Chapter 205: Thirst Price

Seregate’s water market spread across the three streets surrounding the main wells.

People lined up beneath ripped canopies, holding clay tokens in their hands. Caravans waited beside their dry cistern wagons, their animals standing motionless in the heat. Red contract banners waved above the stalls. The air smelled of dust, sweat, and the water these people couldn’t afford to buy. At the center of it all sat the broker, Keth, beneath a canopy, writing prices in his red book. Two horned enforcers collected water marks from the people in line.

The team started at the caravans’ public board.

"The water is being sold at three copper per share," Ceryn told Tessa. "But there’s debt attached to every share. You pay for the future transportation of your water and for well maintenance, and there are penalties if you speak out against the broker."

Tessa read another contract. "The water isn’t only overpriced. The price goes up whenever the broker decides it should."

A woman approached them, wearing an old blue steward’s coat. Her hands were chapped, and a metal water gauge hung from her belt.

"My name is Sera," she said. "I oversee the water count for the older wells. When the aquifer began to drop, Keth took over the pumps and said only his tokens could provide water to the city."

"Would you like us to make your contract terms public?" Austin Veyron asked.

"Yes. I’d like people to know," she said. "But if he turns off the pumps while we’re arguing, the east side of the city will run out of water."

A caravan representative joined her. He was dressed in a dusty trade outfit and wore a torn permit tag.

"My name is Malen," he said. "We’ve found that our caravan water is being given to people who sign long-haul debt deals with him. We know it’s happening, but we have no way to reach the pumps."

Nyra held the heart shard against the well. A blue-black light was pulsing beneath the market.

"There’s a demon below this," she said. "It isn’t a sovereign. It’s something bound. The water pressure is alive."

Austin Veyron looked at the red book in Keth’s hands.

He could run through the market, break the broker’s horns, and devour whatever he carried. It would be quick. But it could ruin the pumps, endanger the people in line, and cut off the water path they needed to find out what was down there.

The hunger was calling to him anyway. He saw a demon, and a city suffering.

Veyra could see the thought in his eyes.

"Name it."

"I want to rip him out of this."

"And what would it make?"

"A win that could leave the city without water."

Sable lowered her crown shard. "Then we devour the debt, not him."

They moved through the line, asking whether they could read people’s contracts without taking their tokens from them. Tessa explained to each person what they were looking for before she asked to see a contract. Some declined. Others handed their contracts over with trembling hands.

Every contract said the same thing in different words.

WATER DEBT BELONGS TO THE WELL KEEPER.

The clause didn’t just charge for water. It forced every thirsty person to become an asset of whoever controlled the pumps.

Keth realized what they were doing.

He stood up from beneath his canopy and smiled, his large horns gleaming in the sunlight.

"Welcome, visitors. Are you here to buy water, or to put on a performance for us?"

"We came to see what your price was," Tessa said.

"You can see my price."

"Not all of it," Ceryn said, holding up a contract.

His enforcers walked toward them.

Each one wore a red token collar around their neck and carried a hooked staff. They were human enough that fear showed in their eyes. Words were stamped across their collars.

ENFORCERS PROTECT THE WATER OWNER.

Rin moved to stand at the edge of the crowd. Tamsin stayed beside Sera and Malen. Veyra placed herself between the enforcers and the line, keeping her wounded shoulder angled away.

Keth looked at Austin Veyron. "I can see you’re going to be a problem for me, witness. So how about you take over this city? I can give you water routes and caravans to control. The city will love you."

Austin Veyron could see how it would play out in his mind. People would thank him for giving them water, and his name would be in that book instead of Keth’s.

The mark on his wrist pulsed.

This demon wasn’t commanding a world source. It was relying on the certainty that its prey would accept any debt, as long as they had one meal to eat today.

Austin Veyron could see the debt being forced onto these people.

WATER DEBT BELONGS TO THE WELL KEEPER.

"Target," Austin Veyron said. "The water-debt ownership clause. Not the wells. Not the buyers. Not the pumps."

"Witnessed," Veyra said.

"Witnessed," Sable said.

Austin Veyron laid the white root chain across the contract in Tessa’s hands.

DEVOUR opened. The clause tasted like having no water in your mouth and agreeing that you would never drink again.

WATER DEBT BELONGS TO THE WELL KEEPER.

He consumed belongs.

The red print faded from the contract.

All around the market, people watched their debt slips begin to curl. The enforcers’ token collars went blank. The enforcers stepped back from Keth, some of them rubbing their necks, not understanding why they suddenly felt lighter.

The water didn’t stop flowing from the pumps. Austin Veyron exhaled, realizing he had been holding his breath. If he had ruined the pumps, everyone in line would have believed the team had done this to them.

The people in line looked down at their contracts. Every debt and well-keeper clause was gone.

Keth finally dropped his smile.

"You don’t know what’s keeping these pumps running."

Sera stepped up to him with her gauge. "Then show us."

Keth looked at the center well.

The stone ring around it split open with a crack that silenced the whole market.

Water shot up out of the well, and a demon woman rose from it. She was made of water and stone, with crystal-like fins along her arms. Chains ran from her arms to the pump houses around the market.

Spray drifted across the market. Some people just stood there, staring at her in awe. Many of them had probably never seen so much water at once.

She looked at Austin Veyron. "Don’t let him empty the east side of the city. He’ll open the deep sluice to show everyone you made the situation worse."

DEVOUR wanted to devour her. All that restrained power was inside her. He knew he could simply take her too.

Keth closed his book.

"Vela is bound to my charter, and the charter controls the pumps," he said. "If I let go of her, the water will destroy the city."

The chains around Vela tightened.

"I’ve been holding back the water since long before he came here," she said. "He chained me to his pumps so that if he ever lets go, the city floods."

Nyra saw that the chain was connected to the lower wellworks. If they broke it here, it could blow out the channels on the east side of the city.

Keth backed away toward the staircase that led to the pump house.

Sera climbed onto the well ring and held up her gauge. "East-side storage! How much does anyone have?"

Several people from the line began to answer. The baker had two barrels beneath her home. A caravan crew had one full wagon. Someone from the clinic told them how much was left for their fever ward. Malen wrote down what they had on a board, and Ceryn copied the old debt terms onto the same board.

Austin Veyron watched them count their stores. None of it was a large amount. But each person who spoke up made the line feel a little stronger.

"We can keep the east side alive until sunset if no one hoards and we leave the south cistern open," Sera told them. "It won’t be enough forever, but it will keep us from panicking."

"I can keep the south cistern flowing if someone opens the side valves," Vela told them. "Just don’t force the water through the deep sluice."

Two pump workers volunteered to open the side valves. They didn’t touch Keth’s ledger. They walked toward the valves with Tamsin covering them.

As Keth watched the count on the board, he began to look less like a merchant and more like what he really was: a demon feeding off his prey. And now the city had started talking to itself.

"You can see my contracts," he said. "But the water still answers to my book."

He raised his hand, and a red line appeared above the market.

EAST DISTRICT DRAINS AT SUNSET.

The people in line began to panic. Austin Veyron could feel them starting to fear one another again.

"He knows how to open the deep sluice," Vela said.

Austin Veyron looked at the water and felt the hunger in the market grow larger.

It wasn’t a hunger for a throne. It was a broker’s hunger for a city full of thirsty people.

"Do you want help?" Austin Veyron asked her.

"Yes," Vela said. "But don’t devour my water. I want to choose my own flow."

Austin Veyron nodded, and they headed toward the lower wellworks together.

The broker slipped away into the pump house.

The sun had begun its slow slide toward the walls, and the clock for the east side of the city began ticking away.