# Chapter 3: The Broken Barter

  The smell of the Copper Cauldron was an aggressive blend of stale beer, sour sweat, and dried blood. It was the kind of tavern where the Guild pushed the hunters who were too dangerous for the noble districts, but too valuable for the dungeon.

  Malik pushed the oak door. The creak of the hinges was barely noticed above the hoarse laughter.

  His right ribs were wrapped in strips of old bedsheet that Nasir had pulled tight until his eyes watered. The fifteen-year-old forced his broad shoulders back to hide the pain.

  Nasir was by his side. The ten-year-old boy wore Malik's canvas coat, which fell to his knees. He coughed into his fist, a muffled sound that made three nearby mercenaries push their chairs away in disgust.

  "Is this it?" Nasir whispered.

  "Yeah," Malik replied through gritted teeth.

  In the farthest, darkest corner of the tavern, sitting at a round table, there they were.

  Brog held a mug the size of a bucket. His colossal hammer leaned against the wall, and his black shield rested at his feet.

  Miren, on the other side of the table, stared at an untouched glass of wine. A thin cigarette hung from her lips while she threw a knife into the center of the wood. *Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.*

  Malik swallowed hard. He placed his hand on his brother's thin back and guided him through the maze of fallen chairs.

  Upon reaching the table, Malik didn't ask for permission. He pulled an empty chair out with his foot and gestured for Nasir to sit. Malik remained standing, his left hand resting on the back of his brother's chair like an organic human shield.

  Miren stopped the knife in the air, but didn't look up.

  Brog slammed his mug down violently, splashing beer. He wiped the foam from his beard and narrowed his beady eyes at Malik.

  "I told you not to bother me until I sold the hide, suicide boy."

  "I came to do business, Brog," Malik tried to keep his voice steady despite the twinge in his rib. "I wasn't hunting a stray dog. That bony beak took blood from me. I want my cut."

  Brog let out a laugh that sounded like grinding stones.

  "You can barely stand with that rag around your belly, boy. And you bring this leper creature sniffing around my table? Get lost before I use you to polish my shield."

  "Mutated Matriarch. Sector Four. Subterranean route of the Eastern Chemical Docks."

  Nasir's voice didn't waver. It was low, but cutting as glass.

  Brog froze with his mug halfway to his mouth. Miren didn't move a muscle. Only the smoke from her cigarette rose, thin, as her gray eyes finally shifted to the tiny boy coughing in the oversized coat.

  Nasir placed a torn piece of parchment on the wet table. It was drawn in charcoal.

  "The Guild pays fifty gold coins for her alive, thirty dead. You kill the pups for spare change and let the biggest prize sleep right under you."

  Brog blinked, his surprise giving way to a scowl.

  "You fill the brat's head with Guild stories and he plays fortuneteller?" the dwarf growled at Malik.

  "It's not fortunetelling. It's biology," Nasir answered before Malik could open his mouth. "That rat you killed today had a bony beak. That mutation takes thirty moons to harden in the complete absence of light. The Matriarch is in the dry cistern, below the active pipes. She just gave birth to a new litter and kicked the older ones out. She's asleep, recovering her energy."

  Miren took a slow drag from her cigarette. Her eyes went from the precise sketch on the parchment to Nasir's pale face.

  "And if we go down there now?" she asked, her voice lethargically cold.

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  "You die," Nasir said with absolute simplicity. "She's blind, but reacts to heat and vibration in the shallow waters. The dwarf won't fit through the narrow ducts without waking her."

  "Watch how you speak, you little plague..." Brog began, but Miren raised two fingers from the hand holding the cigarette. The dwarf fell silent instantly.

  "Continue, boy," Miren ordered.

  Nasir coughed, a dry spasm that made Malik grip the back of the chair tighter. When he recovered, the boy pointed to the charcoal drawing.

  "You can't go down stealthily. You need to ambush her on the main slope. You need someone fast enough to pierce the nest with luminous bait and draw the aberration out to the open area. Someone to pull the beast right into his hammer."

  Miren and Brog looked at Malik. Malik straightened his shoulders, his heart hammering against the pain in his ribs.

  "I'll pull the beast," Malik said, his voice thick. "I go into the cistern, throw the light, and bring her straight to you."

  Brog let out another heavy laugh, though the previous disdain had given way to disbelief.

  "You barely handled a pup in the shallow sewer. The Matriarch will tear you in half just with her stench."

  "I run faster than you," Malik countered. "I pull her into the light, you smash her. Clean and fast."

  Miren crushed her cigarette against the edge of the table.

  "The stubborn boy thinks he has a price. What's your proposal?"

  "Ten percent of the Guild's bounty for me. The hide and the glory of killing the threat are yours." Malik took a deep breath, knowing the next part would cost whatever pride he had left. "And you fix my ribs right now. For free. Otherwise, I can't run."

  The tavern seemed to sink into silence for a second. Brog looked at Miren, expecting a furious refusal, or perhaps for her to pull the knife from the wood.

  Instead, a tiny, almost imperceptible smile curved the corner of the healer's lips. She perfectly saw the brutal calculation on the table: Malik was selling his own life as cheap cannon fodder, all guided by the monstrous intelligence of the coughing child beside him.

  "Ten percent of thirty gold is three gold coins. A peasant doesn't see that in a lifetime," Miren said quietly. "You're bold, boy. And desperate. But your portable oracle there knows how to draw a damn good map."

  Brog rubbed his beard, his beady eyes gleaming at the prospect of silver and gold. With fifty gold they could buy the entire floor of the inn for a year.

  "If he trips and dies down there, he doesn't get a cut of the gold, right?" the dwarf grumbled to the woman.

  "If he dies, we take his little pup and sell him to some antiquarian as an enslaved grimoire reader," Miren replied dryly. She stood up from her chair, adjusting her leather coat, and extended a pale, cold hand toward Malik's chest. "Take off your shirt. Let me fix that garbage bandage before the bone splinter pierces your spleen and stains my tavern floor."

  Malik felt a mix of relief and dread when the cold, white light began to spark from Miren's slender fingers. He looked at Nasir, who finally stopped tensing his shoulders and relaxed in the grimy chair.

  The sick boy had done the work for him. Nasir had found the key to the door that none of Malik's muscles could break down. And, while the unbearable pain of Clandestine Magic forced his bones back together in the middle of the tavern, Malik realized that they would never be ignored in the Underworld again.

  Nasir looked at the hulking dwarf's hands and smiled.

  From then on, the Guild would learn their names.