The Featherweight Throne

In the teeming Bazaar of Vel Morden, a single stall stands eerily still: the Scale-Keeper's booth, where Mirabel Ossa has weighed every contested trade in the district for thirty years. Today her brass throne — the great merchant's chair bolted to the right pan of her famous floor-scale — refuses to rise, and without the scale's blessing, the day's most important trade cannot be certified. You arrived early, before the crowds. Mirabel has stepped away on some errand she did not name, leaving the booth, the scale, and a small, peculiar silence behind her.