A week after the first batch of branded soap was delivered, Marcos could no longer keep up with demand.
ShadowMarket was no longer just a clever name whispered between transactions. It was becoming a real structure, visible in the organization of deliveries, the rhythm of production, and the respect in the eyes of customers when they spoke his name.
He didn't have a sign over the barn.
He didn't need one.
Because people followed results.
And Marcos delivered.
The second product line emerged almost by accident.
During a visit to the tannery for soap fat, Marcos noticed an odd, dense black residue being discarded near the dyeing troughs. He picked up a clump, sniffed, rubbed it between his fingers.
It was iron-rich mud — thick, mineral-heavy, and slightly abrasive.
With Ana's help, he tested it as a polishing compound. After filtering it with clay and mixing it with oil from crushed seeds, they produced a dense, dark paste that could clean bronze, polish knives, and restore the dull edges of scythes.
They called it Barro Negro.
They didn't market it loudly. Instead, Marcos gave two free pots to a toolsmith and a miner.
By the next market day, eight orders came in without a word being said.
Meanwhile, Ana's role was evolving far beyond "assistant."
She now controlled a full accounting book with itemized entries, forward projections, and trade credit charts. She created colored pins for the map on the barn wall — green for paying clients, yellow for irregulars, and red for unreliable ones. She began compiling a second book: a record of all vendors they relied on.
One night, she stayed after closing and asked Marcos:
"Have you considered seasonal volatility in soap demand?"
He blinked.
"Volatility?"
"Rainy season means fewer river trips. Less washing. Lower demand. But you can shift focus to cleaning tools, tanning, and miner clients during those months."
She showed him a table she made from pattern tracking.
Marcos stared at the page.
This wasn't bookkeeping anymore.
This was strategy.
"You're not my assistant," he said finally. "You're our ledger architect."
Ana didn't smile, but her voice was calm.
"Then let's build an empire worth accounting for."
Tobias changed too, in his own wild, instinctual way.
Marcos taught him how to draw symbols to mark packages, how to estimate load weight by feel, how to calculate delivery time without a watch. But the boy was learning things Marcos hadn't taught — things that only someone who lived with dirt under their nails could know.
He knew who cheated measurements.
He knew how to listen to footsteps and tell if a man was drunk or armed.
He could map a route in his head just by hearing someone describe where a goat got lost.
He was, in many ways, the nervous system of ShadowMarket.
But Marcos worried.
Tobias's routes were getting longer. The weight on his back, heavier.
One night, Marcos stopped him before a delivery.
"You need someone watching your back."
Tobias tilted his head. "You don't trust me anymore?"
"I trust you too much. That's why I won't let you walk alone anymore."
The next day, Marcos visited the small guardhouse near the village square. It wasn't an official militia post — just a private shelter where traveling workers and ex-soldiers sometimes waited for day jobs.
He met a man named Gaspar, a broad-shouldered veteran with arms like oak branches and a scar that ran from his brow to his cheek.
Gaspar was quiet.
He didn't ask questions.
When Marcos offered coin and steady food for two weeks of protection, he simply nodded.
"Stick near the boy," Marcos told him. "Don't interfere unless necessary. But if something goes wrong… act fast."
Gaspar didn't smile.
He just tied his belt tighter and followed Tobias out of the barn.
Ana watched from the doorway.
"You've added muscle."
"No," Marcos said. "I've added insurance."
By the end of the month, ShadowMarket had grown from one barn to three functional spaces: the main barn for production, a storeroom Marcos rented from a baker for finished goods, and a covered stall at the edge of the Sunday market, where Ana and Tobias ran sales under the ShadowMarket name — still without a formal sign.
Instead, they marked goods with a small charcoal emblem: a triangle with a vertical line inside — the first symbol of the network.
And people began to recognize it.
One day, while closing shop, Ana found a folded note slipped under the ledger.
It read:
"We don't know who you are. But we're watching.
You smell like a man who wants to change things.
Some of us don't like change."
Ana showed it to Marcos that night.
He read it, folded it, and placed it inside the locked drawer of his desk.
"Not yet," he said.
Ana frowned. "Not yet what?"
Marcos stared at the wall, eyes calm.
"Not yet resistance."
He turned back to his notes.
"First, we finish laying the bricks."