The market of Miraan had transformed itself for the festival.
Every stall was decorated cloth banners in deep colors strung between poles, flowers woven into the frames of vegetable carts, the smell of festival food layering over the usual market smells until the whole street felt like something different from ordinary Tuesday commerce.
People moved with the particular energy of a city that had given itself permission to enjoy something.
Among them a woman in a dress that drew exactly the kind of attention she was trying to avoid.
“Looks like there’s free food,” Seran said, watching a cluster of people gathered around a stall where someone was handing out small portions of something that smelled extraordinary.
“Festival,” Davan said.
“Merchants give samples.
Builds loyalty.”
“Hmm.” Seran looked at the sample.
Then at the crowd.
Then kept walking.
They moved through the market the way they moved through everything eyes taking inventory, patterns building in the background of what looked like casual browsing.
Davan noticed faces.
Seran noticed transactions.
Between them nothing got past.
They entered a crowded section where the stalls pressed closer together and the noise doubled.
“We’re here,” Seran said.
“Rai said the import connections run through the festival trade,” Davan said.
“Someone is using the seasonal traffic as cover.”
“Someone always is.”
They separated slightly moving through adjacent lanes, close enough to signal each other, far enough to cover more ground.
Near a fish stall a transaction had gone wrong.
A merchant from Baahg the specific deep blue of his trade sash marking his origin clearly was arguing with a Hasti merchant over price.
The quality of the fish was evident even from a distance.
Fresh, well-preserved, the kind of quality that justified the asking price and then some.
“One hundred pana,” the Baahg merchant said.
“For this quality — it’s fair.”
“Fifty,” the Hasti merchant said.
Flatly.
Without examining the product more carefully.
The Baahg merchant stared at him.
Then picked up his display and moved to the next stall.
As he passed Davan his voice was low and meant for no one the specific muttering of a man processing injustice through his teeth.
“Hasti markets.
Thieves.
Sixty pana at least—”
He disappeared into the crowd.
Davan watched him go.
Further along, a cluster of merchants from different kingdoms had gathered at the edge of the market the specific gathering of people who had found each other through shared frustration.
Different skin colors, different dress, different languages mixing at the edges.
But the same expression on every face.
Seran drifted toward them.
“You’re losing business,” she said.
Not accusatory.
Just observational.
One man older, with the patient eyes of someone who had been explaining this for years — looked at her.
“They think our goods are inferior,” he said.
“They aren’t.
They’re better.
That’s the problem.” He reached into his display and held something out.
“Try it.”
Seran looked at it.
Then at him.
She took it.
Tried it.
The quality was immediately obvious.
Better than anything at the surrounding Hasti stalls by a significant margin.
She handed it back.
“Why don’t people buy from you then?”
The man smiled the tired smile of someone whose answer was longer than the question deserved.
An old woman in a black dress had been listening from her stall nearby.
“My child,” she said to Seran, “it is simple.
So Hasti merchants make it difficult for them to sell at all.” She arranged something on her display with practiced hands.
“Price pressure.
Supply interference.
Rumors about quality that everyone knows are false.” She looked up.
“Competition is uncomfortable for those who are used to having no competition.”
Seran absorbed this.
Davan had moved further into the market toward the decorated stalls, the flower vendors, the section that smelled of cloth dye and fresh petals.
He was looking at faces, at hands, at the specific way certain merchants watched certain other merchants with something that wasn’t quite commerce in their eyes.
A girl appeared in front of him.
Small.
Maybe nine or ten.
Holding a white flower with both hands, the stem pointed toward him with the professional confidence of someone who had done this many times and had refined their opening.
“Big brother,” she said.
“This flower is for lovers.”
Davan looked at the flower.
“I don’t have one,” he said.
The girl tilted her head.
She looked past him across the market to where Seran was interrogating a stall owner with the specific focused attention that made people want to answer her questions quickly and completely.
“But I see how you look at her,” the girl said.
Davan said nothing.
“She’s beautiful,” the girl continued, with the matter-of-fact assessment of someone who didn’t yet know that this was a complicated observation to make out loud.
“And you look at her like—”
“She’ll be fine,” Davan said.
The girl looked at Seran.
Then at Davan.
Then held the flower out further.
“Please,” she said.
With a smile that had clearly worked before.
Three boys had found Seran.
Not the stall owner she’d been questioning he had retreated into his stall with the speed of someone who had answered everything he intended to answer.
These were different.
Young.
The particular age where confidence and judgment haven’t finished negotiating with each other.
The first one stepped directly into her path.
“Watch where you’re—” He stopped.
Looked at her properly for the first time.
His expression rearranged itself into something he probably thought was charming.
“Hey.
Where are you going, beautiful?”
His friends arranged themselves casually behind him.
The specific casual of people who had done this together before.
Seran looked at him.
Then at his friends.
Then back at him.
The girl with the flower grabbed Davan’s sleeve.
“Big brother,” she said urgently.
“Your wife is in danger.”
“She’s not my wife,” Davan said.
“Don’t lie.” The girl’s grip tightened.
“You’re angry at her because she doesn’t give you enough time—”
“She’ll be fine.”
“How do you know?
Go help her.
Do you want your future children to say their father was a coward?”
Davan looked at her.
She looked back with complete sincerity.
Seran had already moved.
The boy’s hand reaching for her arm with the assumption of someone who had never been told no in a way that stuck was stopped by her grip around his wrist before it arrived.
She pressed.
Precisely.
The specific pressure that communicated exactly one thing without requiring words.
He went very still.
“Don’t,” she said. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
“Touch.”
His friend threw something a knife, panicked, poorly aimed.
She released the wrist, sidestepped, and redirected his momentum into the nearest stall frame.
The impact made the stall shake.
The stall owner relocated immediately.
The third one came from the left.
She moved to the right, caught his arm, and used him to stop the second one who had recovered faster than expected.
They went down together.
The market had gone quiet around them the specific quiet of a crowd that had decided to watch rather than intervene.
Seran tied them with the rope she carried standard issue, checked that none of them were seriously injured, and walked back toward Davan.
The girl was staring at her with pure delight.
“Big brother,” she breathed, “your wife is so strong.”
Seran stopped.
“Wife,” she said.
“Who.”
The girl pointed at Davan.
Seran looked at Davan.
Davan was looking at something in the direction of the tied-up boys specifically at a detail on the nearest one’s jacket.
A mark.
A specific emblem stitched into the lining that wasn’t decorative.
He photographed it with his eyes.
“Got you,” he said quietly.
“Davan.” Seran’s voice had the tone of someone who wanted an explanation for something and was going to get one.
“Why does she think—”
“These are the ones we were looking for,” Davan said.
He looked up.
Finally looked at her directly.
“The most skilled local assassins connected to the case.
We found them.”
Seran looked at the tied boys.
Then at Davan.
Then at the girl who was watching both of them with enormous satisfaction.
“Another time,” Seran said to the girl.
Carefully.
“Don’t call strangers a couple.
Understand?”
The girl’s satisfaction faded slightly.
“Yes,” she said.
In the voice of someone who didn’t understand at all.
The other Nirakh officers arrived twelve minutes later.
The handoff was clean the three boys confirmed, their identities matching the names on the watch list, the emblem on the jacket connecting them to three unsolved incidents in the past month.
Seran reported it with her usual precision.
Davan provided the supporting observation.
Professional.
Efficient.
When they were done and the others had moved the arrested men toward the carriages Seran and Davan stood briefly in the space the crowd had left around them.
The flower girl was gone.
Disappeared back into the festival the way children disappear completely, suddenly, as if she had never been there.
Davan was not looking at Seran.
Seran was looking at the space where the girl had been.
“She said you never went to help me,” Seran said.
“Because you trusted me.”
Davan said nothing.
“She also said—” Seran stopped.
Looked at him.
“Never mind.”
A pause.
“Idiot,” she said.
She walked toward the carriage.
Davan stood in the festival market for one more moment.
Then followed.