---

So she stepped aside. "Then go."

The lesser vampire bowed more deeply and obeyed.

He passed out into the night beyond Dawn House with no more than that one exchange marking his exit.

The city outside was cooler now, the late hour pressing dampness into old stone and making the lamps along narrower roads burn with a more isolated kind of glow. Slik City at night was never truly asleep. It only changed masks. Honest business closed. Other business opened. Noble houses quieted their windows and lower dealings lit fresh lanterns beneath the street.

The lesser vampire moved through it without lingering.

He had instructions.

Find the underground black market.

Find Raka.

Deliver Sekhmet’s words.

Return by morning.

Simple.

Only the city, as always, preferred complication.

He knew the black market district well enough in the loose way many men knew the shape of rot without having lived inside it. He had heard of it. Passed through its outer channels before. Knew the broad flow of the roads that bent toward it and the kind of people who appeared on those roads once night grew deep enough for respectable men to pretend they had gone home.

What he did not know was where Raka’s base lay exactly.

That was a problem.

But not a crippling one.

Sekhmet’s token sat safe on him. The name Raka was known enough in the lower veins of the market. Someone would point. Or try not to. Either way, information could be peeled from men easily enough.

He entered the underground market through one of the lower access streets where the stone dipped into a hollowed corridor lit by crooked lanterns and smelling faintly of cheap liquor, smoke, stale meat, blood, damp earth, and old coin. The market below ground did not try to beautify itself. It leaned into grime and called it practicality. Stalls built into carved alcoves. Shadowed corners where flesh, beasts, poison, forged papers, and rumors could all be bought if one knew which table to approach and how not to look shocked by the answer.

Tonight, however, he did not need the market proper.

He needed Raka.

And after not too much observation, he found the first thread.

A group of drunk men sat in one of the side hollows of the market path where the corridor widened into a low resting space cut into the stone itself. They had taken over two tables and most of the floor beside them, as drunk men did when they believed territory expanded in proportion to noise. There were about fifteen of them altogether if one counted the ones half asleep on the edges of the group and the one currently telling a story to no one who cared. Empty jugs littered the table. Two knives had been stabbed into the wood for no useful reason. Someone had dropped food, and nobody had respected it enough to pick it back up.

The lesser vampire recognized them.

Or rather, he recognized the type of them first, then the details.

These were some of the same men who had once tried to rob Sekhmet the first time he came into these lower paths. The stupid ones. The ones whose greed had become a fight, whose fight had become a chain of consequences, and whose chain had eventually led to Raka becoming Sekhmet’s blood puppet. Men built from more nerve than sense, now very drunk and very certain the night was theirs.

Useful.

Drunk men talked.

He approached openly.

That was his first mistake.

Not because openness was wrong. Because drunk men saw calm confidence and mistook it for insult.

The one closest to him squinted up with an expression only partially attached to his own skull.

"What," the man said.

The lesser vampire stopped just beyond arm’s reach.

"I need Raka."

That got their attention.

Not the respectful kind.

The mocking kind.

Three of them laughed at once. One choked on his own drink and then laughed harder because choking in front of companions was apparently hilarious if the man choking was not dead yet.

Another one leaned forward, eyes red from drink and bad choices. "You need Raka."

"Yes."

The man slapped the table. "Hear that. This bastard needs Raka."

More laughter.

The lesser vampire kept his face still. Annoyance flickered in him, but not enough to matter. These men came under Sekhmet now. Or under those who came under him. There was no need to break them because they were drunk and stupid. Not unless they insisted.

One heavier man with a scar down the left side of his face looked him over more closely and narrowed his eyes. "Do I know you."

"No."

"Then why do you know Raka."

"I was sent."

That one line shifted their laughter by just enough to matter.

Not into respect.

Into suspicion.

"Sent by who," scar-face asked.

The lesser vampire reached into his sleeve and showed the Dawn token.

Not throwing it.

Not waving it like a fool.

Just enough for them to see the mark in the lantern light.

"I serve Sekhmet."

He had expected confusion.

What he got was immediate rejection.

Scar-face barked a laugh so hard it turned ugly at the edges. "No, you don’t."

Another man snatched the token from his hand before the lesser vampire bothered stopping him and held it up badly, turning it this way and that with the unearned confidence of someone too drunk to read danger.

"Fake," the man declared.

The others agreed at once, because drunken groups always preferred certainty to thought.

"Fake."

"Look at him."

"Everyone wants a meeting with Boss Raka now."

"Big Boss Sekhmet too."

"There it is. He heard the name. Comes down here with a copied token and expects us to kneel."

The lesser vampire extended his hand again. "Give that back."

That made them laugh harder.

Scar-face leaned back and squinted at him with sudden false seriousness. "Wait. Wait. I know what this is." He tapped the token with one thick finger. "You’re from Iron House."

That got another shift of attention.