Selling the Blight

The question was not whether the night intake clerk would call the Guild guards, but how many grams of raw necrotic sap Volya could slap onto the iron scale before the guard on duty unbuckled his truncheon.

Volya stood beneath the dripping eaves of the South Mill sluice-gate, coat stiff with dried river mud and the left lens of their salvage goggles held together by tallow wax, two brass wire twists, and sheer obstinacy. In their right pocket, wrapped in three layers of greasy oiled canvas, sat a stoppered glass flask holding two hundred milliliters of pressurized gall fluid harvested from the ventilation flue. It radiated a dull, thrumming warmth against their hip, smelling faintly of sour vinegar and rotting pine resin.

Across the cobbled yard, the Krasnoy Exchange Logistics shed burned with the dull amber light of tallow lamps. The town above the Hollow never truly slept; it merely shifted its rhythm from the daylight field hands who tended the surface barley to the nocturnal extractors dragging wet, glowing refuse out of the intake culverts. Steam hissed from the mill's pulp-vats, mingling with the autumn river mist and the pervasive under-dust that settled in the grooves of every brick in town.

Levskor had vanished the second his boots touched the cobbles, slipping into the dark alley between the granary towers without a sound, like smoke drawn up a chimney. He had left Volya with a cracked map, an aching chest, and a warning that Krasnoy was about to get expensive.

Volya did not need the warning. With sixty-eight hit points remaining, an empty billhook scabbard at their hip, and zero copper pieces to their name, survival in Krasnoy was an arithmetic problem where the town council charged you two coppers just for breathing the soot. The municipal health guide claimed fresh air was free, provided you defined "fresh" as anything that didn't dissolve your boot leather within an hour.

Pushing through the heavy oak door of the intake shed, Volya stepped into an atmosphere thick with sulfur, drying peat, and the sharp tang of preservative lye.

Behind the zinc-topped counter sat Zoryanka.

She was built like an ore cart, with forearms thick as birch boles and dark hair chopped jaggedly at her jawline. A deep, raspy wheeze accompanied every breath she took, the classic lung-whistle of someone who had spent twenty years inhaling crushed spore-pods without a charcoal respirator. She was running a bone-handled scoring knife along the margin of an unrolled ledger, checking numbers against a pile of dull gray lichen bricks.

"Intake closes at fourth bell," Zoryanka said without looking up, her voice vibrating like gravel in an iron chute. "Unless you brought prime tallow-root, turn around and sleep in the culvert. I'm not logging another crate of swamp moss tonight."

"It isn't moss," Volya said, stepping up to the counter and keeping their hands in plain view.

Zoryanka raised her chin. Her eyes were small, pale gray, and entirely devoid of sentiment. She took in Volya's ripped sleeve, the acid-scored hem of the extractor coat, and the fractured glass of the salvage goggles.

"Volya," she muttered, setting the knife down with a deliberate tap. "Word came up an hour ago that the Upper Verge had a localized roof shear. The Guild foreman claimed nobody was registered in that sector. Funny how you always manage to walk out of places where nobody was supposed to be."

"The stone gave way," Volya said evenly. "The timber was rotten."

"The stone doesn't give a damn about timber, and neither do I. What did you drag out?"

Volya reached into their coat, withdrew the wrapped glass flask, and set it squarely in the center of the zinc counter. As Volya peeled back the greasy canvas, the thick, emerald-black sludge inside the glass caught the lamplight, swirling with slow, oily currents. Tiny luminescent bubbles clung to the inner curve of the flask, refusing to pop.

Zoryanka went perfectly still. The wheeze in her chest paused for a beat.

She leaned forward, sniffed once at the sealed neck, and reached under the counter for a brass testing rod. "Necrotic ironwood gall. Deep transition strata. This didn't come from the surface paddies, and it didn't come from the common verge."

"It's fresh," Volya said. "Harvested less than forty minutes ago. The cellular integrity is intact."

"And completely uncertified," a flat voice drawled from the shadow of the back office door.

A man stepped out into the light, resting one broad hand on the pommel of a lead-weighted cudgel hanging from his belt. He wore the dark green wool coat of the Krasnoy Harvest Guild's compliance division, the silver beetle badge pinned over his left breast gleaming under the tallow lamp. He was thick-necked, with close-cropped reddish hair and the heavy, arrogant posture of someone whose authority was backed by municipal ordinance.

Enforcer Burlak.

Volya knew him by reputation. Burlak worked the night docks, intercepting unbonded extractors before their hauls could be officially logged, skimming thirty percent into his own pouch under the label of "irregularity fines."

"Uncertified bio-salvage from a restricted collapse zone," Burlak said, stepping up beside Zoryanka's desk and looking down his nose at the flask. "Under Municipal Code Seven, that's immediate impoundment. Not to mention a five-silver breach penalty for unlicensed deep extraction."

He reached out a gloved hand toward the flask.

"Don't touch that," Volya said.

Burlak's hand hovered an inch from the glass. His eyes narrowed, a smug, dangerous grin touching his lips. "Giving orders to Guild compliance, rat? I can have you locked in the municipal cisterns before dawn. Your father isn't here to pay your bail anymore."

Volya felt the familiar, cold knot tighten in their gut, but their expression remained flat, analytical, and entirely still. Bringing up the old man was amateur bait. Burlak wanted a shouting match; an argument gave him legal cover to swing the cudgel and seize the prize.

Instead of arguing, Volya took half a step closer to the counter and placed two fingertips lightly against the brass clamp securing the flask's cork stopper.

"The sap was harvested from an active ironwood gall under twenty atmospheres of osmotic pressure," Volya said, speaking in a quiet, measured cadence that carried clearly across the quiet shed. "It has been contained for thirty-five minutes in an unvented vessel. The ambient temperature in this room is fifteen degrees higher than the transition tier flues."

Burlak frowned, his fingers twitching above the glass. "What are you babbling about?"

"Exothermic decomposition," Volya said. "The necrotic bacteria inside this fluid generate methane and volatile sulfur compounds as they warm. Right now, the gas cap inside this flask is sitting right at the critical threshold. If you pick it up roughly, the shock will crack the unannealed bottle glass."

Volya gently applied pressure to the brass wing-nut with their thumb, loosening it a fraction of a millimeter.

Hiiissssss.

A needle-thin plume of iridescent green vapor vented from the cork rim. The air instantly filled with the sharp, eye-watering stench of concentrated rot and burning vitriol. The zinc surface of the counter beneath the nozzle turned white, the metal pitting and bubbling as the caustic mist touched it.

Burlak yanked his hand back as if he had brushed a hot stove, taking two rapid steps away from the counter. His face flushed red, eyes watering from the fumes.

"You lunatic!" Burlak snapped, his hand dropping to his cudgel. "You brought an unbuffered live hazard into an enclosed municipal office!"

"I brought a stable extraction sample," Volya corrected calmly, retightening the brass wing-nut until the hiss ceased. "It remains stable as long as the handler knows how to vent the thermal expansion every four minutes. But if you take it from me and lock it in your evidence locker without a Class-Three dampening seal, it will rupture in roughly twelve minutes. The spore mist will destroy every paper ledger in your office, rot the leather of your boots, and coat your lungs in caustic slime."

Volya looked directly into Burlak's eyes. "Of course, if you have the specialized [Preservation Handling] skill at Rank 2 or higher, you can maintain the pressure yourself. Do you have that skill, Enforcer?"

Burlak's jaw tightened. His knuckles whitened against the grip of his cudgel. He had combat skills, intimidation perks, and municipal authority, but not a single rank in biological extraction. Everyone on the docks knew he had bought his badge through family connections.

"That's enough," Zoryanka cut in, her rasping voice cutting through the tension like a dull saw.

She reached over with a pair of long iron tongs, picked up the flask by its neck, and lowered it onto the pan of her brass balancing scale. The weights on the opposite side clattered as she slid the counterpoise along the notched beam.

"Two hundred and ten grams," Zoryanka announced, dipping her quill into a bottle of soot-ink. "High-viscosity necrotic gall extract. Purity grade eighty-two percent. Guild tariff for unregistered harvest: forty percent. Municipal decontamination levy: fifteen percent. Handling fee: five percent."

"Sixty percent off the top?" Volya said, their voice dry. "The Guild's margin on rot processing is barely twenty. What does the town provide for that fifteen percent decontamination levy? A bucket of sand and an encouraging nod?"

"The bucket is an extra two coppers if you want the handle attached," Zoryanka replied without looking up, scratching rapid lines into the thick parchment. "And the Guild's margin is whatever the ledger says it is. You're lucky I don't charge you for the spot of zinc your bottle just dissolved. Take forty percent of gross value or take your exploding soup out into the street. Burlak, write the municipal receipt or get out of my shed. The air is foul enough without your pomade."

Burlak glared at Volya, his chest heaving. The enforcer clearly saw he had lost the leverage; stealing the flask now meant risking his own skin, and Zoryanka's scale was already official.

"I'll be watching your intake logs, delver," Burlak spat, turning on his heel and marching out into the night mist, slamming the heavy oak door behind him.