Chapter 5: Bargains in the Gloom

Chapter 5: Bargains in the Gloom

The archway in the alley didn't lead to another close. It led to everywhere else.

One step through the shimmering graffiti and the damp, grey world of Edinburgh vanished, replaced by a sensory explosion. We stood on a balcony of polished, mossy stone overlooking a cavern so vast it seemed to have its own weather system. Below, a city of stalls and twisting pathways sprawled in the gloom, illuminated not by electricity, but by curtains of phosphorescent fungi dripping from the ceiling, glowing crystals embedded in the walls, and globes of captured starlight that pulsed with a soft, silver luminescence.

The air hummed with a thousand alien sounds: the chiming of unseen bells, the skittering of creatures in the shadows, and a murmur of voices bartering in a language that felt like thorns and honey. The scent was a dizzying mix of night-blooming jasmine, damp earth, ozone, and something else, something coppery and wild that set my teeth on edge.

“Welcome,” Finn announced with a grand sweep of his arm, “to the Gloom Market. Don’t touch anything, don’t eat anything, don’t say ‘thank you,’ and for the love of all that’s green, don’t give anyone your name.”

“What’s wrong with ‘thank you’?” I asked, my voice sounding jarringly flat in the melodic chaos.

“It implies a debt,” he hissed, pulling me away from the railing. “And they always come to collect. Be precise. Be literal. And try not to be a sarcastic arsehole for the next hour. It’s a binding offence here.”

“My entire personality is a binding offence,” I muttered, but I followed him down a set of winding stairs carved from the cavern wall. Morana trailed behind us, a silent, black hole in the vibrant tapestry of the market. Her presence did not go unnoticed. As we descended, the cacophony softened. Stalls we passed fell silent. Fae with iridescent wings, goblins weighing out piles of glittering dust, and tall, shadowy figures with too many joints all stopped to watch her, their expressions a mix of fear and awe. We were walking with a nuclear deterrent.

The market floor was a labyrinth. A stall selling bottled emotions—tiny vials of shimmering mist labelled ‘Rage,’ ‘First Love’s Kiss,’ ‘Petty Vengeance’—was set up next to one where a gnarled troll sharpened swords that wept black tears. We saw merchants selling whispers, captured dreams swirling in glass orbs, and maps to forgotten places. It was a place where anything could be bought, if you had the right currency. And coin was the least of it.

Finn led us purposefully through the throng, navigating by some internal compass I couldn’t fathom. He was tense, his usual flamboyant charm replaced with a wary focus. He was an exile here, and I could feel the weight of countless hostile eyes on his neon-pink trousers.

He finally stopped before a stall built into the base of a colossal, glowing mushroom. The proprietor was a creature with skin like bundled parchment, a dozen tiny, black eyes that all blinked out of sync, and long, delicate fingers that were currently weaving a thread of pure shadow into a complex knot.

“We seek information, Weaver,” Finn said, his voice carefully neutral.

The Weaver’s many eyes all swivelled to focus on him, then me, and finally, with a shudder that rippled through its entire body, on Morana. “The Trickster, the Key, and the End,” it rasped, its voice like the rustling of dry paper. “An ill-omened trio. Information is not free.”

“We know your price,” Finn said. “We need to know who has been seeking the lore of binding shades. Specifically, a Bodach Glas.”

The Weaver’s fingers stilled. “Such a question is loud. To answer it is to make enemies.” Its eyes blinked rapidly. “The price is a memory. A significant one. From the Keystone.” It was looking at me. “Your first taste of true failure. I will take it, and you will never feel its sting again.”

I recoiled. The memory it wanted was sharp and painful: the night I bombed so hard at a comedy club in Glasgow that I couldn’t get on stage for six months. It was a core part of my cynical armour. To lose it… “No,” I said, the word coming out sharper than I intended. “No deal.”

“Then you will learn nothing,” the Weaver rustled, and turned back to its knot of shadow.

We were at an impasse. Finn looked frustrated. Morana looked like she was contemplating unmaking the entire market on principle. My sarcastic nature, the very thing Finn warned me against, was chafing at the bit. These absurd rules, this ridiculous posturing—it was all just a negotiation.

“Perhaps we are asking the wrong person.”

The new voice was smooth as polished jet, cutting through the market’s hum. It came from a tall, elegant Fae who had approached our little group without a sound. He was devastatingly handsome, with silver hair that fell across a sharp, intelligent face and eyes the colour of a starless midnight sky. He wore a coat of deep indigo velvet, exquisitely cut, and a faint smile played on his lips. Unlike the glittering, sun-drenched Fae I’d imagined, he was all moonlight and shadow. He radiated power, but it was a cold, quiet power, not the vibrant energy of Finn. He was Unseelie. I knew it in my bones.

He gave a slight, mocking bow towards Finn. “Finnian. Still slumming it in the mortal world, I see.” His gaze slid to Morana, and the smile tightened with respect. “Lady.” Finally, his midnight eyes landed on me, and a shiver I couldn’t suppress traced its way down my spine. His look was intensely curious, like a naturalist studying a fascinating new species of poisonous insect. “You must be the source of the disturbance.”

“And you are?” I asked, my defenses kicking in.

“I am Lord Kaelen,” he said, his smile widening. “And you are a mortal of unusual… resonance. The Weaver is a coward. It fears the ripples your question creates. But I do not.”

“The Unseelie Court does nothing for free,” Finn warned in a low voice.

Lord Kaelen ignored him, his focus entirely on me. “You want to know who is stitching shadows to their will? I can tell you. I find such clumsy dabbling in the dark arts to be distasteful. It’s… untidy.” He echoed Morana's earlier sentiment, a deliberate, calculated move.

“What’s your price?” I asked, my heart hammering. I was out of my depth, but backing down now felt like a death sentence.

“A promise,” Kaelen said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “From you. A simple favour, to be rendered when I call for it. Nothing more.”

“Dan, no!” Finn hissed. “Don’t you dare!”

But I could see the clue, the first real step on this insane path, dangling right in front of me. It felt like a trap, but it also felt like the only way forward. My comedian’s brain saw the loophole. A ‘favour.’ How bad could it be? Ask me to pick up his dry cleaning? Water his man-eating plants? I could handle it. I was a professional at deconstructing words.

“Define ‘favour’,” I said, trying to sound shrewd.

Kaelen’s smile was a work of art. “A task that you are capable of performing. Is that precise enough for you?”

It sounded reasonable. Dangerously so. I glanced at Morana. Her face was a mask of cold stone, offering no guidance. This was my choice. My move on the board.

“Alright,” I said, the word tasting like a mistake even as I said it. “You have my promise. I will perform one favour for you, at a time of your choosing.”

Lord Kaelen’s eyes flashed with triumph. A faint, silvery light seemed to shimmer in the air between us for a heartbeat, sealing the pact. “Excellent. A man of his word.” He leaned in, his voice a silken whisper meant only for me, Finn, and Morana. “The one you seek is a collector of broken things. A renegade warlock who believes he can cheat the Great Balance. He calls himself the Usher.”

The Usher. The name was a key, a solid piece of information in a world of smoke and riddles. We had it. We’d won.

“A pleasure doing business with you, Keystone,” Kaelen purred. He gave a final, regal nod and melted back into the market crowds as silently as he had appeared.

I turned to my companions, a triumphant grin on my face, but it died when I saw their expressions. Morana’s stormy eyes were colder than ever, a look of profound disappointment etched on her timeless features. But it was Finn who looked truly devastated. His face was pale, his jaunty charm utterly gone, replaced by a look of horrified fury.

“You absolute, blithering idiot,” he seethed, his voice shaking with a rage I hadn’t known he possessed. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?”

“I got us the clue!” I shot back, defensively. “It was a simple promise for a name!”

“‘A task that you are capable of performing’!” Finn quoted, mocking my earlier shrewdness. “He knows you’re a Keystone! He knows your resonance thins the Veil! And you know what task an Unseelie Lord, exiled from his own court’s summer lands, might ask of a living key? He’ll ask you to open a door for him. A door into the heart of the Seelie Court’s power.”

The blood drained from my face. Finn, an exile from the Seelie Court. Kaelen, his Unseelie rival. I had just promised to help one destroy the other.

“You didn’t just make a deal, Dan,” Finn said, his voice heavy with betrayal. “You picked a side in a war that has been raging since before your species learned to use rocks. And you chose the wrong one.”

I looked at Morana. Her silence was more damning than Finn’s anger. I had made a bargain to help the embodiment of cosmic Order, and my first act had been to indebt myself to a Lord of Chaos. I had my clue, but the price was a chain, invisible and unbreakable, linking me to a shadowy throne. And it put me directly at odds with the only two people keeping me alive.