Green Moon
Shadow Street.
There's a saying that if you can't find what you need, you should try Shadow Street first. The street's motto is as arrogant as it is famous:
The only thing missing is what doesn't exist.
Flying that slogan with such pride isn't empty bluster meant to lure in customers. The spectrum of goods circulating through Shadow Street is genuinely vast — items you'd swear couldn't possibly exist are sold out in the open with startling regularity.
That said, this is no magic box you can reach into and pull out whatever you want, whenever you want it. As a black market, its supply chain is perpetually unreliable, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a merchant who stocks any given item on a consistent basis.
Which means luck is essential if you want to walk away with what you're after. The item has to be for sale at the exact moment you happen to be standing there.
And even if something does make it onto a stall, that doesn't mean you can buy it easily.
On Shadow Street, the seller sets the price. Merchants who openly peddle stolen goods and smuggled contraband aren't exactly known for their scruples. They're hungry ghosts, ravenous to fleece every customer who walks by — and this is the one place where that kind of behavior is permitted without limit.
The governing philosophy here is simple: if you get ripped off, you're the idiot. Smart shopping, the kind that doesn't leave you poorer and dumber, requires information. Paying dozens of times the going rate for a D-Rank item is a mistake first-time visitors make with depressing regularity, and there are merchants who specialize in targeting exactly that kind of prey.
I wonder if I'll find it today.
A man in a black mask covering the entire lower half of his face surveyed the market with indifferent eyes. The merchants hawking their wares looked for all the world like a feeding frenzy of hungry ghosts — an everyday scene on Shadow Street.
Of those merchants, fewer than one in ten dealt in genuine goods. Most of them didn't even know what they were selling. Over seventy percent of what circulates through Shadow Street is stolen or smuggled: they take the goods off criminals, slap on a fat margin, and sell. Occasionally a merchant will have something of real value, but the odds are so vanishingly small that unless your eye is exceptionally sharp, you'll lose money nine times out of ten.
The black-masked man scanned the street with a cautious gaze. What he was looking for was nowhere to be seen today, either.
It's stolen goods, so it has to be circulating through this market… or has someone already bought it?
The item he sought had been stolen a month ago. That was why he had come to Shadow Street. In the underworld, the proverb was famous:
If you're looking for stolen goods, go to Shadow Street.
"Lord Green Moon. Out again today, I see. Have you found what you were looking for?"
One of the merchants called out in recognition. He was a vendor Green Moon had dealings with — one of the rare few on this street who actually handled decent merchandise. Of course, that didn't stop him from fleecing his customers any less than the rest of them.
"Haven't found it."
"What a shame. Shadow Street may deal in everything under the sun, but that only holds if the timing is right. I hate to say it, Lord Green Moon, but someone else may have gotten to it first."
"Possible."
The man they called Green Moon answered in a level, unhurried voice. If he didn't find the item by today, he might have to change the entire direction of the search. It was a critically important piece — stolen in the most humiliating fashion, and several of the Cult's executives had lost their heads over it.
"Incidentally, my lord — have you heard the rumor?"
The merchant opened a new topic with a tradesman's stock phrase. Green Moon didn't have time for idle chatter, but conversation with a merchant was a useful window for gathering information. He gave the man the answer he wanted without letting any irritation show.
"What rumor?"
"The Poison Scorpion team was wiped out. Found in an alley in the Royal Capital with their heads clean off. Can you believe it? Everyone figured their luck would run out eventually, but this fast?"
The Poison Scorpion team. A well-known bounty-hunting crew on Shadow Street.
The goods this street dealt in weren't limited to physical merchandise. Intangible services were equally precious commodities here, and like the tangible kind, most of them waded deep into thoroughly illegal territory. Assassination was the prime example.
Shadow Street had something called a bounty board — a board that listed targets with prices on their heads, exactly as the name suggested. Place an assassination request with the street's "Cleaners" and your target went up on the board. The professional teams and individuals who hunted those bounties were called Fixers. The Poison Scorpion team had been one of them.
"The Cleaners collected the bodies. Apparently they died without even realizing they'd been hit. They kicked the wrong hornet's nest."
"What was their target?"
"Couldn't say. Only Fixers can access the bounty board, so there's no way to know who they were after. A team like the Poison Scorpions would certainly have been hunting a Grade 1 target, though."
The bounty board had grades of its own: Grade 3, Grade 2, and Grade 1. Grade 1 was, naturally, the highest difficulty. Fixers capable of taking Grade 1 contracts were few, and the Poison Scorpion team had been one of that scarce number. And now they were gone.
"Nothing particularly unusual."
It was a startling rumor, certainly, but not an especially rare occurrence on Shadow Street. Individual skill was no guarantee a job would succeed. The more capable you were on this street, the more dangerous the work you took — because that was where the money was.
"That's true. As you say, my lord, up to that point it's a fairly ordinary story. However…"
As if he'd anticipated Green Moon's indifference, the merchant wore an expression that said shall I tell you the rest? — an irritating way of speaking, designed to make you hungry for what came next.
The Assassination King.
The moment that title left the merchant's mouth, Green Moon's brow furrowed and his eyes sharpened.
"That… is no ordinary matter."
As expected, talking to a merchant was a window onto information. Green Moon decided that putting up with this man had been well worth the irritation.
"It's a rumor, of course."
Meaning whether the Assassination King would actually move remained an open question. Even so, merely confirming the possibility was a significant gain.
"Well then, Lord Green Moon. I hope you find what you're looking for. And if your purse has any room left in it, perhaps you'd consider buying something of mine."
"Your stall's quality is poor today. Not interested."
"Heh. I should've known I couldn't pull one over on those eyes of yours."
Leaving the merchant's whining behind him, Green Moon started moving again. He'd only covered a quarter of the vast Shadow Street. The market was open for a mere two hours. If he wanted to search the whole place before it closed, he needed to keep his feet moving.
It was while he was sweeping the stalls with that focused attention that an unusual pair caught his eye.
"Wow! H-hey, Blue Snake! Look at this! It says it's a staff made of rowan wood?"
A girl with dry, unkempt brown hair and a boy with striking blond hair. She wore an opera mask and a lavish fur coat; he had concealed his entire face behind a white mask. The girl gave off a distinctly common, unpolished air, while the boy — even with his face fully hidden — radiated a nobility the mask couldn't quite conceal.
A noble boy and a commoner girl. A pairing that showed up constantly in romance novels, and one you almost never saw in real life. On Shadow Street, even less so. The girl's bright, unguarded reactions made it obvious she was a first-timer on this street. At this rate, the merchants would fleece her down to the last copper — that much was certain.
"Haha. The young lady has a fine eye. This is a Galana Wand, crafted from eight-hundred-year-old rowan. A B-Rank item, I'll have you know. Handmade by a master artisan at a Clocktower Street workshop…"
The merchant was spinning the most outrageous nonsense. If B-Rank items were that easy to come by, every noble who spent a fortune acquiring one at auction was a fool. Goods of that caliber were never laid out on a street stall the way some old woman sold vegetables. Anyone with even a shred of worldly sense would see through a con like this.
"A B-Rank item!? That's incredibly rare. And it's only ten silver?"
"Haha. I can hardly sell stolen goods at full price, now can I? I'm practically weeping as I let it go."
Unfortunately, the girl seemed thoroughly unacquainted with how the world worked. That was typical of children from the great noble houses — raised in an environment where anything they needed was within arm's reach, they had no sense of money and only the vaguest grasp of rarity.
Green Moon looked at the girl again. Her face was ordinary — neither ugly nor particularly striking, and certainly not a face that had been carefully tended since childhood. The fur coat she wore, however, was a genuinely luxurious piece. A commoner would have to save several years' income without eating a single meal to get their hands on a coat like that.
By contrast, the masked boy who carried himself like a noble was dressed in rather crude clothing. Looking closer, his bearing showed none of the precise etiquette of the aristocracy. If anything, the girl was the one who seemed more noble in that regard.
Studying the pair more carefully, Green Moon arrived at a new conclusion.
The girl is the noble, then? And the boy is something like her attendant.
A transformation potion could alter someone's appearance dramatically. This pair, he suspected, was a noble girl who'd used one and the bodyguard escorting her. Once that thought settled, a whole scenario wrote itself.
A noble young lady whining that she wanted to see Shadow Street, and the attendant assigned to protect her. A combination rarely spotted on this street — though not an unheard-of one. Growing sick of rigid aristocratic society and romanticizing the commoner's world was a phase noble daughters of that age fell into with tedious regularity.
What happened to young ladies like that on this street was, for the most part, a settled matter. They got ripped off so thoroughly it brought tears to their eyes by merchants who could out-slither a pit of vipers, then went home shrieking, Commoners really are the filthy parasites of the Royal Capital! — and became thoroughgoing classists for life.
As for the merchants, a blind moneybag walking in on its own two feet was too good a chance to pass up. Whether the commoner's reputation went to hell was none of their concern; they slapped on the markup and counted the coin. On Shadow Street, the one who got taken was the fool. Noble or commoner made no difference.
"Miss Red Snake. That's a fake."
The masked boy attending the young lady offered the advice from beside her, where she was still bubbling with excitement.
"A-a fake?! What are you talking about? Look here! This is a crystal orb that reacts to rowan wood. See? When I bring the staff close, it responds just like this!"
The merchant started having a fit the moment the word "fake" was uttered — the usual pattern for someone whose scheme had just been poked in a soft spot.
"This staff — more precisely, it's leftover rowan scraps from the forging process, glued together. A toy that'll crumble to pieces after one or two spells. Am I wrong?"
"Nngh… th-that's…"
"Ten silver for a disposable trinket. Talk about a creative economy."
At the masked boy's words, the merchant turned away with a pained expression. His method had been completely seen through; there was nothing left to say.
That boy. He's rather good.
A sharp eye, and not the ordinary kind. Green Moon found himself interested.