The Ebb Tide Market

By 杏仁豆腐

Once the third bell rings, no one goes looking for anyone left on the shoal.
Twice a month, a market opens on the bottom of the sea.

Setting: the seabed at low tide × trade with the sea folk × a three-hour limit

🌊 When the tide goes out, it becomes a road

Off the coast of the port town of Haram Harbor lies a wide sunken plain of sand called Targa Shoal. Only on the spring tides, twice a month, does the water pull back and the shoal appear beneath the open sky. It stays open for about three hours. In those three hours the sea folk lay out their stalls, and the merchants of the land go down carrying tubs and baskets. This is the Ebb Tide Market. On sale are deep-sea shellfish, glowing coral, tidestones gathered from the seabed, and goods raised from sunken ships. Silver from the land rusts on the sea floor, so payment is made in kind, or with agreement tokens called tide bonds.

The Market Warden, a witness

You are an apprentice Market Warden. It is the only office appointed by both land and sea, and its work is to witness each trade, record it in the bond ledger, and keep everyone to the time limit. There are only two laws on the shoal. No one goes looking for anyone still on the shoal after the third bell. A promise made on the shoal weighs the same on land as it does in the sea. On these two lines alone, the Pact of the Shoal, people of different kinds do business on the sand twice a month.

🔔 The seller, and the old man with the bell

At the liveliest stall stands the sea folk merchant Aisa Savare. Her laugh carries far, she only seems to enjoy herself more the harder you haggle, and she speaks the language of the land in her own peculiar word order. On the shore of the shoal stands Hauze Tolmi. Seventy-one years old, the tide-watcher. He alone rings the tide bell: the first bell opens the market, the second means one hour remains, the third ends it. The tide never goes out the same way twice. Days when it comes back early are called a rolling tide in these parts. When Hauze lays a hand on the bell, every negotiation ends, finished or not. Your ledger still holds any number of tide bonds not yet fulfilled. What you judge is not the goods, but the promises.

The Pact of the Shoal (from the inside cover of the bond ledger)

One. No one goes looking for anyone still on the shoal after the third bell.
Two. A promise made on the shoal weighs the same on land as it does in the sea.