapped his purchase in shadows and web, smiling with both of her scaley heads.

  “Many thanks for your custom, Captain,” she said in harmony, as her left voice trilled along with the right one’s deep boom.

  “Quartermaster,” corrected the drow, returning both of her nods. Then, accepting his parcel, “I have an item of value to sell. Something extremely powerful. Where would I go to shift such a thing?”

  “Mmm… neutral, chaotic or… good…?” she inquired, shuddering at the mention of order and light.

  “Chaotic,” he assured both heads. “Part of a set, but such things are…”

  “Magically linked,” finished Herma. “Seek out the Shop of True Need, Quartermaster. It’ll appear if it takes a mind to, no matter where ya happens ter…”

  The moon darted back out of the clouds again, and Kaazin found himself holding a shadowy parcel, facing a crumbling pillar of sandstone. All around him, the ghostly crew, both cats and Tess were left equally stranded by the fey-market’s abrupt disappearance.

  Tess saw him and started over, carrying several bundles. To judge by her smirk, she’d put some hapless merchant out of business with aggressive bargain hunting.

  “Drow-boy! Did ya find what…?”

  -Blink-

  And the market came back, adjusting itself to their changed positions. Kaazin nodded in reply to the girl’s half-formed question, but his attention wasn’t on Tess. A wooden sign had appeared about five feet in front of him. Shaped like a pointing left hand, the signboard read: Purloined goods to unload? Unwanted emotion to shed? Come to the Shop of True Need and sell, sell, sell! We’ll buy anything you can push, pull or drag onto the counter! All offers considered! Followed by: Yes, this means YOU!

  Tessa’s lips moved when she got around to the front of the sign and started reading. For some reason, this annoyed Kaazin.

  “I believe I will visit the shop,” he said, distracting the mortal by taking her parcels. “Perhaps my luck will improve, this time.”

  Tess looked up at him, smirking still wider.

  “Let me do the haggling, Quarter-thug,” she suggested. “No merchant gets the better of Tess Cullen. Never have, never will.”

  “Be my guest, when it comes to the actual price, First Officer. I shall be interested to see how you fare.”

  They started forward, in the direction marked by that pointing wood hand. Several more signs had been placed in their path, all with printed mottos and slogans from: Nobody outbids the Shop! To: When wild men traded rocks for honey, backaches made them switch to money! Come to the Shop that has what you Need!

  “Pushy, isn’t it?” remarked Tess, as they threaded their way between a seller of charms and a dealer in sleep-mist. Funnily enough, even when the rest of the marketplace flickered out, those signs did not, pointing further down the small, crooked valley.

  Near midnight, well past the healing spring, they came to a small, slapdash hut made from the hull and tanks of a crashed airship. Colorful banners fluttered from tall wooden poles, proclaiming: Right here! You made it! And: Look no further!

  The hut’s main signboard creaked and swung in the rising wind, depicting (for Kaazin) a partly mechanical elf. For Tess, something that made all of the blood drain out of her face at once. She stumbled to a sudden halt, staring hard.

  Kaazin steadied the first mate with a hand at her elbow, lending his warmth and physical nearness. She wasn’t his life-mate. He didn’t know how to love and wasn’t sure that he wanted to learn. She was his first officer though and… for now… that was enough.

  “Calm and casual,” he advised quietly. “We’re simply browsing.”

  That was a lie, but Tess nodded anyhow, getting her courage back along with a healthy dose of sheer mortal cussedness. Right, so… You could take the drow out of his cavern, but you couldn’t take the cavern out of the drow. As a uniformed female, Tess outranked him. Once again, he let her go first, following closely behind as she clomped up three steps made out of a wooden rudder and splintery decking.

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  Tess pushed her way through the swinging doors with a lifted chin and straight back, looking determined to beat the Shop of True Need at its game. Kaazin squared his own shoulders and followed. Last time, he hadn’t got through on his own. Last time, he’d been beaten bloody unconscious by an avatar of the godling he meant to confront.

  Kaazin halfway expected to find the doors barred once again, but they swung wide for him, too, revealing all that he hadn’t been awake to notice, the last time. A circular chamber was piled to its distant ceiling with boxes, barrels and sacks. There were long shelves of contraptions and chests full of magic supplies. Bottled ifrits and djinns made hideous faces through dusty, bubble-flecked glass. A rotating bookshelf was packed with enchanted tomes that whispered their contents in rustling, papery voices. Too much take in all at once, as Kaazin refused to stare or seem impressed.

  At the shop’s far end, a long glass-topped counter curved out of sight. A single, withered old she-gnome hovered behind it, attending to one customer at a time. The chalkboard behind her read: Special today on CARDS! Buy, sell, trade! Limited time! It must have shown something else to Tess, though. She’d gone very still and intense once again.

  On top of all that, Kaazin sensed that the Flying Cloud’s spying presence was gone from his head. This was cause for celebration as far as the drow was concerned, but Tess looked shaken. He did not touch her or speak reassurance. Not his business. Just stalked across the wood floor to stand nearer, driving confusion and loss away as he’d forced back the cold.

  There were others in line to see that grasping, near hairless old gnome; a party of dwarves, a dragon-blood mage and two mortals. One of those was a stripling male with pale hair and a withered right arm. The other was a pretty, dark-skinned female, clearly pregnant.

  By surface standards, Kaazin had terrible manners. He stared openly as each of the preceding customers went to the shop counter and made their bargain or slunk away empty-handed. Not once did coin change hands, Kaazin noticed.

  The surly dwarves stomped off cursing and muttering. That dragon-blood mage fared better, scoring something she tucked in her cloak right away. The pale-haired youth purchased a charm that he hung round his neck, then charged off, smiling broadly.

  The dusky woman proved more interesting. She wasn’t related to Kaazin, but at least one of the children she carried stirred his kin-sense. He gave no sign, merely watching as the mortal woman traded what looked like a droplet of ichor for a shimmering door in the air that let in a chilly sea breeze. The portal vanished as soon as she hurried through, leaving Kaazin and Tess next in line.

  The dark-elf nodded, indicating that grumpy, impatient gnome.

  “After you, First Officer,” he said. (Not just because he wanted Tess to soften the old hag up a bit, first.)

  The girl nodded back, keeping her expression under control. She’d read the epics, and she knew all the classic mistakes. Bowing, Tess said,

  “Good evening, shopkeeper. I hope I find you well?”

  The gnome snorted, looking Tess up and down.

  “You find me, which isn’t much of a shock, after all the signs that I posted. Interested in a fate change, I take it?”

  Tessa nodded. She held her breath for a moment and then said, all in a rush,

  “Not for me. For mum, da and Jimmy. For them, that they didn’t get killed. That they escaped, somehow. I… I joined the pirate crew and left them, or something. Don’t care what happens to me. Just…” her shoulders slumped under that big red coat. The words came out slower and harder, as if every one of them hurt.. “Just let my folks and brother still be alive.”

  The gnome’s head cocked to one side, causing her few strands of wispy white hair to drift like seaweed.

  “Hmm… interesting, and pricey.”

  Tessa started to reach for her purse rather than arguing, but the gnome only laughed.

  “I’ve got all the money I need, Girly… but you’ve got something much better than that. There’s a well of pure terror, shock and pain penned up in your heart. That, I could bottle and sell for a fortune to a necromancer or lich. Trade me that, and I’ll twitch their life-threads onto a safer path.”

  Tess inhaled sharply.

  “I’ll still have Stormy and…” the girl’s brown eyes drifted over to Kaazin. “…and the cats? My crew?”

  The gnome chuckled.

  “All shall be present and accounted for, Girly, although they may not thank you for keeping them penned in the Cloud… and your family will never speak to you, ever again, for deserting them to join a pirate ship.”

  Tess lifted her chin.

  “I don’t care,” she snapped. “They’re alive and they can go peddle Oberyn’s drekking hymnals wherever they want. Good riddance!”

  The gnome grunted, bending to hunt through her counter for something. Moments later, she emerged with a glass bottle shaped like a coiled serpent. Facing Tess once again, the shopkeeper set that empty bottle down on the battered countertop.

  “Look at me, Girly,” she commanded. “Think of the past and let go.”

  Tess stared directly into the gnome’s blue eyes. Then she gasped, as something misty and dark was drawn out of her, through the girl’s nostrils and mouth. It coiled and flowed like smoke, then trickled down into that serpent-shaped bottle, exactly filling it. Black, stinking fluid dribbled and sloshed, made up of long-congealed hatred, loathing and shame.

  Losing the stuff turned Tessa suddenly dizzy. She would have fallen, but Kaazin stepped forward to catch hold and steady her.

  “Geroff,” mumbled the girl. “Don’ need any help!”

  “Clearly,” agreed the dark-elf, shifting his grip. “You are about to collapse of sheer boredom.”

  The gnome jammed a stopper into the mouth of that brimming glass bottle, somehow not spilling its foul, awful contents. Next, she turned to regard Kaazin.

  “Hurry it up, Night-stalker,” grumped the shopkeeper. “I’ve got other customers, on more planes than you could possibly comprehend. You have one of Titania’s wretched cards, I believe?”

  Kaazin inclined his head.

  “I do. It was drawn, but not used, as the deck’s last owner was occupied dying at the time. It is linked to the rest of the deck, back on our ship,” he said.

  Pulling the stolen card from his faerie pockets, the drow set it down on the countertop. Oddly enough, that vellum square displayed neither image nor writing, not having been drawn by Kaazin. It was flickering grey, instead, like a spell-globe gone bad.

  The gnome stroked her bristly chin, considering.

  “Umph. I can pin this card and use it to draw all the others along with their case. An airship can’t own or use them, and the last lucky finder is dead… but there remains the question of payment. What do you seek in return for this card, Dark-spawn?”

  There was the difficult, touchy bit, badly affecting his pride. The part that he hated.

  “I would… speak with a newly-ascended machine god. A former elf with whom I have had some unfortunate history,” Kaazin said evenly.

  The gnome cocked one sparse eyebrow, and then the other.

  “A god?” she blurted. “You want me to pucker right up and whistle for a god?”

  “Yeah, and while you’re at it, fetch Oberyn, too,” growled Tess, folding both arms on her thin chest. “He ‘n me need to have words.”

  The gnome shook her head disbelievingly. Then,

  “Don’t ask for much, do you? Almost better off letting the cards find another user… except that they won’t, without the whole set in their case. Right… I can open a window into Etherion, Darkling, but only for a short time, and I can’t guarantee that Builder of Cities will speak to you. He’s a cross-grained, rebellious whelp, with no proper sense of respect. Not that you care. Well enough. Stand aside and have your escape-spells ready.”

  The gnome frowned, concentrating on a spot in midair before Kaazin. All at once, a small oval window flashed open. The drow and girl could not understand most of what they glimpsed through that sparkling portal. There were too many confusing angles and extra dimensions. Colors that made no sense, and noises like whale song and smoke. After a moment, though, someone wove themselves into existence from all of the weirdness, looking grim and mechanical.

  Builder of Cities, Lord Someday.