Chapter 10: The Echo Bazaar

Morning came to the Echo Bazaar like a wave of sound. Shen Mu woke to the noise of carts and voices and animals and the clatter of a thousand small transactions. He had slept on a mat on the floor of Auntie Vinegar's back room, wrapped in a blanket that smelled of vinegar and old smoke. Li Xin was already awake, sitting on a low stool and sharpening her knife.

"Eat," she said, nodding toward a bowl of cold rice and pickles.

Shen Mu ate. The rice was sticky. The pickles were sour enough to make his eyes water. He ate anyway, because he did not know when he would eat again.

When he finished, Li Xin stood and opened the trapdoor. Light poured down. "Come on. You need to see what you've gotten into."

They climbed into the shop above. It was a vinegar store, narrow and dark, with barrels stacked floor to ceiling. A young boy sat behind the counter, cleaning bottles. He glanced at Shen Mu, then back at his bottles. Auntie Vinegar appeared from behind a curtain and handed Shen Mu a cloak with a hood.

"Keep your head down," she said. "The Chorus has eyes."

They went out into the Bazaar.

Shen Mu had never seen anything like it. The Archive was stone and silence and order. The Echo Bazaar was wood and cloth and noise. Stalls lined both sides of a street so narrow that the awnings touched overhead, creating a tunnel of colored fabric. People crowded between the stalls, jostling and bargaining and shouting. The air smelled of fried dough, incense, animal dung, and something else, something sharp and metallic that Shen Mu slowly recognized as the smell of many Echoes gathered in one place.

Above the stalls, signs hung in layers. Some were painted with words. Others were painted with symbols that Shen Mu did not know. One sign showed a mouth with coins falling from it. Another showed a hand holding a Vessel from which tiny human shapes were escaping. A third showed nothing at all, just a blank board, and beneath it a merchant sat with his eyes closed, selling what he called "the Echo of absence."

Li Xin bought two steamed buns from a vendor and handed one to Shen Mu. The bun was stuffed with pork and ginger. It was the best thing Shen Mu had eaten in months. He ate it as they walked, wiping grease from his chin with his sleeve. For a moment he forgot about the Archive, the Chorus, the fragment under his shirt. For a moment he was simply a young man eating a bun in a crowded street.

Li Xin led him through the crowd. She moved like a fish through water, finding gaps that Shen Mu could barely see. He kept his head down and his hood up and his hand on his writing board.

"This is the Mouth Market," Li Xin said, stopping before a row of stalls where merchants sat behind counters covered with small ceramic cups. "People sell their words here. By the breath. By the sentence. By the emotion."

A woman at the nearest stall was selling a mother's lullaby. She sat with a Vessel pressed to her lips and sang softly into it. A merchant held a second Vessel to catch the overflow. The woman's face was wet with tears. The merchant's face was dry and patient.

Shen Mu stared. The woman could not have been older than twenty-five. She sang until her voice cracked. Then the merchant handed her a few copper coins and stoppered the Vessel. The woman took the coins and walked away, wiping her face with her sleeve.

"She sold her child's lullaby," Li Xin said. "Probably for medicine. Or rent. Or food."

Shen Mu wrote, "Can she get it back?"

Li Xin looked at him. "No. Once a word is sold, it belongs to the buyer. That's the law of the Bazaar."

They moved on. They passed a stall where a man shouted curses into a Vessel for a crowd that cheered and threw coins. They passed a stall where an old woman whispered promises of love that young men bought to give to their sweethearts. They passed a stall where a child, no older than six, stood on a box and recited a poem while a merchant recorded each line.

Shen Mu felt sick. The Bazaar was not a market. It was a slaughterhouse where memory was butchered and sold by the pound.

Li Xin seemed to sense his mood. "It's not all like this," she said, though her voice lacked conviction. "Some people sell words they don't need. Jokes. Greetings. Idle talk."

Shen Mu wrote, "And the rest?"

"The rest do what they have to do." She turned down a narrower street. "Come. I need to buy information."

They entered a tavern called the Laughing Lantern. The sign above the door showed a lantern with a face, its mouth open in a silent laugh. Inside, the air was thick with smoke and the smell of spilled wine. Men and women sat at long tables, drinking and talking in low voices. A few of them looked up as Li Xin entered. They looked at Shen Mu. They looked away.

Li Xin spoke to a man behind the bar. They exchanged whispers. Coins changed hands. The man nodded toward a corner table where a woman sat alone, wrapped in a shawl of many colors.

"That's Brush-Without-Hand," Li Xin said as they crossed the room. "She forges Echoes. If anyone knows what the Chorus is paying for your head, she does."

The woman looked up. Her hands were whole, despite the name. But her eyes were the color of milk glass, and Shen Mu realized she was blind.

"Li Xin," the woman said. "You smell like Archive dust."

"And you smell like lies," Li Xin replied. She sat. Shen Mu sat beside her. "What do you know about a mute janitor from the Grand Archive?"

Brush-Without-Hand smiled. Her teeth were very white. "I know the Chorus has offered five hundred silver weights for him alive. Half that for proof of death. I know they think he's found a way to bind Echoes without speaking. I know half the black market is debating whether to turn him in and the other half is debating whether to sell him by the breath."

Shen Mu's stomach tightened.

"And what do you say?" Li Xin asked.

"I say he's either the most valuable man in the realm or the most dangerous." The blind woman turned her milk-white eyes toward Shen Mu. "Which is it, mute?"

Shen Mu wrote carefully. "I am a janitor."

Brush-Without-Hand laughed, a sound like broken glass. "A janitor. Of course. The most valuable janitor who ever lived."

Li Xin stood. "We're leaving."

"Run fast," Brush-Without-Hand called after them. "The Chorus doesn't pay half for dead men unless they're very sure no one else can have the live one."

Outside, the Bazaar seemed louder than before. Shen Mu pulled his hood lower. Li Xin walked quickly, her hand near her knife.

They passed a stall where a man was selling Vessels of courage. He shouted their virtues to the crowd. "Face your enemies! Speak without fear! One breath, one coin, one Vessel!" A thin young man bought one and pressed it to his chest. His shoulders straightened. His eyes brightened. Then he walked away, and Shen Mu wondered how much of his own courage he had just sold to buy the borrowed kind.

"It's all stolen," Shen Mu wrote as they walked. "Even when they sell it freely, it's stolen from themselves."

Li Xin did not answer for a long time. Then she said, "Yes. That's the business. That's why I got out."

"Did you?" Shen Mu wrote.

She looked at him. Her mouth was tight. "I'm trying."

They walked the rest of the way in silence.

"Five hundred weights," she said. "That's enough to buy a small city."

Shen Mu wrote, "Will you turn me in?"

She stopped. She turned to face him. Her eyes were hard. "I could have. Last night. I could have knocked you unconscious in the tunnel and dragged you to the Chorus. I'd be rich."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because I know what it's like to be worth more as a thing than as a person." She started walking again. "Come on. Auntie Vinegar said two days. We have work to do."

They returned to the vinegar shop as the sun began to set. The boy behind the counter was still cleaning bottles. Auntie Vinegar gave them soup and bread and warned them not to go out again until morning.

Shen Mu sat on his mat and ate. He thought of the woman selling the lullaby. He thought of the blind forger. He thought of Li Xin, who had chosen not to sell him.

He took out his writing board. He wrote one word. "Thank you."

He held it up for Li Xin to see. She looked at it for a long moment. Then she nodded, once, and turned away. But Shen Mu saw her hand touch the handle of her knife, and he knew that whatever happened next, she had already decided whose side she was on.