The market was full of makeshift stalls and blankets spread on the ground with wares piled on them, and the vendors promised a cornucopia of goods from fresh vegetables to weapons to half-active charms salvaged from the city’s countless ruined buildings. I headed straight for the noisy corner of the market, where a humanborn kid stood by cages full of birds. His freckled face and red heap of unkempt hair revealed him as a local, and he grinned when I approached. If he was surprised I was in need of what he was selling, he didn’t show it, though his main clientele had to be mythborn, because even with the temporary food shortages, the humanborn didn’t fancy pigeons and seagulls.
“This one.” I picked the fattest bird, trying not to think what it must have been eating to have grown that big.
