I took a deep breath and read the entry:
Tribute — Crowmarket (protection), 12-month term
Wolfsbane supplies — Ash Barrow apothecary
Silver restraints (chains/locks) — Greyline Forge
Collection fee
Finder’s bonus
Beneath those headings marched dates, amounts, and tidy sums, each line as bloodless as bookkeeping. But it wasn’t numbers that caught me, it was one note tucked among them, sharp as a hook in the gut:
Specialty labor, shadows’ hire — paid through K.
Clean strokes on the page, but I could feel the weight behind them. Protection bought with coin, power bought with chains, and something darker moving in the spaces between. My stomach went cold.
“What’s Crowmarket?” I asked curiously.
“Off-book traders,” Kody said quietly. “Half human, half wolf, all teeth. They sell what
