Chapter 104: Market of Nations
Lysa took him to the Underbazaar on a rest day.
"You can’t understand the kingdom from the Academy," she said, walking at the pace of someone who’d grown up in a city and had calibrated her stride to navigate crowds without slowing down. Ryn, who’d grown up in a village of eighty-three people where the biggest crowd was a family dinner, followed in her wake like a dinghy behind a warship. "Books tell you structure. The market tells you function."
The Underbazaar occupied the underground level of the Market Hall — the vast, barrel-vaulted building on the west side of Anvil Square. Above ground, the Market Hall was organized, regulated, taxed. Licensed merchants in designated stalls selling inspected goods at prices posted on stamped boards. The Ministry of Coin’s inspectors patrolled the aisles with the regularity of tides.
Below ground, the rules were softer.
The Underbazaar wasn’t illegal. That was the first thing Lysa clarified — nothing in Ashenveil was truly illegal without being actively suppressed, because the Ministry of Whispers knew about everything and the things they allowed to continue existed because they served a purpose. The Underbazaar was semi-official. A market for goods that didn’t fit the categories of the Market Hall above: specialty imports, provincial rarities, personal services, information, and the kind of trade that happened between people who preferred their transactions unrecorded.
The entrance was a stone stairway behind the Market Hall’s loading dock — wide enough for two carts, steep enough that the light from above faded before the bottom. Oil lamps on iron brackets lit the underground space in amber pools that left the gaps between stalls in comfortable shadow.
The noise was different down here. Softer. More intimate. The bargaining wasn’t shouted — it was murmured. Prices discussed in close proximity, faces near faces, the universal body language of people doing business they’d rather keep between themselves.
"Three sections," Lysa said, guiding him through the crowd. "Provincial Goods, Foreign Goods, Services. Provincial Goods is the biggest — every province sends its specialties here because the margins are better than the taxed stalls above."
She stopped at a stall draped in crimson cloth. The merchant — a wiry Human woman with burn-scarred hands — presided over a display of glass bottles containing liquids in colors that looked chemically unstable.
"Cinderlands fire-oils," Lysa said. "Vaelthyr’s domain. They extract volatile compounds from volcanic mineral deposits and distill them into — well, various things. Lamp fuel that burns for a month. Forge accelerant that triples smelting speed. Medical cauterizing agents."
"And weapons?"
"Officially, no. Unofficially, a concentrated fire-oil flask makes a very effective incendiary. The Ministry of War buys their entire military-grade output through official channels. What ends up here is the civilian surplus." She picked up a small bottle of amber liquid, uncorked it, sniffed, and set it back. "Decent quality. Overpriced. She’s charging four Marks for what costs two in Ember Spire."
"Then why buy it here?"
"Because Ember Spire is eleven days by caravan and the Underbazaar is a staircase." Lysa moved on. "Economics, Ryn. The price of convenience."
They walked deeper. Each stall was a window into a province:
A Kobold jeweler from the Athenaeum — tiny, meticulous, selling precision-cut gemstones set in stonesteel wire. The tools of her trade were miniaturized to match her hands: hammers smaller than Ryn’s thumb, files thinner than sewing needles. She wore magnifying lenses on a brass headband and spoke in the rapid Kobold trade-dialect that sounded like someone shuffling a deck of cards.
A Gnoll tanner from the Frostmarch — Gharrek Fenward’s province — displaying cured hides of animals that Ryn recognized from home. Wolf pelts, elk leather, the thick-scaled skin of mountain serpents that his village hunters called skinbacks. The tanner worked while he sold, scraping a fresh hide with a bone tool, his amber eyes following every customer with the casual territorial awareness of a predator in a room full of prey animals.
A Minotaur brewer from the Ironfields — massive, jovial, operating from a stall that was essentially a bar. Iron kegs stacked behind him, each stamped with the Gorvaxis cog. He poured samples into small cups and handed them to anyone who looked interested, which was everyone, because free ale from a Minotaur brewer was the oldest sales tactic in the kingdom and it worked every single time.
"Try the ironbock," Lysa said.
Ryn tried the ironbock. It tasted like someone had dissolved a horseshoe in barley water and then set the mixture on fire. His eyes watered. His throat closed. Something in his chest caught flame and refused to extinguish.
"Good?" the Minotaur asked. His smile was the smile of a man who had watched ten thousand first-timers try ironbock and had enjoyed every single reaction.
"I can’t feel my tongue," Ryn managed.
"That means it’s working."
Past the brewer, a stall that made Ryn stop: *Warden Surplus — Authorized Resale.*
The stall was smaller than the others, operated by a young Lizardman woman in the ochre tunic of the Warden Academy’s support staff. The display was utilitarian: pieces of equipment that had been retired from active creature-handling service and cleared for civilian sale. Thick leather harness straps, worn smooth by years of Gryphon-saddle friction. Iron bond-resonance calibrators — palm-sized devices that the Wardens used to measure the strength of a creature-handler bond, repurposed here as curiosity items. A rack of Gryphon feathers — not shed naturally, but collected during molt seasons, each one the length of Ryn’s forearm, bronze and gold, with the faintly warm texture of something that had been touched by divine energy.
"How much for a feather?" Ryn asked.
"Two Marks," the Lizardman woman said. "They don’t do anything — the divine energy fades within a week of separation from the creature. After that, it’s just a feather. A very large, very beautiful feather."
"People buy feathers that don’t do anything?"
"People buy them because they *were* part of a divine creature. The Gryphon that shed this one—" She picked up a particularly large feather, its bronze surface catching the lamplight. "—is a Flight Beta patrol Gryphon named Stormcrest. Twelve years old. Wingspan of thirty-eight meters. This feather was from the left primary wing. It was shed during the autumn molt in Harvestide. The Warden Academy logs every feather and certificates the provenance."
She showed him a small slip of parchment attached to the feather’s quill with iron thread. The certificate listed the creature’s name, the Warden’s name, the date of collection, and a stamped seal from the Warden Academy.
"Collectors love these. Some people frame them. Some people give them as gifts — ’a piece of the divine.’ The Academy makes about eight hundred Marks a year from feather sales alone. It funds the apprentice program."
Lysa pulled him away before he spent two Marks he couldn’t afford.
***
The Foreign Goods section was smaller and stranger.
"Foreign" in this context meant goods from outside the Sovereign Dominion — trade items that had crossed borders, passed through neutral territories, and arrived in Ashenveil through the handful of sanctioned trade routes that connected the kingdom to the wider continent.
Most of the foreign trade moved through House Draeven’s network. Callister Draeven’s merchant convoys operated the southern and eastern trade corridors — overland routes that skirted the Green Accord’s borders and connected to independent settlements, minor god-states, and the few remaining ungoverned trade hubs that existed in the spaces between divine territories.
The Draeven stall in the Underbazaar was the largest — a double-wide space with iron-framed display cases and a staff of six clerks who processed transactions with the efficiency of a military supply depot. The goods were exotic: spices from the Sunheart Archipelago, a chain of volcanic islands a thousand kilometers south. Silk from the Loom Colonies, where an insect god had crossbred silkworms into creatures that produced thread stronger than conventional rope. Carved bone from the Bone Plains, where a death god’s territory produced skeletal fauna that could be harvested and shaped into tools of unusual hardness.
And one section of the Draeven display that drew a crowd: Creature Curiosities — Foreign Origin.
Three items under glass. Each one labeled with Draeven’s precise commercial documentation.
Item 1: A scale the size of Ryn’s palm — deep green with a woody grain, like tree bark compressed into jade. Label: Thornwyrm Scale Fragment. Recovered from Eastern Marsh battlefield, Year 92 AF. Demeterra origin. Divine creature — class: siege-serpent. WARNING: May retain residual hostile divine energy. Do not expose to open flame.
Item 2: A feather unlike any Gryphon feather Ryn had seen — smaller, darker, with a red-black iridescence that looked wet. Label: Growth-Hawk Primary Feather. Gorvahn origin, Year 208 AF. Divine creature — class: aerial assault. Note: Growth-Hawks are divine creatures produced by the Green Accord’s Beast domain. Intelligence assessment: faster than Sovereign Gryphons, less durable.
Item 3: A tooth. Not even that impressive as teeth went — curved, maybe six centimeters long, yellowed with age. But the label made Ryn’s blood run cold: Unknown Divine Creature Tooth. Origin: Korthane Hegemony border region. Year 247 AF. Classification: PENDING. Intelligence value: HIGH. This item confirms the existence of at least one divine creature in a territory previously assessed as creature-free.
Ryn stared at the tooth. The Korthane Hegemony had divine creatures. Or at least one. And someone — a Draeven trader, an intelligence operative, a border scout — had found proof and put it in a display case in the Underbazaar.
"How is that here?" Ryn asked.
"Callister Draeven doesn’t sell intelligence by accident," Lysa said quietly. "If that tooth is in a public display case, it’s because Draeven wants people to see it. He wants the rumor to spread. He wants the Ministry of Whispers to know that he found it, which tells Vrenn Myrvalis that Draeven’s trade network extends into Korthane territory, which is information that Draeven is offering as leverage."
She pulled him away from the glass.
"Everything in this market is a transaction, Ryn. Even the things that look like curiosities."
***
The Services section was the most unsettling.
Not because anything illegal was happening — again, the Ministry of Whispers knew about everything, and everything down here existed at the intersection of tolerated and useful. But the services offered were the kind that reminded Ryn that a city of a hundred and fifty thousand people generated needs that a village of eighty-three couldn’t imagine.
Scribes who wrote letters for the illiterate — a service that shouldn’t have been necessary in a kingdom with a public education system, but was, because not everyone attended the Academy and not every province had achieved full literacy rates. The Frostmarch and Northern Reach had the lowest literacy — Ryn’s own province, where reading was a skill that trade ledger keepers possessed and everyone else considered optional.
Translators. The kingdom’s five races spoke Common as the administrative language, but home tongues persisted — Lizardman Sibilant, Minotaur Tauric, Kobold Chitter, Gnoll Growltongue. In the outer provinces, entire communities still conducted daily life in their racial language and switched to Common only for official business. The Underbazaar translators worked the gaps — converting commercial documents, personal letters, and legal forms between languages for fees that varied by complexity and urgency.
Bond-readers. This was the one that made Ryn stop. A small stall near the back wall, operated by a Gnoll woman with grey-streaked fur and the particular stillness of someone who measured everything. A hand-painted sign: BOND RESONANCE ASSESSMENT — WARDEN APTITUDE SCREENING — 3 MARKS.
"She’s not a Warden," Lysa clarified. "She used to work at the Warden Academy — screening applicants before their formal evaluation. She retired five years ago and set up here. For three Marks, she’ll test your bond-resonance potential — whether your body can harmonize with a divine creature’s energy field."
"Is any of it real?"
"The equipment is real — she has a retired resonance calibrator. The readings are real. Whether the *interpretation* is real..." Lysa shrugged. "She tells about one in fifty people that they have Warden potential. The actual acceptance rate at the Warden Academy is one in three hundred. So she’s either more generous or less accurate. But people pay because they want to know. Parents bring their children. Young people bring themselves. The dream of bonding a divine creature is—" She paused. "—it’s the kingdom’s version of wanting to ride a dragon. Everyone imagines it. Almost no one does it. But the wanting is worth three Marks."
Ryn watched the Gnoll woman place her hand on a young Minotaur boy’s forearm — the boy couldn’t have been more than twelve, dragged here by a beaming father — and activate the calibrator. The device hummed. A small iron needle twitched. The Gnoll studied it, nodded, and said something quiet that made the boy’s face light up and the father’s chest expand.
Warden potential detected. Low resonance, but present.
The boy would probably never enter the Warden Academy. He’d probably grow up to be a smith or a soldier or a merchant. But for three Marks and thirty seconds, he’d been told that somewhere inside him was the capacity to bond a divine creature. And he’d carry that for the rest of his life.
Blessing brokers occupied the next row. Small stalls, usually operated by a single person, offering to connect believers with specific priestly services — healing for chronic conditions, fertility blessings for couples struggling to conceive, protective wards for homes in dangerous districts. The services themselves were legitimate — the Crucible’s priests performed blessings daily as part of their pastoral function. The brokers’ role was navigation: knowing which priest in which temple specialized in which blessing, and arranging appointments for a fee.
"It’s queue-jumping," Lysa explained. "The Crucible’s blessing services are free but the wait list is long. Two weeks for a standard healing. Six weeks for fertility. The brokers cut the wait by knowing which priests have openings and which temples are less busy."
"That seems—"
"Unfair? It is. If you have money, you get blessed faster. If you don’t, you wait. The Crucible pretends the brokers don’t exist. The brokers pretend they’re providing ’consultation services.’ Everyone knows what’s happening. Nobody stops it because stopping it would require the Crucible to acknowledge that its blessing capacity doesn’t meet demand, which would require admitting that a god of a million believers can’t bless all of them equally."
She said it without bitterness. With the detached analytical tone of a history student who had learned to observe systems rather than judge them.
"Every kingdom has cracks," Lysa said. "The good ones know where the cracks are. The great ones know which cracks to fix and which ones to leave alone because fixing them would break something else."
Ryn looked around the Underbazaar. Hundreds of stalls. Thousands of transactions. An underground economy that existed in the shadow of the official economy, filling gaps, serving needs, connecting people and goods in ways that the Ministry of Coin’s inspectors couldn’t — or wouldn’t — regulate. And woven through it all — divine creature feathers and foreign creature curiosities and bond-resonance dreams — the presence of the beasts that had become as much a part of the kingdom’s economy as stonesteel and ironbock.
"Does the Sovereign know about this?"
Lysa laughed. The first time he’d heard her laugh — a short, sharp sound that contained no humor and a great deal of understanding.
"Ryn. The Sovereign designed this."
He didn’t ask how she knew. He didn’t need to. In a kingdom where every road was planned, every institution was architected, every system was engineered for purpose — the idea that an underground market existed by accident was the most naive thing a Northern Reach boy could believe.
Even the cracks are by design.
He followed Lysa back up the stairs into the regulated light of the Market Hall above, where the prices were posted and the inspectors walked and the Iron Marks changed hands in orderly transactions that everyone pretended were the whole economy.
They weren’t. They were the part of the economy that was meant to be seen.
Below, the Underbazaar hummed. Somewhere in its depths, a twelve-year-old Minotaur boy was holding a slip of paper that said *Warden potential detected*, and his father was already planning which Gryphon his son would ride.
The Sovereign watched. Even here. *Especially* here.