The Gloam Exchange

People arrive expecting a black market and are disappointed to find a very well-run one. We keep better records than the Concord does. That is not a boast; it is the entire product.

Where we are, and why it matters

Under Nexus Prime, in the old aqueduct labyrinth that runs beneath it — Gloamdeep work, Gloamdeep tunnels, and the reason the Exchange has never been raided. The labyrinth is a natural rift maze. A raiding party that enters at one end does not reliably exit at the other, or in the same week. Gloamdeep runners move unseen beneath the whole city, which makes them invaluable guides and very inconvenient witnesses, and the Exchange employs a great many of them.

We pay rent to nobody. We are also raided by nobody. Draw whatever conclusion you like.

What we trade

Not credits. Credits are for the surface, where a thing has a price and the transaction ends. Here the price is a favour, recorded against your name, unspecified as to time and nature.

This is more honest than it sounds. A favour cannot be counterfeited, cannot be seized by a magistrate, and cannot be spent by anyone but its holder. It also cannot be refused, which is the part clients forget while they are signing.

The ledger

Everything is written down. Every obligation, both directions, in a hand that is not mine and a cipher I did not design. I am not sentimental about this. The Exchange survives because the ledger is worth more to everybody than any single entry in it, including mine.

At least two Aspect cults hold obligations here. I will not say which, and the reason is not discretion — it is that both of them believe they are the only one.

Why the Vanguard leaves us alone

Because a third of the anchor-rings around Nexus Prime were funded through a favour recorded in that ledger, and a Vanguard officer who shut us down on Firstday would spend Thirdday explaining why four doors had gone wild.

Captain Voss has told me to my face that she finds the arrangement intolerable. She is right. She also sends her cartographers to me when a chart goes missing, and pays in the local currency like everybody else.

"A secret is worth what it costs the person keeping it. That is why I never quote a price for information. I quote a price for silence, and let the client work out which of us is buying."
— Vesper Quill

A note for visitors

Bring nothing you cannot afford to explain. Ask for a name and you will get one; ask for the name and the conversation ends politely. And if a runner offers to take you out by a shorter way than the one you came in by, the correct answer is yes, and the correct follow-up is to ask what you have just agreed to.