Arka spent the first few minutes simply watching.
He found a position near a stall that sold preserved monster eyes and stood there with his arms folded, looking like a man who was deciding whether or not to make a purchase. From that angle he had a clear view of the small covered cage against the wall. Nobody approached it. Nobody seemed to be watching it. That was unusual. Sellers in Hunter Alley always stayed close to their goods.
Which meant either the owner had left temporarily, or the cage was being managed from a distance.
He kept watching.
After about ten minutes, a man appeared from the far end of the alley and walked straight toward the cage without looking at any of the other stalls. He was heavyset, with a thick coat and a wide-brimmed hat pulled low. He moved like someone who was used to being in the market but did not want to be recognized today.
Arka let his Appraisal Sight run a quick check as the man passed within range.
PERSON — No monster properties detected
Carried items: Standard coin purse
Carried items: Iron key ring | Binding rune token x2
Note: Binding runes suggest monster-handling experience
So he was a handler. Someone who worked with captured creatures regularly. The binding rune tokens were tools used to reinforce cage locks, common among mid-level traders and professional hunters. He was not a first-timer.
The man crouched in front of the cage and lifted the canvas cloth just slightly, peering inside. Then he let it fall and straightened up. He glanced left and right along the alley. His gaze passed over Arka without stopping.
Arka turned slightly and pretended to examine a jar of preserved basilisk eyes on the shelf beside him.
"You looking to buy those?" said the stall owner, a thin older man with ink-stained fingers.
"Maybe," Arka said. "What are they from?"
"Eastern basilisk. C Rank specimen, certified. Good for binding relics or vision-based rituals."
"How much?"
"Thirty silver per eye. I have six."
Arka made a noncommittal sound and kept the conversation going for another minute, watching the handler in his peripheral vision. The man had pulled a small notebook from his coat and was writing something in it. Then he put it away, gave the cage one more look, and walked back the way he had come.
Arka waited thirty seconds. Then he followed.
* * *
The handler moved through Hunter Alley at a steady pace, not rushing but not stopping either. He turned left at the main corridor and headed toward the deeper sections of the Bazaar, away from the busy Outer Market and toward the quieter trading zones where the more expensive business happened.
Arka kept his distance, staying about fifteen meters back and keeping other people between them as much as possible. The Bazaar was busy enough that this was not difficult. He had followed people through this market before, when a deal seemed suspicious or when he needed to verify that a seller actually had what they were claiming to have.
The handler turned again at Artifact Street and slowed down. He stopped in front of a shop that sold cursed relics and appeared to be reading the items displayed in the window. Arka stopped too, at a different shop two doors down, and kept his eyes on the reflection in the glass.
A second man came out of the relic shop and greeted the handler. This one was thinner, younger, with a short beard and a leather satchel over one shoulder. They spoke quietly for about a minute. Arka could not hear the words from where he stood.
He let his Appraisal run on the new man.
PERSON — No monster properties detected
Carried items: Leather satchel — contents unclear
Carried items: Folded documents | Merchant seal token
Note: Merchant seal indicates registered Bazaar trader status
A registered trader. That meant the man had official standing in the Bazaar, paid his fees, and had a legal identity within the underground market's own record system. The Bazaar kept records, its own kind of record that had nothing to do with the laws above ground.
If someone with registered trader status was involved in whatever was happening with that cage, then this was not a simple case of one person doing something illegal in a corner. It had some degree of organization behind it.
The two men finished their conversation. The handler nodded once and walked away. The registered trader went back inside the shop.
Arka stood still for a moment and thought about his options.
He could walk away. The moon-gill toads were still waiting for him at Sona's stall. Torven was expecting delivery this afternoon. The commission was eight silver. That was a clean transaction with no risk involved.
Or he could go into that relic shop and find out what the registered trader knew about the girl in the cage.
He adjusted his coat, crossed the distance between the shops in about twelve steps, and pushed open the door of the relic shop.
* * *
The shop was small and dim, with shelves crowded on every wall. Items sat in glass cases and on wooden stands, each with a handwritten tag describing its properties. The smell inside was different from the rest of the Bazaar, drier, with something faintly metallic underneath, the kind of smell that came from objects that had absorbed too much residual energy.
The registered trader was standing behind a counter at the back, writing in a ledger. He looked up when Arka came in.
"Looking for anything specific?"
"Potentially," Arka said. He moved along the nearest shelf, letting his Appraisal touch each item lightly as he passed. Standard relics, nothing remarkable. "I saw you talking to someone outside just now. Big man, wide hat."
The trader's expression did not change, but his pen stopped moving.
"I talk to many people."
"This one had binding rune tokens. He came from the direction of Hunter Alley."
A pause. The trader closed his ledger.
"You have a question you want to ask. Ask it."
"There is a covered cage near the back wall of Hunter Alley," Arka said. "Small. The reading I get from it does not make sense. I want to know what is in it and who owns it."
The trader studied him for a moment. His expression was careful, the kind of careful that came from long practice at not showing anything.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"That is probably the smart answer," Arka agreed. "I am a broker. I buy and sell information as often as I buy and sell creatures. Whatever is in that cage, it is not a standard product. That makes it either very dangerous or very valuable. Possibly both. I am trying to figure out which."
Another pause.
"What's your name?" the trader asked.
"Arka Vale."
Something shifted in the trader's expression when he heard the name. Not recognition, exactly, but something adjacent to it. Like a man recalculating.
"The one with Appraisal Sight."
"People know about that," Arka said. It was not a question.
"Some people," the trader said. He picked up his pen again and opened the ledger. "I genuinely do not know what is in that cage. The man you saw is a middleman. He handles transport and temporary storage for a client I have never met. I process the paperwork."
"What kind of paperwork?"
"Auction registration," the trader said, and his voice was very flat and even. "The item in that cage is registered for the private auction in the Inner Circle. Three days from now."
Arka stood still.
The Inner Circle auction was not public. It was not even semi-public, like the regular Auction Hall upstairs. It was invitation only, attended by the wealthiest and most powerful buyers in the Bazaar. The items sold there were the kind that could not be sold anywhere else.
"What is the registered category for the item?" Arka asked.
The trader looked at him for a long moment.
"Rare specimen," he said. "Living. Unclassified."
Arka thanked him, bought a small relic he did not need, and left the shop.
Outside, the gas lamps flickered in a draft from somewhere deeper in the Bazaar. He stood on the cobblestones and looked at nothing in particular while he processed what he had learned.
A human girl, labeled as a monster.
Registered for auction in the Inner Circle.
Three days.
He was going to need more information before he decided what to do with any of this. And he was going to need to deliver three moon-gill toads to a merchant in the Merchant District before the afternoon ended, or he would lose the commission and the contact.
He started walking back toward Sona's stall.
But he was already thinking about how to get an invitation to the Inner Circle.