Page 71 of Fierce Highland Magic

The vendor's hooded attention stayed on him.

"His claim," she said. "Invoked properly. The passage would open under his guest-protection."

"No."

The word was for Rowan, not the passage.

Too flat. Too fast.

The vendor's hood tilted back toward me.

"You decline?"

"I don't have the authority to spend his standing."

"You have the authority to request it."

"I am not requesting."

"Then you are not purchasing."

The counter gleamed between us. Polished bone, pale as milk, carved with symbols I couldn't read. Behind the vendor, the locked stretch waited: a corridor of dark stone and hanging chains, unlit except for a single amber lamp at its far end.

Thirty feet away. Maybe forty.

A straight path to the old quarter, where the Heart-Lantern's light glowed faintly between tents.

"There must be something else," I said.

"There is always something else. The question is whether you possess it."

"Name a price."

"I have named it."

"Name another."

The vendor's shadow-face did not move. "You are asking me to accept less than the passage is worth."

"I am asking you to accept what I have."

"What you have is insufficient."

The word struck harder than it should. Insufficient.

I had spent my entire career calculating risk for other people. I had priced disasters, quantified exposures, built models that predicted failure before failure arrived. I had made myself indispensable by knowing more than anyone else in the room about what could go wrong.

And this vendor—this faceless thing behind a counter of bone—had looked at everything I possessed and found it wanting.

The vendor's attention returned to Rowan. It stayed there. "The passage will open," she said, "when his guest-claim is invoked. Not before."

Rowan stepped forward.

"Don't."

He didn't stop. His shoulder brushed past mine.

"She is my guest," he said.