Lamor Street was made of packed-down dirt filled with ruts and holes and flanked on both sides by a bunch of single-story shacks all squeezed together like a row of dingy townhouses, except the only thing keeping them upright was the fact that they all leaned against each other. The Meat Grinder was at the nicer end of the street, not too terribly far from the tower itself.
It was little more than an old meeting hall, its roof covered in wood shingles and its shutters ripped off to leave jagged, rusted metal brackets on the frames. The stink of unwashed bodies rolled across Sorin as he slid open the door and entered.
A pair of bouncers flanked him on the inside, both casually leaning against the wall and watching the floor. Sorin spared them a glance, determined both to be rank 1s at best, and ignored them. As long as he didn’t cause any problems, he doubted they’d so much as look in his direction.
The Meat Grinder was considerably more packed than the Climber’s Union lobby had been. At casual count, Sorin saw forty or fifty people walking around. There were a few vendors with stalls set up against the walls in the same style that temporary trading posts used up on the higher floors, none of them big enough to have more than what the vendor could carry in a pack or two.
His first act was to search for familiar faces among the crowd, old companions he doubted he’d recognize if they’d been similarly de-aged like him. It was worth trying though, because the truth of it was that they’d be in the same situation, and that might mean they’d end up in the same place. Sadly, he didn’t see anyone even remotely familiar.
Sorin scanned the goods on display, his eyes passing over the coils of rope, rations wrapped in wax paper, waterskins, and lanterns. His gaze lingered briefly on a stall where a vendor had a few weapons on display, but that was a secondary concern. A good weapon was important, but a soulprint, even a weak one, was worth its weight in gold.
Finally, he found what he was looking for. A broad-shouldered woman with a hooked nose and thick, meaty hands sat at a stall near the back wall, only ten feet or so from the job board, in what Sorin assumed was a coveted spot. Anyone who wanted to look for work would see her wares right next to them.
Unlike the other stalls, which all tried to stuff as much product into the limited space as they could, she had only four objects on the table in front of her. She eyed anybody who walked by warily, almost menacingly, as though she feared they’d try to grab one of the trinkets and run. It was a valid fear, as far as Sorin was concerned. There wasn’t much anima in them, but anyone with a bit of training could feel that they were real soulprints.
He approached openly, his expression warm and friendly despite the borderline hostile glare he got in return. “Don’t try anything stupid,” she warned him.
Okay, no small talk here. That’s fine. I’m not looking to make friends with a woman who looks like she found a horse apple in her grain.
“What are you selling?” he asked, maintaining a veneer of politeness. It had been a long time since any merchant had been anything less than unfailingly civil when it came to doing business with the legendary Sorin Atharel, but he supposed he wasn’t a legend anymore—not here, at least.
The vendor pointed to a small green and black patterned turtle shell and said, “Crisis Shield. Fifty danirs.” Her finger moved to a blue feather with a yellow tip. “Air Step. Forty-five danirs.” The quill of some small animal, six inches long and tinged frosty blue. “Ice Dart. Twenty danirs.” The final trinket, a little brass pin. “Fixed Compass. Twenty danirs. Nothing is negotiable. Take it or leave it.”
Sorin knew all of those, and none were particularly useful. Crisis Shield would blunt an attack, but only once and only when the climber was already life-threateningly injured. Air Step let the user take one single step on the air as if it were a solid surface, which could be useful for exploring but was a waste in a fight when it was just as easy to keep both feet on the ground. Ice Dart did exactly what it sounded like: fired small bursts of ice that did minimal damage but had decent range. Fixed Compass was a bit of a weird one. It let a climber mentally mark a single location and then know which direction that location was relative to their current position, but only as long as they didn’t get too far away.
Crisis Shield and Air Step were immediately off the table. Sorin had twenty-four danirs to his name, which he thought might be enough to get a single F-ranked soulprint and maybe a weapon, but only if he managed some excellent haggling. That had never been one of his skills; he’d had people to do that for him back in his tower.
Of the two soulprints he could actually afford, Ice Dart was the useful one. Any climber who knew what they were doing could find their way back to camp without needing magical assistance, and shifting labyrinthine landscapes wouldn’t appear on Floor 1. Hell, they probably wouldn’t even show up on Floor 30, not unless this version of the tower was completely different from the one Sorin knew.
“How much do you think one of those swords would cost me?” Sorin asked the vendor, nodding his head down the row to the weapon stall he’d bypassed.
“How should I know? Do I look like I keep track of the price of swords?”
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“Best guess,” Sorin pressed.
“Five danirs, maybe. Depends on how much of a piece of shit it is.”
“Five then.” Sorin dropped his purse on the table. “I need one soulprint and one sword. I’ve got twenty-four danirs in here, and you can count them yourself to see I’m not trying to scam you. I’ll give you nineteen for that Ice Dart, or you can sit here all day hoping somebody else comes along.”
“The price is twenty. Go haggle the sword merchant down if you think you can.”
“This is all the money I’ve got in the world. I don’t even know where my next meal is going to come from. Have a heart.”
“Get lost,” she said. “I’m not here for your sob story.”
It’s like she doesn’t even want to make a sale. I’m not even trying to get a good discount here. What is this lady’s problem?
He could hold his own without a soulprint if he had to, but the odds of finding a party to join while his soulspace was empty were next to nothing. Climbing was dangerous, and no one was going to take some untested and underequipped stranger with them. It was already going to be an uphill battle to be taken seriously without a full kit.
“Fine, twenty. You heartless shrew.”
He counted out the coins and pushed the pile across the table, then snatched up the quill before the vendor could say anything. Absorbing a new soulprint wasn’t hard, but it also wasn’t something he normally did with an audience. For one this weak, though, it would only take a few seconds. He focused on it, found the anima inside, and started pulling it out. It came into his soulspace, holding the pattern it had been imbued with, and the quill in his hand lost its luster. Its blueish-white sheen faded to a dull gray, and tiny, hair-thin cracks appeared in it.
The soulprint fully absorbed, Sorin dropped the quill back onto the table, where it broke apart into dust. “I’d say it was a pleasure doing business, but I don’t make it a policy to lie.”
The woman pursed her lips and regarded him silently for a moment, then said, “If you don’t have any money left, get the hell away from my stall.”
Wordlessly, he left. Sorin wanted to find a secure, private area to delve into his soulspace and view his new soulprint, but there was nothing like that around here. Instead, he meandered over to the weapons stall and waited for a would-be climber who was closer to seven feet tall than six to finish buying an equally impressively long sword, one that was meant to be wielded with two hands, but which the man held easily with one. Just when Sorin thought he was finished, the man laid another pile of danirs down on the table and purchased a second sword of the same style.
Idiot. If he’s lucky, he’s going to realize how impractical what he’s trying to do is before it gets him killed.
Sorin took a long, long step backward to get away from the brutish man as he attempted to swing both swords at once, surprisingly keeping them from getting tangled as he took them through what was supposed to be a simple dagger routine. The blades cut through the air, drawing nervous looks from nearby climbers and prompting one of the bouncers to take notice of him.
“You’re going to get yourself kicked out if you don’t knock it off,” Sorin told the man.
“I’d like to see them try,” the brute announced, straightening up to his full height and locking eyes with the bouncer already walking their way.
Two more bouncers emerged from the crowd and joined the first one in approaching the stall. The giant of a man shifted his eyes back to the stall, cleared his throat, and said, “But then, it would be impolite to cause trouble here. If I can just get the sheaths for these fine blades, I’ll be on my way.”
The vendor, trying valiantly to keep from rolling his eyes at the brute’s antics, handed over the leather sheaths, and his customer scurried off. Sorin noted with some amusement that the bouncers simply adjusted their course and ran the man down anyway.
“Name’s Nemd. What are you looking for today?” the vendor asked.
“Sorin. Standard broad sword if you’ve got one, preferably double-edged, but I’ll take single if that’s all you’ve got.”
Nemd started pulling swords out of a long, stiff duffel bag and laying them out across the table. “Got a particular preference on blade length?”
Rust spots dotted two of the blades. All of them were scuffed and scratched, and the cross guard on one had been deeply cut into, likely in a battle against another sword. They were made of iron, with wooden hilts wrapped in leather and thick pommels that probably did a poor job counterbalancing the blade’s weight.
“May I?” Sorin asked, gesturing to one of them.
“As long as you don’t start swinging it around at the other customers.”
“I’ll try to restrain myself.”
He picked up the best looking out of the lot and balanced it on his open hand. As he’d suspected, the pommel was too heavy to do its job, which was only marginally better than being too light. Sorin put it back and snatched up one that had a lot of scuffs and a notch low down along the blade’s length.
This one balanced better, but the blade was incredibly dull. Whoever had owned the sword before it ended up in a stall at the Meat Grinder obviously hadn’t known how to take care of it. But unlike a poorly balanced weapon, he could clean up this sword with a bit of maintenance.
“Do you sell whetstones?”
“I don’t,” the vendor said, “but you’ll find them over with the general supplies a few stalls down.”
“Great. This sword needs one. What’re you asking for it?”
“Six danirs.”
“Six? Seriously?” Sorin affected to be outraged at the price. “With this chip in the blade and the leather falling off the hilt? I’ll give you two.”
“Leather can be replaced. I’ll take it down to five.”
“I’d give you four if you could throw in a whetstone, but you’re trying to sell me a dull, chipped sword. Three’s as high as I’ll go for something in this condition.”
Nemd gave him a long, searching look, though Sorin couldn’t begin to guess what he was trying to find. With a glum sigh, the man nodded. “Fine. Three danirs.”
Counting out what was left of his money, Sorin pocketed his sole remaining danir and handed the rest over to the man. “A scabbard?” he asked.
“Don’t got one,” the vendor grunted as he scooped up the coins. He reached under his table and pulled out a scrap of canvas and a length of twine. “Here. Came to me wrapped up just like this. You can have it. Call it a gesture of goodwill to a man whose coin purse has seen better days.”
Suddenly feeling like he’d gotten cheated, Sorin accepted the canvas, wrapped it around the blade three times until it ran out of material, and tied it closed by knotting the twine around it. It did not paint the picture of a professional climber.
“Pleasure doing business, young man,” Nemd said. “Come on back when you’ve got a bit more coin to spend.”
