"No," he said flatly.
Ishtar blinked. "To which part?"
"All of it."
"...Why?"
She genuinely didn't understand.
She had just handed him everything a mortal could possibly want, and he hadn't even blinked before pushing it away.
"Because of the tags," Rayleigh said.
Ishtar frowned. "The what?"
"The paper tags on their wrists." He watched her closely. "You sent me a girl with a shipping label tied to her like a crate of nails. Your Amazon called her stock, and you don't even remember doing it."
Ishtar rolled her eyes with a heavy groan. "Oh, please. Do you know how many girls are in this house? You want me to memorize them? Keep a little diary of their feelings?"
"I want you to hear yourself."
"I hear myself constantly, it's the best part of my day!" She laughed, but the sound died when she saw his face.
"Gods! You're serious."
"I just spent a month underground," Rayleigh said, his voice completely flat. "I pulled people out of the dark. They were kidnapped, wrapped in vines, and kept alive just so their screams could be used as bait. A little girl walked into a labyrinth because she couldn't stand doing nothing."
He took a single, deliberate step toward the throne.
"Then I come back to the surface, and you march a girl across the city at high noon with a price tag on her wrist, and nobody bats an eye. It's the exact same crime, Ishtar. You just have a better paperwork."
The gold hall went tomb-silent.
The lazy amusement drained from Ishtar's face, leaving something ancient and cold in its wake.
"Careful," she warned softly.
"You asked why?"
"I did." Her nails dug into the armrests. "So let me be crystal clear. Those debts are legal. Signed, witnessed, and filed with the Guild. Half of those girls signed the papers themselves because the alternative was starving in a gutter.
I didn't invent the gutter, Yōtōsai. I just put a roof over it and charged rent. Call me a monster if you want. But don't stand in my house and pretend the Guild's hands are clean. They stamped the papers. They just don't like to visit."
'She's right,' Rayleigh thought bitterly. 'And she knows it.'
"You're right," he admitted.
Ishtar faltered. "...I'm what?"
"You're right. The Guild stamped them, and the city looked away. You aren't some special breed of evil. You're just the one honest enough to build the exact thing everyone else wanted while they pretended not to." Rayleigh shrugged.
"That doesn't make you less of a monster, just an ordinary one. But you are right about the paperwork."
Ishtar stared at him.
Then she threw her head back and laughed.
"Oh, I really do like you! Fine, you made your self-righteous little speech. Feel better?" She stretched like a cat. "Now let's talk business. What do you actually want? Name your price. I'm in a giving mood."
'She means it,' Rayleigh realized. 'She'd give me almost anything in this building right now.'
"Free them," he said.
Silence dropped over the room again.
"Every worn-out girl in this Quarter with a debt she'll never pay off. Tear up the papers. Pay the ones who want to stay a real wage, and let the rest walk away." He held her gaze. "That's my price. Do that, and I will forge for your.... house for the rest of my life, entirely for free."
Ishtar's smile held, but her eyes changed.
For a split second, the beautiful facade slipped, revealing the terrifying, uncaring deity beneath.
"No," she said pleasantly.
"Then we're done."
"We are not remotely done!" She sat up straight.
The room suddenly felt suffocatingly small.
"Listen to me, sword boy. You are going to work for me. Because in about a month, everything you care about is going to become very expensive.
Your commissions will dry up.
Your Familia's shops will have accidents.
That little Ganesha girl who follows you around will be propositioned in a way she can't fight, and Apollo's prophet will find out exactly what happens to girls who see things."
She smiled, slow and venomous.
"Nothing illegal. Just a city that stops being comfortable, one week at a time, until you crawl back up my stairs and beg."
Rayleigh let her finish.
Then, because there was only one language gods actually respected, he told her the truth.
"Ishtar," he said quietly. "Do you know what my title is?"
"Yōtōsai. Demon blade. Yes, yes... very dramatic."
"The other one."
Ishtar's confident smile faltered.
"Ares gave me the first one," Rayleigh said. "The second one I earned in a forest outside this city, from a goddess who hunted me for three days and decided she liked me better than her own pride. You can ask Artemis about it. She's honest, which is exactly why you two despise each other."
He didn't reach for a weapon.
He just stood dead center in her hall, looking up at her with hollow eyes.
"Godslayer. That's the other one."
He let the heavy silence stretch.
"I know a mortal blade can't kill you. It just sends you back to the sky to sulk for a century. That's fine. I'm not threatening your life, Ishtar; I'm managing your schedule." He tilted his head.
"Your little campaign of cruelties takes months. Sending you home takes a single afternoon."
Phryne's heavy, wet breathing echoed from the top of the stairs behind him.
Every trace of movement had completely vanished from Ishtar.
"So go ahead," Rayleigh said softly. "Touch my commissions, touch my shops. But if you put one hand on Ardi or Cassandra, or anyone else who belongs to me... I will walk up these stairs one more time, and there won't be a fifth conversation." He turned his back on her.
"Think about how many years it took you to build this empire. Then think about how long an afternoon is."
He was halfway to the door when she finally spoke.
"You would start a war with the entire Quarter?"
"I'd finish one," Rayleigh replied, never breaking stride. "Thanks for the offer. The stew at the Hostess is better."
He walked down the stairs past a paralyzed Phryne, stepping back out into the music, the silk, and the lantern light.
He walked past a hundred women with frayed ropes for souls, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead.
Because if he looked at them, he would have drawn his swords right then, and starting a war tonight would have gotten them all killed.
'Soon,' he promised. 'Not tonight. But soon.'
Behind him, in a hall made of gold, a goddess who had never been told "no" sat frozen on her throne, her hands gripping the armrests, entirely unable to move.