Chapter 54: THE GRAND EXCHANGE

After another wrong turn, Sio finally accepted that wandering until the market somehow became familiar was not working. He had passed the same red awning twice, climbed a staircase that returned him one level lower, and reached a cargo bridge just in time to watch it rotate away from him.

The juvenile clicked happily beside his ear when Sio spotted a wooden sign marked INFORMATION beneath the next arch. He pointed at the creature while heading toward it. "Don’t sound so happy. You’re the reason I’ve been wandering around this place for the last twenty minutes." The juvenile pressed itself more comfortably against his neck, accepting none of the blame.

A woman behind the public counter listened while Sio explained that he needed to get back toward the equipment district and, more importantly, find Arch and Angle. She unfolded a map across the desk, crossed through the lift Sio had been trying to reach, and marked another route through the lower registration levels. "That lift belongs to auction cargo until evening. Take the western gallery and work your way back up from there."

Sio leaned over the map and followed the line with one finger. Bridges crossed other bridges, stairways changed levels halfway through, and several routes seemed to share the same symbols. "This was supposed to help." When the juvenile leaned over his shoulder and opened its mouth around one corner, Sio snatched the paper away. "No. This map is the only reason I have any chance of finding Arch and Angle again. You are not eating my way back to them."

The woman tapped a cluster of connected levels near the center of the page. Sio followed her finger until he reached the largest words printed on the map.

GRAND EXCHANGE

He looked past her toward the guarded corridors stretching farther into the canyon. "How big is one auction supposed to be?" She pointed out registration halls, appraisal rooms, secured storage and several separate auction chambers, then slid the map back toward him as another customer approached.

"Of course the black market has another market inside it." Sio folded the map with considerably less success than confidence and tucked it beneath his arm. The juvenile reached for the loose corner again, so he moved it to the opposite shoulder before starting down the route she had marked.

The market changed gradually around him. Open stalls became less common, shouting merchants gave way to quieter counters, and more doors had guards beside them checking tokens before allowing anyone through. Sio tried to keep moving until two buyers beside a glass enclosure started arguing over a fist-sized black stone.

"It gained weight since morning," one insisted, pressing both palms against the glass. The other told him he had been cheated, and Sio glanced at the motionless stone as he passed. "See, this is why normal people buy furniture." The juvenile immediately stretched toward a tray of roasted meat moving in the opposite direction, forcing Sio to catch it around the middle. "Food is understandable. Stealing it while I’m lost is not."

Several levels away, Angle stood outside a Grand Exchange registration hall with his thumb rubbing slowly across his palm. He kept remembering the glove he had tried in the equipment shop, not because it had made his flames stronger or changed his Scar, but because the heat inside him had stopped pushing back for those few seconds.

The doors slid apart with a soft hiss, though Angle remained outside long enough for someone behind him to step around. I’m chasing mysterious gloves through a black market because they felt strange. Damn it, I’m starting to act like Sio. The thought almost made him leave out of principle, but the memory of that steady little flame carried him through the doorway instead.

The first clerk sent him to another counter, where a woman disappeared into a records room after seeing the merchant’s transfer slip. She returned with a narrow sheet and ran one finger down the entry. "Transferred this morning. Authentication requested before auction placement."

Angle rested his hand on the counter. "They’re going into the auction?" The clerk confirmed that the submitting party had requested the main Exchange rather than the preliminary lots, though the gloves still needed final appraisal before receiving a lot number.

Once the appraisal cleared, their hall and auction time would appear in the public catalogue. When Angle asked what he needed to bid, the clerk mentioned a registered buyer identity and a hall deposit, adding that registered patrons could bring approved guests.

Angle’s fingers stopped on the slip. His face was already attached to a bounty, and presenting his real identity inside a place where half the population seemed to trade information sounded stupid even by Sio’s standards. First find out what they are. Then worry about getting them. He folded the paper and tucked it inside his coat before leaving the counter.

Sio entered another registration corridor not long afterward and spotted the quiet man from earlier standing at a records desk. The same small metal token rested between two fingers while a clerk searched through files, and Sio slowed before remembering that following whatever caught his attention was exactly how he had ended up separated in the first place.

He adjusted the juvenile on his shoulder and continued walking. "Nope. We’re learning from our mistakes today. Mysterious man doing mysterious business is officially not our problem." The juvenile twisted around to keep staring at the man, so Sio turned its head forward with one hand. "At least pretend we have discipline."

Behind them, the clerk slid a narrow list across the desk and explained that older inventory had been checked again while the Exchange prepared its catalogue. The quiet man read through the entries without changing expression, then stopped halfway down and placed one finger against a line. "Where was this moved?"

The clerk checked another record before giving him a secured appraisal level. He folded the list once and left without asking what waited there, while Sio disappeared around the opposite corner without seeing him move.

At another Grand Exchange entrance, the young woman from the equipment shop approached a reinforced door while two workers carried a padded case several steps behind her. One official lifted a hand for her token, but the man beside him noticed a small mark beneath the edge of her sleeve and quietly caught his wrist.

The first official followed his partner’s gaze and immediately lowered his hand. "Apologies." The woman gave him an easy smile and told him he had only been doing his job, while the lock disengaged and the workers followed her through without anyone checking her name or the case.

A man at the front of the waiting line watched her disappear inside and glanced down at the token already prepared in his own hand. His mouth opened as though he intended to complain, but the two officials had already returned their attention to him, and whatever he had planned to say died before it reached them.

Inside the appraisal room, the padded case was placed beneath a bright examination lamp. The appraiser lifted one glove, checked the material around the palm and reinforced knuckles, then set it down beside several instruments. "Preliminary auction would move them faster. The main Exchange brings better buyers, but it will draw more attention."

The woman rested two fingers against the edge of the case while considering the gloves. "Main Exchange. Let people decide what they think they’re worth." The appraiser gave a short nod and pulled the auction-registration forms closer.

Several levels above, Arch reached the equipment shop and found the display where the gloves had been sitting empty. The merchant recognized him and nodded toward the lower market. "The red-scarf fellow came back. Asked where the gloves went and headed toward the Grand Exchange after I told him."

Arch asked whether the other young man had returned, but the merchant shook his head. Angle had at least followed something predictable, while Sio could have followed a strange animal, an unusual smell or his own curiosity into almost any corner of the canyon. Find them before someone else does. Arch thanked the merchant and headed downhill without wasting another second.

Near the Exchange, a young courier passed him with several brass tags clipped along one side of his coat. Arch nearly ignored him until light caught the symbol stamped into one of them: a compact mark wrapped around a number he had already seen once before.

The pale-coated information broker at the frontier settlement had carried the same branding on his projection. Before Arch could look closer, another courier stopped beside a waiting customer and touched two fingers against a matching brass tag, causing a pale holographic profile to unfold above her hand.

An unfamiliar Wayfarer’s face rotated slowly in the light while the buyer leaned closer. He asked for the last sighting and direction, received both, then paid before the courier dismissed the image and moved on.

Arch kept walking, but now his eyes caught the numbered symbol on another coat, then another. A woman near the railing sold someone the route of an official patrol, while a different courier projected a smuggler’s face for a man carrying two shopping bags. Nobody asked why the customer wanted the information.

A third hologram flickered into existence farther ahead, and Arch stopped when Sio’s face appeared above the courier’s palm. His purple scar was unmistakable, and a rough image of the juvenile sat against one shoulder.

LAST VERIFIED SIGHTING: LOWER REGISTRATION DISTRICT

DIRECTION OF TRAVEL: GRAND EXCHANGE

REPORT AGE: 6 MINUTES

The buyer opposite the courier frowned at the final line and asked whether anything newer had come in. The courier tapped the numbered symbol on his tag and named another price, and coins changed hands without negotiation.

The hologram flickered as another sighting entered the report. Arch had just watched the same network sell a criminal’s route, an official patrol’s position and now Sio’s movement without treating any of them differently. Someone was paying to keep Sio from disappearing into the crowd. Move. Arch pushed toward the lower galleries before another update could be sold.

Farther below, Sio reached the public lift on his map and found a brass gate locked across it. The attendant explained that incoming auction cargo had priority and redirected him through the preliminary viewing level, while the juvenile clicked happily as though another blocked route were entertainment made specifically for it.

"I want it officially recorded that I tried to go the correct way," Sio told the attendant while checking the map again. The man stared at him for a moment before silently pointing toward the western gallery, and Sio accepted that as the closest thing he was going to receive to sympathy.

The gallery opened above several appraisal rooms, with reinforced windows allowing buyers to watch items being inspected below. Workers moved numbered cases between tables while suspended cargo platforms crossed the open space, and Sio found himself slowing even though he still had the map in one hand.

I can look while finding them. That still counts. He continued west while turning his head toward anything interesting behind the glass, which was nearly everything.

Angle stepped onto the opposite side of the same gallery with his registration slip inside his coat. For a few seconds they were almost directly across from one another, but a suspended cargo platform descended between the walkways with a heavy THUNK before either happened to look the right way.

By the time the platform moved again, Angle had turned toward another registration desk and Sio was already farther along the western bridge. Neither noticed how little distance had separated them, and the market swallowed that chance as quickly as it had created it.

Arch reached the upper bridge shortly afterward and saw another numbered courier opening a hologram for a waiting customer. Sio’s face appeared again, and the information beneath it refreshed while Arch watched.

NEW VERIFIED SIGHTING: PRELIMINARY VIEWING LEVEL

The man opposite the courier paid before the projection had even finished stabilizing. He turned toward the stairs leading down, and the movement gave Arch a clear view of his face.

Arch recognized the elite bounty hunter immediately, and the direction he had chosen left no room for doubt about which report he had just purchased. Below them, Sio was still wandering through the viewing galleries, completely unaware that someone far more dangerous than a lost tourist now knew exactly where to start looking.