SIXTEEN
IVALYS
The Bone Market spreads through Gravebind’s dead heart like a cancer.
I’ve heard of this place. Everyone in the Inkwell has—whispered warnings about the bazaar where forbidden goods change hands, where debts can be bought and souls can be traded, where the desperate come to make bargains worse than the ones that ruined them. But hearing about it didn’t prepare me for seeing it.
The stalls are carved from ribcages. Massive ones—creatures that died in some ancient war, their bones repurposed as vendor booths. Femurs serve as tent poles.
The sound is almost worse. Haggling in a dozen languages, the clink of coin-teeth—currency extracted from the dead—and music from somewhere deep in the maze. Strange melodies played on instruments made from bone.
And everywhere, everywhere, people.
The desperate. The criminal. The damned. The crowds press on all sides as I half-carry Rathok through the market’s entrance, hands reaching from shadow, offering goods or seeking payment.
“Keep moving.” Rathok’s voice is a rasp in my ear. He’s heavier than he was a minute ago—slumping more, struggling to keep his feet under him. “Northwest corner. Down the bone stairs. Through the tomb with the red curtain.”
I follow his directions. The market-goers part around us—not from courtesy, but from the look in my eyes. Or maybe from the blood covering us both. Rathok’s blood, mostly. So much of it.
The truth-speaking still echoes through my bones. I feel it—a residue of whatever moved through me in that chapel, whatever let me burn away the Ledger Master’s contracts with nothing but words. My mother’s gift. My inheritance.
I said he wasn’t the Ledger Master’s property. And the magic believed me.
More than believed. It responded. Burned away claims that have bound countless souls. Voided contracts written in the blood of the damned. Because I spoke truth, and truth has power in Gravebind. Even—especially—when everything else is built on lies.
The bone stairs spiral down into the market’s depths. Rathok stumbles on the third step, and I catch him—take more of his weight, feel his arm tighten around my shoulders. His breath is shallow. Ragged. The wounds on his arms are still seeping.
“Almost there.” I don’t know if I’m telling him or myself. “Just a little farther.”
The tomb with the red curtain sits at the bottom of the stairs—a converted burial chamber, velvet drapes over bone walls, shelves displaying merchandise I don’t want to examine too closely. The air here smells of old paper and older magic.
“Madame Viscera.” I call out the name like a prayer. “I need Madame Viscera. Rathok Grimshaw is here.”
Movement in the shadows. A figure emerges from behind the velvet curtains—ancient, impossibly ancient.
“Grimshaw.” She looks past me to where Rathok slumps against a shelf of bottled memories. “You look terrible.”
“Debt-golem.” He forces the words out. “Ledger Master’s direct construct. She burned the contracts off me.”
Those sharp eyes snap to me. Study me. Take in the sigil on my palm, the marks on my arm, the truth-light that probably still lingers around me like smoke.
“Truth-speaker blood.” Her voice is like dry leaves rustling. “Haven’t seen that in fifteen years.”
“You knew my mother.”
“I knew Maren Vane.” She steps closer. Her teeth are filed to points—old fashion, something from before the Ledger Master’s rise. “I have her key.”
My throat constricts. My mother, thinking of me. Planning for me. Even while she was dying.
“A key to what?”
“To the Ledger Master’s weakness.” Madame Viscera’s smile shows all those pointed teeth. “The original contract that gave him power—before he started consuming souls, before he built his empire, before he became the thing he is now.”
“Where is it?”
“The Vault beneath the Ledger Hall. Buried at the bottom of three centuries of claimed debts, voided contracts, broken promises.” She tilts her head, studying me with those ageless eyes. “Your mother found it once. Spoke truth over it but didn’t complete it.”
“I will finish what she started.”
