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Steel, once abundant across the world, is now a precious resource.

A lucky merchant-baron may find an old store of the metal and so establish a wealthy tract, so long as he can quell the infighting.

Food, slaves, listeners… everything can be bought for steel.

~ An Introduction to Modern Economics in a Broken World, Professor Shermila Dula

* * *

Esterra followed the creaking cart as it rumbled along the wide path of the hollow, hauled by two lithe brothers.

They were made of pure sinew and muscle.

Sweat-stained leather straps curled around their chests and shoulders, like those slung around the beasts that once drew similar contraptions in the old picture-books.

The dust and grit of many days coated them, from the bald domes of their skulls down to their straining calves and sandalled feet.

Before them walked their mutual client, Dornig the trader, a lanky, travel-worn grump with an exacting attitude and more than a few chips on his shoulders.

And just behind him came a deaf young girl, a listener, a few years away from womanhood yet.

The listener wore a naive smile that stirred Esterra’s jealousy.

It must be an easy life being that innocent, she thought.

Effi, the trader called her.

The girl had ridden the cart periodically over the course of their journey so far, without any complaint from Dornig.

A bit of a spoiled brat , Esterra thought, though she knew that was likely just more jealousy.

Her own thighs and calves felt like they had developed new muscles in the past few days.

Dornig had driven them hard and fast, and at times she wondered how the two porters had managed to keep up the strict pace.

Esterra had not seen wheeled carts in some time.

The lack of roads beyond the Circle and the varied terrain in the hollows made them incredibly unwieldy.

Traders who could not carry their wares on their backs often used flat pallets with lengths of rope instead, hiring someone to bear the other end, or joined forces with another trader to keep costs down with the added benefit of mutual protection.

But sometimes wheels were a necessity, apparently.

This cart bore something heavy and of great value, or so Dornig seemed to think.

He had hired his burly cousins to draw the thing, but there was no love lost there.

The ill-tempered trader had cautioned everyone to not look beneath the thick woollen blanket he had tied across the contents of the cart.

Whenever the porters’ eyes wandered to it, the trader would cock his head in Esterra’s direction to reemphasise the warning.

The tractwalker. She was the ever-present threat of violence, not so much a bodyguard as a living weapon. No one had challenged her position after she broke two of the younger porter’s fingers on their very first night after he tried to sneak a peek at the goods while the rest were sleeping. He still muttered about it when he didn’t think Esterra could hear. She did not care.

Their little group was an oddity in Verpace.

Very few traders could afford two porters, a guard, and a listener.

Particularly the listener.

Listeners were usually one of two things: a slave, or incredibly well paid.

This one was no slave, no marks of chains on her neck or wrists, no whip marks on the arms.

She was not blinded, either.

Some people put out listeners’ eyes in a misguided attempt to heighten their sense of hearing and therefore increase their value.

All that did was make them more of a burden on their master.

Yet the girl was clearly not forged of talens.

Her clothing was worn and weathered, and her bearing was not the spoiled supremacy of a merchant’s daughter or warlord’s kin.

She had already been with the trader when Esterra met them at a roadside tavern with the cart and its bearers, and the pair communicated well through hand signals and expressions, as well as the occasional scribbled notes.

It seemed to be a business partnership well-matched but still in the early stages.

Still, Esterra imagined the man had gone to some lengths and investment to procure her services, and perhaps whatever deal they had made weighed a little heavily about his neck.

Would explain his foul moods , Esterra thought.

Perhaps the kid was not as naive as she seemed.

As they travelled together, Esterra found the listener to be ever more intriguing, in spite of her initial annoyance.

In all the endless variety of humanity on display in Verpace, from the blind priests of the demented spirit Kal near the Shoreless Sea in the far baed to the stoic Teal mercenaries and the mad cult of the Dying Sun, from the lone tractwalkers who wandered through death and violence to the bookworms like Tarr, none could predict lichtvallen in any way.

None except the listeners.

There were plenty of con-men who sold baubles to the fools of the world, promising that they would glow blue when danger was near, or shake and rattle if the licht came, but they were liars one and all.

Only listeners knew.

Unable to hear a sound, the listeners could somehow sense the approach of a lichtvallen well before anyone could see the betraying glow in the sky.

The ones who could write said the warning came to them as a terrible music that shook their very souls, a sound beyond sound, indescribable.

Esterra shivered at the thought.

The idea of a lichtvallen haunted her nightmares, and the fear was ever-present in her travels.

The Circle employed the vast majority of the listeners.

Well, forcefully enslaved , Esterra thought.

Depending on which tract the Circle was settled in at the time, there was always a squat tower of stone and chains waiting.

The listeners spun cloth there as their main occupation, but with the understanding that if they heard even the slightest note of a lichtvallen, they were to ring the bells.

Long ropes went from their bed-chambers and weaving rooms to the spindle-thin minarets that rose on each corner of their tower.

When they heard the song, they rang the bells until their specially selected set of armed guards rushed them off to the hollows.

It was life or death for the listeners as much as their masters, so there was no question of revolt or disobedience.

The listeners’ guards were heavily armed and highly trusted.

As much as they were an additional expense for the merchant-barons, they were also an imperative necessity, as listeners were often targeted by other slave owners.

Kidnapping them in a moment of chaos was an opportunity few would pass up, should it present itself. Listeners could be sold for a pretty handful of talen to the lords of distant tracts. No one asked after their provenance.

But the Circle treated them well enough, Esterra supposed.

Kept them fed and safe.

Some citizens of Verpace sought to acquire listeners via less costly means.

It took a few dozen attempts at forcibly deafening various unwilling persons to discover that the unique ability only belonged to those born with the condition.

Naturally this failure was only discovered a little too late; a lichtvallen was a lesson not soon forgotten, especially when family or friends vanished without a trace.

However, the abuse continued out in the wastes, where information distorted and people would always maim their sons and daughters in the hope of a tal or two.

Cruelty was inevitably abundant where greed and starvation ran amok.

Esterra watched the girl as she looked about with that constant look of curiosity on her face, unscarred by life.

She wondered what it was like to never hear a sound besides the terrible song from the skies.

Was there a sadness behind the glowing smile, a sorrow in those dark eyes? Esterra had never met a listener before, and so she pondered the question as they ate by the campfire and Effi smiled quietly at the others as they spoke, unhearing but seemingly at peace.

She wondered how well she read lips, wondered how one learnt that skill when speech was such a foreign concept.

She did not know.

The young woman caught her eye and the grin faded a bit.

Esterra tried to smile but her hip was plaguing her, the wound of her fight with the mishtaan.

Adding physical pain to her habitual brooding meant a smile became an impossibility unless she really worked at it.

By the time she had focused her attention on the task, the woman had turned away with a slightly frightened frown.

Esterra grunted.

She scared people.

Considering her current job, she supposed that was the point.

She took up her usual scanning of the surroundings.

The creatures of any place, human or otherwise, always left tracks, marks, signs.

Leavings were the most common, things like bones and offal and excrement.

Paths worn into the earth and damage to plants were relatively common, too.

Every now and then she would come across a scrawl on the wall, either images or runes, a literal sign that sometimes provided more information than mere animal scat.

Signs of intelligence, humanity, civilisation.

But so far she had seen none of these.

The journey had gone well the past few days, walking tracts that she had not travelled in many years.

Some were the same as they had always been.

Others had changed in a lichtvallen. Most were safe, the wild creatures’ hunger overcome by their wariness toward the caravan. The trader seemed to have come through recently, taking the lead without any concerns, only once asking her guidance when he was completely at a loss. He was full of the usual mannish pride, but not a complete fool.

Their journey had been quiet, except one tract.

A lichtvallen had torn through it only a few days prior, leaving blood-stained skeletons in its wake.

It had set them all on edge, but the presence of the listener brought them some comfort.

Should another lichtvallen come, they would have plenty of warning to rush to the nearest hollow.

Dornig did not seem fazed by much, and rather knowledgeable about the effects of lichtvallen.

He had travelled extensively, Esterra learnt during one of his rare talkative moods.

He could even be a tractwalker.

Well, if he ever decides to travel more and earn less and face greater danger , she thought, chuckling to herself with only a trace of cynical bitterness.

In all the years of her wandering she had often considered entering a trade.

She did make a very modest income selling skins and could barter relatively well with even the greasiest merchants of the world.

But she never felt any passion for commerce.

There was a look in a merchant’s eyes, a kind of fevered energy that she simply could not match.

Like a fire, that energy burned even through the exhaustion of a harrowing day and near starvation.

They strove not just for talens, but for an edge over everyone else in the entirety of Verpace.

Ever they sought that fabled edge, and the more determined among them would usually find it in any situation, a way to eke out just a little more, climb a fraction higher, kick the rest down a tiny bit harder.

Esterra was not one to shirk from combat, but her fights ended quickly.

The traders fought forever, clawing and stabbing and chewing through intangible concepts with enemies who fought with the same skills and the same mindset, fever against furious fever, their words and plans more vicious than any blade, cutting with a terrible precision and purpose as their cunning spirits warred.

She rested her calloused palm on the curved knife hooked into her belt, felt the cold bronze of the pommel, the weathered wood of the grip.

This was why she could never be a trader.

The physical world was real, a thing to be contended with, something that could be bled dry if she required it.

Nebulous values spun from thin air by insatiable greed was a different beast altogether.

That same insatiability rotted deep within Dornig.

The sickness permeated even into his eyes.

He was riddled with it, gnawing on his cunning with ragged teeth, relishing in clever plots and conniving bitterness.

His gaze stunk of vinegar and the sweetness of a bloated corpse, cloying to Esterra’s mind.

The spindly trader walked with a neurotic energy.

It animated his gaunt frame with a power that would face the interminable distances of the world without flinching, a power that had become the very being of the person it fuelled, the core desire being so intensely personal that words like family and friends stirred nothing but dull sparks in the face of the raging flames of need.

The trader had snagged something he deemed worth hiring a crew and braving a long journey with an unwieldy wheeled cart.

His fever drove him to speed as well.

He had admitted that the next few tracts were unknown to him, but his sources had told him they would cut his journey in half.

Esterra just hoped nothing else would be cut that same way.

Shortcuts rarely lived up to their name.

“Stake,” Dornig said, waving her over.

She quickened her pace and joined him at the front.

“We need to discuss your pay.”

She glanced at him but kept her tongue.

“We haven’t experienced any dangers along the way.

The journey is without incident, and we near our destination. Correct?”

“Hm.”

“Would you agree that the entire expedition was safe?”

“That is often the case when one travels in numbers, and with a skilled tractwalker to boot.”

“Perhaps.

Yet it makes me reconsider things.”

“One should certainly keep an open mind, but certain constants remain constant no matter the circumstances.”

“A tractwalker and a philosopher.

I would never have the paired the two.”

She grunted.

“As I was saying, immutable as some things may be in your view, I find myself reviewing certain aspects of this business transaction.

We travelled safely, that much is certain.

But in many respects this was in spite of your presence, rather than a positive effect stemming from it.

Your only use has been to break two digits of one of our porters, creating a fresh risk to our progress rather than waylaying any existing danger.”

“You’d rather the porter look under the tarp there? I was protecting your business interests, Dornig.”

“A fair answer, although not entirely correct.

The porter could have looked for hours and be left none the wiser for it.

The item in the cart holds no value that they could comprehend.

I doubt you would, either.”

“Yet you use a tarpaulin and forbid us all from looking beneath it.

As a guard, I was simply fulfilling my end of the bargain we made.”

“Bargain, there is the word.

Excellent choice.

Bargain.

One might say that twenty percent off your fee might be considered a bargain for us both, since you expended next to nothing in acquiring the reward and I lose a little less for the bother.”

“Forget your percents.

Tell me in steel.”

“You wanted thirty tals.

I will pay you twenty-four.”

“We agreed to thirty.

You will pay me thirty.”

“Yet you have done nothing to earn it.

If the porter did not draw the cart, would I pay him the full porter’s fee? What if he kicked in the spokes of the wheel and then refused to draw it? It makes even less sense.

You must see the justice of it.”

“Enough of your talk of justice and fairness.

You’re just looking to squirrel away a few more tals, a breach of our agreement.”

“You should consider your words carefully.

My offer is generous, one I offer out of respect and careful calculation in terms of gain, loss, risk, and suchlike.

The tals await us in the Circle.

You cannot threaten me for them now, as I do not have them.

Harming me or otherwise stalling the expedition would simply delay your payment.

Likewise, if you attempt to threaten me in the Circle, the Circle guard would put a quick stop to it.

Again, no payment.

Think for a moment of your own interests.

You really have no option.

I tell you this to prevent any hasty action on your part, for your own protection and benefit.”

Esterra ground her teeth till they creaked.

“Mind you,” the skinny bastard said, tapping his chin with one finger, “An offer can be withdrawn.

I will write this current one up on paper if you agree before we reach the next hollow.

There are only three more tracts and four more hollows to the Circle from that point.

If you don’t agree, your pay will decrease by twenty percent for each hollow in which your services are not called upon.

A written contract will protect your interests in the Circle.

Without it… well…”

Esterra growled deep in her throat, then returned to the back of the caravan, single fist clenching and loosening, over and over.

She imagined Dornig’s throat between the fingers, the cartilage crunching beneath them, crushing his breath entirely and letting him drown in his own blood.

She watched him for a long time, saw him hold a lengthy discussion with the porters, then a long and protracted hand-dance with the listener.

No one looked happy after the talks, least of all the listener.

Her habitual smile was completely gone.

He’s screwing us all out of our tals .

Esterra decided it was time to think hard and see how the four of them could get what was rightfully theirs.

The first thing to do was see what it was for which she had broken the porter’s two fingers.

I’ll do it tonight.

Probably a damn statue or something useless like that.

They left the hollow behind and emerged into a strange tract of limestone.

Dornig shouted and held up his hand.

The caravan ground to a halt and not a moment too soon.

Pebbles slipped from beneath the wheel of the cart down off the edge of a steep cliff.

They disappeared into a stream so far below that they could not even hear the splash.

It made Esterra feel small, like an insect navigating a place carved by rivulets of rain, expanded to a gigantic scale.

The porters pulled the cart back a bit, and held it there till they were certain it would not roll off.

The tract was very odd, though that in itself was normal in Verpace.

There were no valleys, only steep chasms that dropped deep into shadow, and pillars of weird limestone rising like natural towers, crowned by the distant greenery.

Paths had formed along the ridges of this stone.

They weren’t particularly smooth or flat, but they were traversable enough, should one have the agility and balance.

Esterra eyed the cart with some doubt.

Great waterfalls roared from towers of tortured stone, twisted into shapes that whispered of some intentional design, though there were no straight edges or anything of the sort.

Rather, it was like a child’s first attempts at writing, as if some great stylus in the sky had stabbed into the earth and carved out squiggly gashes in the page of the earth, looping here and there in erratic curves and sudden stops.

It was a land of sudden crevices and towering spires, stalactites and stalagmites fused together over a period of what must have been centuries.

Pink-flowering cherry trees perched perilously on the very tips of these towers of stone, roots clinging to whatever fruitful soil they might find.

Every now and then a gust of wind would shake a thousand petals loose, and they would glide down between the hundreds of pale blue butterflies that rode the same wind.

The folds and shapes the limestone took were all round, turned like wood on a lathe.

The place smelled of moist growth, not the dank humidity of rot, but the freshness of life.

The trees perched in impossible places, from the side of vertical crevices and the edge of the towering stone columns, and ivy flooded the stone like a bad rash.

It climbed up the sides of the cliffs and over the trunks of the cherry trees in waves.

Pink petals wafted over the scene, flittering in the light breeze.

But Esterra had no eyes for picturesque.

Each new tract held the potential for a dozen new ways to die.

For the first few moments she only saw the dangers.

The smell of growth and humidity clung to everything.

Water fell from some of the towers down into the chasms, while in other areas it seemed more like showers of rain, or little drips pattering down from tiny leaves far above, while streams flowed by at a more leisurely pace, bubbling along in silent protest of the rumbling waterfalls crashing far below.

Each chasm was a mad scribble, meandering and looping around the great pillars, sloping up and down and sideways and twisting about till the entire tract was a veritable maze.

The pathways meandered in quite the same manner, often only a few paces wide, and perched on limestone pillars of questionable integrity.

Since everything was covered in moss and foliage, it was unclear how much stone supported these twisting paths, and how much was purely the viewers’ imaginations.

The paths undulated like rolling hills, split in places, widened out into little plateaus, and simply ended in a dead stop in other areas.

It was a veritable maze propped up above myriad chasms and waterfalls and bottomless pits, and even the slightest misstep would see them tumbling over the sides.

She was a little encouraged by the lack of visible scat and prints, but the first could be hidden in any one of the million pits and hidden paths, and the second was expected with the rocky terrain.

Esterra decided that she would need to keep her guard up, as usual.

Dornig surveyed the place with his standard moody glare.

“Do you know the way?” one of the porters asked the other.

“Never seen this place.

Never heard of it.”

“Cousin Dornig has, right?”

“Bloody better have.

I’m not dragging this down any of those paths till…”

“Shut it!” Dornig cut in.

“I paid good tals for a map through this place, so quit complaining.” He drew a folded piece of paper from his pouch and sat down on a mossy outcrop of stone.

Esterra watched him turn it one way, then the other, his head popping up to survey the medley of canyons and towers now and then.

His frown only grew deeper.

Her guts began to tie themselves in intricate knots.

Being lost was nothing new, but being lost with inept travellers was dangerous, particularly when the leader was a conniving son of a bitch with no ability to listen to advice.

Esterra sidled over to the two cousins.

The shorter one, whose fingers she had broken, backed away with a sullen frown.

Can I blame him? Do I care? The answer to both questions was no.

She turned to the older brother.

"She's not his daughter?” she asked in a low tone, nodding at Effi.

"No.

Maybe not.

I don’t know.

What’s your point?”

"I’m wondering why she is with him?”

“Who knows.

She can’t talk, and we can’t understand her finger-language.”

"Makes sense.

Let's just focus on the problem at hand then.

I get the feeling we're being propped up to be knocked down."

"What?"

"Swindled.

Screwed.

Fucked over."

"By who?"

"Who else? The one with all the tals."

"But he’s our cousin,” the shorter of the two said.

“He needs us."

"He needs us till he doesn't.

I don't like the way he's been looking at us lately.

And what's in the waggon?"

"Old steel, probably.

But then he wants to pay us less.”

"Tell your idiot brother the pay cut is not my fault.

It’s Dornig’s.”

The older porter grunted and shrugged.

Great, noncommittal fools.

What a team we make.

She watched him saunter over to the younger brother.

The conversation was tense, and the younger grouched away to stand by the cart.

He then kicked the wheel of the cart in angst, and the whole thing rolled over the edge.

The porter grabbed at it and was pulled down with it.

It all happened so quickly that no one even had time to yell before the echoes of the crashes and screams came up from the chasm.

The gangly trader and the surviving porter rushed to the edge and looked down after the cart.

Dornig did not say a word, but Esterra saw his jaw and fists clench, and he did not move a muscle.

The older brother’s face was a travesty of shock.

So was the trader’s, but for different reasons.

Esterra scratched at the back of her head, watching the group.

The girl worried at her satchels and her pack, tightening and retightening the straps, moving things about, anything to distract her from the cataclysm that had befallen them.

Esterra's heart twisted in her chest, and her nerves were tight, without clear reason.

Death was nothing new to her, even the death of a travelling companion.

But there was something off this time, like thin oil running slick across the surface of drinking water, a feeling that all was not as it should be, that things were happening very quickly and she was not keeping up.

She could see the Dornig’s mind racing as his eyes flicked between the girl, the cliff where the cart fell, his cousin, and Esterra. He blinked a few times, nodded, and spoke.