The Blind Pig was beneath a brewery in what looked like a disused boiler room, and it took Bankole forty-five minutes and three wrong turns to find it.
Augie had drawn a map on a napkin and then drawn another map on another napkin when the first one proved unintelligible, and the entrance was a brick wall that only opened if you knocked in a specific rhythm.
Inside, the speakeasy was warm and low-ceilinged, lit by floating candles and the dim glow of a fire that burned green at the heart.
The clientele was a mix of wizards, goblins, and creatures Bankole couldn’t immediately classify, all of them drinking something that smelled like bad gin and regret.
The goblin behind the bar was Gnarlack.
He had sharp eyes, sharper teeth, and the easy confidence of a man who knew everything that happened in his establishment before it happened.
“You’re the beast-charmer,” Gnarlack said, without preamble.
“I’ve heard about you.”
“I don’t know what you’ve heard.”
“That you can quiet anything.
That you don’t use a wand.
That you won’t sell.” Gnarlack’s eyes glittered.
“That last one’s the interesting part.”
“I’m not a smuggler.”
“No.
You’re something rarer.
A man with a skill he won’t monetize.” Gnarlack poured a glass of something amber and slid it across the bar.
“That kind of principle is either very expensive or very stupid.
I haven’t decided which.”
Bankole did not touch the glass.
“I need to work,” he said.
“I can rehome creatures.
I can treat injured ones.
I can find lost ones.
I don’t sell them.”
Gnarlack studied him.
Then he gestured at a board on the far wall: a corkboard covered in notices, bounties, and requests.
“Post your services.
The board takes ten percent.
If you’re as good as they say, you’ll eat.”
Bankole walked to the board and read the notices.
Missing creatures.
For-sale listings.
A bounty for information about the “menagerie ghost”: his name, not yet attached to the description, but close enough to make his stomach turn.
He pinned his own notice: Beast husbandry.
Rehoming.
Treatment.
No questions.
He turned.
A woman sat alone at a corner table, perhaps fifty, with grey-streaked hair and the calm, assessing gaze of someone who had been in the business long enough to recognize a new player.
She raised her glass to him, and he crossed to her table before he had decided to.
“You’re the one who won’t cage,” she said.
It was not a question.
“I’m the one who won’t sell.”
“That’s not what I asked.” She set her glass down.
“I’m Meridayth.
Some people call me Mother.
I keep beasts too — the ones MACUSA wants dead.
I’ve been doing it longer than you’ve been in this country, and I’ve never met a keeper who refused to cage.”
“How do you keep them?”
“In cages.” She said it flatly, without apology.
“Small ones, hidden ones, the kind that keep a creature alive but not free.
I tell myself it’s temporary.
That one day I’ll open them all.
But the day keeps not coming.”
Bankole sat down across from her.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want to know if you’re real.” She leaned forward.
“There are hundreds of caged creatures in this city.
Smugglers’ stock.
Impounded beasts waiting for disposal.
Creatures MACUSA has locked away because they’re inconvenient.
How many do you think die tonight?”
“I don’t know.”
“I do.
All of them.” She waited.
“And I want to know whether a man who won’t cage has ever thought about the ones already in cages.
The ones someone else put there.
The ones he could open.”
The question hung between them.
The plate, at the edge of his sight, was silent.
“I’ve thought about it,” he said.
“Because I’ve been waiting a long time for someone who would think about it and not look away.”
She did not offer to collaborate.
She did not offer to join forces.
She simply sat there, drinking her bad gin, watching him with the patient certainty of someone who knew the flood was coming and was just waiting for him to see it too.
Bankole left the Blind Pig with rent money in his pocket, a reputation in the underworld, and a question about the cages he could open that he didn’t know how to answer.
Meridayth’s question stayed with him through the cold streets and the long night.
How many die tonight?
He had no answer.
But the plate, for the first time, seemed to expect one.
.
x—SYS❦ — CHARGE: The question of the flood has been asked.
The plate does not answer: it waits.
Meridayth introduced.
PLANT P9 (flood-temptation) seeded.
.
STATUS —— KEEP: [moderate] , — EXPOSURE:.
S”—S” (“beast-charmer who won’t cage” enters the underworld: a description that will eventually reach Graves) , — [THE OBSCURA]:, a, a , x—/SYS—x—
The Blind Pig was still humming when Bankole left, but he barely noticed.
Meridayth’s question was lodged in him like a splinter.
How many caged creatures were dying tonight?
He did not know the number.
He did not want to know.
But the question had been asked, and the plate hadn’t answered.
It was waiting.
The Compact didn’t tell him what to do about the cages someone else had built.
It only told him to keep the ones he opened.
He walked home with the rent money in his pocket and the question burning.
The Blind Pig’s green fire was still burning when Bankole stepped out into the cold night.
The rent money was in his pocket, the reputation was spreading through the underworld, and Meridayth’s question was lodged in him like a splinter he couldn’t remove.
How many caged creatures were dying in this city tonight?
He did not know the number.
He did not want to know the number.
But the question had been asked, and the plate hadn’t answered not because it didn’t care, but because it was waiting to see what he would do about it.
The CHARGE had been clear: find the one who most needs keeping.
He had thought it meant a single creature, a single rescue.
But Meridayth had shown him that the cages weren’t individual they were a system.
And the CHARGE might have been pointing at something larger than a single beast.
He walked home through the cold streets, the question burning.