The man never reached her. As he closed in, a force struck him at the back of the neck and drove him straight down, as if an invisible hand had slammed him out of the air, and his head hit the cobblestones hard enough to shatter them. Cracks spiderwebbed out from the impact, and blood pooled at once, dark against the pale stone.
With his new sight, Makun saw what had done it: silver energy in the shape of a sword. For the first time that night he let out a breath. The veiled woman had been gambling with him, and if things had turned against her she could simply have walked away and left him to it. But silver meant something else. The masked guardian at the entrance had stepped in to enforce the market's rules.
The masked figure walked toward them from the alley, unhurried, as if nothing here could surprise it. "Fighting is not allowed in our markets," it said, calm and absolute. "If you have something to settle, settle it once you leave." The mask turned to Makun. "New one. You came, and you brought trouble on your first visit. You're lucky you weren't the one who started it, or you would be dead. Nothing of the sort in future."
Makun nodded quickly. Sure. With how my life goes, there'll be worse. He kept that to himself.
The mask turned to the veiled woman. "Esteemed guest. I know the situation called for your intervention. Next time, please arrange important trades through contacts, and carry out the exchange outside our market."
She nodded slowly, acknowledgment without apology.
The masked figure looked down at the man on the ground. Blood was still running from his mouth, and his eyes were glazed but conscious. "Zack York." The name carried weight. "You're a regular here. You know the rules. Yet you let your greed cause a disturbance in our market, and for that you will be punished." It turned toward some empty stalls at the edge of the plaza. "Guards. Take him."
Two more silver-masked figures stepped out of those empty stalls, as if they had been standing there invisible all along. They took Zack by the arms and dragged him across the cobblestones, leaving a dark trail behind him. He didn't resist; whatever the silver sword had done to him, it had broken something.
As they hauled him past, his eyes found Makun's for a single second, and he spat. The blood landed on the cobblestones near Makun's feet and looked like nothing more than blood. But something small moved in it, barely visible, and detached itself from the puddle and stuck to Makun's shoe.
Nobody seemed to notice, except that the masked figure's head tilted slightly, its eyes following the movement. It said nothing and did nothing. The veiled woman's eyes lingered on Makun's feet a fraction too long, and she stayed silent as well. Zack had marked him, something to track him by and find him later, and everyone who could have warned him chose not to.
The guards dragged Zack away into the shadows. The masked figure turned back to Makun and the veiled woman. "The market is closing soon. Prepare to leave." For her, that meant start packing; for Makun, it meant find the way out. Then it walked off, and its footsteps faded into silence.
Makun turned to the woman and bowed slightly. "Thank you for your help."
She smiled beneath her veil, as if she hadn't been gambling with his life a few minutes earlier. "It was nothing. We traded the book fairly."
"How do I find you next time I come to the market?"
She reached into her robes and brought out a pendant, a simple silver chain with a small stone at its center that caught the lamplight. "Wear this next week when you come. I'll know, and I'll find you." She paused. "Make sure you come. If you don't..." She left the rest unsaid, and the threat hung in the air anyway. Then her voice softened slightly. "It was nice trading with you."
She knelt and began packing, the bowls of ash and dried plants, the bones and stones, all of it vanishing into her bags faster than seemed natural. Then she looked up at him once more. "Use the book well. It's very precious. And if what you offer me is as valuable as you claim, I'll answer three questions for you, whatever they are."
After that she ignored him completely, and Makun took the hint.
He walked back toward the entrance while the market dissolved around him. The energy faded, the stalls disappeared, and the vendors slipped into shadows that shouldn't have been there, until he was standing alone in the silent plaza he had first walked into: empty cobblestones, a broken fountain that didn't run, no lamps and no hooded figures, only an abandoned square in the middle of Old Town. Had everything really happened on this one street? Had the people he met come from somewhere else? Did they even exist in the same reality?
He looked up at the dark sky. It was four in the morning, with dawn still an hour away.
What the fuck am I in? What happened to me today?
He sighed. The book was heavy in his hands, real and solid. Whatever else had happened tonight, he had this: information, knowledge, perhaps answers. He looked down at the worn leather cover, The Goal of a Mystic, and decided it was time to find out whether it had been worth everything he had just gone through.