Marked by the Four Beast Lords After Transmigration

Nia woke to voices outside the shelter and the scrape of a basket being dragged across wood.

The two travelers who had shared the platform with them were already packing. One had wrapped his feet before putting his boots back on, while his companion crouched near the edge of the shelter and tightened the lower binding around their larger basket. Beyond them, morning light reached through the trees in pale strips.

Shen had opened one of their food wraps and divided breakfast beside the baskets. Kael was outside near the road, speaking with a man who had arrived from the direction they would travel.

Nia sat up and worked the stiffness from her neck before accepting the food Shen passed her.

“You slept better than I expected after yesterday.”

“I feel better now that the basket is on the floor.”

Shen smiled faintly and gave her the water.

Kael returned while she was eating. “The road ahead is dry. More people started toward the market before sunrise.”

One of the other travelers glanced over as he lifted his basket. “If you want space under the market roofs, do not arrive too late.”

His companion adjusted the strap across his chest. “The river-road sellers came in yesterday. They brought more people than last spring.”

“Thank you,” Nia said.

The men gave brief farewells before joining the road.

Nia finished eating while Shen repacked the cloth. By the time Kael lifted the largest basket, the shelter no longer felt like the end of yesterday’s journey. It was simply a place they had slept on the way to somewhere else.

Within the first hour, the road widened as another track joined from the south. Enough people had passed through the meeting point to press the ground flat, and Nia saw the travelers before she could make out where the second road began. Two men carried long woven containers between them on a pole. A woman walked behind them with a smaller basket at her hip and another husband beside her carrying several clay jars cushioned in fiber. No one slowed when the roads met. The two streams of travelers adjusted around one another and continued east.

Farther ahead, another route entered from lower ground. The soil there was darker and still damp around the edges, and several travelers had mud dried nearly to their knees. One man carried a bundle of reeds taller than he was. Another had broad covered baskets that gave off a smell Nia first thought was fish until the breeze shifted and brought something sharper with it.

She looked at Shen.

“It smells like oilseed, probably crushed after pressing,” he said quietly.

The man passed close enough for Nia to smell the heavy nutty scent beneath the damp basket covering.

“One seller is carrying that much?”

“It is more likely from a pressing place.”

Nia looked after him until a pair of traders carrying rolled hides crossed between them. Hearthfang’s spring gathering had seemed large when the new roof filled, but most of those people had still arrived through routes Nia understood. Here, every turn brought another road, another load, or another smell she could not place.

Conversation gradually stopped sounding like separate voices. Calls from sellers carried over one another. Something wooden struck stone several times in a steady rhythm. A woman laughed somewhere ahead, and a man shouted for someone to move a load before another person answered from too far away for Nia to catch the words.

Kael moved closer to her as traffic thickened, not crowding her but keeping himself on the side nearest people approaching from the opposite direction. Shen remained on her other side.

The trees opened gradually onto a space unlike the wide clearing Nia had expected. The largest route continued straight through the middle, while seller paths branched away wherever the ground flattened. Some curved beneath scattered trees, and others crossed exposed earth where low reed screens offered only patches of shade. Roofs stood in clusters rather than rows. Some had heavy posts and raised platforms, while temporary frames carried woven mats, hide, or broad layered leaves. Many sellers had no roof at all, their goods resting on boards, mats, baskets, or low stone supports along the smaller paths.

Nia slowed for half a breath before the people behind them forced her to keep moving.

“This is much bigger than Hearthfang’s market.”

Kael’s attention had already moved across the nearest paths, the open crossing behind them, and the roofs farther ahead. “Yes.”

Nia looked left and nearly missed a man carrying three narrow baskets stacked on his shoulders because she was watching a seller scoop pale grain from a container large enough for Nia to sit inside.

Shen touched her elbow and moved her half a step inward. “That is why the center stays clear.”

Once he pointed it out, Nia saw the pattern. People crossed the broad central road, but anyone who stopped to inspect goods moved completely onto a seller path. Even sellers calling to passing buyers did not drag baskets into the main traffic line. A young man started to set down a bundle near the edge of the central road, and an older seller reached out from his mat and pointed farther inward without interrupting the negotiation he was already having with someone else. The young man shifted the bundle immediately, and no argument followed.

Nia moved closer to Kael when another loaded group passed.

“I want to walk before we buy anything.”

Kael looked at her.

“I cannot tell what is rare here if I do not know what is normal here.”

“Walk first,” he agreed.

Shen adjusted the smaller shoulder bag and glanced toward a cluster of roofs on the north side. “We should choose where we are sleeping before those fill.”

The sleeping area stood beyond the busiest seller paths where several long roofs faced one another across packed ground. There were no private rooms. Travelers claimed sections of raised platforms and kept their road loads beside the places they intended to sleep. Some sections already held tied baskets and folded sleeping cloths while their owners were away, and newcomers set down their own travel loads before heading back toward the seller paths. Cooking fires had been placed outside the roofs in shallow stone circles, far enough away that smoke did not collect beneath the coverings.

Kael chose space near the end of one platform where he could see both the approach from the market and the path leading toward the water point. He set down the largest basket while Shen placed the second beside it.

Nia lowered hers with considerably more appreciation than she had felt the previous morning.

They took only what they needed for the market paths. Kael carried the small trade bundle, and Shen kept the shoulder bag with water and medicine. Nia left her travel basket under the roof between the larger baskets.

When they returned to the market, the crowd had thickened. Nia followed the first seller path slowly enough to look without stopping every few steps.

The goods nearest the central road were familiar in category even when the forms differed. Hides hung over poles. Stone workers had blades, scrapers, weights, and grinding pieces arranged by size. A seller with clay-stained arms had cooking vessels stacked behind him in padded nests.

Farther along, one stall displayed shallow clay vessels pierced with evenly spaced holes. The seller was fitting one inside a deeper pot while a customer watched, and the inner vessel sat above the bottom rather than touching it.

Nia slowed beside the stall, waiting outside the space where another buyer was already speaking with the seller. Steam immediately came to mind, but she did not know whether the seller used it that way or whether the holes served another purpose entirely.

She looked at Shen. “We are coming back here.”

“Yes.”

They continued until a stone seller farther down caught her attention. A pounding bowl reached almost to Nia’s knee, paired with a heavy pestle thicker than anything in their kitchen. A man testing it lifted the pestle with both hands and brought it down into a basket of dry husks the seller had provided for demonstration. The impact produced the wooden rhythm Nia had heard before entering the market.

Nia watched three strikes. “That would do more than crush spices.”

Kael looked from the tool to the man using it. “It would also take more space than your current stone.”

“I know. I am looking.”

They passed a seller with bundles of dried plants tied beneath a cloth shade, then another whose table held several kinds of seeds in shallow bowls. Nia recognized sunseed among them but not the smaller gray seeds beside it, and she did not reach for either.

A little farther along, a bowl of dark dried fruit pieces drew her attention. The seller had placed one open sample dish in front while the larger storage basket remained tied. Nia watched one buyer pick up a piece, smell it, and put it back before another person did the same.

When the path cleared, Nia asked, “Only the small bowl can be inspected?”

“Anything in the open dish can be inspected,” the woman said while straightening the tied basket behind it. “Tied baskets stay closed unless I open them for you.”

“That is what I wanted to know.”

The woman looked at the two men beside Nia, then back at her. “First market on these roads?”

“Yes.”

“You asked before touching. You will be fine.”

Nia smiled and moved on without tasting the fruit.

Shen looked once at the sample bowl and then at her. Nia caught the look.

“I can wait until I know what it is.”

His expression eased, and she bumped her shoulder lightly against his arm as they walked.

The seller paths did not stay organized by one kind of good. Wetland grain might sit beside a hide seller because both had arrived through the same road and chosen neighboring ground. A spice seller had set up opposite a man repairing carrying frames. Two women selling preserved fish shared shade with an older male whose baskets contained pale dried flower heads.

What created order was movement rather than the goods themselves. Loaded sellers entered from particular roads and tended to settle near the side they had come from. Buyers who already knew where they were going cut directly between paths. People looking for something less familiar followed the open spaces and asked.

Nia began hearing route names she did not recognize. One seller complained that his next oil delivery would not arrive until the river road dropped another handspan. Another told a buyer that a stone shipment from the western ridge had broken an axle before reaching the market. Two men argued over whether a southern fruit lot had been dried too early, then separated without raising their voices once the seller refused to lower his trade demand.

None of it had anything to do with Hearthfang, and Nia liked that more than she expected. At home, Kael’s position touched nearly every large public problem eventually. Here, a broken axle could remain someone else’s broken axle. A seller could be angry over fruit while a woman ten steps away negotiated for clay jars and a man behind them retied a carrying pole.

Kael still watched everything around Nia, but the people around them continued buying, carrying, arguing, and sorting without changing their work because he had entered the market.

A few people recognized him. A broad-shouldered seller near a hide path gave him a nod and said, “Hearthfang.”

Kael returned the greeting without stopping.

Another man asked whether the eastern road had opened to carts.

“Foot traffic only near our side,” Kael answered. “The lower road is better.”

The man accepted the information and returned to tying a hide bundle.

Nia glanced at Kael. “It is strange seeing people recognize you as Hearthfang when they do not know our household.”

Kael looked across the market. “Most people here know territories before they know households.”

That answer stayed with her while they moved deeper.

By midday, Nia had stopped trying to remember every seller and began remembering paths instead. The large pounding tools were near the western stone road. The pierced clay vessels were two turns from the sleeping roofs. The grain sellers thickened toward the lower wetland route. Dried flowers and fruit appeared more often along the southern path, where shade covers were tied higher to let air move beneath them.

Shen slowed near that path when the scent of sunbell strengthened around them. Several sellers carried whole dried flower heads in open baskets. Some were pale gold. Others had browned at the edges or broken during transport.

One seller had three large baskets arranged behind a low board, with a short reed laid across the top of the middle basket. Nia noticed buyers looking into the other two while leaving that one alone.

She waited until the seller finished weighing a packet against two small stone pieces.

“What does the reed mean?”

The seller tightened the packet as he answered. “That lot is promised to a buying house. Some buyers arrange it before market day. They may take half, choose the best basket, or refuse it after inspection.”

Nia looked at the covered flowers again. “Which house promised to buy it?”

“The red-fox house took that one.”

Shen’s gaze moved toward the promised basket. “The same buyers who take the better sunbell farther south?”

The seller looked at him. “You know their buyers?”

“I know the man running their buying here.”

“Then you know why sellers let them choose early.”

Before Shen answered, a man on the other side of the stall pulled back a cloth covering from a lower basket. The smell changed, and the flowers beneath looked darker than the dry heads above them. He crouched beside the basket, directing his attention to the underside of the cloth before touching the flowers themselves.

“Do not tie this again,” he said.

The seller beside Nia turned immediately. “The top was dry this morning.”

“The top is dry now. The bottom cloth is damp.”

His voice was easy to hear without being loud. He lifted one corner of the basket lining and exposed a darker patch where moisture had gathered beneath the flowers.

Shen stepped closer, and the man looked up at him.

“Shen. Do not take anything from this lot for the return road.”

“I had already ruled it out.”

The man looked back at the flowers. “Good.”

Shen examined the damp lower layer. “If it warmed under wet cloth, sealing it again would make the damage worse.”

“Yes.”

The seller exhaled and reached for the basket. “I can spread it.”

“Use the empty mat behind you. Keep this lot away from the dry one until you know how far the damp reached.”

The seller began moving the basket without protest.

Nia looked from him to the man who had given the instruction. Nothing about the exchange had sounded like a seller being corrected by a stranger.

The man noticed her watching, but his attention did not linger. He looked toward Shen.

“Keep your grain wrappings away from this seller’s spare outer cloth. It carried pressed seed cakes yesterday.”

The seller made a noise of objection from behind them. “It was washed.”

“It still smells like oil.”

Shen turned his head toward the folded cloth hanging from a peg. After a moment he said, “It does.”

Nia leaned just enough to smell it and caught the faint heavy scent beneath the sunbell.

The man had already turned away. Someone farther down the seller path called to him about a fruit lot, and he walked toward the voice without introducing himself.

Nia watched him stop beside another covered basket while the flower seller spread the damp sunbell across the empty mat.

She looked at Shen. “You know him?”

“Yes. He is a friend.”

The seller answered before Nia asked anything else. “He runs their buying here.”

Nia looked back toward the man.

Kael had been quiet through the exchange, but his eyes followed the same path.

“He chose the promised basket too?” Nia asked.

“His choice,” the seller said. “That one passed. This one did not.”

Shen examined the pale flower heads in the open dry basket, then stepped back without making an offer.

“We can return tomorrow.”

The seller nodded. “We will know more about the damp lot by then.”

Nia left the stall with Kael and Shen while another buyer moved into the space they had vacated. Around them, negotiations and carrying continued: a woman argued over the size of a clay lid, someone crossed the path with a dripping bundle of fresh reeds, and farther down the red-fox buyer crouched beside a fruit basket and pushed aside the top layer to inspect what lay underneath before the seller named a price.

Nia slowed enough to watch him reject one piece and reach deeper into the basket. Shen touched her back lightly and guided her around a loaded carrier coming up the path, and they kept walking.

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