The Exiled Merchant

The next morning brought no thaw.

Frost etched the inside of the windowglass in delicate ferns that turned brittle when I breathed near them. My candle had guttered out hours before, but I hadn't bothered to relight it. I'd sat at the table, staring into the dark, the ledger closed beneath my palm.

If there was a line between caution and fear, I had long since stepped over it. But the fear was clean. Honest. It made every decision feel sharper.

When dawn finally pressed its thin light between the shutters, I rose, washed in the cracked basin, and dressed without hurry.

There was no knock that morning. No courier waiting in the alley.

I took it as a small mercy.

---

I made my way to the counting house alone.

The alleys were quieter than usual—fewer carts, fewer voices. It was the hush that came before something broke, though I could not have said why I felt it.

At the chipped blue tile, I paused to gather myself. Then I lifted the latch and stepped inside.

The bearded clerk looked up, his quill mid-stroke.

"You're early," he observed.

"I prefer it."

He studied me a moment longer, then inclined his head.

"No commission today."

I felt the quiet in my chest deepen.

"Then why call me back?"

He nodded toward a small box on the corner of the desk.

"This arrived last night."

I stepped closer. The box was plain wood, sealed in black wax stamped with a symbol I didn't recognize: a single spiral surrounded by a ring of barbed lines.

"Who sent it?"

"Elinne."

The word was neither question nor answer, but it settled the matter all the same.

He pushed the box across the desk without further comment.

"Open it," he said.

I set my palm flat against the lid. For an instant, the grain of the wood felt warmer than it should have, as though something inside waited to be known.

I broke the seal.

Inside lay a folded sheet of parchment, thicker than any I'd seen since leaving the guild's sanctioned halls. Beneath it, a small object wrapped in oiled cloth.

I lifted the parchment first. The writing was precise, each letter formed with a confident hand.

Ren—

You are proving more resourceful than I expected.

I would have this conversation in person.

Tonight, after third bell.

The old glassworks, western Hallowmere.

Come alone.

There was no signature. Only the same spiral pressed into the paper in red wax.

I read it twice before folding it carefully and slipping it inside my coat.

The bearded clerk watched me with unreadable eyes.

"And the other?" he prompted.

I unwrapped the oiled cloth.

A seal ring rested in my palm—iron chased with copper, the face engraved with a stylized flame.

Guild rank symbols were always elaborate, designed to proclaim legitimacy. This was simpler. Older.

"What does it mean?" I asked.

He shrugged.

"Means you're expected."

---

Outside, the air had shifted. The frost had begun to melt under a thin sun, but the light felt brittle rather than warm.

I tucked the seal ring into my pocket and began walking, each step measured.

For the first time in days, I felt the old hunger stirring—a curiosity that had nothing to do with survival.

If Elinne wanted a meeting, it meant she no longer saw me as just another desperate outcast.

It meant she saw potential.

I wasn't sure yet if that was better or worse.

---

The rest of the day passed in a slow current of errands.

I traded two of the remaining silver drakes for a week's rent on the loft, ignoring the landlord's sidelong glance at the coins.

I bought a loaf of black bread and a wedge of salt cheese. A single candle. A new tin of ink.

At each stall, I felt the same quiet wariness in the merchants' eyes, as though they sensed something I hadn't yet named.

Perhaps they did.

---

By dusk, I returned to the loft and set the iron seal on the table. The flame sigil caught the last of the daylight, glinting like an ember.

I did not touch it again.

Night settled over Hallowmere like a held breath.

By the time the third bell began its slow tolling from the western tower, I had already left the loft behind. The streets were quieter than I had ever known them—no clatter of wagons, no calls from doorways. Just the hush of wind between the chimneys and the occasional drip of meltwater from an overhanging eave.

I kept to the side alleys, my steps careful, deliberate. In my pocket, the seal ring felt heavier than its modest weight should allow. A token. An invitation. A warning.

I wasn't sure which yet.

---

The old glassworks stood near the canal, its roofline broken where half the tiles had fallen in. The walls were blackened by decades of kiln smoke, the main door barred with a length of iron that looked as if it hadn't been moved in years.

But as I approached, a faint light flickered behind one of the ground-floor shutters.

I paused at the threshold. My heart beat steadily—no faster than it had when I'd crossed the counting house door, or when I'd faced the tribunal. But the sense that something irreversible waited beyond that wall was impossible to ignore.

I rapped twice on the door, then once more.

A long pause. Then the scrape of bolts being drawn back.

The door opened inward just enough to admit me.

Inside, the air smelled of old soot and fresh lamp oil. A single lantern rested on a crate near the center of the room, its light pooling across the pitted floorboards.

Elinne stood beside it.

Her face was shadowed by the hood of her cloak, but her voice was unmistakable.

"You came."

"I was curious," I said.

She gestured to a second crate opposite her.

"Sit."

I crossed the floor, feeling the grain of old ash shift under my boots. When I lowered myself onto the crate, she pulled back her hood.

Her hair was darker than I remembered, bound in a simple braid. Her eyes were the same—cool, watchful, as if she were already measuring how far I might be pushed before I broke.

"Do you know why I asked you here?" she asked.

"To test me."

A flicker of amusement crossed her mouth.

"Not entirely."

She reached into the folds of her cloak and withdrew a folded slip of parchment.

"This city is an old machine," she said. "The guild is only part of it. A very loud part, but not the only one."

She extended the parchment toward me.

"Read."

I unfolded it.

A list of names. Six, all written in the same precise hand as the earlier message. Beside each, a symbol I didn't recognize—some angular sigil that looked older than any guild mark.

"These are?"

"Merchants," she said. "Some in debt. Some in disfavor. All in possession of goods the guild prefers to keep within its walls."

"And you want me to—"

"I want you to do what you've already proven you can."

Her gaze didn't waver.

"You have a talent, Ren. Not just for finding the cracks in their monopoly. For understanding what frightens them."

I said nothing.

She stepped closer, the lamplight catching the edge of her cheekbone.

"They fear what they can't name," she said softly. "They fear men who don't need their sanction to prosper."

I let the parchment curl shut in my hand.

"And if I refuse?"

"Then I wish you luck," she said simply. "And I will not offer it again."

I thought of the clerk at the counting house, the way he'd looked at me when the coins failed. The merchants whose hands had trembled when they touched my payment.

"You think you know what I am," I said quietly.

"No," she said. "But I think you're worth betting on."

Her honesty startled me more than any threat might have.

She nodded once toward the parchment.

"Take it. Decide before the week is out."

I hesitated, then slipped it inside my coat.

"And the seal?" I asked.

She smiled faintly.

"Keep it," she said. "You'll need it soon enough."

---

We stood in silence for a time, the only sound the drip of water through a crack in the roof.

When she turned to leave, she paused with one hand on the doorframe.

"Be careful," she said without looking back. "The guild isn't the only thing watching you."

The door swung shut behind her, leaving me alone with the fading lantern glow.

---

For a moment, I simply stood there, feeling the old soot cling to my coat, the cold seeping through the soles of my boots.

Then I turned and crossed the floor to the door.

Outside, the night had grown colder. The canal lay black and still between the banks of snow, reflecting nothing.

I drew a slow breath.

Whatever this was—whatever I was becoming—it was no longer something I could set aside.

I began walking.

And for the first time, I didn't pretend I was still trying to return to the man I had been.