Reeta skeeter's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The sellers welcomed Reeta Skeeter now. Her stalls filled with clean grain, honest cloth, and fair spice. But no rare goods came her way. Ordinary stock moved through ordinary hands, and the dealers who set prices for the universe's rarest wares would never glance at such traders. She needed something no other merchant could touch. Claire Sketcre found her at the ledger table that evening. "You're bored," Claire said. She dropped into the chair across from Reeta and tapped the wood. "Good. Bored means you're ready to hear a bad idea." Reeta closed her ledger. "How bad?" "There's a beast frozen in the far ice. A yeti, twisted by some old corruption. Green fire runs under its skin. Collectors of strange things would empty their vaults for it." Claire leaned close. "It's kept inside a black castle. The kind of place people walk toward and never leave." Reeta knew the castle Claire meant. Dark stone. Jagged towers. A red glow leaking through its gate. Traders spoke of it the way children speak of storms. "No one has taken anything out of there," Reeta said. "That's the point," Claire said. "Rare because it's deadly." Reeta rode out the next morning. She left the market behind and reached a lone old tree with a face carved deep in its trunk. Its branches shifted though no wind blew. "You seek the frozen beast," the tree said, slow and low. "Its keeper trades. He does not fight. Offer him what he wants and he opens the gate." "What does he want?" "A name," the tree said. "The name of an enemy for his collection of debts." Reeta stood still. She had one enemy worth that price. The banned rival, with his friends above the market. Handing his name to a creature in a black castle would mark her for those same powerful friends. She walked to the gate. Cold air poured out. Beyond the bars stood the yeti, huge and ragged, green light crawling through cracks in its fur. Its eyes burned. The keeper's voice came from the dark. "You know my price." Reeta gave the rival's name. The gate opened. They chained the beast and loaded it onto her cart. It breathed frost against the ropes and watched her the whole way back. Word of it spread before she reached the floor. A messenger waited at her stall, cloak plain, seal unfamiliar. He did not speak like a market man. "The table has heard," he said. "They wish to see the beast, and the trader who found it." Reeta's chest tightened. She had what the elite dealers noticed at last. But the keeper now held her enemy's name, and her enemy's high friends sat at the very table that had just called her in.