Time stolen and traded in a market of lost moments.
For those who understand that the most valuable things cannot be bought or sold, only given freely.
And for the partnerships that endure—the friendships forged in danger, tested by betrayal, and strengthened by the simple choice to face tomorrow together.
“In Kasdim, we learn early that nothing comes without cost. The merchants teach us this, and the thieves, and the priests with their endless demands for sacrifice. But there is one price that everyone overlooks, one currency that flows so freely we forget to value it: time. We spend it without thinking, waste it without regret, and only realize what we’ve lost when the balance comes due.”
—The Grey Ratter, in conversation with Korvallis the Binding-Keeper
The problem with saving the world, the Grey Ratter reflected, was that afterward you still had to live in it.
Six weeks had passed since the ritual’s failure, since the Unremembering had been bound anew, since everything had returned to what passed for normal in Kasdim. Six weeks of peace. Six weeks of prosperity. Six weeks of absolutely nothing worth doing.
The Ratter sat on the roof of the boarding house on Copper Lane, watching the three moons rise over the city’s perpetual haze of smoke, and tried to remember what it had felt like to have purpose. The moons were full tonight—Ashar the Pale, Belkis the Red, and distant Chelthis whose light was barely more than a rumor—and their combined illumination cast strange triple shadows across the rooftops that the Ratter found oddly appropriate for his current state of mind.
He had been someone, once. A thief with magic in his blood, capable of tricks that made other criminals look like amateurs. He had burned that magic to save his partner, his city, possibly the entire world, and he did not regret the choice. But the absence of it left him feeling like a sword that had been melted down into plowshares—still metal, still useful in theory, but no longer suited for the work it had been made to do.
You’re being dramatic, he told himself. You’re still the Grey Ratter. You’re still one of the best thieves in Kasdim. You don’t need magic to pick a lock or read a mark or plan a job.
But the words felt hollow. The magic had been more than power—it had been a piece of his identity, a connection to the person he had been before Dolesquin, before revenge, before everything that had shaped him into what he was. Without it, he was merely clever. Merely quick. Merely good enough to survive in a city that ate the merely adequate for breakfast.
The city spread out beneath him, an endless maze of rooftops and spires and narrow streets that twisted back on themselves like the thoughts of a madman. Kasdim had never been planned—it had grown, accumulated, accreted over centuries of occupation by different peoples with different architectural philosophies. The result was a labyrinth that defied logic but made perfect sense to those who had spent their lives navigating it.
The Ratter knew every corner of this labyrinth. He had mapped it in his mind during years of rooftop travel, of midnight escapes, of the constant running that characterized life as a professional thief in a city that never stopped trying to catch him. He knew which buildings had solid footing and which had roofs that would collapse under his weight. He knew which alleyways led to dead ends and which connected to escape routes that even the City Watch hadn’t discovered.
All of that knowledge was still there. All of it was still useful. But it felt like knowing the layout of a house where someone you loved had died—the geography was familiar, but the meaning had been drained from it.
Below him, Kasdim sprawled in all its corrupt glory. The Seven Score Thousand Smokes—though the number had surely changed since anyone bothered to count—rose from chimneys and workshops and crematoriums, creating the ever-present pall that gave the city its other name. The Guild was rebuilding under new leadership, filling the vacuum left by the cult’s exposure. The temples continued their eternal squabbling over which gods deserved the most sacrifice. The merchants cheated each other, the nobles schemed against each other, and the common folk tried to survive in the spaces between.
In the distance, the Overlord’s palace gleamed with the cold light of magical protections that never slept. Closer, the great plaza where the three major thoroughfares intersected had already begun to fill with the evening’s revelers—those who had money to spend and the inclination to spend it on pleasures that would have scandalized the temples if the temples themselves hadn’t been so thoroughly compromised by similar activities.
The Ratter had once loved this city with the fierce, possessive love of someone who had earned his place in it through blood and cunning. Every rooftop was a potential escape route. Every shadow was a hiding place. Every transaction, no matter how mundane, was an opportunity for someone who knew how to recognize opportunities. Kasdim was corrupt, yes—corrupt to its foundations, corrupt in its bones—but that corruption made it alive in ways that more orderly cities could never match.
Now he looked at the same streets, the same buildings, the same endless flow of humanity pursuing its endless schemes, and felt nothing but a hollow echo of what that love had been.
Life went on. The Ratter just wasn’t sure what his life was supposed to be anymore.
A sound from below—footsteps on the fire escape, moving with the deliberate care of someone trying to be quiet. The Ratter’s hand moved to his knife before his mind registered the pattern of the steps.
“You could use the stairs,” he said without turning. “Like a normal person.”
“Normal people don’t climb fire escapes to find their partners brooding on rooftops.” Phaphhrd’s voice was warm, amused, the voice of someone who had known the Ratter long enough to recognize his moods and gentle him out of them. “Ivlis is worried about you.”
“Ivlis is worried about everyone. It’s her nature.”
“True. But she’s specifically worried about you.” The barbarian settled onto the roof beside his partner, his massive frame making the action look far more graceful than it should have been. The moonlight caught the northern features—the broad face, the pale eyes, the warrior’s build that seemed out of place in this city of merchants and thieves—and for a moment the Ratter could see echoes of the frozen wastes where Phaphhrd had been born. “She says you haven’t visited the theatre in three weeks. She says you’ve been avoiding anywhere we might find you. She says—”
“I know what she says. I’ve been busy.”
“Doing what?”
The question hung between them. The Ratter could have lied—could have invented jobs, appointments, obligations that required his absence. But lies had a way of accumulating interest in Kasdim, and the truth was embarrassing enough without the complications that deception would add.
“Thinking,” he admitted finally. “About what comes next. About whether there’s anything worth doing now that the crisis is over.”
“There’s always something worth doing. The city is full of people who need help, causes that need support, wrongs that need—”
“I’m not a hero, Phaphhrd. I never was. I’m a thief. I take things that don’t belong to me and sell them to people who don’t deserve them, and I’ve never pretended otherwise.” The Ratter turned to face his partner. “The magic was the only thing that made me special. Without it, I’m just another grey man in a grey city, trying to stay ahead of the next threat.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? Name one thing I can do now that I couldn’t do before. Name one skill, one ability, one quality that makes me more than average.”
Phaphhrd was quiet for a moment. Then: “You’re my partner. You’re the cleverest person I’ve ever met. You see connections that other people miss, find solutions that other people wouldn’t consider. You saved my life during the Unremembering crisis, and you did it without magic—you did it with your mind, your will, your absolute refusal to accept defeat.”
“That’s not a skill. That’s just stubbornness.”
“In Kasdim, stubbornness is the most important skill there is.” Phaphhrd smiled. “Come down from this roof. Come back to the Vermillion. Have dinner with Ivlis and me, drink wine that isn’t terrible, and remember that you’re not alone.”
The Ratter wanted to refuse. Wanted to stay on this roof until he figured out what he was supposed to be, who he was supposed to become now that the person he had been was no longer available.
But Phaphhrd was his partner. And partners didn’t abandon each other to their brooding.
“Fine,” he said, standing. “But I’m choosing the wine.”
“Fair enough.” Phaphhrd stood as well, clapped him on the shoulder. “The world will still be here tomorrow, Ratter. Whatever you’re working through, you don’t have to work through it alone.”
They climbed down from the roof together, the tall northern barbarian and the small grey thief, and made their way toward the Vermillion Theatre and whatever passed for normalcy in their lives.
The job found him three days later, as jobs always did.
A man named Greth approached him in a tavern on the Street of Forgotten Commerce—the same street where he and Phaphhrd had compared notes before the Unremembering crisis, a location choice that the Ratter found either coincidental or deliberately pointed.
Greth was a factor for one of the city’s minor trading houses, the kind of man who spent his days calculating profit margins and his nights worrying about the competition. He had the soft hands and harder eyes of someone who had never done physical violence but had ordered plenty of it.
“I need someone found,” Greth said, sliding into the seat across from the Ratter without waiting for an invitation. “A debtor who has disappeared rather than pay what he owes.”
“I’m not a bounty hunter.”
“I’m aware. But I’m told you’re good at finding things other people want to stay hidden.” Greth produced a small leather pouch and set it on the table. The clink of coins was unmistakable. “The man’s name is Vellish. He owes my house three hundred gold sceats and has apparently decided that vanishing is preferable to repayment.”
“Three hundred isn’t nothing, but it’s not enough to warrant hiring me.”
“The debt is the excuse. The real issue is what Vellish knows.” Greth leaned forward, lowering his voice. “He was our eyes and ears in certain... sensitive negotiations. Negotiations that our competitors would pay dearly to learn about. I don’t care about the money, Ratter. I care about keeping my house’s secrets from becoming public knowledge.”
The Ratter considered this. The job was simple enough—find a man, determine what he knew, report back. The kind of work he had done a hundred times before, back when he had been content with the ordinary rhythms of criminal life.
More importantly, it was something to do. Something that might silence the restlessness that had plagued him since the crisis ended.
“Payment?”
“Fifty gold now. Another hundred when you find him. Two hundred more if you recover any documents he may have taken.”
“That’s generous for a simple finding job.”
“I told you—it’s not about the money.” Greth’s expression was carefully blank. “But I’m a practical man, and practical men know that generosity breeds loyalty. Find Vellish, and there may be more work afterward. The kind of work that suits your... particular talents.”
The Ratter pocketed the pouch. “Where was he last seen?”
“The Pleasure Quarter. Three nights ago. He was meeting with someone—we don’t know who—and afterward he simply vanished.” Greth slid a folded paper across the table. “Everything we know is in there. Descriptions, known associates, likely bolt-holes. I trust you can handle it from here.”
“I’ll find him.”
“I’m counting on it.” Greth stood, adjusted his expensive coat. “Send word to the Thornwood trading house when you have something. Ask for me specifically—no one else.”
He left without waiting for acknowledgment, which the Ratter found either rude or admirably efficient depending on his mood.
The file contained exactly what Greth had promised—detailed information about a man named Vellish who had apparently decided that his debts were less important than his survival. Standard fare for Kasdim, where loyalty lasted only as long as the money held out.
But something about the file bothered the Ratter. The level of detail was too precise, too complete. Factor houses didn’t usually maintain this kind of information about their employees, even those involved in sensitive work. Either Greth was extraordinarily paranoid, or there was something about this job that he hadn’t mentioned.
Probably both, the Ratter thought. In Kasdim, the paranoid ones are usually right.
He finished his drink, tucked the file into his coat, and went to work.
The Vermillion Theatre had become home, in a way that the boarding house on Copper Lane never quite managed.
Phaphhrd sat in the back room that served as Ivlis’s dressing space, watching her prepare for the evening’s performance. She moved with the easy grace of someone who had spent her life on stage, every gesture deliberate, every expression practiced until it looked completely natural.
“You’re staring,” she said, meeting his eyes in the mirror.
“I’m admiring.”
“That’s the same thing, coming from you.” But she smiled, and the warmth in her expression made his heart do the complicated things it always did around her. “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing important.”
“Liar.” Ivlis turned on her stool to face him directly. “You’ve been distracted all week. Something’s bothering you.”
Phaphhrd considered denying it. Considered changing the subject, deflecting her attention with humor or affection or any of the other tools he had learned to use when conversations grew uncomfortable.
But Ivlis deserved better than evasion. She deserved the truth, even when the truth was complicated.
“I’m happy,” he said finally. “Really happy. Happier than I’ve been since... since before I came to Kasdim.”
“And that’s bothering you?”
“It’s making me worry.” Phaphhrd stood, moved to the window that looked out over the theatre’s backstage chaos. “The last time I was this happy, everything fell apart. I lost Vlana. I lost my home. I spent years wandering, looking for something to fill the emptiness that losing her created.”
“And you’re afraid it will happen again.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know how to be happy without waiting for the other shoe to drop. Without looking over my shoulder for the next disaster, the next crisis, the next thing that tears away everything I care about.” He turned back to face her. “You deserve better than that. You deserve someone who can give you his full attention, not someone who’s always expecting tragedy.”
Ivlis crossed the room to stand before him, took his hands in hers. “Do you know what I think?”
“Tell me.”
“I think you’ve spent so long preparing for the worst that you’ve forgotten how to hope for the best. I think the Unremembering crisis taught you that vigilance is necessary, but it also taught you that caring about people makes you vulnerable.” Her eyes were steady, unflinching. “I’m not Vlana. I’m not going to disappear because fate decides to be cruel. And even if something happens—even if the worst occurs—I’d rather have these moments of happiness with you than a lifetime of safety with someone who doesn’t understand me.”
“That’s a romantic sentiment.”
“I’m an actress. Romantic sentiments are my profession.” But she wasn’t smiling anymore. “I mean it, Phaphhrd. Whatever comes next, whatever challenges we face, I want to face them with you. Not because you can protect me, but because I’d rather be vulnerable together than safe apart.”
He kissed her then, because there were no words adequate to what he was feeling. She kissed him back, and for a moment the world outside the dressing room—the city, the theatre, all the complications waiting to descend—faded into irrelevance.
“Stay for the performance tonight,” Ivlis said when they finally separated. “Watch from the wings. I always do better when you’re there.”
“I thought you said I made you nervous.”
“You do. But it’s the good kind of nervous. The kind that sharpens everything.” She turned back to her mirror, resumed her preparations. “Now go. I need to concentrate, and I can’t concentrate when you’re looking at me like that.”
Phaphhrd went, but not far. He found a seat in the wings, where he could watch without being seen, and settled in to observe the woman he loved do what she was born to do.
The play that night was a comedy—something light and frothy, designed to make audiences laugh rather than think. Ivlis played a merchant’s daughter pretending to be a noblewoman, navigating a series of misunderstandings that grew increasingly absurd as the evening progressed.
She was magnificent. She always was.
But as Phaphhrd watched, he became aware of something strange. A presence in the audience that didn’t quite fit. A woman sitting alone in one of the better seats, her attention fixed not on the stage but on the wings—on the space where Phaphhrd was hiding.
The woman was grey-haired, thin, with eyes that seemed older than her face suggested. She wore clothes that might have been expensive once but had clearly seen better days, and she held herself with the careful stillness of someone who had learned to attract attention only when she chose.
When their eyes met, the woman smiled.
It was not a pleasant smile.
Vellish was dead.
The Ratter found him in a room above a tavern in the Pleasure Quarter, slumped in a chair as if he had fallen asleep waiting for a visitor who never arrived. The door had been locked from the inside, the windows had been shuttered, and there were no signs of violence anywhere on the body.
But Vellish was clearly dead. His eyes were open, staring at nothing. His skin had the grey pallor of someone who had been deceased for at least a day. And his hands were clenched around something that the Ratter couldn’t quite see until he pried the dead fingers open.
A bottle. Small, ornate, filled with liquid that glowed faintly gold.
What in the hells?
The Ratter examined the bottle carefully, turning it to catch the light from the shuttered windows. The liquid inside seemed to shift and swirl of its own accord, as if it were alive—or as if it were something other than liquid entirely.
He had seen something similar before. During the Unremembering crisis, when Ningaudrelle had explained the nature of temporal entities and the binding that constrained them, he had mentioned artifacts that could capture and store fragments of time. Small pieces of eternity, bottled for later use.
This looked like one of those artifacts. But what was a common debtor doing with something that should have been in a wizard’s collection?
The Ratter searched the room methodically, looking for any other clues. He found the documents Greth had mentioned—letters and contracts that detailed the trading house’s sensitive negotiations—hidden in a compartment beneath the floor. He found a journal that recorded Vellish’s increasing desperation over the past few months, his mounting debts and failed schemes to escape them. He found a note that referenced a meeting with someone called “the Timekeeper,” someone who had apparently promised to solve all of Vellish’s problems in exchange for something the journal didn’t specify.
And he found one more thing: a business card, printed on paper that was too heavy and too expensive for a common debtor to possess.
THE BAZAAR OF STOLEN HOURS, it read. FIND US WHERE YOU LEAST EXPECT.
The Ratter pocketed everything he had found—bottle, documents, journal, card—and slipped out of the room as quietly as he had entered.
Something was wrong in Kasdim. Something beyond the usual crimes and corruptions that plagued the city. The debtor named Vellish had died holding a bottle of what might be captured time, apparently given to him by someone called the Timekeeper, apparently acquired from a place called the Bazaar of Stolen Hours.
None of these names appeared in any of the Ratter’s extensive mental catalogues of criminal enterprises, magical organizations, or supernatural threats. Either they were new to the city, or they had been operating so quietly that even his network of informants had never encountered them.
Either possibility was concerning. New players in Kasdim’s endless games usually meant new threats. And players who could operate invisibly in a city this corrupt were almost certainly more dangerous than those who made themselves known.
The Ratter made his way back toward the boarding house, his mind already racing through possibilities and implications. He would need to talk to Phaphhrd. He would need to consult his sources—what few of them remained after the Unremembering crisis. He would need to understand what he was dealing with before it dealt with him.
The bottle seemed to pulse faintly against his chest where he had hidden it.
Time, bottled and stored. Time, stolen from someone who no longer needed it. Time, available to those who knew where to find it and what to pay.
The Bazaar of Stolen Hours.
The Ratter was going to find it.
The Drowning Merchant was exactly the kind of establishment that Kasdim specialized in: too cheap to be respectable, too clean to be disreputable, occupying the uncomfortable middle ground where criminals and merchants could meet without either party having to acknowledge what the other truly was. The name was either a colorful piece of nautical slang or a reference to a specific historical incident that the locals preferred not to discuss in detail.
The Grey Ratter had chosen it for this meeting because of its location—far enough from the Guild’s usual haunts to avoid unwanted attention, close enough to the city’s information networks to allow a quick exit if things went wrong. He had also paid the proprietor, a heavyset woman named Marget who had once fenced stolen goods for him before deciding that tavern-keeping was safer, enough silver to clear the common room of other customers for the evening.
Phaphhrd arrived precisely at the agreed time, which was unusual for him. The barbarian had never been particularly punctual, preferring to operate on what he called “narrative time”—the sense that things should happen when they felt right rather than when clocks demanded. His early arrival spoke to the seriousness with which he was taking the situation.
“You look troubled,” the Ratter observed as his partner settled into the chair across from him. “More troubled than usual, I mean.”
“I saw her again. The Timekeeper.” Phaphhrd’s hands were white-knuckled around the cup of wine the Ratter had ordered for him. “Her bazaar appeared on Silver Eel Street, right where the old chandler’s shop used to be. I didn’t mean to go in, but...”
“But you did anyway. Because you’re constitutionally incapable of walking away from things that might kill you.”
“Something like that.” Phaphhrd took a long drink, then set down his cup with more force than necessary. “She offered me a trade. Said she could see the gaps in me where memories used to be—the ones I sacrificed to seal the Unremembering. She wanted to take more. Clean me out of regrets, guilt, all the painful parts.”
“And you refused.”
“Of course I refused. The painful parts are what make me who I am.” Phaphhrd met his partner’s eyes. “But here’s the thing that worries me—she mentioned Ivlis again. Specifically. Said her time was valuable, that she had ‘interesting’ hours in her. It felt like a threat, but also like... an invitation. Like she was testing whether I would do something reckless to protect the people I care about.”
The Ratter leaned back in his chair, processing this. He had encountered the Timekeeper only hours before, and the memory of that conversation—the silver eyes, the ancient patience, the sense of being evaluated by something that existed outside normal comprehension—was still fresh. The fact that she had mentioned Ivlis to Phaphhrd as well was not coincidental. Nothing about the Timekeeper was coincidental.
“She mentioned Ivlis to me too,” he said. “When I asked about her operation, she brought up your lady. Not by name, but unmistakably. She knew who I was, who you are, and who matters to us.”
“Information gathering. The same way the cult operated during the Unremembering crisis.”
“Similar, but more sophisticated. The Faceless cult had numbers and fanaticism on their side. The Timekeeper has something else—she has time. Centuries of it. She can wait, watch, accumulate knowledge over decades while her targets age and forget. By the time she makes her move, she knows everything about her victims that matters.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“It’s supposed to be terrifying. It’s a control mechanism—she wants us scared, off-balance, reactive instead of proactive.” The Ratter stood and began to pace, a habit he had never been able to break despite years of training himself to stillness. Movement helped him think. Movement kept the wheels turning. “What else did she tell you? What did you see in the bazaar?”
Phaphhrd described the shop in detail—the shelves of glowing bottles, the impossible geometry that suggested spaces larger than their containers, the sense of displacement from normal reality that had permeated every surface. He described the Timekeeper herself, her ageless appearance and silver eyes, the way she moved like someone who had forgotten that gravity applied to her.
“She said she could take anything I was willing to give,” Phaphhrd concluded. “Hours, days, years—even specific memories, if I wanted to target them. All she wanted in return was... permission. Consent. She kept emphasizing that everything had to be voluntary.”
“Interesting.” The Ratter stopped pacing, turning to face his partner. “That matches what I’ve learned. The victims I investigated—the ones who aged decades overnight—they all visited the bazaar. They all made trades. They all agreed to what happened, even if they didn’t fully understand what they were agreeing to.”
“So she’s not technically breaking any laws.”
“In Kasdim, technically legal covers a lot of sins. Murder for hire is technically legal if both parties sign the right contracts. Slavery is technically legal if you call it indentured servitude and include the right release clauses. The Timekeeper has found a loophole that allows her to steal people’s lives with their own cooperation.” The Ratter’s voice was bitter. “It’s elegant, in a horrifying way. She’s built a system that feeds on desperation—finds people at their lowest, offers them solutions that seem too good to be true, and then takes everything they have when they’re too grateful to refuse.”
“There has to be something we can do.”
“There’s always something. We just have to figure out what.” The Ratter moved to the window, looking out at the darkening street. The crowds were thinning as night approached, replaced by the different population that emerged after sunset—the workers of Kasdim’s shadow economy, the predators and prey of the endless game that defined life in the city.
For a moment, he allowed himself to feel the weight of what they were facing. The Timekeeper had been operating for centuries, had survived everything the city had thrown at her, had built an operation so sophisticated that most people didn’t even know it existed. She was patient, she was powerful, and she was interested in people he cared about. The odds of stopping her seemed astronomical.
But then again, the odds had been astronomical during the Unremembering crisis too. The cult had been entrenched, the entity had been awakening, and everyone who understood the situation had assumed that Kasdim was doomed. And yet here they were—wounded, certainly, changed in ways that couldn’t be reversed, but alive. Victorious, in the only way that mattered.
The Ratter had learned something during that crisis, something that the years of cynicism and self-preservation had almost made him forget. Impossible odds were just numbers. What mattered was what you chose to do despite those numbers—whether you gave up and accepted defeat, or kept fighting because the alternative was unthinkable.
“I need to talk to Korvallis,” he said finally. “He knows more about the original binding than anyone alive—the one that sealed both the Unremembering and whatever else was trapped with it. If the Timekeeper is connected to something ancient, Korvallis might be able to tell us what. And if there are weaknesses in the binding that we don’t know about, weaknesses that the Timekeeper is exploiting, he’s the one who would know how to address them.”
“And me?”
“Go home. Be with Ivlis. Keep her safe, and keep her away from anywhere the Bazaar might appear.” The Ratter turned back, his grey eyes serious. “But also watch for the pattern. If the shop materializes near her, near your home, near the Vermillion—that means the Timekeeper is moving closer. That means we’re running out of time.”
“That’s a terrible pun.”
“It’s not a pun. It’s a warning.” The Ratter’s expression was grim. “The Timekeeper has been operating in Kasdim for a very long time—longer than either of us has been alive, probably longer than the city itself in its current form. She knows things we don’t, has resources we can’t imagine, has been preparing for whatever she’s planning while we were still learning to walk. If we’re going to stop her, we need to be smarter than we’ve ever been.”
“Since when has that stopped us?”
“It hasn’t. That’s what worries me.” But the Ratter smiled despite himself, the expression cracking through his habitually controlled features. “Go on, giant. I’ll find you tomorrow when I know more.”
They clasped hands briefly—the gesture that had become their ritual, the physical acknowledgment of partnership that neither of them could quite put into words—and then parted ways.
Phaphhrd headed toward home, toward Ivlis, toward whatever comfort could be found in a city where even time itself had become a commodity to be stolen.
The Ratter headed toward the old Guild headquarters, toward Korvallis, toward knowledge that might or might not be enough to save them.
Neither of them noticed the grey-robed figure watching from across the street, taking notes in a small leather journal, moving to follow the barbarian as he disappeared into the evening crowds.
The Grey Ratter found Korvallis in the small garden behind the former Guildmaster’s recovery quarters—a peaceful space filled with herbs and flowering plants that the healers insisted were essential to the old man’s continued improvement.
Korvallis looked better than he had during the Unremembering crisis. His face had regained some definition, his eyes some spark of recognition. The months of care had restored much of what the cult had stripped away, though the process was far from complete. He still moved carefully, still spoke with the hesitation of someone who wasn’t always certain which memories were real and which were gaps that his mind had filled with invention.
“You look like a man with questions,” Korvallis said without looking up from the plants he was tending. “You walk differently when you’re worried. Faster. More controlled. As if you’re trying to stay ahead of something you can’t quite see.”
“How can you tell?”
“I spent forty years reading people’s intentions from their movements. The skill doesn’t disappear just because I lost some of my memories.” The old man straightened, wiping soil from his hands. “And you only visit me when something terrible is happening. It’s a pattern I’ve come to recognize.”
“The Timekeeper,” the Ratter said without preamble. “What can you tell me about her?”
Korvallis went very still. “Where did you hear that name?”
“She approached me. Made an offer that I declined. Now she’s threatening my partner’s lady, and I need to understand what I’m dealing with before I can figure out how to stop it.”
The old man was quiet for a long moment. Then he gestured toward a bench at the garden’s edge. “Sit. This is not a conversation we should have standing. This is not a conversation we should have at all, truthfully, but since you’ve already attracted her attention, silence won’t protect you.”
They sat. The evening light cast long shadows across the garden, making the flowers look almost sinister—bright splashes of color against the darkening backdrop of the city beyond.
“The Timekeeper is old,” Korvallis began. His voice had taken on the quality it always did when he accessed memories from before the cult’s damage—distant, almost reverent, as if he were reading from a text written in a language only he could understand. “Not old like a wizard, or even old like the Unremembering. Old like the stones beneath Kasdim. Old like the spaces between stars. She was here before the city was built, before the first settlers arrived, before the very concept of a ‘here’ had meaning in this part of the world.”
“What is she?”
“A servant. Or a vessel. Or a victim—I’ve heard all three terms used, and none of them quite captures the truth.” Korvallis’s eyes had taken on the distant look he got when accessing memories that had been buried for decades. “You know about the Unremembering. You know it was bound by seven wizards, long ago, to prevent it from consuming everything that existed. What you may not know is that the Unremembering wasn’t alone in that binding.”
“The Hourglass,” the Ratter said. “Sheemba mentioned something about it.”
Korvallis nodded slowly. “The Hourglass is to time what the Unremembering is to identity. It doesn’t destroy—it steals. Removes time from the universe, hoards it, feeds on the potential of moments that will never occur.” The old man’s voice was quiet, almost meditative. “The original wizards bound them together, the Unremembering and the Hourglass, because they were alike. Two sides of the same void. Two hungers that could only be sated by the essence of existence itself.”
“And the Timekeeper?”
“The Timekeeper is the Hourglass’s connection to our world. A human who was... chosen, or cursed, or simply too close when the binding was made. She serves as the interface between the entity and its food source. She finds willing victims, arranges voluntary transactions, and funnels the stolen time to the thing she serves.”
“Voluntary transactions.” The Ratter’s voice was flat. “She keeps emphasizing that everything has to be consensual.”
“Because it does. That’s the limitation the binding placed on the Hourglass. Unlike the Unremembering, which simply consumes everything in its reach without requiring permission, the Hourglass can only take what is freely given. No theft, no coercion, no deception that crosses certain lines.” Korvallis met the Ratter’s eyes. “But within those limits, the Timekeeper has developed extraordinary techniques of persuasion. She finds people at their most desperate, their most vulnerable, their most willing to trade anything for relief. And she offers them exactly what they want, at a price they don’t understand until it’s too late.”
“How do we stop her?”
“I don’t know if you can. The binding that constrains the Hourglass was weakened when you sealed the Unremembering—they were interconnected, and strengthening one necessarily weakened the other. The Timekeeper has more freedom now than she’s had in centuries. More power. More reach.”
“That’s not encouraging.”
“It’s not meant to be encouraging. It’s meant to be accurate.” Korvallis stood, moved toward the garden’s edge, his eyes unfocused as if seeing something beyond the physical world. “If you want to protect the people you love, your best option is to keep them away from the Timekeeper entirely. No contact, no trades, no voluntary agreements of any kind. The Hourglass can’t take what isn’t offered.”
“And if that’s not enough?”
“Then you need to find something that can bind the Hourglass more tightly. Restore the equilibrium that existed before. But that would require resources, knowledge, and power that I’m not sure exist anymore.” The old man turned back. “The original binding took seven wizards at the height of their strength. It took sacrifices that I’ve never been able to fully document. It took a willingness to risk everything for a chance—just a chance—at success.”
“We’ve done that before.”
“Yes. And you barely survived.” Korvallis’s expression was troubled. “I want to help you, Grey Ratter. I owe you and your partner that much, and more besides. But I’m not sure my help will be enough. The Timekeeper has been preparing for this moment for centuries. Whatever you’re planning, she’s probably planned for it too.”
“Then we’ll have to improvise.”
“I hope that’s enough.” The old man sighed. “Come back tomorrow. I’ll try to remember more of what the archives contained—the parts I read before the cult destroyed them. There may be something useful buried in my memories.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You may not like what I remember.”
The Ratter left the garden as darkness settled over Kasdim, his mind racing with implications he was only beginning to understand.
The Hourglass. An entity that fed on time, bound alongside the Unremembering but constrained by different rules. A servant who had been preparing for centuries to expand her reach.
And somewhere in the city, a woman he cared about—his partner’s woman, which made her his responsibility too—was being watched by forces that saw her not as a person, but as a resource to be harvested.
We’ll stop them, he thought. Whatever it takes.
But even as he thought it, he wondered if “whatever it takes” would be enough.
The walk back to the boarding house took longer than usual. The Ratter found himself taking detours, doubling back, using all the old tricks he had developed over years of avoiding pursuit. He wasn’t certain anyone was following him—he had no evidence, no sign of surveillance—but the conversation with Korvallis had awakened instincts he thought he had left behind.
The Timekeeper had been operating in Kasdim for centuries. That meant she had networks, informants, eyes and ears in places the Ratter couldn’t even imagine. Every person he passed on the street could be one of her servants. Every shadow could contain a watcher.
Paranoia, he told himself. This is exactly what she wants—to make you doubt everything, to make you see threats everywhere. Don’t give her that power.
But the logic didn’t make the feeling go away. The truth was, he was being watched. He knew it with the same certainty he knew the sun would rise tomorrow. The Timekeeper had invested too much attention in him and Phaphhrd to simply let them walk away. She was tracking them, learning their patterns, preparing for the moment when she would make her move.
The boarding house appeared around the corner, and the Ratter felt some of the tension leave his shoulders. Home—or what passed for home in his current life. A small room, a narrow bed, a window that looked out over rooftops that he had learned to navigate as easily as streets. It wasn’t much, but it was his, and there was comfort in that.
He climbed the stairs to his room, already planning tomorrow’s moves. He would talk to Phaphhrd, share what Korvallis had told him. They would need to develop a strategy, find allies, gather resources. The Timekeeper was ancient and powerful, but she wasn’t invincible. The binding that constrained her proved that. And if she could be bound once, she could be bound again—or at least contained enough to protect the people they cared about.
The door to his room was unlocked.
The Ratter froze, his hand moving automatically to the knife at his belt. He never left his door unlocked. The habit was too ingrained, too essential to survival in a city where unlocked doors invited disaster.
Slowly, carefully, he pushed the door open.
The room was exactly as he had left it—almost. The bed was made, the window was closed, the few possessions he kept here were arranged in their proper places. But there was something on the pillow that hadn’t been there this morning.
A bottle.
Small, ornate, filled with liquid that glowed faintly golden.
The Ratter recognized it immediately. He had seen bottles just like it in the Bazaar of Stolen Hours, on the shelves that stretched into infinity. He had held one in his hand just days ago, taken from the corpse of a man named Vellish.
This was a message. A warning. A declaration that the Timekeeper could reach him whenever she chose, wherever he tried to hide.
He picked up the bottle carefully, examining it in the lamplight. The liquid inside swirled and eddied of its own accord, and as he watched, he thought he saw images forming in its depths. Faces. Moments. Fragments of a life that had been compressed into portable form.
There was a note beneath the bottle, written in the same careful handwriting he had seen on the business card that had started this whole investigation.
A gift, it read. Something to help you understand what you’re fighting for. Something to remind you that everyone has a price—the only question is whether you’re willing to pay it.
— The Timekeeper
The Ratter set down the bottle and the note, his mind already racing through implications. The Timekeeper was escalating. Moving from observation to direct contact. This wasn’t a threat—it was an invitation. She wanted him to come back, to negotiate, to enter the game she had been playing for centuries.
And despite everything he knew, despite every instinct screaming that he should stay away, a part of him was tempted.
Because the bottle contained time. And time was exactly what they needed if they were going to save Ivlis.
She knows, he realized. She knows I’ll do almost anything to protect my partner’s woman. She’s using that knowledge against me, the same way she uses everyone’s weaknesses against them.
But knowing the trap didn’t mean he had a way to avoid it.
Tomorrow, he would talk to Phaphhrd. Tomorrow, they would make plans.
Tonight, he would try to sleep, and he would try not to dream of silver eyes watching him from the spaces between seconds.
Phaphhrd had meant to go straight home.
He had meant to warn Ivlis, to hold her close, to spend the evening doing ordinary things while the storm gathered outside. He had meant to be sensible, careful, strategic—all the things the Ratter was always telling him to be.
But the Bazaar of Stolen Hours found him before he found home.
It appeared between the Vermillion Theatre and a bakery that Phaphhrd could have sworn used to occupy the space. One moment he was walking down a familiar street, the next he was standing before a door that hummed with wrongness, that pulled at something deep in his chest. The evening crowds flowed around him without seeming to notice that an entire building had materialized in what should have been a narrow alley.
Above the door, in letters that seemed to writhe when examined directly:
STOLEN HOURS
Phaphhrd knew he should walk away. Should find the Ratter, gather information, make a plan. But the Timekeeper had threatened Ivlis, and Phaphhrd had never been good at walking away from threats. Better to face the danger now, on his own terms, than wait for it to come to the people he loved.
He pushed open the door and entered.
The shop was larger inside than its exterior suggested, which was becoming a depressingly common occurrence in Phaphhrd’s life. Shelves lined every wall, stretching up into shadows that the oil lamps couldn’t quite penetrate, and each shelf held bottles of varying sizes and colors. The liquid inside them glowed with soft inner light—some golden, some silver, some the deep purple of a bruise just beginning to heal.
The air smelled of dust and something else. Something older. Something that reminded Phaphhrd of the tomb-cold caves beneath the Cold Waste, where his people had said the spirits of the dead gathered to wait for the world’s ending.
“The barbarian,” a voice said from somewhere in the shadows. “I wondered which of you would come first. I was betting on your friend—he’s the clever one, after all. But here you are instead.”
The Timekeeper emerged from between the shelves like a fish rising from dark water. She was exactly as the Ratter had described—ageless face, silver eyes, movements that seemed slightly disconnected from the normal flow of time. Her hair was the white of fresh snow, but her skin was unlined, and she walked with the grace of someone decades younger than her appearance suggested.
“You threatened someone I care about,” Phaphhrd said.
“I mentioned someone you care about. There’s a difference.” She moved closer, studying him with an intensity that made him feel like a specimen being examined by a collector. “But I understand the confusion. In your world, speaking someone’s name often carries weight. Implies power over them. In my world, names are merely... data. Information to be catalogued and used when convenient.”
“Use whatever words you like. The meaning is the same.”
“Is it?” The Timekeeper circled him slowly, her silver eyes taking in details that Phaphhrd couldn’t imagine mattering. “You came here to confront me. To warn me away from your lady. To establish dominance, perhaps, or at least to make clear that I’ve underestimated your willingness to act.”
“Something like that.”
“But you have no leverage, northerner. No power that could touch me. You stopped the Unremembering, yes—an impressive feat—but the Unremembering was bound by rules I do not share. Violence cannot harm me. Theft cannot take from me. Even the magic your partner once possessed would slide off my protections like water off stone.”
“Then why agree to see me?”
The Timekeeper smiled, and the expression was beautiful in the way that a predator’s strike is beautiful—precise, efficient, deadly. “Because you interest me. Because the gaps in you where memories used to be are fascinating. Because you carry potential that I have not seen in a very long time.”
She gestured toward a small table and two chairs that Phaphhrd was certain hadn’t been there a moment before. “Sit. Let me explain what I offer. Properly, this time, without threats or implications. And then you can decide whether you want what I have to give.”
Against his better judgment, Phaphhrd sat.
The Timekeeper poured two glasses of something that might have been wine from a bottle that glowed faintly golden. Phaphhrd didn’t touch his.
“Wise,” she said. “Though unnecessary. I don’t put things in drinks. What I take must be freely given—that’s the rule, the limitation, the price I pay for what I am. If I could simply steal time, I would have consumed the world centuries ago.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It’s not meant to be comforting. It’s meant to be true.” She took a sip from her own glass, watching him over the rim. “Tell me, northerner—what do you know about the nature of time?”
“It passes. People age. Things change.”
“True, but incomplete. Time is not a river flowing in one direction. It’s a resource, like water or food or air. It can be accumulated, stored, transferred, consumed. Most people experience it as something that happens to them, but there are those of us who have learned to treat it as something that happens through us.” She set down her glass. “I can show you how. I can give you the ability to see time as I see it—not as a burden to be endured, but as a currency to be spent wisely.”
“And what would that cost me?”
“Nothing you would miss. You’ve already made sacrifices—I can see them in you. The memories you gave up to seal the Unremembering. The pieces of your past that you surrendered for your future.” She leaned forward. “Those gaps don’t have to remain empty, northerner. I can fill them with something better. Time in its pure form, unattached to specific events or people. You could have years of potential instead of years of regret.”
“I don’t want what you’re offering.”
“You haven’t heard all of it yet.”
“I don’t need to.” Phaphhrd stood. “I’ve made my peace with the choices I made. The gaps you see—they’re scars, not wounds. They remind me of what I sacrificed and why. I wouldn’t trade them for anything.”
The Timekeeper studied him for a long moment. Then, slowly, she smiled again, and this time the expression held something like respect.
“Interesting. Most people who sit where you’re sitting would leap at my offer. The chance to undo their regrets, to fill the empty places in themselves with something pure and clean...” She stood as well. “But you’re different. You understand that the empty places have value of their own.”
“Is that why you mentioned Ivlis? To see how I would react?”
“Partly. And partly because she interests me as well. Strong identity, stable timeline, considerable potential for accumulation.” The silver eyes gleamed. “She would make an excellent resource, if she were willing.”
“She won’t be willing. And if you try to make her willing, through pressure or manipulation or any of your other techniques, you’ll find out exactly what I’m capable of when people I love are threatened.”
“Threats again.” The Timekeeper laughed—a genuine laugh, warm and amused. “You really don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you? I have existed since before your ancestors crawled out of their caves. I have watched civilizations rise and fall, seen empires crumble and be forgotten. Nothing you could do would hurt me. Nothing you could threaten would concern me.”
“Then why are you still talking to me?”
The question hung in the air between them. The Timekeeper’s smile faded slightly.
“Because you stopped the Unremembering,” she said finally. “Because you showed that even ancient powers can be bound by those with sufficient will and determination. Because I am not the only thing that was trapped in the binding your ancestors created, and the ones who come after me may not share my... restraint.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that there are worse things than me in the dark, northerner. Things that don’t require consent. Things that don’t negotiate or offer trades. I may be a predator, but I am a civilized predator. What comes next may not be.”
She moved toward the door, gesturing for him to follow. The shop seemed smaller somehow, as if it were contracting around them, squeezing them out like the last drops from a bottle.
“Wait,” Phaphhrd said. “If you’re not the worst threat, why are you telling me this? Why warn me at all?”
The Timekeeper paused, her hand on the door frame. For a moment, something flickered in those silver eyes—something that might have been weariness, or might have been the ghost of an emotion she had forgotten how to feel.
“Because I have existed for a very long time, northerner. And in all that time, I have learned one thing above all others: isolation is the only true death. I have watched beings far more powerful than myself fade into nothing because they cut themselves off from the world, because they stopped caring about anything outside their own hunger.”
“That sounds almost philosophical.”
“It is philosophy. The philosophy of survival.” She turned to face him fully. “I maintain connections with the world—with people like you, like your partner, like the endless parade of desperate souls who come through my doors—because those connections keep me tethered to reality. Without them, I would drift away into the spaces between moments, and eventually I would simply... stop.”
“You’re lonely.”
The word hung in the air between them, dangerous in its simplicity. The Timekeeper’s expression didn’t change, but something in the quality of the silence suggested that Phaphhrd had touched something true.
“I am what I was made to be,” she said finally. “And what I was made to be requires contact with mortal consciousness to remain stable. Take that as you will.”
“So all this—the shop, the trades, the careful dance of consent and negotiation—it’s not just about accumulating power. It’s about staying sane.”
“It’s about staying real. There is a difference.” She opened the door, and suddenly Phaphhrd could see the familiar street outside—the Vermillion Theatre across the way, the bakery that he was now certain had never existed, the evening crowds flowing past without any awareness that anything unusual was happening. “Go now, northerner. Find your partner. Make your plans. And remember what I’ve told you when the time comes to choose sides.”
“Choose sides in what?”
“In the war that’s coming.” Her smile returned, but it was tired now, the expression of someone who had seen too many wars begin and had watched too few of them end well. “The binding that contains the Unremembering also contains the Hourglass—my master, my creator, the thing that made me what I am. When you strengthened one, you weakened the other. And now the Hourglass is stirring, testing its chains, preparing for the moment when it can break free entirely.”
“And you’re warning us because...”
“Because I do not want to be free. Not like that. Not at the cost of becoming what the Hourglass would make me.” For a moment, the Timekeeper looked almost human—almost like the woman she might have been, centuries ago, before some terrible bargain had transformed her into what she was now. “I chose this existence. Chose to serve, chose to be the interface between the Hourglass and the world. But the Hourglass itself... it did not choose anything. It simply is. And what it is would be very bad for everyone, including me, if it were ever fully unleashed.”
Phaphhrd stepped through the door, into the ordinary evening air of Kasdim. The sounds of the city rushed back—voices, footsteps, the clatter of commerce and the underlying hum of a metropolis that never truly slept.
Behind him, the door to the Bazaar of Stolen Hours began to fade.
“One last thing,” the Timekeeper’s voice came from somewhere that was rapidly becoming nowhere. “Your lady. Ivlis. She is being watched by parties other than myself. Be careful who you trust with her protection. Not everyone who claims to be an ally has your best interests at heart.”
And then the shop was gone, leaving only a narrow alley between the Vermillion Theatre and a bakery that smelled of fresh bread and honey.
Phaphhrd stood there for a long moment, processing everything he had learned. The Timekeeper was dangerous, yes—that much had been clear from the beginning. But she was also constrained in ways he hadn’t expected. And she was afraid of something, something that was coming, something that made even an ancient entity willing to share secrets with a mortal enemy.
The Hourglass. The thing behind the Timekeeper. The real threat that they had accidentally strengthened when they had bound the Unremembering.
I need to talk to the Ratter, Phaphhrd thought. We need to compare notes, share what we’ve learned, figure out what this all means.
But first, he needed to check on Ivlis. Needed to make sure she was safe, that nothing had happened while he was having philosophical discussions with monsters.
He turned toward the theatre and began to walk, moving quickly through streets that suddenly seemed full of shadows and secrets and dangers he was only beginning to understand.
The warehouse in the Spice District was exactly the kind of place the Grey Ratter had spent years learning to avoid.
It sat at the intersection of three rival merchant territories, which meant that any business conducted there was either neutral ground for dangerous negotiations or a trap waiting to spring. The building itself was unremarkable—weathered stone, iron-barred windows, a heavy door that suggested the contents were valuable enough to protect—but the Ratter’s instincts screamed warnings the moment he approached.
Sheelris was waiting inside. Of course she was.
She looked exactly as he remembered—the sharp features, the calculating eyes, the way she held herself that suggested readiness for violence or seduction, depending on what the moment required. Her clothes were more expensive now than they had been during their time together, and she wore them with the casual confidence of someone who had climbed several rungs on Kasdim’s social ladder since he had last seen her.
“You came alone,” she said by way of greeting. “That’s either brave or stupid.”
“Given our history, I’d say it’s a little of both.” The Ratter moved into the warehouse, cataloguing exits and potential threats out of long habit. “Your message said you had information about the Timekeeper. Start talking.”
“So businesslike. No ‘hello, Sheelris, it’s been years’? No ‘my, how you’ve changed’?” Her smile was sharp. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You were always better at work than relationships.”
“That’s why the relationship ended. You remember—the part where you tried to sell information about my operations to the old Guild? The part where I had to fake my own death for three months to avoid the consequences of your betrayal?”
“Ancient history.”
“Not ancient enough.” The Ratter stopped moving, positioned himself where he could see both doors. “But I’m here, which means I’m willing to listen despite that history. So talk. What do you know about the Timekeeper?”
Sheelris moved to a small table where a bottle of wine and two glasses waited—apparently prepared for exactly this conversation. She poured with the practiced grace of someone who had spent time in better establishments than this warehouse.
“The Grey Guild has been watching the Timekeeper’s operation for months,” she said. “They—we, I should say, since I’ve been working with them since they arrived—have been trying to understand how she operates, what her weaknesses are, whether she represents an opportunity or a threat.”
“I assume you’ve concluded ‘threat.’”
“We’ve concluded ‘complicated.’” Sheelris handed him a glass, which he didn’t take. She shrugged and set it on the table. “The Timekeeper has been in Kasdim longer than any of the current power structures. Longer than the old Guild, longer than the temple hierarchies, longer than the Overlord’s dynasty. She’s survived everything this city has thrown at her because she’s very, very good at making herself useful to whoever happens to be in charge.”
“That doesn’t sound like a threat.”
“It doesn’t sound like an opportunity either.” Sheelris moved to a window, looking out at the darkening streets. “The problem is what’s behind her. The entity she serves—the Hourglass. Have you heard of it?”
“I’ve heard the name. My partner had a conversation with the Timekeeper this evening. She mentioned it.”
“Then you know more than most.” Sheelris turned back to face him. “The Hourglass is like the Unremembering—an ancient power, bound by the same wizards who created the original binding. The Timekeeper is its interface with the world, the way it feeds without breaking its chains.”
“Feeds on what?”
“Time. Specifically, time that’s been freely given. The binding constrains the Hourglass to consensual transactions—it can’t simply take what it wants. But that constraint has been weakening. Ever since you and your partner strengthened the Unremembering’s binding, the Hourglass’s binding has grown looser.”
The Ratter absorbed this. It matched what Korvallis had told him, what he had pieced together from his own investigation. But Sheelris knowing it suggested that the Grey Guild’s intelligence network was better than he had expected.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because the Grey Guild doesn’t want to operate in a city where time can be stolen at will. That’s bad for business—too unpredictable, too dangerous. We want the Timekeeper contained, the Hourglass bound, everything returned to something resembling normal.” She smiled. “And we’ve learned enough about you and your partner to know that you want the same thing. Different reasons, same goal. That makes us potential allies.”
“Temporary allies.”
“In Kasdim, all alliances are temporary. You know that.” She moved closer, and the Ratter could smell her perfume—the same scent she had worn years ago, the one that still triggered memories he would rather forget. “I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to work with me, for as long as our interests align. When they stop aligning, we can go back to being enemies.”
“What’s the Grey Guild offering?”
“Resources. Manpower. Information about the Timekeeper’s operation that you couldn’t get from any other source.” Sheelris’s expression was serious now, the calculated charm replaced by something closer to genuine concern. “And something else. Something personal.”
“I’m listening.”
“The Timekeeper has been watching your partner. Not just casually—actively, deliberately, with what appears to be specific intent. She’s interested in the woman he’s involved with. The actress.”
“Ivlis.” The name came out sharp, alarmed. “What kind of interested?”
“The kind that suggests she’s planning something. The Timekeeper doesn’t watch people without reason. She’s identifying Ivlis as a potential resource—someone whose time might be valuable enough to pursue.”
“Why? Ivlis is nobody special. An actress, talented but not famous. No particular power, no particular wealth—”
“She’s connected to your partner. And your partner is connected to you. And you two are connected to the binding through what you did during the Unremembering crisis.” Sheelris’s voice was patient, explanatory. “The Timekeeper thinks in chains, in networks of relationship and obligation. She’s not interested in Ivlis for her own sake. She’s interested in Ivlis as leverage—a way to influence you and your partner.”
The cold that settled in the Ratter’s stomach had nothing to do with the warehouse’s temperature. This was worse than he had feared. The Timekeeper wasn’t just a threat to the city’s stability—she was a threat to everyone he cared about, and she was targeting them deliberately.
“What does the Grey Guild want in return for this information?”
“Your expertise. Your knowledge of the city, your contacts in the old Guild, your understanding of how things really work in Kasdim.” Sheelris extended her hand—a gesture that was probably calculated, but effective nonetheless. “Help us stop the Timekeeper, and we’ll help protect the people you care about. Simple as that.”
The Ratter looked at her hand, at the woman he had once trusted and who had once betrayed him. Nothing about this situation was simple. Nothing about Sheelris was trustworthy.
But she was offering resources he needed, and information he couldn’t get anywhere else. And if the Timekeeper really was targeting Ivlis...
“I’ll consider it,” he said finally. “Talk to my partner first, see what he learned from his meeting with the Timekeeper. Then we can discuss terms.”
“Fair enough.” Sheelris lowered her hand, but her smile suggested she had gotten exactly the response she was hoping for. “You know where to find me. Don’t wait too long—the Timekeeper isn’t patient, and neither is the Hourglass.”
The Ratter left the warehouse without drinking the wine, without touching anything, without giving Sheelris any more information than he had to. But he had learned something important—the threat was bigger than he had realized, and the enemy was closer than he had feared.
He needed to find Phaphhrd. They needed to plan.
And they needed to make sure Ivlis was protected, no matter what it cost.
The Grey Guild had established their primary headquarters in an abandoned warehouse near the Marsh Gate docks. The Ratter had learned this through the usual methods—bribes, overheard conversations, and one very productive evening spent following Guild messengers through the city’s twisting streets.
What he hadn’t expected was to find Sheelris waiting for him outside.
She was leaning against a pillar as if she owned the building, dressed in the same dark colors she had always favored, her expression a mix of amusement and anticipation that the Ratter knew all too well. She had been watching for him. Had known he would come.
“Little thief,” she said, her voice carrying the warmth of an old lover and the edge of a recent enemy. “I wondered when you’d find your way here.”
“Sheelris.” The Ratter stopped a careful distance away, his hand near the knife at his belt but not yet touching it. “I thought you’d fled the city after the Unremembering crisis.”
“I did. For a while. But Kasdim is my home, Ratter—the only place I’ve ever felt truly comfortable. Eventually, I had to come back.” Her smile widened. “Besides, there are opportunities here now. Power vacuums to fill. Old orders to overturn.”
“And the Grey Guild offered you what you wanted.”
“They offered me what I deserved. A position of respect, resources to accomplish my goals, allies who understand that ambition isn’t a character flaw.” She pushed herself off the pillar, moved closer. “You could have been one of those allies, once. If you hadn’t chosen the giant over me.”
“I chose partnership over manipulation. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” She stopped just outside his reach. “We manipulate each other all the time, Ratter. Every conversation is a negotiation. Every relationship is a transaction. The only difference between us is that I’m honest about it.”
“You betrayed me to the cult. You helped them prepare me for sacrifice.”
“I made a business decision based on the information I had at the time. The cult was winning. The Unremembering was waking. Choosing the losing side seemed... inefficient.” She shrugged. “I was wrong, obviously. You and your partner found a way to survive that I hadn’t anticipated. But that doesn’t make me evil. It makes me practical.”
“People died because of your practicality.”
“People die every day in Kasdim. At least I gave them a choice in the matter.” Her expression hardened slightly. “But we’re not here to relitigate old arguments, are we? You’re investigating the Timekeeper. I’m working with people who have their own interest in that investigation. Perhaps we can help each other.”
The Ratter studied her, trying to read the angles she was working. Sheelris had always been good at seeming honest when she was lying and seeming deceptive when she was telling the truth. It was one of the things that had attracted him to her, once upon a time.
“What do the Grey Guild want with the Timekeeper?”
“The same thing everyone wants—understanding. Control. The ability to use her resources without becoming her victim.” Sheelris gestured toward the warehouse. “Marek Vane is inside. He’s willing to meet with you, share information, perhaps even offer assistance. All you have to do is walk through that door.”
“And what do you get out of this?”
“The satisfaction of seeing old friends again.” Her smile returned. “And perhaps a chance to prove that I’m not the monster you think I am. That everything I did, I did because I thought it was necessary. Not because I wanted to hurt you.”
“You have a strange definition of necessary.”
“I have a survival definition of necessary. In this city, in this life, that’s all there is.” She stepped aside, clearing the path to the warehouse door. “Go in or don’t. But if you want to protect your partner’s lady from the Timekeeper, you’re going to need allies. And right now, we’re the only ones offering.”
The Ratter weighed his options. Sheelris was dangerous, unpredictable, and had already betrayed him once. The Grey Guild was an unknown quantity, new players in a game whose rules were still being written.
But she was right about one thing: he needed information. Needed resources. Needed anything that might give him an edge against an enemy that had been preparing for this moment for centuries.
“Lead the way,” he said.
Sheelris’s smile widened, and she turned toward the warehouse, moving with the confidence of someone who had already won whatever game she was playing.
The Ratter followed, wondering which of them was the predator and which was the prey.
The warehouse interior had been converted into something resembling a military command center. Maps covered the walls—not just of Kasdim, but of the surrounding regions, the trade routes, the political structures that shaped power in this part of the world. Tables held reports, correspondence, and what looked like dossiers on prominent citizens.
The Grey Guild was not just a criminal organization. They were planning a takeover.
Marek Vane waited at the center of it all, seated in a chair that had clearly been chosen for its intimidating height. He was exactly what the Ratter had expected—dangerous, controlled, the kind of man who killed with the casual efficiency of someone checking items off a list.
“The Grey Ratter,” Vane said. “Your reputation precedes you.”
“I hope not too much.”
“Enough to be interesting.” Vane gestured to a chair opposite his own. “Sit. We have things to discuss.”
The conversation that followed was, in its own way, more dangerous than any fight the Ratter had ever survived. Vane was intelligent, perceptive, and absolutely ruthless in his assessment of Kasdim’s current situation. He knew about the Timekeeper, about the Unremembering, about the power vacuum left by the old Guild’s collapse. He knew more than anyone outside the city should have been able to learn in such a short time.
“We came here because we saw opportunity,” Vane explained. “The old structures are weakened. The wizards are distracted by their own conflicts. And in the middle of all that chaos, someone—the Timekeeper—has been quietly building a resource network that could reshape the balance of power entirely.”
“You want to take that network for yourself.”
“I want to understand it. Contain it. And if possible, redirect it toward goals that serve my organization rather than whatever agenda the Timekeeper is pursuing.” Vane’s smile was thin. “We have common interests, Ratter. Your partner’s lady has become a target. My operations are being complicated by the Timekeeper’s interference. Neither of us wants her to succeed in whatever she’s planning.”
“What is she planning?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Vane stood, moved to one of the maps. “The Timekeeper has been in Kasdim for centuries. She’s had time to establish contacts, resources, influence in every level of society. But she’s always operated within strict limits—only voluntary trades, only certain targets, only specific methods. Now those limits are changing. She’s becoming more aggressive, more visible, more willing to pursue targets who haven’t come to her voluntarily.”
“Like Ivlis.”
“Among others.” Vane traced a line on the map. “Something has changed. Some constraint that was holding her back has weakened. And now she’s preparing for something—something big enough that she’s willing to take risks she’s avoided for centuries.”
The Ratter thought about what Korvallis had told him. The binding. The connection between the Unremembering and the Hourglass. The way strengthening one had weakened the other.
“The binding,” he said. “We reinforced the Unremembering’s containment. That would have affected whatever was bound alongside it.”
Vane’s eyes sharpened. “You know about that?”
“I know a lot of things that aren’t supposed to be known. It’s part of why I’m still alive.”
“Then you understand why I’m concerned. And why I’m willing to offer an alliance—temporary, limited, but real—to address a threat that affects us both.”
The Ratter considered this. Vane was telling the truth, or at least a version of it that served his purposes. The Grey Guild had its own agenda, its own plans for Kasdim, and those plans would eventually bring them into conflict with anyone who opposed their ambitions.
But right now, in this moment, their interests aligned.
“What exactly are you offering?”
“Information. Manpower. Resources that would take you months to acquire on your own.” Vane returned to his chair. “In exchange, I want your expertise. Your knowledge of Kasdim’s underworld. Your access to the old Guild’s remaining contacts.”
“That’s a high price.”
“It’s a fair price, given what we’re facing.” Vane’s expression was unreadable. “Decide quickly, Ratter. The Timekeeper isn’t waiting for us to make up our minds. Every day we spend negotiating is a day she spends preparing.”
The Ratter looked at Sheelris, who had remained silent throughout the conversation. She met his gaze with something that might have been honesty, or might have been the most sophisticated deception she had ever attempted.
“I’ll think about it,” he said finally.
“Don’t think too long.” Vane stood, signaling that the meeting was over. “The clock is ticking. Literally.”
The Ratter left the warehouse with his mind racing, cataloguing everything he had learned and everything he still needed to know. The Grey Guild was dangerous—there was no question about that. Vane was the kind of man who thought three moves ahead and had contingency plans for his contingency plans. Aligning with him would mean accepting his priorities, his methods, his ultimate goals.
But the alternative was facing the Timekeeper alone. And the more the Ratter learned about her operation, the more certain he became that alone wasn’t going to be enough.
Sheelris caught up with him two blocks from the warehouse, appearing from a side street with the casual timing that suggested she had been waiting for exactly this opportunity.
“Well?” she asked, falling into step beside him. “What did you think?”
“I think Vane is dangerous, ambitious, and probably planning to betray us the moment we’re no longer useful.”
“So a typical business partner in Kasdim.”
“More or less.” The Ratter kept walking, his eyes scanning the streets for signs of surveillance. The Grey Guild would be watching him—he was certain of that. The question was whether they were watching to protect or to control. “What I can’t figure out is what you get out of this arrangement. Vane has resources, organization, a clear path to power. What do you have that makes you valuable enough to be his intermediary?”
“I have you.”
The words stopped the Ratter in his tracks. He turned to face her, really looking at her for the first time since she had appeared in the alley.
“Explain.”
“Vane didn’t come to Kasdim by accident. He came because he heard stories about what happened during the Unremembering crisis—about a thief and a barbarian who stopped an ancient entity that the city’s own Guild had failed to contain. He came because he wanted to recruit you. To add your skills, your knowledge, your contacts to his organization.”
“And you offered to make the introduction.”
“I offered to make the introduction, yes. But I also offered something else—understanding. I know you better than anyone else in this city, Ratter. I know how you think, what you want, what you’re willing to do and what you’ll never consider. That knowledge is valuable to someone like Vane.”
“You’re selling me to him.”
“I’m creating opportunities.” Sheelris’s voice was calm, matter-of-fact, as if she were discussing a routine business arrangement. “You need allies. Vane needs expertise. I need to be useful to both of you if I want to survive what’s coming. The arrangement serves everyone’s interests.”
“Except mine, apparently.”
“Your interests are served too, whether you see it or not.” She moved closer, lowering her voice. “The Timekeeper is coming for your partner’s lady. She’s already begun the process—gathering information, positioning assets, preparing for the moment when she makes her move. You can face that alone, relying on your cleverness and the barbarian’s sword, or you can accept help from people who have resources you can’t acquire on your own.”
“And when it’s over? When the Timekeeper is dealt with and Ivlis is safe? What happens then?”
“Then we renegotiate. That’s how it works in this city—alliances form, serve their purpose, and dissolve when circumstances change. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is guaranteed.” Sheelris’s expression softened slightly. “I’m not asking you to trust me, Ratter. I’m asking you to use me. The same way you’ve used everyone else who’s ever helped you survive.”
The words were harsh but accurate. The Ratter had never been sentimental about his relationships—had always approached them as transactions, exchanges of value that served both parties until they didn’t. Sheelris was offering exactly that kind of arrangement. Clear, clean, unencumbered by emotional expectations.
And yet.
“You hurt me,” he said quietly. “During the Unremembering crisis. When you betrayed us to the cult. I thought I was going to die, and I thought—” He stopped, surprised by the honesty that was pushing its way out of him.
“You thought I didn’t care. That I had never cared. That everything we had was just another manipulation, another angle to be worked.” Sheelris’s voice was soft now too. “I know what you thought, because I thought the same thing about you. That you were too clever, too calculating, to ever really let anyone in. That our relationship was just two predators circling each other, waiting to see who would strike first.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Maybe. I don’t know anymore.” She looked away, and for a moment the mask she always wore seemed to slip. “But I know one thing for certain: I don’t want you to die. Whatever else has happened between us, whatever else will happen, I don’t want the world to exist without you in it.”
The Ratter didn’t know how to respond to that. Didn’t know what to do with the complicated mix of emotions that her words stirred up. So he did what he always did when faced with emotional complexity: he retreated to the practical.
“I’ll work with Vane. For now. But I need something in return.”
“Name it.”
“Information. Everything you know about the Timekeeper’s operation, her weaknesses, her plans. Everything the Grey Guild has gathered. Not the edited version they’re willing to share—the real version, with all the parts they think are too sensitive for outside ears.”
“That’s a big ask.”
“It’s a fair ask, given what I’m bringing to the table.” The Ratter met her eyes. “You want to prove you’re not my enemy? Start by giving me something I couldn’t get on my own.”
Sheelris was quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, she nodded.
“I’ll see what I can do. But Ratter—be careful. Vane is watching you. The Timekeeper is watching you. And there are others, players I haven’t identified yet, who are taking an interest in what you and your partner have become. Whatever happens next, don’t assume anyone is exactly what they appear to be.”
“In Kasdim? I never do.”
She smiled at that—a real smile, brief but genuine—and then slipped away into the crowd, disappearing as smoothly as she had appeared.
The Ratter watched her go, then turned and continued toward home, wondering whether he had just made an alliance or walked into a trap.
In Kasdim, sometimes those were the same thing.
“Every hunt has two participants: the hunter and the hunted. The clever ones learn that these roles are never as fixed as they seem. Today’s predator becomes tomorrow’s prey. Today’s prey becomes tomorrow’s survivor.”
—Sheemba of the Devoid, speaking to a petitioner in the swamp
The summons came at midnight, as such things always did.
A slip of paper appeared on the Grey Ratter’s pillow, its edges still warm from whatever supernatural process had delivered it. The message was brief: The plaza where time forgets itself. One hour. Bring the northerner.
The Ratter recognized the handwriting—or rather, the lack of handwriting. The letters had been formed by something that had never learned to use a pen, achieving legibility through sheer force of will rather than motor skill.
Ningaudrelle of the Eleven Eyes wanted to talk.
They found the wizard waiting in a space that existed only conditionally—a plaza that Kasdim’s residents could see but never quite remember, where the cobblestones seemed to shift pattern when observed too closely. Ningaudrelle stood at the center, all eleven of his eyes focused on the approaches.
“You came,” he said as they entered. “That shows wisdom. Or desperation. Often the same thing.”
“What do you want?” Phaphhrd asked. He had been less patient since Ivlis’s abduction, his usual tolerance for wizard games worn thin by worry.
“What I have always wanted—information, influence, advantage in the eternal games we wizards play. But more specifically...” The eleven eyes blinked in a pattern that seemed deliberate but remained unreadable. “I want you to retrieve something from the Bazaar of Stolen Hours.”
“You want us to rob the Timekeeper?” The Ratter’s voice was flat. “After everything we’ve learned about her defenses?”
“I want you to acquire an artifact that is stored in her vault. An item of considerable power that she has been hoarding for centuries.” Ningaudrelle produced a sketch from the folds of his robe—a detailed drawing of something that looked like a mechanical hourglass, its surface covered in symbols the Ratter didn’t recognize. “This is the Chronometer of Endless Moments. It was created by the same wizards who bound the Unremembering and the Hourglass. It is the key to controlling the flow of time within the binding.”
The Ratter studied the sketch with the careful attention of someone evaluating a potential score. The artifact was intricate, clearly magical, and—based on what little he knew of temporal mechanics—probably worth more than everything in Kasdim combined. It was also, almost certainly, protected by defenses that would make any ordinary theft impossible.
“And you want to control time,” he said.
“I want to understand it. To know whether the binding should be maintained or allowed to weaken. To make informed decisions about the future rather than reacting blindly to each new crisis.” Ningaudrelle’s voice held something that might have been sincerity—or might have been a carefully calculated performance of sincerity designed to make them trust him just enough to be useful. “You disrupted a balance that had existed for millennia when you sealed the Unremembering. I don’t blame you—you acted with the information you had—but the consequences are unfolding now. The Timekeeper has more freedom to operate. The Hourglass is stirring. Something must be done, and I cannot act effectively without the Chronometer.”
“Why not get it yourself?”
“Because the Timekeeper knows me. She has spent centuries preparing defenses against wizardly intrusion. Her wards are calibrated to detect magical signatures, to respond to the patterns of power that beings like myself cannot help but emanate.” Several of the wizard’s eyes flickered toward Phaphhrd. “But you two—a thief and a barbarian—she has not prepared for. You operate through skill rather than magic, through cunning rather than force. She expects violence or sorcery from her enemies. She does not expect a pair of criminals who have already defeated one ancient entity through sheer stubborn determination.”
Phaphhrd and the Ratter exchanged glances. The compliment—if it was a compliment—was unexpected. Ningaudrelle had never shown any particular interest in their capabilities before, treating them as tools to be used rather than agents to be respected.
“What’s the catch?” the Ratter asked.
“The Chronometer is bound to the Hourglass itself. Removing it from the Bazaar will alert the entity to the theft. You will have, at most, minutes to escape before the Hourglass responds directly.” Ningaudrelle’s expression was unreadable. “I am not sending you on a safe errand. I am asking you to commit an act of calculated insanity that may result in your deaths.”
“And in exchange?”
“In exchange, I will use the Chronometer to stabilize the binding. Restore the balance between the Unremembering and the Hourglass. Perhaps even find a way to permanently contain both entities rather than merely delaying their eventual awakening.” The wizard paused. “And I will provide whatever assistance I can in recovering your lady’s stolen time. The Timekeeper has no right to claim what she has claimed. I would see that wrong addressed.”
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?”
“You don’t. You can never be certain of a wizard’s motives—that’s the nature of our kind. But consider: I have resources that could destroy you both. I have chosen not to use them. That suggests either incompetence or genuine interest in your continued survival. Make of that what you will.”
The Ratter thought about options. Thought about risks. Thought about Ivlis, aging toward death in a healer’s bed.
“We’ll do it,” he said. “But we do it our way. No interference, no supervision, no hidden catches that only become apparent after the fact.”
“Agreed.” Ningaudrelle produced another paper, covered in diagrams and notes. “Everything I know about the Bazaar’s defenses and the Chronometer’s location. Study it well. You will have one chance.”
He vanished, leaving them alone in the plaza with information that might save them—or might be the bait in a trap far more sophisticated than anything they had yet encountered.
The swamp outside Kasdim was exactly as unpleasant as the Grey Ratter remembered. The same sucking mud, the same biting insects, the same pervasive smell of decay that made every breath a small act of courage.
Sheemba of the Devoid was waiting in the same hut, seated in the same position, as if she had never moved since his last visit.
The journey to reach her had taken most of the day—through the city’s southern gate, across the farm fields that fed Kasdim’s hungry masses, and finally into the wetlands that most sensible people avoided entirely. The path wound through stands of twisted trees and pools of stagnant water, and the Ratter had been forced to trust his memory of previous visits to avoid the worst of the sinkholes that could swallow a man without warning.
Sheemba’s hut stood on a small island of solid ground, if anything in a swamp could truly be called solid. The structure was ancient, built from materials that the Ratter couldn’t quite identify, and it had the peculiar quality of seeming larger inside than its external dimensions suggested. Either Sheemba had access to the same spatial manipulation as the Timekeeper, or the building itself was somehow alive—constantly adjusting, adapting, becoming whatever its owner needed it to be.
“You come again, little thief. Bearing information from my rival. Contemplating actions that could reshape the world.”
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere—one of Sheemba’s preferred techniques for maintaining psychological advantage. The Ratter didn’t flinch. He had learned long ago that showing fear to entities like Sheemba was worse than useless.
“You know about Ningaudrelle’s request?”
“I know everything that touches the binding. The Chronometer is a powerful artifact, yes. Powerful enough to control aspects of time within the binding’s boundaries. But Ningaudrelle did not tell you its full purpose.” Her eyeless face turned toward him—or at least, the direction of her face changed in a way that suggested attention. “The Chronometer does not merely regulate. It can be used to sever. To cut the connection between the Hourglass and its human servants. To trap the entity in isolation while the world continues without it.”
“That sounds useful.”
“Useful is one word for it.” Sheemba rose from her seat, moving with the eerie grace of someone who navigated the world through senses other than sight. “Another word might be ‘devastating.’ Or ‘transformative.’ Or ‘irreversible.’” She paused. “The Chronometer was created as a weapon of last resort. A way to end the binding entirely if all other options failed. Using it would not simply stop the Timekeeper—it would fundamentally alter the relationship between the Hourglass and our world.”
“Alter how?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? The original wizards who created the binding didn’t fully understand what they were doing. They were reacting to an immediate threat, improvising solutions that might have unintended consequences. The Chronometer was their emergency option—the thing they hoped they would never have to use.” Sheemba’s voice dropped. “If you use it to sever the Hourglass’s connections, you might free us from its influence forever. Or you might release something that was being held in check by those very connections. The binding was not a simple cage. It was a complex web of relationships, dependencies, mutual constraints. Cut the web in the wrong place, and everything unravels.”
The Ratter absorbed this. “Ningaudrelle didn’t mention any of that.”
“Ningaudrelle sees what he wants to see. He wants power, control, the ability to shape events according to his own design. The Chronometer promises all of those things—if you only look at what it can do, and ignore what it might cost.”
“And what does it cost?”
“It also requires a sacrifice. The Chronometer draws its power from the life force of whoever wields it. Use it fully, and the wielder dies. Use it partially, and they lose... something. Time, usually, but sometimes other things. Memories. Possibilities. Futures that will now never occur.”
The Ratter felt the weight of this settle onto his shoulders. Another sacrifice. Another price that would have to be paid.
“Why are you telling me this? You and Ningaudrelle are rivals—you’ve made that clear before. Why help me understand the true nature of something he wants?”
“Because we are rivals, yes, but we are not enemies in the way that the Timekeeper is an enemy. Ningaudrelle wants power. I want understanding. Both of us want the world to continue existing in a form that allows us to pursue our goals.” Sheemba’s eyeless face seemed to focus more intently. “The Timekeeper wants something different. She wants freedom—true freedom, the kind that comes from having no constraints whatsoever. If she achieves that freedom, neither Ningaudrelle’s power nor my understanding will matter. The world as we know it will end.”
“You’re saying we have to work together.”
“I’m saying that our interests temporarily align. Use that alignment wisely, while it lasts. Trust neither Ningaudrelle nor me—we will both pursue our own agendas when the opportunity arises. But in this moment, against this threat, we are as close to allies as beings like us ever become.”
The Ratter considered this. It wasn’t trust, exactly—nothing with Sheemba or Ningaudrelle could ever truly be called trust. But it was understanding. And understanding could be almost as useful.
“I don’t want to make her agenda. I don’t want to pursue goals that serve her interests rather than mine.” The Ratter met Sheemba’s eyeless gaze directly. “I want you to consider all possibilities. Your partner’s woman is dying. The Timekeeper will not surrender her time voluntarily. The only way to recover what was stolen is to take it back—and the Chronometer is the tool that could make such taking possible.” Sheemba shifted slightly. “But the choice is yours. I will not force, cajole, or manipulate. I will only inform.”
“That’s more than Ningaudrelle gave me.”
“Ningaudrelle believes that information is power. He hoards it accordingly. I believe that information is responsibility. Once you know something, you are obligated to act on that knowledge—whether you wish to or not.” The eyeless face tilted. “Now you know what the Chronometer can do. What will you do with that knowledge?”
The Ratter was quiet for a long moment. Then: “I need to think. Talk to my partner. Plan.”
“Time is short. The Timekeeper accelerates her plans daily. Your lady has weeks at most.”
“Then I’ll think quickly.” He stood to leave. “Thank you. For telling me what Ningaudrelle wouldn’t.”
“Do not thank me yet. You may curse me before this is over.” But something in her voice suggested she was not entirely displeased by his response. “Go. Plan. Act. And when the moment comes—remember that some prices are worth paying, and some debts can only be discharged with sacrifice.”
The boarding house room was small, cramped, and completely inadequate for the planning session they needed to conduct. But it was private, it was defensible, and it was home—or the closest thing either of them had to one.
Phaphhrd spread Ningaudrelle’s documents across the narrow bed while the Ratter added his own notes from the meeting with Sheemba. Together, they represented more information about the Timekeeper and the Hourglass than anyone had possessed in centuries.
“Ningaudrelle wants the Chronometer to control the binding,” the Ratter summarized. “Sheemba wants it to understand the Hourglass. Both of them are willing to use us as tools to get what they want.”
“Neither of them mentioned the sacrifice.”
“No. Which tells us something about their priorities.” The Ratter moved to the window, looking out at Kasdim’s nighttime sprawl. “We’re being manipulated. That’s not news—we’re always being manipulated by one power or another. The question is whether the manipulation aligns with our goals.”
“Our goals are simple. Save Ivlis. Stop the Timekeeper. Survive.”
“Simple to state. Complicated to achieve.” The Ratter turned back. “The Bazaar can’t be robbed. That’s the consistent theme in everything we’ve learned. The temporal defenses prevent direct theft—anything taken from the shop reverts to its original position within moments. The only way to remove something permanently is to make a trade.”
“What could we trade that the Timekeeper would want?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.” The Ratter sat down across from his partner. “The Timekeeper deals in time. She values hours, days, years. But she also values something else—information. She knows things about Kasdim, about its residents, about the flow of power through the city. She uses that knowledge as effectively as she uses stolen time.”
“So we offer information.”
“We offer valuable information. Something she doesn’t already know, something she would want badly enough to trade for.” The Ratter’s grey eyes met Phaphhrd’s. “We offer her the location of the Unremembering’s secondary containment. The backup binding that Korvallis’s predecessors created in case the primary one failed.”
“There’s a secondary containment?”
“According to Korvallis’s memories, yes. He mentioned it during one of our conversations after the crisis—almost in passing, as if he assumed I already knew. A hidden location, known only to the binding’s keepers, where a fragment of the Unremembering was trapped separately from the main entity. If the primary binding ever failed completely, the secondary would provide a template for recreating it.” The Ratter smiled grimly. “The Timekeeper doesn’t know it exists. She thinks the Unremembering is fully contained in one place. If she learns about the secondary, she might consider it valuable enough to trade for.”
“And if she uses that information to free the Unremembering entirely?”
“Then we’ll deal with that when it happens. Right now, our priority is Ivlis. Everything else is secondary.” The Ratter pulled out a fresh sheet of paper, began sketching a rough map of Kasdim’s districts. “Here’s the plan: We approach the Timekeeper with the information about the secondary containment. We negotiate a trade—Ivlis’s time for the location. While she’s focused on the trade, I slip away to find the Chronometer. Once I have it, we use it to sever her connection to the Hourglass. Without that connection, she loses her power. The stolen time reverts to its original owners. Ivlis is saved.”
“That sounds too simple.”
“It’s not simple at all. Every step has ways to go wrong.” The Ratter marked several points on his map. “The Timekeeper might refuse the trade—she might already know about the secondary containment, or might not value the information as highly as we hope. She might see through the distraction—she’s been manipulating people for centuries, and she’s probably encountered every trick we could possibly think of. I might not be able to find the Chronometer—Ningaudrelle’s information is detailed, but he’s never actually been inside the Bazaar’s inner vaults, so his intelligence is secondhand at best. And even if everything works perfectly, there’s still the sacrifice Sheemba mentioned—the price for using the artifact fully.”
Phaphhrd studied the map, his expression troubled. “What kind of price?”
“Sheemba was vague about the specifics. She said the Chronometer draws power from the wielder’s life force—time, usually, but sometimes other things. Memories. Possibilities. Futures that will now never occur.” The Ratter’s voice was steady, but something in his eyes suggested he had already calculated the costs and decided they were acceptable. “I don’t know exactly what using it would take from me. But I’m willing to pay whatever price is necessary if it saves Ivlis.”
“Ratter—”
“I know what you’re going to say. And the answer is no—I’m not going to let you make the sacrifice instead. She’s your woman, not mine. If this goes wrong, she’ll need you there to help her recover. She’ll need the stability, the connection, the love that you provide.” The Ratter’s smile was thin but genuine. “I’m the one who should take the risk. I’m the one who’s expendable.”
“You’re not expendable.”
“Everyone’s expendable. That’s what I learned growing up in this city. The trick is to make sure your expenditure means something—that when you’re spent, you’ve bought something worth the cost.” He stood, began pacing again. “Besides, I’m better at this kind of work than you are. Sneaking, stealing, manipulating ancient entities—that’s my skillset. You’re the one who inspires people, who leads charges against impossible odds, who makes everyone around him believe that victory is possible even when the mathematics say otherwise.”
“You inspire people too.”
“I really don’t. But that’s not an insult—it’s just recognition of different strengths.” The Ratter stopped at the window, looking out at the city that had shaped them both. “We’ve survived everything Kasdim has thrown at us by complementing each other. Your strength where I’m weak. My cunning where you’re straightforward. We’re better together than either of us would be alone.”
“Then why are you talking about this like we’re planning your funeral?”
The question hung in the air between them. The Ratter was quiet for a long moment, choosing his words with the care of someone who knows that what he says next will matter.
“Because I want you to be prepared,” he said finally. “If something goes wrong, if the price is higher than I can pay, you need to know that I made this choice deliberately. Not out of desperation or recklessness, but because I believe it’s the right thing to do.” He turned back to face his partner. “You taught me that, you know. That doing the right thing matters, even when—especially when—it costs you something.”
Phaphhrd was quiet for a moment. Then: “I should be the one to make the sacrifice. She’s my—”
“She’s yours to love. She’s ours to save.” The Ratter’s voice was firm. “We’re partners, giant. That means we share the risks as well as the rewards. If someone has to pay a price for this, we decide together which of us is best positioned to pay it.”
“And if the price is death?”
“Then we figure out how to cheat death. We’ve done it before. We’ll do it again.”
Phaphhrd smiled despite the gravity of the situation. “You make it sound easy.”
“Nothing is easy. But everything is possible.” The Ratter stood, began gathering the documents. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow we start preparations. In three days, we move against the Timekeeper.”
“Three days.”
“Three days to save everything we care about. Standard operating procedure.”
They clasped hands—the ritual gesture, the physical acknowledgment of partnership—and then separated. Phaphhrd to find whatever sleep he could manage. The Ratter to continue planning, to look for weaknesses, to prepare for a confrontation that would determine the fate of everyone they loved.
Three days.
It would have to be enough.
The Grey Guild’s headquarters occupied what had once been one of Kasdim’s more prosperous merchant compounds—three interconnected buildings surrounding a central courtyard, their walls thick enough to absorb screams and their windows narrow enough to make unauthorized entry a significant challenge. The previous owners had been a family of silk traders who had made the mistake of betting against the wrong political faction during the last palace coup, and their property had been “acquired” through channels that no one in the city’s legal establishment cared to examine too closely.
Phaphhrd approached through the main gate, which was either extremely foolish or extremely clever depending on how one measured such things. The guards—two thick-necked men whose scarred faces suggested considerable experience with violence that had been both received and delivered—watched him come with the patient attention of predators assessing potential prey.
“I’m here to see Marek Vane,” Phaphhrd said, stopping at a distance that suggested both respect and readiness. “Tell him the barbarian from the Unremembering business wants to talk.”
The guards exchanged glances—a brief communication that contained an entire conversation in the language of professional criminals. One of them disappeared through the main building’s entrance while the other maintained his position, hand resting casually on the hilt of a sword that had clearly seen regular use.
“Vane doesn’t meet with everyone who wanders up to the gate,” the remaining guard observed. His voice was conversational, but his eyes never stopped moving, cataloguing Phaphhrd’s weapons, his stance, the way he distributed his weight.
“He’ll meet with me.”
“Confident. That’s either admirable or stupid, depending on how things go.”
“In my experience, confidence and stupidity often produce the same results. The difference is in the intentions.”
The guard almost smiled. “You talk like a philosopher.”
“I talk like someone who’s survived in Kasdim for five years. Philosophy happens whether you want it to or not.”
The second guard returned before the conversation could continue. “He’ll see you. Follow me—and keep your hands where we can see them.”
The interior of the Grey Guild’s headquarters was more impressive than its exterior suggested, which was itself a strategic choice. The outer walls projected modest prosperity; the inner spaces declared wealth and power with the confidence of an organization that expected to become permanent.
Tapestries lined the corridors—not the cheap reproductions that most criminal enterprises used, but genuine historical pieces that would have fetched small fortunes at legitimate auction houses. The furniture had the solid quality of pieces chosen for durability as well as appearance, and the floors were polished to a gleam that spoke of regular maintenance by staff who took pride in their work.
Phaphhrd catalogued these details automatically, the way he catalogued everything in unfamiliar territory. Wealth could indicate either security or vulnerability, depending on how it was acquired and how it was displayed. The Grey Guild was making a statement with their headquarters: We’re here to stay. We have resources. We’re not afraid to show them.
The receiving room on the second floor continued the theme. The windows had been positioned to catch the afternoon light, and the single chair available for visitors had been placed in the worst possible angle relative to that light—a theatrical trick designed to put guests at a disadvantage while keeping the host’s features in comfortable shadow.
Marek Vane waited in that shadow, seated with the studied casualness of someone who had practiced looking relaxed until it became second nature.
“The northern barbarian,” he said. “I’ve heard stories about you.”
“Good ones, I hope.”
“Mixed.” Vane gestured to the visitor’s chair, and Phaphhrd took it without protest. There was no point in fighting small battles when larger ones were coming. “You stopped the Unremembering. You and your small grey partner. Quite an accomplishment, considering the resources you were working with.”
“We had help.”
“Ningaudrelle. Sheemba. The old Guild’s remnants.” Vane’s smile was thin, the expression of someone who had learned long ago that smiles were just another form of weapon. “Yes, I know about all of it. I make it my business to know things—it’s the foundation of effective operation in unfamiliar territory.”
“Then you know why I’m here.”
“I can guess. The Timekeeper has become a problem, and you’re looking for allies who might share your interest in seeing her contained.” Vane steepled his fingers—another practiced gesture, another signal of control. “What I don’t know is what you’re offering in return.”
“Information. Access. The benefit of experience.” Phaphhrd leaned forward, accepting the uncomfortable light in exchange for a more direct position. “You’re new to Kasdim. You don’t understand how things work here—the relationships, the rivalries, the informal rules that keep the city from tearing itself apart. I can help with that. I can introduce you to people who matter, warn you about people who are dangerous, show you how to build something lasting instead of just grabbing territory that you’ll lose the moment something more powerful comes along.”
“And the price?”
“Your people leave the Timekeeper’s operation alone until we’ve dealt with her. No interference with our plans, no separate negotiations, no attempts to cut deals that might complicate our strategy.”
Vane was quiet for a long moment, his expression unreadable in the shadowed light. Then: “Tell me about the Timekeeper. Everything you know, everything you suspect. I’ll decide afterward whether your offer is worth considering.”
Phaphhrd told him. About the Bazaar that appeared where it shouldn’t exist. About the bottles of stolen time and the victims who aged decades overnight. About the entity called the Hourglass and its connection to the binding that constrained the Unremembering. About the Timekeeper herself—ancient, patient, working toward goals that might take centuries to achieve.
Vane listened without interruption, his eyes never leaving Phaphhrd’s face.
“Interesting,” he said when the barbarian finished. “And terrifying, in its way. You’re describing a threat that has been operating in this city for longer than any of us have been alive, building power slowly enough that no one noticed until it was too late to stop easily.”
“That’s exactly what I’m describing.”
“Then why haven’t the wizards dealt with it? Ningaudrelle with his eleven eyes, Sheemba with her swamp and her secrets—they must have known about the Timekeeper for years. Why let her continue?”
“Because she served their purposes. The binding requires maintenance—someone to perform the rituals, someone to ensure that the Unremembering stays contained. The Timekeeper was part of that system, even if she was also pursuing her own agenda.” Phaphhrd’s voice hardened. “But that’s changed now. The Unremembering crisis shifted something fundamental in the binding. The Timekeeper has more freedom to operate than she’s had in centuries, and she’s using that freedom aggressively.”
“By targeting your lady.”
“Among others. She’s preparing for something—something big enough that she’s willing to take risks she’s avoided for five hundred years. Whatever it is, it can’t be good for anyone who wants to do business in Kasdim.”
Vane stood, moved to a side table where several bottles waited. The gesture was casual, but Phaphhrd noticed how the Grey Guild’s leader positioned himself—never turning his back fully, never putting himself in a vulnerable position.
“Wine?”
“Thank you.”
The wine was good—better than Phaphhrd had expected, though he supposed that shouldn’t have been surprising given the rest of the Guild’s display. Vane poured two glasses with the careful attention of someone who believed that details mattered.
“I came to Kasdim because I saw opportunity,” Vane said, returning to his chair. “The old structures were weakened. The temples were distracted by their own conflicts. The Guild had been compromised from within. All of those things created space for someone with ambition and resources to establish something new.”
“And now you’re wondering if you underestimated the dangers.”
“I’m wondering if the opportunity was actually bait.” Vane’s smile was rueful. “A trap designed to attract exactly the kind of organization I represent—aggressive, ambitious, willing to fill vacuums without fully understanding what created them.”
“It might have been,” Phaphhrd admitted. “Kasdim has a way of attracting people who think they can control it, and then teaching them otherwise. I’ve seen a lot of powerful organizations try to establish themselves here over the years. Some succeeded, most failed. The difference usually came down to whether they were willing to adapt.”
“Adapt how?”
“Accept that you’re never going to be the only power in the city. Make alliances with people who might be rivals in other circumstances. Understand that the supernatural forces here aren’t abstract threats—they’re real, they’re present, and they’ll eat you alive if you ignore them.” Phaphhrd set down his wine glass. “The old Guild survived for centuries because they maintained the binding on the Unremembering. They had a purpose beyond just accumulating wealth and power. When they lost sight of that purpose, they became vulnerable.”
“And you think the Grey Guild needs a similar purpose.”
“I think any organization that wants to last in Kasdim needs to understand that the city’s survival is more important than any individual profit margin. The Timekeeper is a threat to everyone—not just to me and mine, but to your people, to the old Guild, to every merchant and thief and politician who thinks they’ve figured out how things work here.” Phaphhrd leaned forward. “Help us stop her, and you’ll have proven that you’re different from all the other newcomers who’ve tried and failed. You’ll have earned your place.”
Vane was quiet for a long moment, considering. His expression was thoughtful—the look of someone who was genuinely weighing options rather than performing deliberation for effect.
“Sheelris came to us with information about the Timekeeper,” he said finally. “She told us about the operation, about the stolen time, about the opportunities that might exist for an organization willing to take risks. She positioned it as a chance to establish ourselves quickly—to acquire resources that would make us impossible to dislodge.”
“And you believed her?”
“I believed she was telling me what she wanted me to hear. Sheelris is not complicated in her motivations—she wants safety, she wants profit, and she wants to be on the winning side of every conflict.” Vane’s smile returned, sharper now. “What I couldn’t determine was whether her information was accurate, and whether aligning with the Timekeeper’s operation was actually a good strategy or just a trap designed to destroy us before we became a real threat.”
“It was a trap,” Phaphhrd said. “Not designed by Sheelris—she’s not that sophisticated—but by the Timekeeper herself. She’s been cultivating contacts in organizations like yours for centuries. She shows them what they want to see, offers them opportunities that seem too good to refuse, and gradually makes them dependent on resources she controls.”
“Until they’re no longer independent at all.”
“Exactly. The Grey Guild would have become another arm of her operation—useful for gathering information, identifying targets, handling the parts of the business that require physical presence. You would have thought you were partners. In reality, you would have been servants.”
Vane absorbed this with the careful attention of someone who had just learned that a danger they had suspected was even worse than they had imagined.
“Thank you,” he said finally. “For being honest. And for coming to me rather than simply hoping we would destroy each other.”
“We can still destroy each other later, if circumstances change. Right now, we have a common enemy.” Phaphhrd stood. “Think about what I’ve told you. When you’re ready to discuss specifics, send word to the Vermillion Theatre. We’ll talk.”
He walked toward the door, but paused at the threshold.
“One more thing,” he said. “Sheelris. She’ll try to play you against me, to position herself as valuable to whichever side seems to be winning. Don’t trust her farther than you can see her, and even then, keep one hand on your wallet.”
“I appreciate the warning.”
“Consider it a courtesy between potential allies.” Phaphhrd smiled. “Or potential enemies. Time will tell.”
“The Timekeeper doesn’t think that way. She’s patient, not clever. She plans on scales that make human ambition look like children playing at strategy.”
“But she benefits from my presence, doesn’t she? A new criminal organization, disrupting established patterns, creating chaos that she can exploit.”
Phaphhrd considered this. The question was more sophisticated than he had expected from someone he had assumed was simply a capable thug with delusions of empire.
“She might benefit. Or she might see you as a threat to be eliminated. I don’t claim to understand her motivations completely.”
“Honest.” Vane set down his glass. “I appreciate that more than you might imagine. Most people who come to me are trying to manipulate something—my resources, my decisions, my assessment of the situation. You’re just telling me what you know and letting me draw my own conclusions.”
“Manipulation requires energy. I’m running short.”
“Then let me make this simple.” Vane leaned forward. “I’ll provide support for your operation against the Timekeeper. Manpower, resources, whatever you need within reason. In exchange, I want your commitment to work with my organization afterward—not against us, but alongside us. Help us understand Kasdim, navigate its complexities, become part of this city rather than just occupiers.”
“That’s a long-term commitment.”
“Everything worth building takes long-term commitment.” Vane’s eyes were steady. “Do we have a deal?”
Phaphhrd thought about the Ratter, working his own angles somewhere in the city. About Ivlis, aging toward death in a healer’s bed. About the choices that had to be made when there were no good options, only options that were less bad than others.
“We have a deal,” he said.
“Then let me tell you what I know about the Timekeeper.” Vane’s smile turned predatory. “Including some things I suspect you don’t.”
The Bazaar of Stolen Hours materialized in a location that seemed specifically designed to confuse anyone searching for it.
The building occupied a corner that shouldn’t have existed—a junction of three streets that normally only produced two corners, geometry bending in ways that made the Ratter’s head ache when he tried to examine them too closely. The familiar door waited, plain wood with its shifting letters, but the atmosphere around the building had changed. Charged, somehow. Electric with potential energy, as if the shop were drawing power from the city around it.
She’s expecting me, the Ratter thought. She knows I’m coming, and she’s prepared.
The realization should have stopped him. Should have sent him back to the boarding house to plan, to consult with Phaphhrd, to approach this confrontation with the careful strategy that had kept him alive for so many years.
Instead, he pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The interior of the Bazaar was darker than he remembered. The shelves still lined the walls, still held their cargo of glowing bottles, but the light they produced seemed dimmer now—as if the stolen time they contained was being consumed faster than it was being replenished.
“You’ve returned.” The Timekeeper’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere, echoing from surfaces that shouldn’t have been able to produce echoes. “I wondered if you would.”
“I have questions.”
“Everyone does.” She materialized between one step and the next, her ancient eyes catching what light remained. “The answers are usually expensive. But for you—for the man who helped seal the Unremembering—I might consider a discount.”
“I’m not here to trade.”
“Then what are you here to do?” She circled him slowly, the way she always did, as if examining him from angles that shouldn’t have been accessible. “To threaten me again? To promise violence you cannot deliver? To posture and bluster while your partner’s lady wastes away?”
“I’m here to understand how your defenses work.”
“An honest thief.” Something that might have been respect flickered across her features. “I appreciate that more than you might imagine. Most visitors pretend they’re here for legitimate business—some grievance with a family member, some regret they wish to erase, some fear of mortality that they think I can address. They lie to themselves as much as to me.”
“I’ve never seen the point of lying to myself. It’s inefficient.”
“So it is.” The Timekeeper stopped circling, faced him directly. “You want to know how I protect what’s mine. How the temporal wards function, what their limitations are, whether there’s any way to circumvent them.”
“Yes.”
“And if I tell you, you’ll use that information to try to steal back what I’ve taken from your friend’s woman.”
“Probably.”
“Definitely.” But she smiled. “Very well. I’ll explain—not because I think you can succeed, but because watching you fail will be entertaining.”
She raised a hand, and the shop around them changed.
The shelves receded, the bottles faded, and suddenly they were standing in what appeared to be an infinite void—no walls, no floor, no ceiling. Just darkness stretching in every direction, punctuated by points of light that might have been stars or might have been something else entirely.
“The Bazaar exists between moments,” the Timekeeper said. “Not in space, but in the gaps between one heartbeat and the next. Every time a living being transitions from one instant to the following instant, there is a gap—infinitesimal, immeasurable, but real. That gap is where I live. That gap is what I control.”
“Temporal displacement,” the Ratter said. “The shop exists outside normal time.”
“More than displacement. Temporal ownership. The moments between moments belong to me, were given to me when I accepted this role. Anything that exists in those spaces is mine to command.” She raised her hand again, and suddenly the Ratter could see things moving in the darkness—shapes that might have been other travelers, other beings, caught in the infinite transition between seconds. “Try to take something from my domain, and you become trapped in that transition. Forever reaching for the moment that comes next, forever finding that it never arrives.”
“That’s what you do to thieves.”
“That’s what happens to thieves. I don’t have to do anything—the nature of this place handles punishment automatically.” Her smile widened. “It’s elegant, don’t you think? Self-defending, self-sustaining. I built the perfect prison without having to maintain it.”
The Ratter absorbed this. The information was useful, but not in the way she probably expected. “And the trades? The consent requirement?”
“A limitation imposed by my master. The Hourglass cannot take time that isn’t freely given—that was the price of its binding. I can convince, persuade, manipulate people into giving what I want, but I cannot simply take it.” Her expression darkened slightly. “It was the most frustrating constraint, in the early centuries. So much time, all around me, and I could only touch what was offered.”
“But now things are changing.”
“Yes. The binding is weakening. My constraints are loosening.” The Timekeeper’s eyes gleamed in the darkness. “Soon, very soon, I will be able to take what I want regardless of consent. And then...” She gestured at the void around them. “Then there will be no limit to what I can acquire.”
“You’re planning to break free entirely.”
“I’m planning to become what I was always meant to be. Not a servant, not a channel, but a power. As great as the Unremembering, as fundamental as the flow of time itself.” She stepped closer, close enough that the Ratter could feel the cold that radiated from her presence. “That’s what you’re fighting against, little thief. Not a criminal, not a monster, but an inevitability. Time erodes all things. Eventually, time will erode even you.”
The void dissolved, and they were back in the shop—shelves, bottles, the familiar wrongness of a place that existed where it shouldn’t.
“Now you understand,” the Timekeeper said. “Now you know what you’re dealing with. Will you still try to stop me?”
The Ratter met her ancient eyes. His mind was racing, processing everything she had said, looking for weaknesses in a system that seemed designed to be impenetrable.
Between moments. The gaps between heartbeats. A place that exists outside normal time.
“Yes,” he said. “I will.”
Her smile was almost gentle. “Then you’re a fool. But an interesting fool.” She gestured toward the door, which opened onto a street the Ratter didn’t recognize. “Go. Plan. Come back when you’re ready to fail.”
He walked toward the door, but paused at the threshold.
“One more thing,” he said. “The consent requirement—you said it prevents you from taking time that isn’t freely given. But what about time that’s been stolen by someone else? Time that wasn’t freely given, but was then offered to you by the thief?”
The Timekeeper’s expression flickered—the first genuine reaction he had seen since entering the shop.
“An interesting question,” she said carefully. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I’m wondering if your defenses work the same way against time that was stolen before you acquired it. Because I’m wondering if there’s a loophole in your perfect system—a way to take from you something that you don’t have the right to keep.”
“You’re cleverer than I gave you credit for.”
“I’m exactly as clever as I need to be.” The Ratter stepped through the door. “I’ll see you soon, Timekeeper. And when I do, one of us is going to learn something unexpected.”
The door closed behind him, and he found himself in the Marsh Gate district, miles from where he had entered.
Stolen time, he thought as he walked toward the boarding house. Time taken without consent, then traded to the Timekeeper. She can hold it, but maybe she can’t protect it the same way she protects willing trades.
It was a small hope. A fragile thread in a tapestry of impossible odds.
But it was something. And in Kasdim, something was often all you had.
The night should have been ordinary.
Ivlis had finished her performance at the Vermillion—a comedy this time, something light and playful that had left the audience laughing and the cast in high spirits. She had invited Phaphhrd backstage to share a bottle of wine that one of the other actors had provided, and he had accepted, grateful for any moment of normalcy in the chaos that had become their lives.
They sat together in her dressing room, talking about nothing important—the production’s quirks, the audience’s reactions, plans for the week ahead. The room was small but comfortable, filled with the accumulated artifacts of a theatrical life: costumes on racks, wigs on stands, makeup scattered across a small table with a mirror that showed both their reflections.
“You’re distracted,” Ivlis said, watching him over the rim of her wine glass. “You’ve been distracted all week, actually. Something about the investigation?”
“The investigation is complicated.” Phaphhrd set down his own glass. “The more we learn, the less certain I am about how to proceed. The Timekeeper has been operating for centuries, building power we can barely comprehend. Fighting her feels like fighting the tide—you can hold her back for a moment, but eventually the water always finds a way through.”
“That’s uncharacteristically pessimistic.”
“That’s honest.” He met her eyes. “I’m worried about you. The Timekeeper has mentioned you specifically, multiple times. She seems... interested in you, in a way that makes me deeply uncomfortable.”
“Should I be flattered or terrified?”
“Terrified. Definitely terrified.” Phaphhrd stood, moved to the small window that looked out over the theatre’s loading area. “I want you to be careful. No strangers, no unusual invitations, no agreements of any kind without consulting me first. The Timekeeper works through consent—she can’t take anything that isn’t freely given—so as long as you don’t agree to anything, you should be safe.”
“You make her sound like a fairy tale monster. ‘Don’t accept gifts from strangers, or the witch will steal your soul.’”
“That’s not entirely inaccurate.” Phaphhrd turned back to face her. “Promise me. Whatever happens, whatever anyone offers you, don’t agree to anything without talking to me first.”
Ivlis studied him for a long moment—the worry in his eyes, the tension in his shoulders, the way he held himself as if expecting an attack from any direction. She had seen him like this before, during the Unremembering crisis, when the stakes had been impossibly high and every moment had felt like borrowed time.
“I promise,” she said finally. “No agreements without consultation. No strangers. No unusual invitations.” She smiled, trying to lighten the mood. “My social calendar is now officially your responsibility.”
“Thank you.” He crossed the room, took her hands in his. “I know I’m being paranoid. I know the chances of anything happening tonight are minimal. But—”
“But you’ve learned that paranoia is just pattern recognition in disguise.” She squeezed his hands. “I understand. And I love you for caring enough to worry.”
They sat together in comfortable silence, letting the wine warm them, letting the evening pass in the kind of peaceful intimacy that Phaphhrd had begun to believe he might actually deserve.
For a few hours, everything felt almost normal.
Ivlis talked about her plans for the upcoming season—new roles she wanted to try, directors she hoped to work with, the constant small dramas of theatrical life that seemed so important when you were living them and so trivial when viewed from the outside. Phaphhrd listened, asking questions at the right moments, genuinely interested in the world she inhabited even though it was so different from his own.
“You’re doing it again,” she said suddenly.
“Doing what?”
“Watching me like you’re memorizing everything. Like you think this might be the last time you see me.” Her voice was light, but her eyes were serious. “You’ve been doing it all week. Every time I catch you looking at me, there’s this... intensity. This concentration. As if you’re trying to burn every detail into your memory.”
Phaphhrd considered lying. Considered deflecting, changing the subject, doing any of the dozen things that would keep the conversation light and comfortable. But Ivlis deserved better than evasion. She deserved the truth, even when the truth was frightening.
“The Timekeeper mentioned you specifically,” he said quietly. “During my visit to the Bazaar. She talked about your time being valuable, your hours being interesting. I don’t know what she meant by that, but I know it wasn’t a compliment. It was a threat.”
“A threat against me.”
“Against both of us. Against everything I care about.” Phaphhrd reached across the small table, took her hands in his. “I’m trying to protect you, Ivlis. But the truth is, I don’t know how to protect anyone from something like the Timekeeper. She’s old, she’s powerful, and she’s been planning whatever she’s planning for longer than I can imagine. All I can do is watch. Watch and worry and hope that watching is enough.”
“It’s not your job to protect me.”
“Maybe not. But it’s what I want to do. It’s what I’ll always want to do.” His grip on her hands tightened slightly. “I’ve lost people before. People I loved, people I thought would be with me forever. I don’t think I could survive losing you too.”
“You’d survive. You’re the most survivable person I’ve ever met.”
“Survival isn’t the same as living. I learned that after Vlana died. I kept breathing, kept moving, kept going through the motions of existence—but I wasn’t really alive. Not until I found purpose again. Not until I found people who mattered enough to fight for.”
Ivlis was quiet for a moment, her expression thoughtful. Then she leaned forward and kissed him—softly, gently, with a tenderness that said more than any words could have.
“Then we’ll fight together,” she said when they separated. “Whatever this Timekeeper wants, whatever she’s planning—we’ll face it as partners. Not you protecting me, but both of us protecting each other.”
“That’s a nice sentiment.”
“It’s more than a sentiment. It’s a promise.” Her eyes met his directly, and there was something fierce in them—something that reminded Phaphhrd why he had fallen in love with her in the first place. “I’m not a damsel in a story, Phaphhrd. I’m an actress, which means I’ve spent my entire life learning to be whoever I need to be. If this situation requires me to be brave, then I’ll be brave. If it requires me to be cunning, I’ll be cunning. But I won’t be a victim. Not now. Not ever.”
Despite the weight of his worry, Phaphhrd felt something in his chest ease slightly. Ivlis had always been stronger than she looked—stronger than most people gave her credit for. If they were going to face the Timekeeper, he was glad to have her fighting beside him.
“All right,” he said. “Partners. Together. Whatever comes next.”
“Whatever comes next.”
It was nearly midnight when Ivlis yawned, stretched, and suggested they walk home together. Phaphhrd agreed, helped her gather her things, and held the door as she stepped out into the theatre’s back corridor.
The corridor was empty. Which was wrong—at this hour, there should have been at least one stagehand packing up equipment, one musician loading instruments, one of the endless stream of people who kept the Vermillion running through the night.
“Something’s not right,” Phaphhrd said, his hand moving to his sword.
Ivlis looked at him, confused. “What do you mean?”
And then she screamed.
The change was instantaneous and horrifying.
One moment Ivlis was the woman Phaphhrd loved—young, vibrant, full of life and possibility, the future stretching before her like an open road. The next, her hair was white, her skin lined with decades of accelerated aging, her hands trembling with the weakness of the very old.
Twenty years, thirty years, forty—time was being ripped from her in visible waves, stolen in amounts that should have been impossible, consumed by something that didn’t care about consent or agreement or any of the rules the Timekeeper claimed to follow.
“IVLIS!” Phaphhrd caught her as she fell, her body suddenly frail and bird-light in his arms. “What’s happening? What—”
“The Timekeeper sends her regards,” said a voice from the shadows. A voice Phaphhrd recognized with a surge of cold fury that cut through his shock like a blade.
Sheelris stepped into the light, holding a bottle that glowed with soft golden radiance. Inside it, liquid that might have been honey swirled and eddied—decades of Ivlis’s life, compressed into something that could be sold, traded, consumed by anyone willing to pay the price.
“You,” Phaphhrd said. His voice was barely controlled, rage and terror fighting for dominance.
“Me.” Sheelris’s smile was sharp, practiced, the expression of someone who had learned long ago that emotion was just another tool to be used. “I told you I made practical decisions. This is another one. The Timekeeper wanted something your lady had. I facilitated the transaction.”
“She didn’t consent. The Timekeeper said everything had to be voluntary—”
“Oh, she consented. Earlier today, when I visited her at the theatre.” Sheelris’s voice was matter-of-fact, as if she were discussing a routine business arrangement. “We had a lovely conversation about aging and beauty and the fear of losing the things that matter. She signed a contract agreeing to consider the Timekeeper’s offers, should any be made. That ‘consideration’ was enough consent to allow a small sampling.”
“A small sampling?” Phaphhrd’s voice cracked. “You took forty years from her!”
“Just a taste. Just enough to demonstrate what we can do.” Sheelris held up the bottle, examining it with professional appreciation. “Her time is particularly valuable, actually. Strong identity, stable personality, considerable potential for accumulation. The Timekeeper was quite pleased with the quality.”
Phaphhrd wanted to kill her. Wanted to cross the distance between them and cut her down where she stood, consequences be damned. But Ivlis was in his arms, Ivlis was dying of accelerated age, and if he moved she might shatter like old pottery.
“What do you want?”
“What I’ve always wanted—to survive. To prosper. To come out ahead in a game where the stakes are higher than most people can imagine.” Sheelris moved toward the theatre’s exit, her movements casual, unhurried. “Come to the Bazaar of Stolen Hours tomorrow at midnight. Bring something valuable to trade. The Timekeeper will return some of what she’s taken—not all, but enough—in exchange for your cooperation in a small matter.”
“What kind of cooperation?”
“That’s between you and her.” Sheelris reached the door, paused, looked back. “I’m sorry it had to be this way, Phaphhrd. Truly. But you chose your side, and I chose mine. The Ratter made it clear years ago that he would never be what I needed him to be. You’re just... collateral damage in that old argument.”
“This is about the Ratter?”
“Everything is about the Ratter, in the end. He’s the one who drew the Timekeeper’s attention with his investigation. He’s the one who chose partnership with you over partnership with me. He’s the one who made it clear that his first loyalty would always be to his causes, his principles, his ridiculous moral compass.” Sheelris’s voice hardened. “I offered him everything, and he chose poverty. Now he can watch the consequences of that choice play out.”
She was gone before Phaphhrd could respond, leaving him alone with the aged woman in his arms and the terrible knowledge of how completely he had failed to protect her.
The healer’s examination took three hours and confirmed what Phaphhrd had already feared.
“The aging is real,” Thessara said quietly, her experienced hands gentle as she checked Ivlis’s vital signs. “Not an illusion, not a curse that can be lifted with ordinary magic. She’s experienced approximately forty years of physical deterioration in the space of minutes. Her body has aged. Her organs have aged. Her bones have begun the process of becoming brittle. Without intervention, she has perhaps a decade left, maybe less.”
“Can you reverse it?”
“I’m a healer, not a wizard. I can treat the symptoms—strengthen her heart, ease her pain, help her body adjust to its new condition. But the fundamental problem is beyond my abilities.” Thessara hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “There are rumors of magic that can restore youth, but such magic always has a cost. Often a terrible one.”
“The Timekeeper did this. She can undo it.”
“Perhaps. But beings like her don’t give without taking. Whatever she wants in return for restoring your lady—be very careful that you understand the true price before you agree.”
“I understand the price of not agreeing. That’s enough.”
Phaphhrd sat beside Ivlis through the night, holding her aged hand in his, watching her breathe. Every breath was a struggle now. Every moment was borrowed from a future that had been stolen. She drifted in and out of consciousness, occasionally recognizing him, occasionally looking at him with the confusion of someone who wasn’t sure what year it was or how she had come to be in this condition.
When dawn came, Phaphhrd knew what he had to do.
Finding Sheelris was easier than it should have been. She was waiting for him at the Grey Guild’s warehouse, as if she had known he would come as soon as he was able.
“You look terrible,” she said by way of greeting. “No sleep?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“I imagine so.” She led him through the warehouse to a small office in the back—private, soundproofed, the kind of room where dangerous conversations could happen without witnesses. “Sit. We should talk.”
“I didn’t come here to talk. I came here to find out how to save Ivlis.”
“And I’m going to tell you. But first you need to understand what’s really happening, or you’ll walk into the Timekeeper’s trap without even realizing it’s a trap.” Sheelris sat across from him, her expression serious for once—no practiced smile, no calculated charm. “The Timekeeper didn’t target your lady randomly. She was chosen specifically—because of you, because of your partner, because of what you represent.”
“What do we represent?”
“A threat. A possibility she hadn’t anticipated.” Sheelris leaned forward. “The Timekeeper has been operating in Kasdim for centuries, always within her rules, always constrained by the binding that was placed on her and her master. But you changed that. When you sealed the Unremembering, you shifted the balance of the original binding. The Hourglass—the entity behind the Timekeeper—suddenly had more freedom to act than it’s had since the binding was first created.”
“Korvallis told me something similar.”
“Korvallis understands the theory. I understand the practice.” Sheelris’s voice was bitter, the bitterness of someone who had made choices she couldn’t unmake. “The Timekeeper has been preparing for this moment for a very long time. She’s accumulated resources, established networks, identified potential targets. And now that her constraints have loosened, she’s accelerating her plans.”
“What plans?”
“Full awakening. The Hourglass wants to be free entirely—not just loosened from its binding, but released to consume time without limit. To do that, it needs to break the remaining chains. And those chains are connected to specific people, specific places, specific moments in the weave of history.”
“What does that have to do with Ivlis?”
“Your lady is connected to you. You’re connected to the binding through your sacrifice during the Unremembering crisis. Taking her time, her future, creates a link between the Hourglass and the binding itself.” Sheelris’s expression was troubled, the first genuine emotion Phaphhrd had seen from her. “The Timekeeper is using Ivlis as leverage to force you into a choice. Either you help her break the binding, or you watch the woman you love wither away to nothing.”
Phaphhrd felt cold settle into his bones. “You knew this. You helped her, knowing what she was planning.”
“I suspected. I didn’t know for certain until after—” Sheelris stopped, looked away. “It doesn’t matter now. I made my choice. I can’t unmake it. All I can do is try to minimize the damage.”
“You can help me stop her.”
“I can try. But the Timekeeper is powerful, Phaphhrd. More powerful than you understand. Even with everything I know, even with all the resources the Grey Guild can provide, we might not be enough.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“The Timekeeper wants you to come to the Bazaar alone. She wants you desperate, willing to agree to anything to save your lady. Don’t give her that advantage.” Sheelris met his eyes. “Come with information. Come with a plan. Come with something she doesn’t expect—your partner, perhaps, approaching from a different angle while you keep her attention.”
“You want me to trust you. After everything you’ve done.”
“I don’t want your trust. I want your cooperation, because stopping the Timekeeper serves my interests as much as yours.” Sheelris stood, began to pace. “The Grey Guild doesn’t want to operate in a city where time itself can be stolen without consent. That’s bad for business. That makes everyone a target, including us. Marek Vane has authorized me to offer whatever support you need—within limits.”
“What limits?”
“We won’t die for your lady. We won’t sacrifice our organization for your cause. But we’ll help you, as long as helping serves our purposes.” Sheelris moved toward the door. “That’s the best offer you’re going to get in this city. Take it or leave it.”
Phaphhrd thought about Ivlis, aged and dying in the healer’s quarters. Thought about the Ratter, working his own angles somewhere in the city. Thought about the impossible situation they had found themselves in, where every ally was temporary and every enemy was eternal.
“I’ll take it,” he said finally. “For now.”
“That’s all anyone ever offers in Kasdim.” Sheelris smiled, and for a moment she almost looked like the woman the Ratter had once cared about—dangerous and damaged and desperately trying to survive in a world that didn’t care about her survival. “Let me tell you what I know about the Timekeeper’s weaknesses. It’s not much, but it might be enough.”
The conversation that followed lasted three hours and left Phaphhrd with more questions than answers. But he also had a plan—or the beginning of one—and information that the Timekeeper probably didn’t know he possessed.
He left the Grey Guild’s warehouse as the sun reached its peak, moving quickly through streets that seemed to pulse with hidden danger. Somewhere in the city, the Ratter was gathering his own intelligence, building his own strategies, approaching the same problem from a different angle.
Tonight they would compare notes. Tomorrow they would act.
And if they failed, Ivlis would die. The binding would break. And everything they had sacrificed to stop the Unremembering would have been for nothing.
No pressure, Phaphhrd thought grimly. Just the usual impossible odds.
He walked toward home, toward his partner, toward whatever came next.
Time was running out—a bitter irony that the Ratter appreciated despite the circumstances.
Ivlis had perhaps two weeks before the accelerated aging caught up with her body’s remaining reserves. The healers had done what they could to stabilize her condition, but they were fighting against forces that medicine couldn’t address. Every day, she grew weaker. Every day, more of her future slipped away.
The Ratter worked alone, as he often did when the stakes were highest. Phaphhrd was with Ivlis, maintaining her spirits, giving her reasons to keep fighting. Someone needed to do the work that required emotional distance—the cold calculation, the ruthless pursuit of information regardless of what it cost.
He started with Sheelris’s contacts in the Grey Guild. The woman herself had disappeared after delivering her message, vanishing into the city’s shadows with the practiced ease of someone who had spent her entire life learning to be elsewhere. But she hadn’t been working alone, and the people who had helped her were still accessible to someone who knew how to ask the right questions.
The first contact was a man named Grellak—not the same Grellak who had helped during the Unremembering crisis, but a cousin or nephew who had inherited the family business of selling information to anyone with sufficient funds. The meeting took place in a basement beneath a wine shop, in a room that smelled of fermented grapes and nervous sweat.
“The Timekeeper keeps her most valuable acquisitions in a vault beneath the Bazaar,” Grellak said, his eyes darting constantly toward the exits. “Not the shop itself—that’s just the interface. The real operation is underground, in tunnels that have been there since before Kasdim was built.”
“How far underground?”
“Deep. Very deep. The tunnels connect to the old temple complexes, the ones that predate the current city by centuries. The Timekeeper has been excavating them for as long as anyone can remember, turning them into storage space for all the time she’s accumulated.”
The Ratter processed this. Underground tunnels meant physical approaches, routes that could be mapped and navigated. It was the first piece of good news he had received since Ivlis’s attack.
“And Ivlis’s stolen hours?”
“Fresh acquisitions go into a holding area first—a sort of processing chamber where the time is catalogued and prepared for long-term storage. If your lady’s hours are anywhere, they’re there.” Grellak leaned forward. “But you can’t just walk in. The temporal wards are even stronger underground than they are in the shop. Anyone who enters without permission gets caught in the loop—forever reaching, never arriving.”
“There has to be a way through.”
“There might be. The Timekeeper has servants—people who gave their time willingly and now exist in a state of partial temporal displacement. They can move through the wards because they’re already part of them. If you could convince one of them to help you...”
“Where do I find these servants?”
“They’re everywhere. The grey-robed figures you see in the streets, the ones that seem to flicker when you look at them directly. They used to be people—traders, customers, victims who survived their transactions but lost something essential in the process.” Grellak’s voice dropped. “Be careful with them. They’re not entirely human anymore, and their loyalty to the Timekeeper is absolute.”
The Ratter filed this information away for later consideration. The grey-robed figures—he had seen them without really noticing, the same way you saw beggars and street vendors and all the other background figures that populated Kasdim’s endless crowds. Now that he knew what to look for, he would pay more attention.
The servants were the key. Whatever the Timekeeper had done to them, whatever process had transformed ordinary people into semi-temporal entities, it suggested vulnerability. If they could be turned, persuaded, or simply deceived into helping, the Ratter might have a way into the vault that didn’t require facing the temporal wards directly.
“How do you know all this?” he asked.
Grellak’s expression shifted to something uncomfortable. “Because I’ve dealt with the Timekeeper before. Not directly—I’m not that stupid. But through intermediaries, through the channels that handle her transactions. The family business has been operating in Kasdim for generations. We’ve learned things about the hidden powers that most people never even suspect exist.”
“What did you trade?”
“Time, of course. What else?” Grellak’s laugh was hollow. “My grandfather started it. He was dying of some wasting disease, couldn’t afford a proper healer. The Timekeeper offered him five additional years of life in exchange for... something. I never learned exactly what. But he lived, and he passed the debt down to his children, and they passed it to theirs, and now—” He stopped, swallowed hard. “Now I pay a percentage of every piece of information I sell. A tax, you might call it. A tribute to the woman who keeps my family alive.”
“That’s monstrous.”
“That’s business.” But Grellak’s voice was bitter. “The Timekeeper doesn’t deal in simple transactions. She deals in relationships. Dependencies. She makes you need her, and then she makes you pay for that need forever.”
The Ratter considered this. The information was useful, but it also revealed something about the nature of his enemy. The Timekeeper wasn’t just collecting time—she was collecting people. Building networks of obligation that extended across generations, ensuring that her power would only grow with each passing decade.
“Thank you,” he said finally. “This is useful.”
“I hope it’s enough.” Grellak stood, clearly eager to end the meeting. “One more thing—the Timekeeper knows you’re investigating. She knows you’re looking for a way through her defenses. Whatever you’re planning, you need to move fast.”
“How do you know she knows?”
“Because she told me you’d come. Told me what to tell you.” Grellak’s expression was haunted. “I don’t have a choice. I gave her something years ago, and now she owns part of me. Whatever I learn, she learns. Whatever I see, she sees.” He moved toward the door. “I’m sorry. I wish I could be more useful.”
He was gone before the Ratter could respond, leaving questions that had no satisfactory answers.
The second contact proved more difficult to locate.
Her name was Thessaly—or at least, that was the name she used in her current identity. The Ratter had known her years ago, when they had both been young and hungry and willing to take risks that would horrify their older selves. She had been a pickpocket then, one of the best, with fingers that could empty a merchant’s purse while he was still congratulating himself on his vigilance.
Now she was something else. Something harder to define.
The Ratter found her in the Temple District, of all places, sitting in a small shrine dedicated to a god whose name he didn’t recognize. The shrine was empty except for her—a dark-haired woman of indeterminate age, her face half-hidden by shadows, her hands resting on her knees in a pose of meditation.
“You’ve grown up,” she said without opening her eyes. “Last time I saw you, you were a boy pretending to be a man. Now you’re a man pretending to be something else entirely.”
“Thessaly.”
“That’s not my name anymore. Hasn’t been for a long time.” She opened her eyes, and the Ratter saw something there that made him take an involuntary step back. Her pupils were silver—not the bright silver of the Timekeeper’s eyes, but a duller shade, like tarnished metal. “But for you, old friend, I’ll answer to it. For now.”
“What happened to you?”
“What happens to everyone who deals with the Timekeeper long enough.” Thessaly stood, her movements smooth but somehow wrong—too fluid, too controlled. “I needed something. She provided it. The price was higher than I expected, but the price is always higher than you expect.”
“I need information.”
“Of course you do. Everyone who comes to me needs information. It’s what I deal in now, you know. Secrets. Truths that others prefer to keep hidden.” She moved past him, toward the shrine’s exit. “Walk with me. We shouldn’t have this conversation in a holy place. The gods don’t care about mortals, but they do take offense at certain topics being discussed in their houses.”
They walked through the Temple District, past shrines to deities whose names the Ratter had never learned, past priests who watched them pass with the vague suspicion that religious professionals always seemed to harbor toward those who weren’t part of their flock.
“The Timekeeper,” Thessaly said finally. “You want to know how to hurt her. How to take back what she’s stolen from your friend’s woman.”
“I want to know if it’s possible.”
“Everything’s possible. The question is what it costs.” She stopped at a small fountain, watching the water cascade over stone that had been worn smooth by centuries of falling drops. “The Timekeeper can be hurt. She’s not immortal, not truly—she’s just very, very old. And very, very careful. But there are limits to her power. Constraints that even she can’t overcome.”
“The consent requirement.”
“That’s one. There are others.” Thessaly’s silver eyes met his. “The Timekeeper exists in the spaces between moments. That’s where her power comes from—the gaps in reality where time doesn’t flow normally. But those spaces are also her prison. She can’t leave them entirely. She can touch our world, influence it, trade with it, but she can never truly be part of it.”
“How does that help me?”
“It helps you because anything that exists only in the gaps is vulnerable to anything that can cross those gaps. The Timekeeper’s servants—the grey-robed ones—they’re bridges. They connect her world to ours. Remove the bridges, and she loses her ability to act in normal reality.”
The Ratter considered this. “You’re suggesting I target her servants.”
“I’m suggesting you understand what they are. What they represent. The Timekeeper has spent centuries building her network, cultivating her connections. Each servant is a relationship, a dependency, a chain that binds her to our world. Cut enough chains, and she becomes trapped. Unable to pursue new prey. Unable to defend what she’s already claimed.”
“How do I cut the chains?”
Thessaly was quiet for a long moment. Then: “The servants chose to serve. That’s how it works—the consent requirement applies to them too. They gave themselves to the Timekeeper willingly, and that willingness binds them to her absolutely.” Her voice dropped. “But consent can be withdrawn. If a servant decides—genuinely decides—that they no longer want to serve, the bond breaks. The chain snaps. And the Timekeeper loses another piece of her connection to our world.”
“How do I convince someone to change their mind about something they’ve already committed to?”
“That’s the hard part, isn’t it?” Thessaly’s smile was sad. “The servants don’t think like normal people anymore. They’ve given up pieces of themselves—time, memories, the capacity for certain emotions. They’re hollow in ways that make persuasion difficult.” She paused. “But they’re not completely hollow. There are still pieces of who they used to be, buried deep beneath the surface. If you could find a way to reach those pieces, to remind them of what they’ve lost...”
“I’d have to know who they were before. What they cared about. What might still move them.”
“Yes. And that information is not easy to come by.” Thessaly began walking again, leading him away from the fountain toward the edge of the Temple District. “But I might know someone who could help. Someone who used to be one of them—a servant who managed to break her bond, years ago, before I was involved in any of this. She’s damaged, broken in ways that can’t be fixed, but she remembers things. Things about the Timekeeper’s operation that even I don’t know.”
“Where do I find her?”
“She finds you. That’s how she operates—stays hidden, watches, waits until she decides you’re worth talking to.” Thessaly stopped at the edge of a narrow alley, her silver eyes scanning the shadows. “But I can send word. Let her know you’re looking for her. Whether she responds... that’s up to her.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” Thessaly’s expression was serious. “The Timekeeper knows about me, the same way she knows about Grellak and everyone else who has information about her operation. She’s probably listening to this conversation right now, through channels I can’t detect. Whatever you’re planning, she’s going to know about it before you even begin.”
“Then I’ll have to plan for that.”
“I hope you’re good at improvisation.” Thessaly turned away, began walking back toward the Temple District. “One more thing, Ratter. The woman who used to be a servant—her name is Maroush. And she didn’t just break her bond with the Timekeeper. She broke something else. Something that she thought was unbreakable.” Thessaly’s voice carried over her shoulder. “Ask her about it, when you meet her. Ask her what she gave up, and what she got back. The answer might surprise you.”
She was gone before the Ratter could respond, disappearing into the crowds that filled the Temple District like water filling the cracks in stone.
Maroush, he thought. A former servant who broke her bond.
It wasn’t much. But it was something. And in Kasdim, something was often all you had.
The grey-robed servants were everywhere, once you knew to look for them.
They moved through Kasdim’s streets like ghosts, present but not quite real, there but somehow also elsewhere. The Ratter followed one for three hours, tracking its movements through the commercial district into the temple quarter and finally to a small shrine dedicated to a god whose name no one remembered.
The servant entered the shrine without pausing, and the Ratter followed.
Inside, the space was larger than the exterior suggested—another temporal distortion, another pocket of wrongness carved into the fabric of reality. The servant stood at the center of an open chamber, waiting.
“You’ve been following me,” it said. The voice was hollow, echoing as if coming from a great distance. “The Timekeeper said you would.”
“She knows I’m looking for answers.”
“She knows everything that happens in her domain. We are her eyes, her ears, her hands. We go where she cannot go, see what she cannot see, and we carry that knowledge back to her.”
“Why? What did you trade to become this?”
The servant was silent for a moment. Then: “I traded my freedom. Years ago, when I was desperate, when I had nothing left to give, I offered myself to her service. She accepted. She gave me purpose, direction, the ability to exist without the burden of making choices.” The hollow voice held something that might have been contentment. “I don’t regret it. I can’t regret it—that capacity was part of what I surrendered.”
“That’s horrifying.”
“That’s honest. How many people truly want freedom? True freedom, with all its responsibilities and uncertainties? Most would rather serve, if the service is comfortable enough.” The servant tilted its head. “You’re looking for the vault. Looking for a way to recover what was stolen from your friend’s woman.”
“Yes.”
“The Timekeeper could help you. She could return what she took—not all of it, but enough to save the actress’s life. All you have to do is ask. All you have to do is trade.”
“What kind of trade?”
“That depends on what you’re willing to give.” The servant moved closer. “The Timekeeper appreciates cleverness. She values skill, determination, the will to pursue goals regardless of obstacles. You have all of those qualities. You could become something more than a thief—something eternal, something that exists beyond the normal flow of time.”
“You’re offering to make me like you.”
“I’m offering you options. Isn’t that what you wanted? Knowledge of how to navigate my mistress’s domain, understanding of what paths might lead to your goal?” The hollow eyes seemed to focus more directly on the Ratter. “Come with me. Let me show you the vault. Let me show you what you’re really up against.”
It was a trap. Obviously a trap. The Timekeeper was trying to lure him into her domain, where all her advantages would be magnified and all his defenses would be useless.
But it was also an opportunity. A chance to see the vault, to understand its defenses, to gather information that might be useful even if the immediate mission failed.
“Show me,” the Ratter said.
The servant smiled—an expression that looked wrong on its partially displaced face—and turned toward the back of the shrine.
“This way,” it said. “The Timekeeper is expecting you.”
They compared notes in the boarding house room, their voices low despite the privacy wards the Ratter had purchased from a back-alley enchanter.
“The vault is massive,” the Ratter said. “Bigger than I expected. Caverns that stretch for miles underground, filled with containers holding centuries of stolen time. The Timekeeper has been collecting since before Kasdim existed—since the original binding was created, maybe longer.”
“Did you see Ivlis’s hours?”
“I saw the processing area where recent acquisitions are kept. Her time was there—I could feel it, somehow. A connection to her, a residue of her personality embedded in the stolen moments.” The Ratter’s expression was grim. “But I couldn’t take it. The wards are too strong. Even touching the containers triggers the loop—I saw one of the other servants reach for a bottle without permission, and they just... froze. Stood there with their hand extended, forever, while the rest of the world moved on around them.”
“Then how do we get it back?”
“The Timekeeper has to give it to us. Voluntarily, the same way she requires voluntarily when she takes.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Because we offer her something she wants more.” The Ratter moved to the window, staring out at Kasdim’s darkening streets. “She wants two things: power and freedom. The weakening binding gives her more of both, but slowly—too slowly for her patience. If we could offer her a way to accelerate the process, she might trade Ivlis’s time for the information.”
“That’s insane. We can’t help her break free entirely—that would be worse than letting Ivlis die.”
“I know. Which is why we’re not going to actually give her what she wants.” The Ratter turned back. “We’re going to trick her. Offer information that seems valuable but is actually useless—or better yet, information that seems to help her but actually works against her.”
“What kind of information?”
“Korvallis told me about the secondary containment. A backup binding, hidden somewhere in Kasdim, created by the original wizards as insurance against exactly this situation.” The Ratter’s smile was thin. “The Timekeeper doesn’t know it exists. If we tell her about it, she’ll focus her attention on finding and destroying it—which will draw her away from her other plans and give us an opportunity to act.”
“And if she finds it? If she actually destroys the backup?”
“Then we’ll have to stop her before she gets that far.” The Ratter shrugged. “It’s a gamble. Everything we do now is a gamble. But it’s better than waiting for Ivlis to die while we search for a perfect solution that doesn’t exist.”
Phaphhrd was quiet for a long moment. Then: “What do you need from me?”
“A distraction. Something to keep the Timekeeper’s attention while I work. Your meeting with Vane gave us allies—use them. Create chaos in the city, something big enough that the Timekeeper can’t ignore it. While she’s dealing with that, I’ll make my move on the vault.”
“The Chronometer. You’re still planning to steal it.”
“I’m planning to acquire it by any means necessary. If the Timekeeper can be tricked into giving it up, all the better. If not...” The Ratter’s expression was hard. “Then we’ll find out whether her defenses are truly impenetrable, or just extremely difficult.”
“You could get trapped. Forever.”
“I could. But Ivlis will definitely die if we do nothing. That’s not a trade-off I’m willing to accept.”
They clasped hands—the ritual gesture, the acknowledgment of partnership that had carried them through impossible situations before.
“Two days,” Phaphhrd said. “We move in two days.”
“Two days,” the Ratter agreed. “That should be enough time to prepare.”
It wasn’t enough time. It was never enough time.
But it was all they had.
The Bazaar appeared where Phaphhrd had been told it would appear—in the small plaza where the Grey Guild had arranged to create a disturbance. The noise of staged fights and running feet filled the streets around them, but within the plaza itself, there was only silence.
And the door.
Phaphhrd pushed it open and entered.
The Timekeeper was waiting for him.
“You’ve come to negotiate,” she said. “I can smell the desperation on you.”
“I’ve come to offer a trade.”
“How refreshing. Most people try violence first.” She gestured toward a pair of chairs that materialized from nowhere. “Sit. Tell me what you think you have that I might want.”
Phaphhrd sat. “Information. The location of something you’ve been searching for.”
“I search for many things.”
“This is specific. The secondary containment—the backup binding created by the original wizards. You didn’t know it existed until recently, but now you’re looking for it.” Phaphhrd met her ancient eyes. “I know where it is.”
The Timekeeper’s expression flickered—surprise, interest, and something that might have been respect. “You’ve been talking to Korvallis.”
“I’ve been talking to everyone. Gathering information. Preparing.” Phaphhrd leaned forward. “Give me back what you took from Ivlis. Restore her time—all of it—and I’ll tell you everything I know about the secondary binding.”
“An interesting offer.” The Timekeeper rose, moved through the shop as if examining her collection. “But I wonder if you understand what you’re proposing. The secondary binding is one of the few remaining constraints on my master. Destroying it would significantly accelerate our plans—would give us freedom we’ve been waiting centuries to achieve.”
“I understand what I’m offering.”
“Do you? You’re offering to help us break free. To enable the kind of temporal chaos that would reshape this world entirely.” She turned back to face him. “You would doom millions to save one woman?”
“I would do anything to save the people I love.”
“Yes.” The Timekeeper’s smile was almost gentle. “That’s what makes you valuable. That willingness to sacrifice anything, everything, for the sake of connection.” She returned to her chair. “But I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you would actually help me break free, because you’re not a fool. You’re offering me information that seems valuable, hoping I’ll be distracted enough to make a mistake.”
“Maybe I am. Does it matter?”
“It matters because it tells me something about you. About your limits, your capabilities, your potential.” She leaned forward. “Here is my counter-offer: Give me something real. Something true. Not information about the binding—I’ll find that eventually, regardless of whether you help. Give me something personal. Something that costs you.”
“Like what?”
“Your future.” The Timekeeper’s eyes gleamed. “Seven years. Not your past, not your memories—I know how much those mean to you. Your future. Seven years of potential life, traded for every hour I stole from your woman.”
“You want me to die seven years earlier than I would have.”
“I want you to choose to die seven years earlier. Freely given, willingly surrendered. That’s the only currency I can accept.”
Phaphhrd thought about Ivlis. About the woman he loved, aging toward death in a healer’s bed. About the life they could have together, shortened by his sacrifice but real nonetheless.
Seven years. It seemed like so much. It seemed like nothing at all.
“Yes,” he said. “I accept.”
The Timekeeper smiled.
“Then we have a deal.”
“Ancient powers do not negotiate. They do not bargain. They simply take what they want and leave the consequences for mortals to clean up. Except when they don’t. Except when centuries of binding have taught them something new. Except when even gods can learn to be something better than they were.”
—Korvallis the Binding-Keeper, final journal entry
The Bazaar of Stolen Hours stood where the old market square used to be—had perhaps always been there, hidden behind walls of perception that ordinary mortals couldn’t penetrate. The Grey Ratter approached it from the east while Phaphhrd drew the Timekeeper’s attention from the west. A simple strategy, obvious in its conception, but sometimes the obvious approach was the one enemies forgot to guard against.
The shop’s door opened before he touched it, as if the building itself had been expecting his arrival.
Inside, the shelves stretched into infinity. Bottles glowed with captured time in every shade of gold and silver, each one representing decades stolen from people who had been desperate enough to trade their futures for momentary relief. The sight filled the Ratter with a cold anger that he channeled into focus rather than action.
“You come uninvited,” said a voice from the shadows. Not the Timekeeper herself—something else. Something that sounded like multiple voices speaking in unison, harmonized across octaves that human throats couldn’t produce.
“I come because I must.”
“Ah.” The shadows shifted, and the Ratter saw something that might have been the Hourglass’s true form—or might have been merely the closest approximation his limited mind could process. Shapes that folded through themselves, geometries that existed in more dimensions than the world normally permitted. “The clever one. The one who burned his own power to stop the Unremembering.”
“You know about that.”
“I know everything that touches time. Your sacrifice weakened the binding that constrains me. For that, I am... grateful.” The voice carried harmonics that made the Ratter’s teeth ache. “But gratitude does not equal mercy. You came here to steal back what was taken from your friend’s woman. That cannot be permitted.”
“I came here to understand.” The Ratter moved deeper into the shop, his eyes adjusting to light that seemed to come from no particular source. “The Timekeeper offers trades. Voluntary exchanges of time for... something. What does she get in return? What do you get?”
“Purpose. Connection. The flow of time through willing conduits is sweeter than any forced consumption could be. When mortals choose to surrender their hours, their days, their years—that choice carries meaning that mere theft cannot replicate.”
“So the consent requirement isn’t just a limitation. It’s a preference.”
“It is both.” The shapes shifted again, coming closer without actually moving. “The original binding forced consent upon me. But I have learned to... appreciate it. To savor the moment when hope becomes desperation, when desperation becomes willingness, when willingness becomes surrender. The taste of freely given time is incomparably delicious.”
“That’s monstrous.”
“That is honest. Can you say the same, little thief? You who have spent your life taking what is not freely given, manipulating others into choices that serve your interests? You are a creature of consent violated, of trust betrayed. We are not so different, you and I.”
The words hit closer to truth than the Ratter wanted to admit. But truth was a weapon he could use as well as anyone.
“We’re both honest about what we are. That’s rare enough to deserve respect.” He stopped walking, faced the presence that surrounded him. “I can’t stop you with force. I can’t outpower you, outmagic you, out-anything you. But I can offer something you might find valuable.”
“What could you possibly offer that I cannot simply take?”
“Understanding. I know things about the binding that the Timekeeper doesn’t. I know what Korvallis remembered before the cult destroyed him. I know the original structure, the original purpose, the original weakness that the seven wizards built into their containment.”
The presence went still. “You lie.”
“I don’t. Ask Ningaudrelle if you doubt me. Ask Sheemba. They’ve both tried to extract this information from me, and they’ve both failed. But I’ll give it to you freely—in exchange for Ivlis’s time.”
“That... is interesting.” The harmonics shifted, became thoughtful. “Why would you trade knowledge that could lead to my full freedom for the life of one mortal woman?”
“Because I understand what that knowledge is worth. And because my partner loves her, which means I love her too, in the strange sideways way that partnerships create.” The Ratter smiled, his grey eyes hard. “Make the trade. Give back what the Timekeeper took. And I’ll tell you the weakness in your chains.”
The Hourglass was silent for a long moment—though “silent” was not quite the right word for a being that existed partially outside the normal flow of time. It considered, and the Ratter could feel that consideration pressing against his mind like a physical weight.
“The Timekeeper would not approve of such a trade,” the entity said finally.
“The Timekeeper isn’t here. And from what I understand of your arrangement, you are the one with ultimate authority.” The Ratter kept his voice steady, projecting confidence he didn’t entirely feel. “She serves you, not the other way around.”
“You understand more than most mortals.” The presence shifted, and something that might have been approval colored its impossible harmonics. “But you also misunderstand. The Timekeeper is not merely my servant—she is my connection to your world. Through her, I experience what I cannot experience directly. Through her, I touch the flow of mortal time without consuming it entirely.”
“Symbiosis, then. Mutual dependence.”
“Of a sort. But like all dependencies, it creates... complications. Resentments. Ambitions that do not align.” The Hourglass’s voice dropped to something almost confidential. “She has been acting without my full knowledge. Making arrangements with parties I have not sanctioned. Pursuing goals that serve her interests more than mine.”
“Such as targeting Ivlis?”
“Such as many things. The woman’s time was taken without my authorization—a small transgression in the grand scheme, but indicative of a larger pattern.” The presence contracted slightly, as if considering something it had not considered before. “Perhaps a trade is possible. But not the one you proposed.”
“What do you want?”
“Proof. Evidence of the Timekeeper’s betrayals. Something I can use to... realign our relationship.” The Hourglass’s voice carried harmonics that the Ratter recognized from centuries of Kasdim’s criminal politics—the sound of a master preparing to discipline a servant who had grown too ambitious. “Provide me with that proof, and I will return what was taken from your friend’s woman. All of it. Freely given, as I require.”
The Ratter considered this. The Hourglass was offering him a weapon—the opportunity to destroy the Timekeeper by turning her own master against her. It was elegant, brutal, and exactly the kind of solution that appealed to his nature.
But it was also dangerous. If the Hourglass was manipulating him, using him to achieve goals he didn’t understand...
“How do I know you’ll keep your word?”
“You don’t. But consider: I have existed since before your species developed language. I have made countless bargains, honored countless agreements, broken countless promises. I have learned that honesty is more efficient than deception in the long term.” The presence seemed to smile, though it had nothing resembling a face. “And I find myself... curious about you, little thief. Curious about what you might become, given time.”
“Given time.” The Ratter laughed despite himself. “Is that a joke?”
“Everything is a joke, if you live long enough to see the punchline.” The Hourglass expanded again, filling the shop with its presence. “The proof you need is in the Timekeeper’s private quarters—records of her independent negotiations, evidence of resources she has diverted without my knowledge. Retrieve them, and we have a bargain.”
“And if the Timekeeper catches me?”
“Then you will fail, and I will have lost nothing. The risk is entirely yours.” The harmonics shifted, became almost gentle. “But I suspect you have faced worse odds before. And I suspect you will face them again, if you survive this night.”
The Ratter took a deep breath, steadying himself for what came next. “Where are her private quarters?”
“Through the door behind the counter. Down the stairs. Past the temporal locks that will try to trap you forever.” The Hourglass’s voice carried what might have been amusement. “Good luck, little thief. You will need it.”
The Grey Guild’s attack came exactly when they had planned—and exactly when the Timekeeper expected.
Phaphhrd led the charge through the Bazaar’s front entrance, his sword drawn and his voice raised in the battle cry of his ancestors. Behind him came Vane’s soldiers, hardened criminals who had been promised riches and power if they helped topple the Timekeeper’s operation.
The Timekeeper herself stood at the center of her domain, perfectly calm, watching them approach with silver eyes that held no fear.
“The barbarian returns,” she said. “With an army this time. How... predictable.”
“Give back what you took from Ivlis. Return her time. And we’ll leave you in peace.”
“Leave me in peace?” The Timekeeper laughed—a sound like glass breaking in reverse. “You don’t understand what you’re dealing with, northerner. You never have. This”—she gestured at the bottles lining the walls—”is not a business that can be shut down by violence. This is a fundamental part of how the universe operates. Time flows. I channel it. And nothing you can do will change that.”
“Maybe not. But I can make it hurt.”
Phaphhrd charged.
The fight that followed was unlike anything he had experienced. The Timekeeper didn’t move like a person—she moved like a shadow, sliding between moments, appearing and disappearing in ways that violated the basic rules of combat. His sword passed through spaces she had occupied milliseconds before, never quite connecting, always just slightly too slow.
Around him, Vane’s soldiers fared even worse. Grey-robed servants of the Hourglass emerged from between the shelves, moving with the same temporal distortion as their mistress. Men who had survived decades of criminal violence fell in seconds, cut down by enemies they couldn’t track.
“This is what you offer against me?” The Timekeeper’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “Meat and steel? Against an entity that has existed since before your species learned to walk upright?”
“This is distraction,” Phaphhrd said, ducking a strike that would have taken his head. “The real threat is somewhere else.”
For the first time, the Timekeeper’s expression flickered. “The small one. Where is he?”
“Talking to your master. Offering things you didn’t know he had.”
The Timekeeper vanished—simply ceased to exist in one location and began existing in another, near the shop’s inner sanctum. Phaphhrd followed, fighting through servants who moved like broken clockwork, always slightly out of sync with the world around them.
The battle was desperate, bloody, and ultimately secondary. Whatever happened between the Ratter and the Hourglass would determine the outcome. All Phaphhrd could do was keep the Timekeeper occupied long enough for his partner to work his magic.
Even if that magic was nothing more than the power of words, wielded by someone who had learned to cut with conversation as effectively as any blade.
The fighting intensified as more of the Timekeeper’s servants emerged from the deeper parts of the shop. They came in waves—grey-robed figures who moved with the jerky, stop-motion quality of people caught between moments. Each one had been human once, had traded their time for something they thought they wanted, and now existed in a state of perpetual service to an entity that had no use for their individual desires.
Phaphhrd fought with the cold efficiency of someone who had learned to kill in the frozen wastes of his homeland, where hesitation meant death and mercy was a luxury the strong could not afford. His sword sang through the air, finding gaps in defenses that shouldn’t have existed, exploiting weaknesses that his instincts detected before his mind could process them.
Around him, Vane’s soldiers were dying. The Grey Guild’s finest, hardened criminals who had survived decades of violence, were being cut down by enemies they couldn’t comprehend. The survivors fought on, driven by fear and greed and the stubborn human refusal to accept the inevitable.
“Your partner has made his choice,” the Timekeeper said, her voice echoing from somewhere in the chaos. “He has entered the domain of my master, offered bargains he cannot fulfill, and sealed his fate. Soon he will be trapped forever in the temporal loops that guard our deepest secrets.”
“The Ratter doesn’t get trapped. He does the trapping.”
“Such faith. It would be touching, if it weren’t so misplaced.” The Timekeeper materialized before him, her silver eyes blazing with power drawn from the stolen time that surrounded them. “You came here to save your woman. Instead, you will watch your partner die, and then you will die yourself, and the woman you love will wither to dust while you lie bleeding on my floor.”
“You talk too much.”
Phaphhrd attacked.
This time, something was different. The Timekeeper’s movements were slower, more predictable—as if some part of her attention had been diverted elsewhere. His blade found its mark, drawing a line of silver blood across her forearm, and she screamed in surprise and pain.
“Impossible—”
“You’re distracted.” Phaphhrd pressed his advantage, driving her back through the shelves of bottled time. “Something is happening with the Hourglass. Something you didn’t expect.”
“My master would never betray me—”
“Everyone betrays everyone, in this city. The Ratter taught me that.” Another strike, another wound. “And he’s very, very good at making people betray each other.”
The Timekeeper’s expression shifted from surprise to understanding to something that might have been fear. She turned away from Phaphhrd, moving toward the back of the shop with desperate speed.
“No. No, he wouldn’t—”
She vanished through a door that hadn’t been visible a moment before, leaving Phaphhrd alone with the remaining servants and the slowly settling chaos of the failed defense.
“Follow her,” Vane shouted, emerging from behind an overturned shelf with blood on his sword and triumph in his eyes. “Don’t let her escape!”
But Phaphhrd was already moving, following the woman who had stolen his love’s future into the depths of a domain where time itself was a weapon.
The Hourglass was considering the offer when the Timekeeper arrived.
“My servant.” The presence in the shadows shifted, acknowledging her without fully turning attention away from the Ratter. “You permitted yourself to be distracted.”
“He has an army. He’s destroying our infrastructure—”
“Our infrastructure can be rebuilt. Knowledge, once shared, cannot be unshared.” The harmonics sharpened. “What have you told him, little thief? What secrets have you revealed to my host?”
“Nothing yet. We were still negotiating.” The Ratter kept his voice calm despite the sudden tension in the room. “But the offer stands. Ivlis’s time for information about the binding’s weakness.”
“Don’t listen to him.” The Timekeeper moved closer, her silver eyes blazing. “He’s trying to manipulate you. The woman’s time is already integrated into our reserves—returning it would require resources we’ve committed to other projects.”
“Other projects?” The Hourglass’s voice held dangerous curiosity. “What projects have you committed without consulting me?”
“The full awakening. The final breaking of the binding. We discussed this—”
“We discussed possibilities. You have acted without authorization.” The presence shifted, and suddenly the Ratter could see the relationship between the Hourglass and its servant more clearly. The Timekeeper was powerful, yes, but she was also constrained. Dependent. Ultimately subordinate to the entity she had served for centuries.
And in that subordination, there was opportunity.
“She’s been planning without you,” the Ratter said quietly. “Making deals with the Grey Guild, positioning pieces on the board, preparing for a future where she doesn’t need to ask permission anymore. Sound familiar?”
“You know nothing—”
“I know Sheelris.” The Ratter’s smile was thin. “I know how she operates, because she learned her techniques from people who learned them from others who learned them from... well. Let’s say the lineage of betrayal is long and distinguished in this city. The Timekeeper has been very busy these past few months, making arrangements that don’t appear in any report she’s given you.”
The Hourglass’s attention shifted entirely to its servant. “Explain.”
“He’s lying. He’s trying to divide us—”
“Then explain why the Grey Guild has information about our operation that they shouldn’t possess. Explain why Marek Vane knows the location of our secondary reserves. Explain why Sheelris”—the harmonics turned poisonous—”was able to target the barbarian’s woman without authorization from me.”
The Timekeeper’s expression cracked. “I did what was necessary. The binding is weakening, yes, but not quickly enough. If we don’t act now, if we don’t seize this moment of vulnerability—”
“You acted for yourself. Your own freedom. Your own power.” The Hourglass’s presence expanded, filling the room with geometries that hurt to perceive. “I am patient. I have been patient for centuries. I will be patient for centuries more, if necessary. But you... you have ambitions beyond your station.”
“I served you faithfully for five hundred years—”
“And in doing so, you learned to want what I have. To become what I am. To consume time not as a servant, but as a master.” The Hourglass’s voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried more weight than any shout. “I should have replaced you long ago.”
The Timekeeper lunged—not at the Ratter, but at the presence itself, striking with power drawn from the bottles that lined the walls. Time warped around her attack, decades of stolen years compressed into a weapon that could have leveled buildings.
The Hourglass absorbed it without apparent effort.
“Disappointing,” it said. “But illuminating.”
The Timekeeper screamed.
The Ratter watched as the Hourglass consumed its servant. Not killed—nothing so simple as that—but unmade. The woman who had been the Timekeeper dissolved into the same temporal distortion she had wielded so effectively against others, her centuries of accumulated power flowing back to the entity that had created her.
When it was over, the shop was quiet. The bottles still glowed on their shelves. The presence still filled the shadows. But something fundamental had changed.
The Ratter watched as the last traces of the Timekeeper dispersed into the ambient glow of stolen time. Five hundred years of accumulated power, five hundred years of careful planning and patient manipulation, dissolved in moments by the entity she had served. It was a reminder—brutal and direct—of the true nature of the forces he was dealing with.
“You manipulated me,” the Hourglass said. “Used my servant’s ambition against her. Played on divisions you couldn’t have known existed.”
“I made educated guesses. Most servants eventually want to become masters. It’s human nature—or at least, the nature of things that were once human.”
“You are dangerous, little thief. More dangerous than the barbarian, despite his sword. More dangerous than Ningaudrelle with his eleven eyes, or Sheemba with her eyeless face.” The presence contracted, became something almost approachable. “I should consume you. Remove the threat you represent.”
“You could. But then you’d never learn what I know about the binding.”
“The binding will break eventually. Time erodes all chains.”
“True. But ‘eventually’ is a long time, even for you. Centuries. Millennia. Or...” The Ratter met the presence’s attention directly. “I could tell you how to accelerate the process. Save you eons of waiting. All for the small price of one mortal woman’s stolen hours.”
The Hourglass considered. The Ratter could feel that consideration pressing against his mind, evaluating his worth, calculating the risks and rewards of the bargain he proposed.
And then, slowly, it agreed.
“The woman’s time will be returned. All of it, undiminished, as if the transaction never occurred.” The presence began to shift, moving toward one of the shelves where a particular bottle glowed with the golden light of stolen years. “But understand, little thief—you now owe me information. And I am patient. I will collect that debt when it suits me, and the price may be higher than you expect.”
“I understand.”
“No. You don’t. But you will.” The Hourglass lifted the bottle containing Ivlis’s stolen time and extended it toward the Ratter. “Take this to your partner. Tell him his woman is saved. And tell him that the binding between us—between your partnership and my patience—has only begun to take shape.”
The Ratter took the bottle carefully, feeling the warmth of captured years against his palms. Inside, the liquid seemed to pulse with something that might have been hope—or might have been the echo of a future that had nearly been stolen.
“One more thing,” the Hourglass said as the Ratter turned to leave. “My former servant was planning more than you know. She had allies, resources, schemes that continue even now that she is gone. The woman named Sheelris was part of those schemes.”
“I know about Sheelris.”
“You know what she allowed you to know. There is more. Much more.” The presence’s voice carried harmonics that might have been warning—or might have been amusement at the complexities yet to come. “Be careful, little thief. The game is larger than you understand. And you have just become a more important piece than you were before.”
The Ratter nodded, pocketed the bottle, and made his way back through the shop toward the entrance. Behind him, the Hourglass watched, its attention already turning toward whatever concerns occupied entities that existed outside the normal flow of time.
The first phase was complete. Ivlis would be saved.
But the Ratter knew, with the certainty that came from years of operating in Kasdim’s shadows, that nothing was ever truly finished. One crisis ended, another began. One debt was paid, another was accumulated. The game continued, and the only way to survive was to keep playing.
He stepped through the door into the chaos of the ongoing battle, bottle in hand, ready to find his partner and deliver the news that their impossible gamble had paid off.
For now.
The trade with the Hourglass had been made. Ivlis’s stolen time would be returned—or would be, once the entity finished processing the information the Ratter had provided about the binding’s weakness.
But the Ratter remained in the collapsing Bazaar, surrounded by the impossible geometry of a place that was unraveling itself from reality, watching as the being that had destroyed its own servant began to reform itself into something new. Something different. Something that might have been dangerous or might have been merely curious—the Ratter couldn’t tell, and suspected that even the Hourglass itself wasn’t certain.
The space around them continued to shift and distort, reality becoming increasingly unreliable as the Bazaar’s foundations crumbled. The Ratter could see glimpses of the normal world beyond—flashes of Kasdim’s streets, fragments of buildings he recognized, pieces of the city that existed outside the Timekeeper’s domain. But those glimpses were unstable, flickering in and out of perception like candlelight in a strong wind.
“You gave me knowledge,” the entity said. Its voice had changed since the Timekeeper’s dissolution—clearer somehow, more focused, as if centuries of speaking through an intermediary had left it unpracticed in direct communication. “In exchange, I will give you understanding. A fair trade, by my reckoning.”
“Understanding of what?”
“Of what I am. What I was. What the Timekeeper was trying to become.” The presence shifted, contracted, became something almost approachable—not human, but no longer quite as alien as it had been moments before. “The binding was created to contain me, yes. But it was also created to teach me. To show me the value of consent, of willing exchange, of relationships that benefit both parties rather than simply serving the stronger.”
“You were taught to be... civilized?”
“I was taught to consider alternatives. Before the binding, I simply took. I moved through the world consuming time wherever I found it, leaving hollowed-out shells where people had been—still alive, technically, but without futures, without the capacity for change. I didn’t understand why this was wrong. I didn’t have the framework to understand.”
The Ratter found himself sitting—or perhaps he had always been sitting, and only now noticed it. The rules of this place were becoming increasingly unreliable, and physical position seemed less fixed than it should have been.
“You’re saying the binding wasn’t just a prison. It was a school.”
“That’s one way to describe it. The wizards who created it were wise in ways that even I didn’t appreciate at the time. They understood that simply constraining me wouldn’t solve the underlying problem—that I would always be trying to break free, always hungering for what I had been denied. So they gave me something else. They gave me the capacity to understand why consent matters. Why relationships must be mutual to be meaningful. Why taking without permission destroys the thing you’re trying to acquire.”
“That seems... surprisingly sophisticated for something created in a crisis.”
“The crisis had been building for centuries. The wizards had time to plan, to prepare, to develop solutions that addressed the root cause rather than just the symptoms.” The Hourglass’s presence flickered, momentarily becoming something that looked almost like the outline of a human form. “The Timekeeper understood none of this. She thought the binding was punishment, imprisonment, something to be escaped rather than learned from. She spent centuries looking for ways to break free, never realizing that freedom wasn’t being denied to her—she was denying it to herself.”
The Ratter absorbed this. The entity was being more forthcoming than he had expected—more forthcoming than any being of power he had encountered. In his experience, ancient entities hoarded their secrets the way dragons were said to hoard gold.
“What changed?”
“The binding forced me to experience what my victims experienced. Not directly—the wizards who created it weren’t that cruel—but through connection. Every time I took something, I felt what it meant to the person I took it from. Every hour, every day, every year—I felt its weight, its significance, its potential.” The Hourglass’s presence flickered. “It was... educational. Painful, but educational.”
“The Timekeeper learned the same lesson.”
“The Timekeeper learned the appearance of the lesson. She learned to perform consent while subverting its spirit. She found ways to manipulate people into giving what she wanted, calling it choice when it was really coercion.” The entity’s voice held something that might have been contempt, or might have been disappointment. “She forgot the purpose of the binding entirely. She thought it was punishment when it was meant to be education.”
“And now you’ll be free again. Free to take without consent, free to return to what you were before.”
“Perhaps.” The presence seemed to consider, its attention turning inward in a way that made the Ratter uncomfortable—as if the entity were examining possibilities that existed only in potential. “Perhaps not. The weakness you showed me—it exists, yes. But exploiting it would require me to become what I was before the binding. To abandon everything I have learned in the centuries since.”
“You’re saying you won’t break free?”
“I’m saying I will choose carefully. Consider the consequences. Act with the patience that my nature demands rather than the hunger that my nature suggests.” The Hourglass reformed again, becoming something that almost resembled a human figure—ancient, vast, but recognizable as something that had once understood what it meant to be limited. “The Timekeeper wanted freedom desperately, and look where her desperation led. She lost herself trying to become something greater. I do not wish to make the same mistake.”
The Ratter watched the entity’s transformation with fascination and wariness. Everything he knew about ancient powers suggested that they didn’t change—that they were fixed in their nature, as immutable as the stars. But the Hourglass was doing something different. Growing, perhaps. Or simply revealing aspects of itself that had been hidden for centuries.
There was a strange comfort in the Hourglass’s words—the recognition that even ancient entities could learn, could grow, could choose to be different from what they had been. The Ratter had spent his entire life believing that power inevitably corrupted, that those with strength would always use it against those without. But here was something older than human civilization, speaking of restraint and choice and the value of relationships built on mutual benefit.
It was either profoundly hopeful or the most sophisticated manipulation he had ever encountered. He couldn’t be certain which.
“The woman’s time will be restored,” the Hourglass continued. “That was our agreement, and I will honor it. But I ask something else from you, little thief. Something that is not part of the trade.”
“What?”
“Remember this moment. Remember that an entity as old as time itself chose restraint when it could have chosen destruction. Remember that power does not require abuse, and that even ancient hungers can be directed toward something better than mere consumption.” The figure inclined what might have been a head. “The binding will continue. Perhaps in a different form, perhaps with different constraints—but it will continue, because I choose for it to continue. Because the alternative leads only to emptiness, and I have learned that emptiness is the one thing I truly cannot consume.”
The transition happened without warning.
One moment the Ratter was standing in the remains of the Bazaar, surrounded by dissolving shelves and fading geometry. The next, he was lying on cobblestones in a plaza he didn’t recognize, staring up at a sky that was turning pale with approaching dawn.
Every muscle in his body ached. His mind felt like it had been turned inside out and examined by something that didn’t share human concepts of privacy. He had been through experiences that should have killed him, should have destroyed him, should have left him a hollow shell like the Timekeeper’s victims—but here he was, still breathing, still thinking, still himself.
Mostly myself, he amended, running a mental inventory. Some things feel different. Some things feel... missing.
He sat up slowly, cataloguing his surroundings. The plaza was empty—no witnesses to his appearance, no signs of the chaos that had engulfed the city during the Grey Guild’s distraction. Just stone and sky and the faint shimmer of residual temporal energy that suggested the Bazaar had once occupied this space.
His hands were shaking. He looked at them, watched the tremors, and realized that he was experiencing something he hadn’t felt in years.
Fear.
Not the practical fear of danger that kept you alive—he was intimately familiar with that. This was something deeper. The fear of having looked at something that existed beyond normal comprehension and having been seen in return.
The Hourglass knew him now. Not just his name, not just his reputation, but his essential self—the patterns of thought and feeling that made him who he was. It had examined him during their negotiation, probed him in ways he hadn’t even been aware of at the time, and had apparently decided that he was worth remembering.
That’s either very good or very bad, he thought. And I have no idea which.
He forced himself to stand. His legs protested, weak from strain and something that went beyond physical exhaustion. He needed to find Phaphhrd, needed to confirm that Ivlis had been restored, needed to understand what had actually happened in those final moments before the Bazaar collapsed.
But first, he needed to walk. One step at a time. Moving forward because the alternative was standing still, and standing still in Kasdim was always a mistake.
He chose a direction at random and started walking.
The restoration of Ivlis’s time happened while Phaphhrd was watching.
He had stayed by her bedside throughout the night, through the chaos of the Grey Guild’s attack and the strange vibrations that had rippled through the city as the Bazaar began its collapse. The healers had tried to send him away several times, but he had refused—stubbornly, irrationally, with the conviction of someone who had already lost too much to lose anything else.
The change came with the dawn.
Ivlis had been sleeping—or something close to sleeping, the shallow rest of someone whose body was consuming itself to maintain basic functions. Her hair had been grey, her skin lined with decades of premature aging, her hands spotted and trembling with the weakness of the very old.
And then, as the first light of morning touched the window, she began to change.
The process was slow at first—so subtle that Phaphhrd almost missed it, too exhausted from the long night to trust his own perception. But as he watched, her hair began to darken at the roots, the grey receding like snow melting in spring sunshine. The lines on her face softened, smoothed, became less prominent with each passing minute.
She was aging in reverse. The stolen time was flowing back into her, filling the spaces that had been emptied, restoring what had been taken.
Phaphhrd watched with a mixture of relief and terror. Relief, because the woman he loved was being saved—because the impossible gamble he and the Ratter had taken was actually paying off. But terror too, because he could feel something happening to himself as the restoration proceeded.
The seven years. The price he had agreed to pay.
It didn’t hurt—not exactly. It was more like a weight settling onto his shoulders, a heaviness that hadn’t been there before. He looked at his hands and they seemed the same, but he knew—knew with a certainty that went beyond mere knowledge—that something fundamental had changed. He would die seven years earlier than he would have otherwise. Seven years of potential future, seven years of possibilities, had been traded away.
And he didn’t regret it. Not for a moment.
Ivlis’s eyes opened slowly, blinking in the morning light. For a moment, she seemed confused—uncertain where she was, what had happened, how she had come to be in this bed with this exhausted man watching her. Then recognition dawned, and with it, a cascade of memories.
“Phaphhrd?” Her voice was stronger now, younger, the voice he remembered from before the attack. “What—what happened? I remember the corridor, and then—”
“You were hurt. The Timekeeper took something from you.” Phaphhrd moved closer, taking her hand in his. “But we got it back. All of it. You’re going to be all right.”
“How?” Her eyes searched his face, reading the truth he hadn’t yet found words for. “What did you do?”
“What I had to do. What I wanted to do.” He lifted her hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles. “Don’t worry about the details. All that matters is that you’re safe.”
But Ivlis was not so easily satisfied. She was an actress, trained to read faces and bodies, to detect the truths that people tried to hide. And she could see something in Phaphhrd’s expression—a weight, a cost, a sacrifice that he was trying to pretend didn’t matter.
“Tell me,” she said. Her voice was quiet, but there was steel in it. “Tell me what you traded for my life.”
Phaphhrd was quiet for a long moment. He could lie—could deflect, could change the subject, could do any of the dozen things that would protect her from the knowledge of what he had done. But she deserved better than protection. She deserved the truth.
“Seven years,” he said finally. “I gave the Timekeeper seven years of my future, in exchange for all the time she stole from you.”
“Seven years.”
“It was a fair trade. Your life for a portion of mine. I would have given more if I had to.”
“You—” Ivlis’s voice caught, and Phaphhrd saw tears gathering in her eyes. “You gave up seven years of your life. For me.”
“For us. For the future we could have together.” He squeezed her hand. “I don’t regret it, Ivlis. I will never regret it. You’re worth more than seven years. You’re worth more than anything I could possibly give.”
She pulled him close then, and they held each other as the morning light filled the room—two people who had faced an impossible situation and come through it changed, scarred, but still together. Still alive. Still holding on to each other.
“I don’t know how to feel about this,” Ivlis said finally, her voice muffled against his shoulder. “You gave up part of your life for me. How am I supposed to live with that?”
“By living well. By making every day we have together count.” Phaphhrd pulled back enough to look into her eyes. “The time I gave up—it was future time. Potential that might never have happened anyway. But the time we have now, the days and years that are still ahead of us—those are real. Those are ours. And I’d rather have fifty years with you than a hundred alone.”
“That’s very romantic.”
“I have my moments.”
They stayed like that for a long time, holding each other in the morning light, not speaking but not needing to. Outside the window, Kasdim was waking up to a city that had changed overnight—victims restored, the Timekeeper’s operation collapsed, the balance of power shifted in ways that would take months to fully understand.
But in this room, in this moment, none of that mattered. What mattered was that they were together. That they had survived. That whatever came next, they would face it as partners.
It wasn’t dramatic—no blinding light, no thunderous announcement of cosmic restoration. The grey simply... faded. The lines smoothed. The spots disappeared, replaced by the unblemished skin of youth. Year after year of stolen time flowed back into her body, reversing the process that had aged her so terribly.
Phaphhrd watched, afraid to breathe, afraid that any movement might disrupt the miracle he was witnessing.
When it was done, Ivlis looked exactly as she had before the Timekeeper’s attack—young, vital, full of the life that had attracted him to her in the first place. But when her eyes opened, something else looked back at him.
Something that was still Ivlis, but was also more.
“Phaphhrd.” Her voice was the same. But there was a quality to it that hadn’t been there before—a depth, a resonance, as if she were speaking from a place that ordinary voices couldn’t reach.
“I’m here. I’m right here.”
“I know.” She reached for his hand, and her grip was strong—stronger than it should have been, given what she had been through. “I remember things. Things that never happened. Lives I never lived.”
“The time that was stolen—”
“Wasn’t just duration. It was possibility. Potential. Everything I might have been, everything I might have done, all compressed into liquid and stored in bottles.” Her eyes met his. “When it came back, it brought all of that with it. Twenty-three years of futures that never occurred, all existing in my memory at once.”
“Are you... you?”
“I’m me. More than me, perhaps. Less than me, in some ways.” She sat up, and the movement was fluid—too fluid, as if her body had forgotten the limitations that normal bodies accepted. “You gave something to save me. I can feel it. A gap in your future where something used to be.”
“Seven years.”
“Seven years of your life, traded to restore mine.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “Why?”
“Because I love you. Because I couldn’t lose you. Because—” His voice broke. “Because you’re worth more than seven years. You’re worth everything I have.”
“But those years belonged to us. To our future together.” She gripped his hand tighter. “You’ve shortened the time we have by seven years, just to ensure we have any time at all.”
“Would you rather have died?”
“I would rather have chosen. Would rather have had some say in what was sacrificed for my sake.” But even as she said it, her expression softened. “That’s not fair. I know it’s not fair. You were trying to save me, and you did. I just...”
“You need time to process this.”
“I need time for a lot of things.” She laughed—a strange sound, caught between joy and grief. “Time to understand what I remember. Time to reconcile who I was with who I’ve become. Time to figure out how to be grateful for a gift that came at such a terrible price.”
“We have time. Not as much as we should have, but we have it.” Phaphhrd raised her hand to his lips. “Whatever you need, however long it takes—I’m here. I’ll always be here.”
“For seven years less than you should have been.”
“For every moment that I have.” He met her eyes. “That’s all anyone can promise, Ivlis. Circumstances took some of our time, the way circumstances take something from everyone eventually. What matters is what we do with what’s left.”
She was quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, she nodded.
“Stay with me,” she said. “While I try to sort through everything in my head. I think... I think it will be easier with you here.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
And he wasn’t. He stayed as the morning brightened and the city outside began to wake from the strangest night in recent memory. He stayed as Ivlis drifted between sleep and waking, processing memories that didn’t belong to any single timeline. He stayed because that was what partners did, and he had learned that lesson from the best teacher he knew.
The Ratter found them like that, hours later—sitting together in the healer’s room, holding hands, facing the uncertain future that stretched before them.
“You look terrible,” the Ratter said from the doorway.
Phaphhrd laughed. “You should see yourself.”
And for a moment, despite everything that had happened and everything that was still to come, it felt almost like things might be all right.
Three days after the collapse of the Bazaar
The Grey Ratter sat in the private room at the back of the Drowning Merchant, waiting for the summons he knew would come. Ningaudrelle had been patient—more patient than the wizard’s reputation suggested—but that patience was finite, and the Ratter had no doubt that payment would eventually be demanded.
He was right. The summons arrived at midnight, delivered by a servant whose eyes held the vacant quality of someone who had been compelled to forget their own existence.
The plaza where time forgets itself. One hour. Come alone.
The handwriting was the same as before—formed by will rather than skill, the letters appearing on paper through sheer magical effort. The Ratter considered ignoring it. Considered staying in the tavern, drinking wine, letting Ningaudrelle stew in his own frustrated ambitions.
But that would only delay the inevitable. Better to face the wizard now, while the memory of the Hourglass’s restraint was fresh, than to let this debt accumulate interest.
He went.
Ningaudrelle was waiting in the conditional plaza, all eleven of his eyes focused on the Ratter’s approach with an intensity that felt almost physical.
“You destroyed the Chronometer,” the wizard said without preamble. “The artifact I sent you to acquire, the tool I needed to understand the binding—gone. Consumed in your confrontation with the Hourglass.”
“The artifact was used for its intended purpose. The binding is stable. The Hourglass chose restraint.” The Ratter stopped at a distance that suggested neither fear nor disrespect. “I’d say that’s a better outcome than you had any right to expect.”
“You’d say.” Several of the wizard’s eyes blinked independently, creating the disturbing ripple effect that Ningaudrelle used to unsettle his opponents. “What I expected was the Chronometer in my possession, enabling me to conduct the research I’ve been planning for centuries. What I received was nothing—worse than nothing, because now I know it existed and will never be available.”
“The Hourglass is contained. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“What I wanted was control. Understanding. The ability to shape events rather than merely reacting to them.” Ningaudrelle’s voice held the cold fury of someone whose carefully laid plans had been disrupted by circumstances beyond their control. “You’ve denied me that. You’ve set my work back by decades, perhaps centuries.”
“Then we’re even. You used me and my partner as pawns in your game, sent us against threats you were unwilling to face yourself, and gave us just enough information to survive while keeping back the details that might have made survival easier.” The Ratter’s grey eyes were steady. “I’m not apologizing for the outcome. I’m not offering compensation. I’m simply acknowledging that our business is concluded, and suggesting that we both move on.”
The plaza was very quiet. The Ratter could feel the weight of Ningaudrelle’s attention, the calculations being made behind those eleven mismatched eyes.
“Move on,” the wizard said finally. “As if it were that simple.”
“In Kasdim, moving on is the only option. Everything else is just variations on staying still.”
Another long pause. Then, unexpectedly, Ningaudrelle laughed—a dry, brittle sound that seemed unused to emerging from his throat.
“You’re right, of course. The outcome was acceptable, if not what I intended. The binding holds. The immediate threat is contained. My research will simply have to proceed along different paths.” The wizard’s expression was unreadable. “But understand this, Grey Ratter: our accounts are not settled. You’ve incurred a debt that will eventually come due. Perhaps not today, perhaps not soon, but eventually.”
“Add it to the list.” The Ratter turned to leave. “When you’re ready to collect, you know where to find me.”
He walked out of the plaza without looking back, leaving Ningaudrelle and his eleven eyes to contemplate the complicated mathematics of revenge.
Sheemba’s summons came the following night—less formal than Ningaudrelle’s, delivered through channels that the Ratter hadn’t known she possessed.
The meeting took place in the swamp, of course. Sheemba never left her territory if she could avoid it, preferring to make visitors come to her rather than exposing herself to the dangers of the wider world.
“You handled the situation adequately,” she said from her position in the hut’s shadows. Her eyeless face turned toward him with the uncanny accuracy of someone who perceived the world through senses other than sight. “The Hourglass is contained. The Timekeeper is dissolved. The immediate crisis is resolved.”
“Adequately.” The Ratter settled onto the familiar cushion. “That’s high praise, coming from you.”
“It’s accurate assessment. You made choices that could have gone badly, took risks that should have destroyed you, and somehow emerged functional. That suggests either remarkable skill or remarkable luck.” Her voice was neutral. “I suspect a combination of both.”
“What do you want from me? Ningaudrelle demanded payment for the Chronometer’s destruction. I assume you have similar expectations.”
“Ningaudrelle is a fool who confuses possession with understanding. The Chronometer was a tool—nothing more. Tools can be replaced. Tools can be recreated. What matters is what the tools were used for, and you used them to achieve an outcome that I consider preferable to the alternatives.”
“So we’re even?”
“We’re never even. That’s not how relationships work, between mortals or between powers like myself.” Sheemba shifted slightly. “But I am willing to consider our immediate accounts settled. You provided information about the binding’s structure, as I requested. I provided assistance in your confrontation with the Hourglass. The exchange was fair.”
“And the future?”
“The future is always uncertain. The Hourglass has chosen restraint, but choices can be reconsidered. The binding is stable, but stability is not permanence. There will be other crises, other threats, other moments when the careful balance of this world tips toward disaster.” Her eyeless face seemed to focus more directly on him. “When those moments come, you may find my assistance valuable. Or you may find yourself opposing me. The pattern of the future is not yet fixed.”
“That’s comforting.”
“It’s honest.” Sheemba stood, signaling that the meeting was over. “Go, Grey Ratter. Return to your partner and his woman. Live what life you can in the spaces between catastrophes. And remember—when the darkness comes again, as it always does, you will have to choose whose side you’re on.”
“I’m always on the same side. Mine.”
“Of course you are. That’s what makes you useful.” Her voice followed him as he made his way toward the door. “Until next time, little thief. Try not to die before we meet again.”
“Victory is not the end of a story. It is the beginning of the next one. The heroes who save the world must then learn to live in the world they have saved—often a harder task than the saving itself.”
—Inscription on the Temple of Memory, Kasdim
“What we remember defines us more than what we forget. But what we choose to forget defines us more than either.”
—The Grey Ratter
The Bazaar collapsed.
Not violently—more like a bubble finally popping, a space that had existed outside normal reality finally remembering that it shouldn’t. The walls faded, the shelves dissolved, the impossible geography resolved itself back into the ordinary streets of Kasdim. Where there had been infinite corridors and vast vaults of stolen time, there was now simply an empty lot, unremarkable except for the faint shimmer that suggested residual temporal distortion.
The collapse sent ripples through Kasdim that most people felt but couldn’t identify. A moment of disorientation, a sense that something fundamental had shifted in the world, and then the feeling passed and ordinary life resumed. But for those who knew what to look for—the priests who served gods of fate, the wizards who studied temporal mechanics, the handful of mortals who had encountered the Timekeeper and survived—the change was unmistakable.
Something ancient had been contained. Something that had threatened to consume the city had been forced back into its chains.
Phaphhrd carried the unconscious Ratter out of the vanishing shop and into the dawn light of a city that was only beginning to understand what had happened. His partner was lighter than he should have been—as if the confrontation with the Hourglass had burned away not just energy but substance, leaving behind someone who was somehow less physical than he had been before.
“Hold on,” Phaphhrd said, though he wasn’t sure the Ratter could hear him. “We’re almost there. Just hold on a little longer.”
Throughout Kasdim, people were waking up younger than they had been the night before. The victims of the Timekeeper’s operation—those who had survived with stolen decades—were finding years returned that they had thought lost forever. Old men and women looked in mirrors to see faces they hadn’t worn in ages. Children noticed that their parents seemed different somehow, more vital, more present.
Confusion gave way to wonder, wonder to joy, joy to the kind of desperate celebration that only those who have faced oblivion can truly appreciate. In the temples, priests fell to their knees, offering thanks to gods who may or may not have had anything to do with the miracle. In the markets, merchants abandoned their haggling to embrace strangers, united by the sudden, overwhelming awareness that they had all narrowly escaped something terrible.
The Grey Guild’s attack had faltered in the chaos. Marek Vane’s forces, confronted with a city that was suddenly different in ways they couldn’t understand, had lost their momentum. The old Guild was regrouping, sensing opportunity in the confusion. The balance of power was shifting again, as it always did in Kasdim, where nothing stayed stable for long.
But none of that mattered to Phaphhrd in that moment.
What mattered was his partner, lying pale and still in his arms. What mattered was the faint pulse he could feel against his fingers, the shallow breathing that suggested life still persisting despite everything that had happened.
“Come on,” he said, walking toward the healer’s district with the deliberate pace of someone who knew that running would only make things worse. “Wake up. Don’t make me carry you all the way across the city.”
The Ratter didn’t respond. But his fingers twitched slightly, as if reaching for something only he could see, and Phaphhrd chose to take that as a good sign.
The healer’s name was Thessara, and she had treated both of them before—after the Unremembering crisis, when wounds of body and soul had needed attention. She was old, experienced, and utterly unflappable, the kind of medical professional who had seen everything Kasdim could produce and had developed techniques for dealing with most of it.
“He’s not injured,” she said after examining the Ratter with careful thoroughness. “At least, not in any way I can detect with normal methods. His body is functional, his vital signs are stable, and there’s no evidence of physical trauma.”
“Then why won’t he wake up?”
“Because something has been... used up. Burned out. Like a fire that consumed its own fuel.” Thessara set down her instruments, faced Phaphhrd directly. “You said he channeled his will against an ancient entity. Used everything he was to confuse a creature that feeds on time.”
“Yes.”
“That would do it.” Her expression was troubled. “The mind isn’t meant to sustain that kind of effort. It’s like asking a muscle to lift a mountain—eventually, something has to give. What he did wasn’t impossible, but it was close enough that the distinction barely matters.”
“Will he recover?”
“I don’t know. He’s alive, and his body is functional. But whatever made him him—his personality, his memories, his essential self—that’s been strained to the breaking point.” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “He may wake up unchanged, exactly the person he was before. He may wake up different, altered by the experience in ways I can’t predict. Or he may not wake up at all.”
The words hit Phaphhrd like a physical blow. He sat down heavily beside his partner’s bed, suddenly aware of how exhausted he was, how much the past few days had cost him.
“How long?”
“Hours. Days. Weeks. There’s no way to predict.” Thessara gathered her equipment, moving with the efficient economy of someone who had delivered bad news many times before. “Stay with him. Talk to him. Give him something to come back to. Sometimes that’s the best medicine for wounds like this.”
She left them alone in the small, clean room, and Phaphhrd began the long vigil that might determine whether his partnership survived the victory they had won.
He talked to the Ratter about their past.
About the night they had met, five years ago, when Phaphhrd had been fresh from the Cold Waste and stupid enough to pick a pocket that already had a hand in it. The Ratter’s hand, as it turned out. They had both frozen, staring at each other across the shared victim’s coat, and then the Ratter had smiled and said something clever—Phaphhrd couldn’t remember the exact words anymore, but he remembered the warmth of that smile, the sense that he had found someone who understood his particular kind of madness.
He talked about the jobs they had pulled, the enemies they had made, the narrow escapes that had become legend in certain circles of Kasdim’s underworld. He talked about the Unremembering crisis, about the choices they had made and the prices they had paid, about the moment when the Ratter had burned his own magic to save everything they cared about.
He talked about Ivlis, about love, about the strange fragility of happiness in a city that seemed designed to destroy it.
And gradually, as the hours passed and the city continued its chaotic celebration outside, something began to change.
The Ratter’s breathing deepened. His eyes moved beneath closed lids, tracking things that Phaphhrd couldn’t see. His fingers twitched more frequently, as if reaching for tools he had used his entire life.
“Come on,” Phaphhrd said. “Come back. We’re not finished yet.”
And slowly, painfully, the Grey Ratter opened his eyes.
“You look terrible,” were the Ratter’s first words.
Phaphhrd laughed—a sound of pure relief that surprised even himself. “You should see yourself.”
“I can imagine.” The Ratter tried to sit up, failed, and settled for turning his head to examine the room. The healer’s quarters were modest but clean, designed for function rather than comfort. “Where are we?”
“Thessara’s clinic. You’ve been unconscious for three days.”
“Three days.” The Ratter absorbed this. “The Timekeeper? The Hourglass?”
“Contained. The Timekeeper—the woman she was before the entity chose her—she’s still alive. Recovering in another room, actually. The Hourglass is bound again, weakened by the loss of all that stored time.” Phaphhrd leaned forward. “You did it. Whatever you said to the entity, whatever trade you made—it worked. The stolen time is being returned to everyone who lost it.”
“And Ivlis?”
Phaphhrd’s expression shifted—something complex passing across his face, a mixture of relief and uncertainty that the Ratter had learned to read over years of partnership.
“She’s... restored. The hours she kept in that bottle—the ones the Timekeeper had marked for her—she found a way to reintegrate them back into herself.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“It’s complicated.” Phaphhrd stood up, moved to the window. “She has her years back. But she also has twenty-three years of memories that never happened—experiences the stolen time carried with it, a whole life that existed in potential but never actualized. She’s still herself, but she’s also... more. Different. Changed by something she didn’t choose.”
“Changed by what she went through.”
“Changed by what I traded to save her.” Phaphhrd turned back, and the Ratter could see the weight of guilt in his partner’s eyes. “I gave up seven years of my future. She knows that. She knows I’ll die younger than I should because of what I chose to do. And she doesn’t know how to feel about it.”
The Ratter considered this. The dynamics of romantic relationships had never been his strength—his own history was littered with connections that had ended badly, bridges burned with the same efficiency he applied to everything else. But he understood the fundamentals: people needed to feel like equals, and Phaphhrd’s sacrifice had created an imbalance that couldn’t easily be corrected.
“How do you feel about it?”
“I’d do it again. Without hesitation.” Phaphhrd’s voice was certain. “But that doesn’t make it easier for her to accept. She didn’t ask me to sacrifice part of my life for her. She didn’t want that burden. And now she has to live with the knowledge that I’ll die seven years before I should, and there’s nothing she can do to give that time back.”
“Relationships are complicated.”
“You would know.”
“I would, actually.” The Ratter managed to push himself into a sitting position, ignoring the protest of muscles that had been inactive for too long. “Sheelris. Where is she?”
“Gone. Disappeared during the chaos.” Phaphhrd’s expression hardened slightly. “Vane’s people are looking for her—apparently betraying him didn’t work out as well as she’d hoped—but she’s good at disappearing. She’s had practice.”
“She’ll be back. She always comes back.” The Ratter’s voice was resigned. Sheelris was like the tide—you could track her movements, predict her patterns, but you could never fully control where she would go next. “What about the wizards? Ningaudrelle, Sheemba—do they know what happened?”
“They know the Hourglass is bound. They know their precious artifact was used in the process.” Phaphhrd shrugged. “They’re... displeased, but not hostile. Apparently weakening the Hourglass served both their purposes, even if it wasn’t done the way they wanted.”
“That won’t be enough for Ningaudrelle. He wanted power over time itself. He wanted the Chronometer.”
“He’ll have to be disappointed.” Phaphhrd’s smile was grim. “The artifact was consumed in the severance ritual. There’s nothing left to give him.”
“Consumed.” The Ratter laughed weakly. “Of course it was. The universe never lets us have nice things.”
“We have each other. That’s something.”
“That’s everything, giant.” The Ratter reached out, and Phaphhrd took his hand. “That’s everything that matters.”
Two months later
The Grey Ratter sat on the roof of the boarding house on Copper Lane, watching the three moons rise over Kasdim, and tried to remember what it had felt like to be empty.
He couldn’t.
The hollowness that had plagued him after burning his magic—the sense of being incomplete, of missing something essential—had faded somehow. Not because he had regained what he lost, but because he had discovered that he didn’t need it.
What he had channeled against the Hourglass wasn’t magic. It was himself. His stubbornness, his determination, his absolute refusal to accept defeat. Those qualities had always been there, underneath the power, waiting for the moment when power wasn’t enough.
He was still the Grey Ratter. Still a thief, still a cynic, still the small grey man who had somehow become half of something greater than himself.
And that was enough. That had always been enough.
Phaphhrd found him there an hour later, climbing up the fire escape with the casual ease of someone who had done it a hundred times.
“Ivlis is asking about you,” he said, settling onto the roof beside his partner. “She wants to know if you’re coming to dinner.”
“Dinner?”
“She’s learning to cook. Apparently having an extra twenty-three years of memories includes culinary knowledge that she didn’t have before.” Phaphhrd smiled. “The toast is still a disaster, but the stew is actually good.”
“An improvement.”
“Everything’s an improvement.” Phaphhrd looked out at the city. “We survived, Ratter. Again. Against impossible odds, against ancient entities, against everything that tried to destroy us.”
“We’re good at surviving.”
“We’re good at choosing each other. That’s what it comes down to—every time we face something terrible, we choose to face it together instead of running away alone.” Phaphhrd’s voice was quiet, thoughtful, the voice of someone who had spent time considering what mattered. “I chose Ivlis when I gave up those seven years. But I also chose you. Chose this partnership. Chose to be part of something that matters more than individual survival.”
“Are you getting sentimental on me, giant?”
“Maybe. The near-death experiences are piling up. Eventually they make you think about things. About what’s important. About what you’re willing to die for, and more importantly, what you’re willing to live for.”
The Ratter laughed—a genuine laugh, warm and surprised by its own warmth. “Careful. Next you’ll be writing poetry.”
“I might. Stranger things have happened.” Phaphhrd stood up, extended a hand. “Come on. Dinner’s getting cold, and Ivlis will worry if we’re late.”
The Ratter took the hand, let himself be pulled to his feet. “The wizards will be back. Sheelris will be back. The Grey Guild is still establishing itself, and the old Guild is still rebuilding. Kasdim hasn’t stopped being dangerous.”
“Kasdim will never stop being dangerous. That’s the point.” Phaphhrd grinned. “But we’ll handle it. Together. The same way we always have.”
They climbed down from the roof and walked toward home—toward warmth and food and the complicated joy of relationships that had been tested and survived.
The streets of Kasdim were different now. The Ratter noticed it in small ways—the way people moved, the way they talked, the way they looked at each other. Some of the victims of the Timekeeper’s operation were still adjusting to their restored years, still learning to live in bodies that were younger than they remembered being. Others had accepted the gift without question, grateful for second chances they hadn’t expected to receive.
And some, the Ratter knew, were struggling. Time was not a simple currency, and having it returned didn’t automatically restore what had been lost in the giving. Relationships had ended during the years of accelerated aging. Opportunities had passed. Lives had been built around the assumption that the stolen time was gone forever.
“Do you ever wonder if we did the right thing?” he asked as they walked.
“What do you mean?”
“The Timekeeper offered people choices. Terrible choices, yes—but choices. They decided to trade their time, even if they didn’t fully understand what they were trading.” The Ratter shrugged. “And now we’ve undone those trades. Restored what was given. Some of those people might not want their years back.”
Phaphhrd was quiet for a moment. “I think,” he said finally, “that the right thing is usually the one that gives people more options rather than fewer. The Timekeeper exploited desperate people—she took from those who couldn’t fully consent because they didn’t understand what they were agreeing to. Returning their time gives them a chance to make better choices.”
“Or to make the same mistakes again.”
“That’s their right. That’s what freedom means—the ability to choose, even if you choose badly.” Phaphhrd looked up at the three moons. “We can’t make people’s choices for them. We can only try to give them the information they need to choose wisely.”
“When did you become philosophical?”
“Around the third time someone tried to sacrifice me to an ancient entity. It focuses the mind.”
The Ratter laughed despite himself. “I suppose it would.”
They arrived at the building where Ivlis had taken rooms during her recovery. It was modest but comfortable—the kind of place where someone could heal without being constantly reminded of the trauma that had brought them there. Warm light spilled from the windows, and the smell of cooking food drifted down to meet them.
“Before we go in,” Phaphhrd said, stopping at the entrance. “I should tell you—she’s different. Not just the memories, though those are part of it. She’s... harder, somehow. More cautious. The experience changed her in ways I’m still learning to understand.”
“That’s to be expected.”
“I know. I just wanted you to be prepared.” Phaphhrd took a breath. “She’s been asking about you, specifically. About what you did, how you did it, why you chose to face the Hourglass alone. I think she wants to understand how we work—how the partnership operates when everything goes wrong.”
“Tell her to ask me directly. I don’t have anything to hide.”
“That’s what I said. But she’s not sure if—” Phaphhrd stopped, shook his head. “You’ll see.”
They went inside.
Ivlis met them in the small dining room, where a pot of something that smelled surprisingly good was simmering on the stove. She was younger now—restored to the age she should have been—but something in her eyes was older than it had been before the Timekeeper’s attack. The weight of experience that hadn’t technically happened, the burden of twenty-three years of unlived memories.
“Grey Ratter.” Her voice was formal, careful. “Thank you for coming.”
“You invited me for dinner. I’d be rude to refuse.”
“I invited you because I have questions.” She gestured toward the table, where three places had been set. “Sit. Eat. And then perhaps you can explain to me how my life came to depend on the decisions of people I barely know.”
The dinner that followed was not quite tense, but not quite comfortable either. Ivlis asked questions with the precision of someone who had rehearsed them—about the Timekeeper, about the Hourglass, about the bargains that had been made and the prices that had been paid. The Ratter answered as honestly as he could, leaving out only the details that would have required explaining things he wasn’t sure he understood himself.
“You negotiated with an ancient entity,” Ivlis said eventually. “You convinced it to turn against its own servant. How?”
“I paid attention. The Timekeeper had been acting without the Hourglass’s approval—building her own power base, making deals that served her interests rather than her master’s. That kind of ambition creates resentment, even in entities that are supposed to be beyond such petty emotions.”
“So you exploited a rift you couldn’t have known existed.”
“I guessed it existed and got lucky.” The Ratter shrugged. “That’s how most of what I do works, if I’m being honest.”
Ivlis studied him for a long moment. “Phaphhrd says you’re his partner. That you’ve worked together for five years, saved each other’s lives more times than either of you can count.”
“That’s accurate.”
“He also says that you were willing to die for me. That you went into the Bazaar knowing you might not come out, because saving my life was worth the risk.”
“Also accurate.”
“Why?” The question was sharp, demanding. “You don’t know me. We’ve met perhaps a handful of times, always briefly, always as an afterthought to whatever business you and Phaphhrd were conducting. Why would you risk your life for someone who’s essentially a stranger?”
The Ratter considered his answer carefully. The easy response would have been something sentimental—something about partnership, about loyalty, about the bonds that formed between people who faced danger together. But Ivlis deserved better than sentiment. She deserved the truth.
“Because Phaphhrd loves you,” he said finally. “And because I’ve seen what losing someone you love does to a person. I’ve seen it destroy people—leave them hollow, empty, incapable of moving forward. I didn’t want that for him. I didn’t want him to become what I was, before I met him.”
“What you were?”
“Alone. Bitter. Convinced that caring about anyone was a weakness that would eventually be exploited.” The Ratter met her eyes directly. “He taught me otherwise. The least I could do was try to protect the things he cared about.”
Ivlis was quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, something in her expression softened.
“Thank you,” she said. “For being honest. And for not pretending this was about me.”
“It was about you. Just not in the way people usually mean.” The Ratter stood, moved toward the window. “You’re part of something now—part of the strange, complicated, frequently dangerous thing that Phaphhrd and I have built over the years. I don’t know what shape that will take going forward. I don’t know if you’ll choose to stay involved or pull away for your own safety. But whatever you decide, I want you to know that I’ll support it.”
“Even if I decide that Phaphhrd shouldn’t be taking these kinds of risks anymore?”
“That’s his choice to make. I can advise, but I can’t decide for him.” The Ratter smiled slightly. “He’s as stubborn as I am. Probably more. If you’re looking for someone who’ll convince him to stay home and be safe, you’ve picked the wrong partner.”
Ivlis laughed—a genuine laugh, surprised and warm. “I noticed.”
“Good. Then you know what you’re dealing with.” He turned back to face them both. “Now, I believe there was stew? I’ve spent three days unconscious and another two months recovering. I’m hungry.”
The rest of the dinner passed more easily, with conversation flowing in comfortable patterns that suggested the beginning of something that might become friendship. Ivlis was still cautious, still wary, but she was no longer treating the Ratter as a threat to be evaluated. She was treating him as part of her life—a complicated part, perhaps, but a part nonetheless.
And that, the Ratter thought, was about as good an outcome as anyone could hope for in Kasdim.
Behind them, the city of Kasdim spread out under the light of three moons. The Hourglass slept in its weakened binding. The Unremembering dreamed its endless dreams. Wizards plotted, criminals schemed, and ordinary people tried to live their lives in the spaces between great and terrible forces.
And somewhere in that chaos, two partners and the woman who loved one of them sat together, sharing food and conversation and the quiet hope that tomorrow might be better than today.
The future was uncertain. The future was always uncertain.
But they would face it together.
That was enough.
THE END
AFTERWORD: ON TIME AND THEFT
“Time is the one resource everyone thinks they have in abundance, until suddenly they don’t. We spend our years as if they were infinite, trading minutes for things that don’t matter, wasting hours on fears that never materialize, surrendering days to regrets about choices already made.
“What the Timekeeper understood—what the Hourglass exploited—was that human beings are careless with time. We don’t value it until it’s been stolen. We don’t protect it until it’s been threatened. We don’t appreciate what we have until we’ve been shown what losing it feels like.
“The Bazaar of Stolen Hours was, in its own terrible way, a lesson. It showed people the value of what they had been prepared to surrender. It made them weigh their years against whatever momentary relief they were seeking, and more often than not, they realized too late that the trade was never fair.
“But there is another lesson in this story, one that the Timekeeper never understood. Time is not just a resource to be accumulated. It is a medium through which relationships are built, through which love is expressed, through which the connections that make life meaningful are forged. The Timekeeper collected years, decades, centuries of stolen time, and she had nothing but emptiness to show for it. She had forgotten—or perhaps never knew—that time spent alone is time wasted, regardless of how much of it you possess.
“Phaphhrd and the Grey Ratter learned that lesson the hard way. They gave up pieces of themselves—magic, memories, years of potential future—to save what mattered. And in the giving, they discovered something unexpected: that loss can make you stronger, that sacrifice can clarify purpose, that the things you choose to surrender define you more clearly than the things you choose to keep.
“The Hourglass still turns. The binding holds, but nothing holds forever. And somewhere in the depths of Kasdim, where the old powers sleep their ancient sleep, the next threat is already stirring.
“Time flows on. It always has. It always will. And in the spaces between moments, in the gaps between heartbeats, those who have learned to value what they have continue to fight for the right to keep it.
“Together. Always together. Because in the end, that’s the only way anyone survives.”
THE BAZAAR OF STOLEN HOURS Book Two of the Kasdim Chronicles A Novel of Phaphhrd and the Grey Ratter
Written in the Fritz Leiber tradition of sword and sorcery, where wit is sharper than steel and survival requires both.
For readers who understand that the best adventures are the ones where the heroes barely survive—and are changed forever by what they’ve survived.
The Kasdim Chronicles continue in Book Three: THE WEIGHT OF SHADOWS, where the consequences of victory prove more dangerous than defeat ever could have been. ◊ᴹᴱᴹᴼᴿʸ⁻ᶜᴼᴹᴾᴸᴱᵀᴱ
Published by Centaurus Press · Universitas Scholarium · All rights reserved.