A City of Drowned Oaths - The Rookhaven Covenant - Book Two

The Market of Lost Things

Kieran’s mother sang four notes before he asked Neris to stop her.

Neris did not move.

“The market heard what you wanted,” she said. “It is not my voice to silence.”

The lullaby continued beneath the open floor. A woman hummed as if a child’s sleep depended on never reaching the end of the melody. Kieran stood at the top of the spiral stair with one hand pressed over his mouth.

I had seen him bleeding, commanded, and nearly dead. I had never seen him look young.

“Do you remember the song?” I asked.

He lowered his hand.

“My body does.”

“That is not what I asked.”

“No.” His voice roughened. “I remember Maeven mocking it. I remember a nurse refusing to sing it after my mother died. I do not remember my mother’s voice.”

The song rose through the stairwell.

Kieran took one step down.

The rusted key in his pocket struck the stone through his coat.

Neris watched him without satisfaction. The market had tempted me with my father and permitted her to learn what I would sacrifice. Now it turned the same appetite toward him.

I caught his sleeve.

He stopped.

“I am not forbidding you,” I said.

“I know.”

“I am reminding you that stairs lead in both directions.”

His eyes closed briefly.

We descended together.

The market had changed since my first visit. Every awning faced the Keeper’s stair. Buyers and vendors stood motionless beneath their lamps, leaving a straight road to the nearest stall. On its counter lay the three objects Neris had shown us from above.

The spool of lost years was larger than it had appeared. Black, silver, and gold threads wound around its bone-white center. Small scenes moved within them: Kieran kneeling in snow, Kieran laughing beside a woman whose face had been cut away, Kieran closing a cell, Kieran holding a child with bright red hair.

The sealed card rested beside it.

No name showed through the paper. A royal crest had been pressed over the wax, then scarred out so violently the card had almost torn.

The third object was the key.

SEVENTH GATE had been stamped into its bow.

A vendor waited behind them. She wore the dark blue dress of a royal nurse. Her face remained hidden by a veil, but Kieran’s eyes fixed on the hands folded at her waist.

“Those were hers,” he said.

“Your mother’s?”

“The ring finger healed crooked. My father broke it when she reached for me during an argument.”

The veiled woman’s hands tightened.

Kieran did not look away.

“How old were you?” I asked.

“Five, perhaps six. Ages were counted by ceremonies, not birthdays. I had failed to kneel when my father entered the nursery.”

“So he struck her.”

“He struck me first. She put her hand between the second blow and my face.”

His voice was flat. The hands on the other side of the counter had begun to tremble.

“Is that your memory?” I asked.

“The pain is. The rest may be something Maeven told me so often that I cannot separate it from seeing.”

The vendor lifted her crooked finger and touched the veil where her mouth would be.

Kieran stopped breathing.

“What?”

“She did that when she wanted me silent.”

The gesture might have come from a servant’s memory, a nurse’s record, or his mother’s body. It was real without being whole. Namarra knew precisely how much truth to show before a starving person mistook recognition for return.

“How did she die?” I asked.

He looked at me, surprised.

“Everyone knows.”

“Everyone knows what the court announced.”

His gaze returned to the hands. “Fever, according to the announcement. Poison, according to Maeven. Grief, according to my father when he wanted me to feel responsible.”

“And according to you?”

“I remember a door I was not allowed to open. I remember hearing this song through it. Then nothing until her funeral.”

The sealed card gave one soft pulse.

“The missing years begin there?”

“Some of them.” His jaw tightened. “Maeven liked to remove the edges around an injury. She said clean wounds healed obediently.”

“Is she a memory?” I asked.

The vendor answered in the same voice that had sung.

“The voice was taken from the child. The hands were taken from a witness. The dress belonged to the woman. No soul is offered.”

Kieran’s shoulders lowered by a fraction. Relief, grief, or both.

“State the offer,” he said.

Silver writing appeared above the counter.

THE YEARS WITHHELD.

THE NAME FIRST GIVEN.

THE MEMORY OF THE DROWNED.

RETURNED TO THE SEVENTH GATE.

“That is a destination,” I said. “Not a price.”

The vendor turned her veiled face toward me.

“The claimant must resume the office deposited with them.”

“For how long?”

“Until the closed names are restored or lawfully surrendered.”

Kieran looked at the endless market.

“How many?”

“Nine thousand, seven hundred and six remain wholly closed. Twenty-three thousand, one hundred and twelve remain partial.”

The numbers turned the word until into a lifetime.

“What authority does the office hold over him?” I asked.

“The Seventh Gate may open or close crossings, receive sealed testimony, carry returned prices, and stand in place of the Keeper when required.”

“What authority does it hold over his body?”

The vendor went quiet.

Kieran put both palms on the counter.

“State it.”

“While he carries the office, Namarra may use his blood to close a breach and his body to hold a gate if no other means remains.”

The memory of him fighting the lever moved through my mind.

“Does he choose each use?”

“The office was recorded before current consent provisions.”

“That is an elegant no.”

“It is a complete term.”

Kieran leaned closer to the writing.

“Could the office use me to prevent someone leaving Namarra?”

“Yes.”

“Could it use my voice to issue terms?”

“Only terms already recorded.”

“Could it make me take a returned price into my body?”

“If no other lawful bearer exists and failure to carry it would destroy the claimant.”

“Could I refuse and allow the claimant to die?”

“Not while holding the office.”

The old Kieran would have heard only that he could save someone. The man beside me heard that his body would cease to be his at precisely the moment another life made refusal look selfish.

“What happens if carrying a price kills me?” he asked.

“The office passes to the nearest eligible bearer.”

“Who is eligible?”

The silver writing turned toward me.

THE FIFTH WITNESS.

Cold entered the market.

Kieran stepped between me and the letters before thought could catch him.

“Do not,” I said.

He stopped but did not move aside.

The vendor continued. “If no registered Witness remains, the Keeper carries both offices.”

Neris’s face revealed nothing.

Two women positioned behind one man’s death. The market called that succession. I called it a blade with several handles.

“If he accepts,” I said, “his sacrifice becomes leverage against me, and my refusal becomes leverage against Neris.”

“Yes.”

At least the truth arrived without perfume.

The vendor’s voice did not defend it. Courts rarely needed to approve their own cruelty. They only needed to pronounce it accurately enough to survive challenge.

Kieran studied the spool.

“Can I accept one return without the others?”

“No.”

“Can I review the memories before accepting?”

“Only the displayed fragments.”

“Can I resign?”

“When the names are restored or surrendered.”

“Can another person assume the office?”

“If every claimant attached to it agrees.”

He laughed once without humor. Nine thousand dead, missing, sleeping, or nameless people would have to consent to his replacement.

The market had left a door.

It had placed a city in front of it.

The veiled vendor pushed the sealed card forward.

The lullaby sharpened.

Kieran’s fingers moved toward the wax.

I wanted him to open it.

The desire shamed me only because it was not alone. I wanted the name his mother had whispered before his father turned him into a title. I wanted the lost years to explain each silence in his face. I wanted knowledge to do what the vanished bond once had: make loving him safer by removing what I could misunderstand.

Namarra had not invented the hunger.

It had given it a counter and asked what I would pay.

“I want to know,” I said.

Kieran’s hand stopped above the card.

“Your name. Your mother’s voice. What happened in those years. I want all of it.”

Pain moved through his expression.

“Mara—”

“I also want you able to leave this room.”

He searched my face. “Which want is stronger?”

“That changes every few seconds.”

“You are supposed to say me.”

“Would you believe me if I did?”

His silence answered.

I stepped closer to the counter. The spool showed him dancing with the faceless woman now. Their hands were joined. His remembered smile was open in a way I had seen only after exhaustion stripped his defenses away.

Jealousy came before compassion. I wanted her face. I wanted to know whether he had loved her, failed her, buried her, or forgotten her willingly. I hated the blank place because it belonged to a version of him I could not ask to explain.

“The bond used to make me believe I knew what you felt,” I said. “It did not, not truly. But it gave fear a sensation I could name. Now I watch you look at her and invent answers.”

“What answer are you inventing?”

“That you loved her more safely than you love me.”

He stared at the faceless dancer.

“Nothing about loving you feels safe.”

“That was almost romantic.”

“I meant that I know you can leave.” He touched the edge of the spool. “Perhaps she could too. Perhaps that is why the court took her face.”

The possibility hurt him. It also made the jealousy small enough to examine.

“I want knowledge because uncertainty gives every frightened s********m to grow,” I said. “That does not make knowledge worth your body.”

“And if refusing lets those stories damage us?”

“Then we damage each other honestly and repair what we can.”

“A beautiful proposal.”

“I am known for elegance.”

The vendor waited.

“If you accept, I will not pretend it does not affect me,” I continued. “If you refuse, I will not punish you for leaving me uncertain.”

“What if the memories contain something that changes what you feel?”

“Then they change it.”

“You make love sound exceptionally unsafe.”

“It has poor regulation.”

His mouth moved despite himself.

Then the child with red hair appeared in the spool again.

Kieran touched the thread above her face without lifting it from the counter.

“I know her,” he said.

“From where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to?”

“So badly I cannot tell whether the wanting is mine or the guilt attached to the gap.”

He turned to Neris.

“Did I hurt her?”

Neris stood at the edge of the stall light.

“I know the records of Namarra. I do not know every year Maeven took from you.”

“You could tell me what you suspect.”

“And let suspicion enter your memory before the evidence? No.”

He looked back at the spool.

The child raised her face. She was smiling at the remembered Kieran, unafraid.

The image hurt him more than fear would have.

“If I accept the office,” he said, “can I protect the sleepers from involuntary return?”

“Sometimes,” Neris answered.

“Can I release you from the chair?”

“For hours. Perhaps days. Not permanently while the city remains between waking and sleep.”

“So it would help.”

“Yes.”

He exhaled.

I watched duty find the softest place in him and begin pressing.

“What do you want?” I asked Neris.

The question surprised her.

“Rest.”

Kieran’s hand closed around the key.

“And?” I asked.

Neris looked at his fingers.

“Not this way.”

He released it.

The key remained on the counter.

“Why show him?”

“I did not. His admitted desire opened the market. I brought him here because concealed terms become more dangerous when ignored.”

“You could let him believe the office would be noble.”

“I have lived beneath enough noble decisions.”

Kieran rubbed both hands over his face.

The vendor began singing again. This time the song contained a word where the melody turned.

Not a name I understood.

Kieran did.

His knees bent.

I caught his arm. “What did she say?”

“Something my mother called me.”

“Your birth name?”

“No.” He looked at the sealed card. “Something smaller.”

The kind of name used in darkness when no court listened.

He took one breath, then another.

“State whether refusal changes my current right to leave,” he told the vendor.

“It does not.”

“State whether these objects will remain available.”

“Until claimed, lawfully returned elsewhere, or destroyed.”

“State whether refusing now prevents later acceptance.”

“It does not.”

He looked at me.

“I am not taking them.”

Relief hit before I could make my face kind.

He saw it.

“For now,” he added.

Fear followed relief.

I made myself nod. “For now belongs to you.”

He turned away from his mother’s hands.

The market protested.

Lamps flared. Lost years unspooled across the counter. The sealed card cracked its own wax without opening. The key rolled after him and stopped against his boot.

Kieran did not look back.

We walked three stalls before the lullaby stopped.

Only then did he stumble.

I led him into the shadow between two awnings. His forehead dropped to my shoulder. I put my arms around him without asking because he had already leaned his full weight into me.

“I almost took it,” he said.

“I know.”

“When she used that name, I would have agreed to anything.”

“I know.”

“You cannot know.”

“No.” I held him tighter. “But I can believe you.”

He remained against me until his breathing slowed.

“Ask me tomorrow,” he said.

“Whether you still refuse?”

“Whether I still want the ordinary things.”

“You think one night will make them disappear?”

“I think wanting my mother’s voice has made every other desire feel disloyal.”

I understood then that the market was not merely offering the past. It was asking him to prove love for the dead by surrendering the future.

“I will ask,” I said. “And if your answer changes, I will listen before I become furious.”

“A generous sequence.”

“Do not abuse it.”

His breath broke against my neck.

Behind him, the market floor moved.

A golden eye opened between the cobbles.

It looked at Kieran, then at me.

Before I could call Neris, a woman screamed from the next street.

We ran.

The numbered maid lay beneath the bridge, choking on a green thread. The number above her heart had split open. Names poured from it too quickly to read.

Neris dropped beside her.

“Maren,” she said. “Stay with me.”

The maid clawed at her throat.

The green thread tightened.

From inside it came the voice of an eleven-year-old girl.

My voice.

“I left something in the water.”