"We can find someone else to buy the thread,” Fintan told Cherry. The auditor was busy counting the boxes, and the jeweler was polishing his crown. People crowded to see the boxes, but the junior auditor returned with friends. A transaction this size would have a team of auditors, and he was caught in the middle.

  Cherry didn’t seem to hear what he was saying. Her only concern was the gold and getting her fair share. RuTing put a hand on his elbow and pulled him aside to the edge of the parameter. She’d seen his reaction to the crown and the dial.

  “It’s too late,” she whispered into his ear. “We are too far into the deal.”

  “We can walk away right now. No gilders have exchanged hands. She still hasn’t signed.”

  “It doesn’t matter. They know what it is. Questions will be asked. There are no ogres here.”

  RuTing was right. Bannerburg didn’t openly trade with a city aligned with the Adversary. If the jewelers knew about the scrolls and Bannerburg, it was because the scrolls were smuggled into Yuxia. By joining the Yuxian merchants, they had inadvertently shifted sides from a free city to the Adversary.

  It didn’t matter that the ogres still paid tribute to the Adversary. They were unsanctioned traders, and if they didn’t make this deal after coming so close, their loyalty would be in question. Yuxia might take the thread and toss them in jail.

  He was a fool for not seeing this coming and a fool to believe so much gold wouldn’t make an impact. His face felt numb.

  “We couldn’t know,” RuTing said. “This market does millions of gilders in a trade a day.”

  He felt she mourned, but she was better at hiding her emotions.

  The attention of the sale brought a crowd, and many people in the crowd were slave owners with dials in their hands and slaves wearing simple smocks who waited, to the dismay of other shop owners. They were from all over the afterlife, and Fintan didn’t recognize many of them. The Zeusopolans had their own guards, and their slaves, men and women, wore white linen loincloths with bronze chain-link belts with the symbol of their master. They didn’t have footwear, and they shifted their feet on the hot road.

  “Will this lower the price of a crown?” a merchant called.

  “The price of a crown will stay the same,” the jeweler responded. “We will have new crowns that will not need to be renewed.”

  “At a higher cost!”

  “What are you willing to pay for an eternal crown?”

  The jeweler had already returned to tabulation, but the unrest from the crowd didn’t stop until a silence almost as harsh as whispers and yelling sent the masters and slaves on their way.

  They drained out of the narrow street as if a spigot had opened on the bottom of the barrel. The Xingren arrived, but they weren’t the cause of the commotion. In their midst, four Acolytes of the Adversary clopped along on the steel-shod hooves. Their cowls were thrown back and their horns were on full display. They were not all equals in their transformation. Underneath the simple cotton robe, their leader was bare-chested. His muscles rippled oddly as if they weren’t attached to his frame correctly, and his neck was bent. The others that followed were more human, but even the least had small horns and square irises.

  They penetrated the perimeter of the auditors as if they owned the place, and perhaps they did. The jeweler was so busy tabulating that he didn’t appear to be aware of the change. Perhaps he was deaf or hard of hearing. When he looked up, the Acolyte brayed in his face, and he paled and fell into his chair. Spittle covered his forehead, but his hands didn’t move.

  The voice that issued from the distended jaw was surprisingly human.

  “Fine quality,” the Acolyte said. Perhaps those words were a signal because a lesser Acolyte carrying a foil plate lunged forward to retrieve a box of silver spool. He held it before his superior on a bent knee with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. The senior Acolyte fingered the thread.

  “It will be many days before the thread is rendered into crowns,” the jeweler said, and then added hastily. “Of course, orders from the Acolytes of the Adversary will be delivered first.”

  “Crowns are not necessary,” Acolyte said. “The Adversary has no use for slaves. Those are a gift returned to the people.”

  That was news to Fintan. Apparently the Adversary didn’t keep the slaves he gathered from the portals. YouRan said he’d been freed from the Adversary—after a time.

  “The Adversary might have a use for this thread,” another Acolyte said. He was almost as transformed as the first and stood at his right. “What is the cost?”

  “Twenty for the silver and ten for the gold,” Cherry said, “but for the Adversary we can sell at a discount.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The younger and less transformed Acolyte seemed ready to negotiate, but the older Acolyte brayed again.

  He spit all over the jeweler, somehow missing Cherry.

  “The Adversary will pay you forty for the silver and twenty for the gold,” the Acolyte said. “The Adversary understands value, and he will not take away from the merchants of Yuxia. How quickly will you have more thread?”

  “We have a great deal in holding right now,” Cherry said. “The spools are at the gates of Heaven. All we have to do is pay the fees.”

  “The Adversary will pay the fees, young miss.”

  The goat head chewed on the words and also a sprig. The younger Acolyte produced a handful of green grass from his pocket and carefully held the stalks while his elder’s sharp teeth trimmed the grass from his hand.

  The auditor cleared his throat as if he wanted to add something, and the other three Acolytes turned their square irises on him, but the old Acolyte who was more goat than human spoke again.

  “And we will pay the taxes due Yuxia.”

  “The trade is not on Yuxian soil, most benevolent Herdmaster.”

  “Even so. Let Yuxia remember the largesse of the Adversary.”

  The Acolytes turned away from the stall after the foil papers were etched and continued. The jeweler started breathing again. He smiled through the spittle. His partner had collapsed on the ground. He hadn’t made a deal with the Adversary but was happy to have escaped the Goat God’s notice.

  Fintan wasn’t sure what to think. When the numbers were tallied, Cherry had fifty thousand gilders. The crowds returned, but a few of the Xingren remained even as the auditors left to file the paperwork.

  The next commotion didn’t stir the crowd, but Fintan’s ears were peeled.

  “Stop!” The order was barked into the crowd, and he saw WuXin push his way toward them. WuXin still had his backpack, but he was missing his spear. Not far behind, the guards were closing rapidly.

  WuXin grabbed Fintan’s shoulder and attempted to scoop Cherry over hsi shoulder, but she hit him across the face.

  “We have to run,” he said.

  He must not have realized how many of the Xingren remained. The thread spools were stacked across the jeweler’s table, and he had slaves packing them in trunks, but he needed the security from the market.

  A guard tackled WuXin, but the mighty Zeusopolan soldier threw him off, and the guard flew ten feet to land on the crowd. That was more than enough time for the other guards to circle around them, capturing them against the stall packed with goods.

  RuTing spun behind WuXin’s back, but then she turned on him and bent both his arms behind him, forcing him to his knees.

  “What happened?” Fintan asked a guard.

  “Do you know this man?”

  “He arrived with us,” RuTing said.

  “He is wanted for forgery.”

  “I told them it wasn’t real,” Wuxin said.

  A moment later, more guards arrived in front of a merchant who carried the copper-coated spear. It was bent in half, broken. The wood inside was visible.

  “Who could make such a thing?” The words were whispered from one guard to the next, and Fintan realized his mistake. The green bamboo was visible and unburnt from the copper coating. He’d manifested metal over wood that never would have survived the plating process undamaged. He was interested in the new wood and made a copper spear as easily as he could. “It’s a knockoff.”

  The guards chained WuXin, but not before RuTing held him close, and Fintan thought something passed between them.

  “He’s strong,” she told the guards.

  “I won’t resist,” WuXin said. “I panicked. I’m sorry.”

  It was too late for apologies. The guards bound his wrists behind his back with iron chains and then kicked him in the stomach. When he fell to the ground, they retrieved his eimai card before kicking him again.

  “He’s a student of Ru,” the guard said sarcastically, “Since yesterday.”

  “Put a crown on his head and send him to the Adversary,” the merchant yelled. He pumped the broken spear in the air. The defrauded merchant tried to shoulder his way past the Xingren and hit WuXin with the spear, but they stopped him until a guard punched him in the stomach. He fell to the ground, where he shouted a retort of his own. “They come into our town and steal our gilders!”

  Fintan was afraid the commotion on the street was the return of the Acolytes, but instead it was the Market’s Adjuster. Fintan gathered from the whispers that the Adjuster had ultimate authority over the market.

  The Adjuster saw WuXin’s eimai and immediately punched a symbol into it.

  “He’s barred from the market until sentencing.”

  The defrauded merchant threw the copper-coated bamboo onto the ground and stalked off. The merchant’s dissatisfaction was Fintan’s hope, but the merchant called back to them, perhaps seeking more justice from a safe distance.

  “And what if he isn’t a true believer?”

  “The question has been asked,” the Adjuster said.

  “He ran off,” the guard said, pointing at the merchant who disappeared in the crowd. “We don’t have to respond.” He nodded to Cherry. “She’s in the Acolyte’s favor. It’s fifty-fifty what that crazy goat will do if he returns. He wants their thread. What do we do?”

  “We follow the law,” the Adjuster replied, “but we give him the test right now. If WuXin is a true son of the Builder, he will pass the test. If not, the judge will sentence him to the river.”

  WuXin had levered himself to his feet. The guards had beaten him, but when Fintan restored him in Bannerburg, he’d gained strength. He didn’t show any marks, not that they would have lasted long in this humidity.

  “I’ve never built anything,” WuXin said. “I have no training, only the feeling in my heart that the Builder called to me.”

  He had more than that. Fintan had seen WuXin’s Skill before. He disassembled Angus’s arm cannon by the force of his will. Taking apart was not the same as building.

  A guard was sent to the station to return with the test, and the jeweler closed his stall. His slaves carried away the thread. They were left with Wuxin’s backpack, as valuable as thousands of gilders but still in doubt. The guards said nothing, but they didn’t dare retrieve it. Cherry watched with wide eyes, not daring to touch the spools. She was now a wealthy woman, and the first thing a wealthy person thought of was how to keep their wealth.

  They’d established the bond over the weeks, and he wondered if she would stay in Yuxia. No doubt the Ogres would want her, but she was safe from them in the city.

  The Xingren guards did not have the same force of presence as the Accolytes. When the rumors of the test spread, the traffic reappeared. Fintan was on the inside of the perimeter, and one look from Xingren told him he wouldn’t get on the outside, like it or not; he and his companions were associated with WuXin.

  “He doesn’t look like a son of the Builder,” someone in the crowd said.

  “What is a son of the Builder?” Fintan asked. He speculated WuXin would have to display his technomancy.

  “The test will tell us the truth,” the Adjuster said.