Low sat cross-legged on the floor, sharpening one of her throwing stones against the edge of her boot while Jacqueline inventoried their dwindling supplies. The parchment list between them was depressingly short—and even more depressingly full of blanks.
"Half a loaf of bread, two onions, and a sack of salt that's more damp than solid," Jacqueline muttered, frowning.
"We'll need rope, bandages, oil, and… proper food."
"Good luck finding all that," Low said dryly.
Leonotis and Zombiel had left not to long ago to scout the palace routes ahead of the Sunstone Tournament. That left the girls to handle what they could without attracting attention.
Jacqueline folded the list and tucked it into her cloak. "We'll have to make do. Maybe the general store still has—"
Low cut her off with a humorless snort. "The general store will be be sold out with all the tourist coming in from for that tournament."
She rose to her feet, slinging her satchel over one shoulder. "If we need supplies we can't buy in the open, but there's one place I've heard of."
Jacqueline hesitated, catching the glint in Low's eyes. "And where's that?"
Low smiled. "The Shadow Souk."
The Shadow Souk. It wasn't a market one found on any map; it was a festering wound in the capital's underbelly. Low led the way down a set of slick, moss-covered steps hidden behind a butcher's shop, the stench of blood and offal giving way to something far older and less natural. The air grew cool and damp, thick with the smell of mildew, stagnant water, and the sharp, alchemical tang of secrets best kept in the dark.
This was Low's element. She navigated the cramped, torch-lit tunnels of the undercroft with a gruff, purposeful confidence. Her shoulders were hunched in a predator's crouch, her eyes constantly scanning the shifting shadows and the unsavory characters who lurked within them. She moved like she belonged, another piece of the darkness.
Jacqueline, however, was a discordant note in the oppressive symphony of the Souk. She walked a half-step behind Low, her cloak pulled so tightly around her it was a wonder she could breathe. Her posture, even when trying to be inconspicuous, was too straight, too refined. She flinched as a drip of foul-smelling water fell from the low stone ceiling, landing near her boot. Her gaze darted nervously, avoiding the eyes of a one-eyed man selling what looked like pickled monster parts from a grimy blanket.
Low felt a flash of her old, familiar annoyance. Jacqueline was a liability here. In a place where blending in was the first rule of survival, Jacqueline stood out like a sore thumb. Her discomfort was a call to action to the preadators and pickpockets in these tunnels.
"Stay close," Low muttered, not bothering to look back. "And try to look like you've seen filth before."
She stopped at a stall carved directly into the damp earth wall, where a woman with tattooed cheeks sold coils of sturdy-looking rope. Low pulled a small, silk pouch from her belt. It didn't jingle with coin. She tipped its contents into her palm: two pure silver buttons she'd cut from a guard's uniform at the inn, a small, intricately carved bird bone, and a polished river stone that shimmered with a faint, residual magic.
"I need twenty feet of your best rope," Low said, her voice flat.
The tattooed woman eyed the offerings, then looked past Low to Jacqueline. A greedy smirk touched her lips. "For such fine-looking travelers? The price is higher. The bone… and the girl's earrings."
Jacqueline instinctively touched her ears, where small, elegant silver studs were barely visible beneath her hair.
Before Jacqueline could even react, Low leaned forward, her hand still outstretched. "My friend is not part of the bargain," she snarled, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous growl. "And if you look at her again, I'll trade you this bird bone for your teeth. Now. The rope. For the buttons."
The woman's smirk vanished, replaced by a sullen glare. She saw the deadly seriousness in Low's eyes, the way her hand hovered near the throwing rocks at her belt. After a tense moment, she snatched the silver buttons from Low's palm and tossed a coil of rope onto the counter.
Low grabbed it and turned away, pushing Jacqueline deeper into the throng. "See?" she hissed, her annoyance sharp. "They see you and they see an easy mark. Keep your head down."
Jacqueline said nothing, simply pulling the floppy brim of her hat lower, her face a pale mask in the flickering torchlight. She felt utterly useless, a fragile piece of porcelain in a world of iron and stone, completely dependent on the fierce, angry girl who was her only guide in the suffocating darkness.
The last essential item on Low's list was a grappling hook. She found one at a stall run by a burly, sweat-sheened merchant with a greasy smile and fingers as thick as sausages. The hook was well-made, its iron claws sharp and its rope strong. The price, however, was far more than the single bird bone she had left to trade.
"The bone is a fine start," the merchant rumbled, eyeing it greedily. "But not enough. Not for this beauty." He patted the grappling hook. "Tell you what. We'll play for it. One round. My three stones against your bone. You find the scorpion, you win the hook."
He produced three flat, black river stones. On the underside of one, he showed her, was a crudely painted white scorpion. Low recognized the game instantly. It was a classic shell game, a test of observation and a magnet for cheaters.
"Fine," Low agreed, her eyes narrowing. She had played this game in the gutters of the orphanage more times than she could count. She knew every trick.
The merchant grinned, placing the three stones face down on the wobbly wooden table. His thick fingers moved with a surprising, fluid grace, sliding the stones over one another in a dizzying dance. Left over right, middle slides, right follows. Low's eyes were locked on the target stone, tracking its every move, ignoring the distracting flourishes of his other hand. She saw him palm the scorpion stone in a practiced, almost invisible motion as his knuckles brushed the edge of the table. A classic switch. He was leaving her with three blank stones.
The stones stopped moving. "Well, little girl?" the merchant sneered, gesturing to the three stones on the table. "Where is it? Your future, or mine?"
She tried to stay calm but being alone with Jacqueline had erroded her patience. A cold, hard anger settled in Low's gut. He was a cheat, and he was mocking her. Her hand tightened, her knuckles turning white. She was about to flip the table, to drive her fist into his greasy, smiling face and just take the hook. A brawl would draw attention, but she wasn't about to be played for a fool.
Just as she was about to explode, a delicate, cloaked hand touched her arm. It was Jacqueline. Her face was hidden in the shadow of her floppy hat, but she gave a single, almost imperceptible shake of her head. Jacqueline stepped forward. She leaned over the table, shadowed by her hat, and let her fingertips brush the wood. A faint shimmer pulsed, small enough that only Low noticed.
The merchant's grin widened. "Made your choice, little lady?"
A bead of water formed under his fist. Then another. His grip slipped.
Clatter.
The scorpion stone fell to the floor.
Silence descended on the small crowd that had gathered to watch. Every eye went from the stone on the floor to the merchant's suddenly empty, guilty hand, then to the three blank stones on the table.
The merchant's face went from smug confidence to stark, abject terror. "I— that's—" he stammered.
For a heartbeat, the Souk was silent. Then the crowd—many of them victims of his tricks—roared. A man seized the merchant's collar, shouting about lost coin. Others piled on, anger boiling over into violence.
In the ensuing chaos, as the angry crowd surged forward, knocking over the table and accosting the terrified merchant, Low's instincts took over. She snatched the grappling hook from its peg, grabbed Jacqueline's arm, and pulled her forcefully away from the brawl. They melted back into the shadows of the Souk, leaving the sound of shouting and the merchant's pathetic cries of innocence behind them.
They found refuge in a narrow, dead-end alley between a spice merchant's storeroom and the slick wall of a cistern. The air was thick with the scent of cinnamon and damp stone, a welcome relief from the Souk's more pungent odors. The distant shouts from the brawl they'd left behind faded into the market's general hum.
Low leaned against the cistern wall, her heart still hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She looked at Jacqueline, who was calmly adjusting the floppy brim of her hat, her breathing barely disturbed. A slow, grudging respect began to bubble up through Low's adrenaline.
"That was… smart," Low admitted, the words feeling foreign in her mouth. She hefted the new grappling hook, its weight solid and reassuring. "Didn't think you had that in you."
"Survival requires more than brute force," Jacqueline replied, her voice quiet in the confined space. "Sometimes you must change the currents, not fight the tide." She looked down at her own hands, small and slender in the dim torchlight from the main thoroughfare. A profound weariness seemed to settle over her. "I'm glad it worked. I felt… useless here. Compared to you. Your strength, your confidence… you belong in a place like this. I just feel like a porcelain doll waiting to be broken."
The confession caught Low completely off guard. She had seen Jacqueline as a privileged girl. She had never once considered that Jacqueline might see herself the same way, and hate it. For the first time, Low saw past the elegant posture and the melodic voice. She saw a girl who was just as scared and out of her element as she was, but who was still fighting. The anger and resentment Low had been nursing for weeks, a hard knot in her chest, finally loosened its grip enough for her to speak the words.
"When you left us… back on the mountain…" she said, her voice dropping, the accusation softened by a new, raw honesty. "I was angry you were just saving yourself."
Jacqueline's gaze met hers. There was no defensiveness, only a deep sorrow. "I was," she admitted quietly. "But not in the way you think. I will tell you something I've been holding from you. My people… my home… it is dying. The purifying waters that give it life are failing. My journey here, my quest… I am the only one who can restore them. If I died…" She took a shaky breath, the weight of her entire world resting on her slender shoulders. "My entire homeland dies with me. I was saving myself because I am all they have left."
The thought of the crushing weight of that responsibility, landed on Low with the force of a physical blow. Her own struggles, her own curse, suddenly felt smaller. Jacqueline wasn't running from a fight; she was already in one, carrying the fate of a whole civilization on her back.
A long moment passed, filled only by the distant sounds of the Souk. Low broke the silence with a short, sharp nod, a gesture of finality.
"Alright," she grunted. "Fine." She looked down at her own worn boots, then back at Jacqueline. "I still don't forgive you... but I understand."
It was the closest she could come to an apology, to an understanding. It was her version of peace. The rift between them finally shifted closer, if only slightly.
Feeling more like a duo and less like two strangers tied together by fate, Low and Jacqueline left the shadows of the Souk behind. Together they left the Souk, but Low kept glancing back, hand near her belt. Too many eyes had been on them; someone might follow. She doubled back twice before guiding Jacqueline to their next hunting ground: The Rusty Mug, a dingy tavern for off-duty guards.
"Keep your ears open and your mouth shut," Low murmured as they entered, pulling the hoods of their cloaks lower. "Important people love to talk when they think no one important is listening."
They bought two mugs of the cheapest, watered-down ale and found a shadowy booth in the corner, the wood of the table sticky beneath their elbows. From here, they could observe the room without drawing too much attention. The tavern was noisy, filled with the boisterous laughter and loud complaints of soldiers.
For a while, they heard nothing but banal grumbling about patrol schedules and the poor quality of the mess hall stew. Jacqueline was beginning to think the effort was fruitless when two guards sat down at the table next to them, slamming their heavy mugs down with a weary groan.
"Damn, my arms ache," the first guard, a burly man with a thick neck, complained. "Hauling those buckets of live fish down to the lower cells is worse than latrine duty."
His companion, a younger, leaner man, shuddered. "It's the noise that gets to me. That high-pitched screeching… sounds like a dying gull being strangled. Gives me the shivers every time we have to feed the thing."
Jacqueline froze, her mug halfway to her lips. She kept her head down, her focus narrowing entirely on their conversation.
"What even is it?" the burly guard asked, taking a long pull of his ale. "The Captain just calls it the 'Silver-Scaled Devil'. Saw it thrashing in the net when they brought it in. Looked like a man, but with scales like polished coin and a great, thrashing fish tail."
"I heard it tore a chunk out of Sergeant Merik's arm when they were moving it to the deep cells," the younger one whispered, leaning closer. "The wet cells, at the very bottom. The ones that flood with the river tide. They say the King wants it kept alive. For what, I have no idea. More of his 'experiments,' I wager."
"Whatever it is, it's a waste of good fish and a damn nuisance," the first guard concluded, signaling the barmaid for another round. "Let the alchemists have their fun with it and be done, I say."
The world seemed to tilt for Jacqueline. The noise of the tavern, the smell of stale ale, the presence of Low beside her—it all faded away. The casual, callous words of the guards confirmed a nightmare she hadn't dared to fully believe.
A merman. Her people. Not a sailor's fantasy, but a real, living being, captured and caged in the wet, dark dungeons of the palace. The "Silver-Scaled Devil." The name was a desecration, a brand of monstrousness placed on a creature of the free seas.
Her mission to find passage south, her duty to her own dying home—all of it was eclipsed by this single, horrifying truth. King Rega, the man who dissected Dryads for power, had one of her kin in his grasp.
Low glanced at her, noticing the sudden, rigid stillness of her posture, the way her knuckles had tightened around her mug. Not sure what to make of it Low shrugged and continued looking over the bar.
Jacqueline slowly placed her mug on the table. Her own personal quest had just become inextricably tangled with Leonotis's dungeon rescue. She had to descend into those deep, wet cells and free the merman from the King's cruel grasp.