Chương 28: Chapter 29: First Contract

Barely hours had passed since Voss and Kest had crossed the Union courtyard toward her. Stelle had spent the time descending Oakhaven's tiered streets, picking apart every second of the encounter, until her steps brought her into the cramped alleys of the Low District.

The bell above the door of The Blind Scale Antiquities chimed softly as she stepped inside and the shop's familiar clutter greeted her in place of its owner—cracked pottery from three kingdoms, the taxidermied creature with too many legs still mounted above the counter, the same unlabeled bottles catching the lamplight in ways ordinary liquids didn't. The stool behind the counter sat empty. None of it seemed to follow any real category.

Just things that were unique, old, some dusty but all still in surprisingly good condition. She didn't really have time for this. She needed to speak to him.

"Corin?" No answer. She let herself drift deeper into the narrow space, trailing a finger along the spines of the same unlabeled books she'd noticed on her first visit, pausing over a small brass instrument whose function she couldn't immediately place. She was still turning it over in her hands when a door at the back of the shop creaked open.

"Interested in old books? If you're hoping for the same kind I gave you last time, that one's not it," Corin said, stepping through it with the same unhurried ease he wore into every room. She set the instrument back on the shelf.

"You weren't at the counter."

"I'm rarely anywhere I'm supposed to be." He crossed the room to lean against the counter, arms folded before studying her with the particular attention of a man recalculating why a customer had returned twice in one week.

"You're back sooner than I expected. I take it you already have something you want then?"

"I want something you might have."

"Well, you came to the right person." He gestured toward the door he'd come through.

"But before that, let's head inside. You already know a little about me. I should introduce myself properly." She didn't ask why the distinction mattered. He was dangerous, certainly, but he kept a wall around himself that stopped him from causing harm without reason. Unpredictable, but not a man who bothered with anything unless there was something in it for him. The two of them stepped through the door together. Inside was a small living room, modest enough for any ordinary person to call home.

He gestured for her to sit.

"Do you drink tea?"

"I can. If it doesn't cost anything."

"Your answers are always interesting." He set two cups of tea on the low table between them.

"You're a guest in my house right now and not a customer yet in my shop, so it's free. Besides... the real deal we're here for is this conversation and I can't very well let a potential customer leave early." He settled into the chair across from her.

"Before we begin, let me introduce myself properly. I'm Corin, merchant of the Blind Scale. Tier 4 Awakened, Dual Path Phantasm and Mystic. I imagine you already suspected that much."

"Yes. I put it together after the book you gave me."

"Good. You know how to read between the lines." He smiled.

"I'm also a member of merchant group, Silver Trade if I may add."

"Then let's start. What is it you actually want from me?"

"Something that will help me disappear completely." Corin's eyebrows lifted, just slightly.

"That's a considerably larger request than a simple information. What's driving the urgency?"

"This afternoon," Stelle said, deciding there was no advantage in denying it.

"The Mage Ministry approached me. A woman named Voss, and her assistant, Kest."

"Voss." Something flickered behind his eyes.

"The Magister, and her little assistant."

"You know them?"

"A merchant should know every potential customer in his territory, shouldn't he?" Corin's mouth curved.

"You're a little unlucky, snowflake. Voss isn't an easygoing woman. She has a hand in the underground too but not deep, enough to matter."

"They offered me a place with them and a possibility of climbing the Tower."

"The old trick." He shook his head.

"Dangled in front of every Awakened's eyes, though only the truly exceptional ever actually get the chance. I doubt she has more than a passing interest in you—the Ministry likes collecting Awakened the way some people collect rare stones, and most of what they collect never amounts to much."

"So I'm only on their radar for now?"

"Maybe. But you'll notice the difference after today. If they've spotted something odd about you then expect them to come looking again tomorrow." This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Stelle thought back to the lens Kest had used.

"The man Kest, had a special lens. I think it reads mana."

"Hmm." Corin's expression sharpened slightly.

"An advanced Ministry tool, built for accurate readings. Hard to fake past. I'd love to own one myself, but they're rare enough that only high-ranking Magisters usually carry them. And that thing can apparently see straight through my veil, the same way your own particular sight does." Did they notice something? The recalculation ran through Stelle's mind at once, cold and immediate.

"You know," Corin went on, watching her think it over, "it would be easier to simply run and leave, little snowflake. Why make it harder on yourself than it needs to be? Vira will only loses her own shot at the Tower because of you. Nothing more."

"Vira wants to climb the Tower?"

"What else did you think she wanted from you?" Corin spread his hands.

"Everything has a price. You're an investment. That's exactly why Voss looks at you the way she does. Why Vira does too." He paused.

"And that's also why I'm willing to help you. You bring nothing in your hands but yourself, right?" Stelle had nothing material to offer in exchange. But she understood in their past encounters that she herself might have exactly what this man wanted—and that was a bargaining chip in its own right. Stelle set her tea down carefully.

"What do you want?" Corin's smile returned, though it carried none of its usual laziness now.

"Since you're headed to the Tower regardless, I'll need you to do something for me once you reach the Archonian Dominion. It isn't a difficult job. I simply need a representative there."

"A representative?"

"I can't say more than that yet. After I've helped you, I'll tell you everything. And you'll have every right to refuse my bargain then and choose a different one from me instead, if you'd rather." He said it without apology, watching her weigh the proposition with open curiosity rather than concern.

"How can I agree to something I don't even properly understand?"

"If it would ease your mind," he said, setting his cup down and meeting her eyes squarely, all the idle charm gone from his face for the first time since she'd walked into the back room,"I can bind it under the name of my Mystic lord. The God of Bargains. Ekwen." The God of Bargains. Ekwen. She turned the name over in her archive, expecting a dead end. Instead, a single obscure entry flickered to life under a title Rolling Coin.

It was hardly a proper record but only just a fragment, a handful of cryptic lines buried deep in the text. But it was there. [Archive: Rolling Coin, Vol. I]"He does not ask for prayers, nor does he build temples of stone. The God of Bargains walks where debt is owed and desperation speaks. To summon Ekwen is not to worship, but to negotiate. Legend names him the Keepers' secret arbiter—a entity bound to the law of equivalent exchange. A secret given for a secret kept. A life spared for a future owed.

They say he carries a coin that never settles on heads or tails, continually spinning upon the counter until the terms are struck.

"He'll oversee our deal himself," Corin said, watching the name settle over her, "to make certain we both hold up our end of it."

"That's not a threat snowflake, it's the opposite. A contract sanctioned that way binds both of us equally. I couldn't cheat you out of it even if I wanted to, not without paying a price steeper than anything I'd stand to gain." Stelle considered it for a long moment, the idea of a contract witnessed by something she couldn't see or couldn't measure. Absurd didn't begin to cover it.

And yet every calculation she ran kept arriving at the same place since a stranger's binding oath was still more reliable than a stranger's mere word, and she had precious little else to trust him on.

"Before that, how exactly will you help me?"

"Running is easy enough, like I said. But it won't make you immune to the kind of people who can still trace you down." Corin leaned forward, elbows on his knees, all business now.

"Since you actually want to disappear, we'll need to make you vanish without a trace left behind, which means you'll need the right tools to counter Awakened skilled enough to find you and perhaps something to hide you from eyes higher up than that." Stelle knew her own understanding of other Awakened's abilities was still limited. She had already made the mistake once of relying solely on her own judgment, and it had nearly cost her more than she'd intended to reveal.

To avoid repeating it, she had decided to adjust her approach by not relying on herself alone, but drawing on someone more knowledgeable when the odds demanded it. This was not a world where a person could simply adapt to everything alone in a short amount of time, no matter how capable they believed themselves to be.

"Then I will be in your care." Corin smiled.

"Good choice, snowflake. You will not regret your decision." He rose, crossed to a low cabinet in the corner, and returned with a small brass scale and two scraps of old, yellowed parchment, setting all three down on the table between them with a care that hadn't accompanied anything else he'd shown her tonight.

"Write down what you want from me," he said.

"Fold it, then place it on one side of the scale. I'll do the same on the other. Lord Ekwen will read both and weigh them to balance the scale according to what each bargain is actually worth, not what either of us claims it's worth." The two of them wrote in silence, careful not to let the other glimpse what had been written before placing their folded papers onto opposite plates of the scale.

Stelle noticed Corin's side dip significantly lower, as though it carried far more weight than a single folded scrap of paper should, despite both papers being the exact same size.

"Oh! I completely forgot to add," Corin said, glancing at the imbalance with mild, theatrical surprise,"That you're free to refuse once I've explained everything in full, and make a different request of me instead, if the first doesn't suit you." He added a few more words to his own paper, and the scale slowly began to level between them.

"I thought you might add something," Corin said.

"You're more honest than I expected."

"I want to do this fairly," Stelle replied.

"It's my first time forming a contract."

"You're beginning to understand the weight of the Mystic Path," Corin said quietly, his earlier playfulness gone entirely now.

"Its reach isn't something you can simply run from. Not once you're bound to it." He began his divination, his mouth shaping words in a foreign language even her archive couldn't parse—not a gap in translation, but an absence, as though the language itself refused to exist inside her knowledge at all. The room seemed to sink around them while the air growing heavier and silent in a way that felt deliberate rather than empty.

Then, somewhere in that thickening stillness, she felt it again, the same sensation from the church, the frozen basin, Malakai's faltering chant. Someone or something was there with them. Watching. It was nothing like what she'd felt in the church. Corin's voice seemed to come from everywhere in the room at once, and her eyes kept trying to find a source that wasn't there, sliding past every corner without ever quite landing on anything at all. Then after a long moment, it stopped.

The scale settled into perfect motionless balance. Corin exhaled slowly, some of the color returning to his face and offered her the same easy, unhurried smile he'd worn since she'd first walked into his shop.

"It's done," he said.

"Our contract is finally sealed."