Makun waited by the water for midnight. The bench was cold, the air smelled of rust and brine, and waves lapped quietly against the docks. At 11:47 he double-tapped his forehead to activate his Sight, and the particles appeared, golden threads drifting through the air, thicker here than anywhere he'd been.
At exactly midnight, he felt it. The frequency shifted, subtly, as if the air itself had adjusted. The particles stopped drifting at random and began to move in patterns, currents flowing toward a single point ahead of him.
At Old Town Plaza, it had felt as if reality cracked open along a seam and the market bled through like ink through wet paper. This was smoother and more controlled. The air shimmered, not violently, just differently, and then the market was there. Distant chatter broke the silence, voices and movement and the glow of lanterns and stranger lights, and stalls and containers appeared with figures moving between them.
Makun got up and walked forward, and once again he found himself facing the same silver-masked guide who had let him in the first time. It stood with its arms crossed, the mask reflecting the faint moonlight, cold polished silver with no expression at all.
"You're here." Its voice was flat. "Don't bring trouble this time. You've been warned." It scoffed, then turned its attention elsewhere as if he no longer existed.
Makun could only sigh. He wondered how the market worked. If it opened at midnight, why were people already here selling things the moment he walked in? And why did he always end up in front of the same masked guide? By now he could tell that the people at this market weren't all from Naija City. There had to be some mechanism that made it possible, a portal, a spatial fold, something the book might explain later.
A purple glow lit up the pendant around his neck, and Makun froze. The pendant pulsed, warm against his chest, and he knew at once that the veiled woman was here and aware of him. He could feel a faint resonance with something far off too, as if he knew exactly where she was, a pull, faint but clear.
He started walking at an easy pace, taking in the market as he went. It was nothing like Old Town, which had mostly been stalls and people standing around, simple and compact.
The pier market was bigger. There were still stalls, and vendors selling much the same goods as at Old Town, charms, herbs, small vials, bones and talismans, but there were also new things he couldn't identify, objects that seemed to have come out of the sea: faintly glowing shells, scales, wet leathery skins stretched over wooden frames, jars of murky liquid with shapes floating in them.
What caught his attention most were the containers. Unlike Old Town, where everything happened in the open air, the pier was full of shipping containers of every size, twenty-footers and forty-footers, some stacked two high.
Some had large signs painted or mounted on their sides: RELICS & ARTIFACTS: APPRAISAL AVAILABLE. SOUL CONTRACTS: NEGOTIATION ONLY. DREAM CYCLE NAVIGATION: EXPERIENCED GUIDES. ENTITY BINDING: CONSULTATION FIRST. They looked like established businesses, permanent and professional. Others were rusted and unmarked and barely lit.
Not everyone could get into them, either; he watched a man approach one of the larger containers, and a guard stepped out, checked something and only then let him in. Do these belong to special guests? Maybe they were reserved for people of higher status, Elite practitioners, people with money or reputation. It felt like a city, a whole city hidden from ordinary people and open only to mystics.
He kept following the pendant's resonance, its purple glow pulsing faintly against his chest, past more stalls and containers and hooded, masked figures, some of whom glanced at him and most of whom didn't. At last he stopped in front of a container thirty feet long, eight wide and nine high, where the pull went no further.
It was painted violet, so dark it looked almost black in the dim light, and it was closed, but unlike a standard container it had a small, human-sized wooden door carved with faint symbols he didn't recognize. There were no lights and nothing flashy, as if its owner wanted to be discreet. He walked slowly up to it and raised his hand to knock, and before his knuckles touched the wood, the door swung open.
"You came. Good. Come in."
The veiled woman's soft, clear voice drew him inside, and the interior was nothing like the outside suggested. It was an elegant, simple room: two low, cushioned couches in dark fabric facing each other across a polished wooden table.
On the table lay some of the goods she'd had at Old Town Plaza, small vials, a deck of cards, a bundle of dried herbs tied with string and a crystal sphere the size of a fist, and on its edge sat a small device he didn't recognize, metallic and circular, etched with runes and humming faintly. In the middle of the container was an empty stretch of clean, open floor. Compact as it was, it felt more like an apartment than a shipping box.
Then he looked at her. The silver necklace was still in place, its thin chains draped across her chest and shoulders and catching the light. At Old Town he hadn't gotten a good look at her, but now he saw that she was beautiful: tall, about five foot eight, with smooth, fair skin that seemed almost luminous in the dim light, and dark, deep, unreadable eyes.
Her clothes were fitted to a full, athletic figure, neither provocative nor modest, practical and elegant, and Makun had no doubt she took good care of her body. She looked strong and disciplined.
He took her in, then shook his head. No time for distractions.
"Are you ready to pay?" she asked, her voice calm and measured. She sat on one of the couches and gestured to the other, and Makun sat down.