Anything can be bought or sold at the Night Market.

A dozen hummingbird tongues curled like tiny snails, basted in honey and chili oil and served on a silver tray. A mermaid’s song, caught in an antique bottle of smoked glass. A gleaming dagger carved from the ivory of the last true unicorn-whale. Gowns of moonlight and mist, trimmed with sea-foam lace. The lost diaries of one’s youth. The visions of mad prophets, the poetry of saints. A pair of spectacles that allow a person to peer through the cosmic dust and curtains of Time.

Anything can be bought or sold. Countless currencies change hands; funds are exchanged by electronic transfer, the latest of magics, and by thought alone. But I neither sell nor buy, not exactly. I take what is offered. I hold these offerings in trust, in safekeeping. And when the time is right—if asked—I give them back.

Not all are brave enough to ask for theirs back.

Tonight, I watch from my darkened corner of the Market, from my unprepossessing stall. The crowd floods in at dusk. The silver moon is a crescent above.

She has been searching for me, tracking the movement of the Night Market between worlds. I’ve felt the subtle tug of her call. Her pull on what pulses within the box near my hand.

Here she is now, just stepping into this courtyard, this secluded corner of the Market, away from the dazzle and clamor of the main show. A small woman in a drab gray cloak, the hood pulled low. No hint of her usual bright skirts, the famous scarlet silks and rich brocades.

The Red Queen. Or rather, she who was once known as the Red Queen. The Empress of Worlds, the Destroyer of Nebulas. She who commanded the legendary Snow Lotus Fleet, who conquered and freed worlds with both fire and ice. The Radiant Queen, the Star-Crowned Sovereign, the Pearl of Night.

She lifts her head and meets my eyes, and I see only a scared little girl.

• • • •

Years ago, I met her in a city of poisoned rain and soup-thick fog. The Night Market descended for one rare, clear night.

She came right to my stall, a mere child. Only twelve standard years old. Her head held high, her eyes scared but determined. She knew what she wanted.

She’d already done as much as she could on her own. She’d armored herself, hardened herself from within. Perfected a cold glare, a don’t-you-dare-touch-me aura. Ignored the taunts and humiliations of the street, was silent through scoldings and beatings and worse at home. Learned to swallow her sobs. Inured herself as best she could to the coldness and horror of her world. It wasn’t enough.

I held out my hand, and she gave it to me: the first tender slice of her already-scarred heart.

• • • •

Many of my clients have risen high in their worlds, as they measure such things. Few have reached the heights of the Red Queen.

She came to me most often in the first years, trading in bits of her heart for iron and frost. At fourteen she joined the Galactic Bright Army, intent on escape. Her talent was recognized, and she was sent for specialized training, for a proper education. She pushed herself relentlessly, forgoing rest and sleep. Hungry for achievement, for the first crumbs of affirmation. She rose up the ranks. Was given her own unit to command. Promoted, and promoted again.

She came to me when the first of her companions died. When the first soldiers died under her command. When she had to steel herself to destroy innocent homes and lives.

Slivers of her warm heart. I helped to protect her, as much as any of her mentors and sponsors. I kept pieces of her heart alive, in a silk-lined box. And she sealed the resulting holes in her chest with iron and ice.

• • • •

The Red Queen is cruel and ruthless, the stories say, and they are true.

The Red Queen is our compassionate savior, others say, and they are correct as well.

She is kind when she feels that she can afford it. She is cruel when she believes it necessary.

In the game of politics and war, survival is the biggest prize.

She learned the ways of Galactic Court politics. She observed the shifting allegiances, the lies and hidden campaigns. The fate of other generals who rose too high, who threatened the Emperor’s power. She learned to flatter, to ingratiate herself, to lie low as needed. And when the opportunity presented itself, she seized it ruthlessly.

Betray or be betrayed. Survive, or die.

Billions flocked to her banner, to her new rebel army. She promised a new era, an end to the old empire’s corruption. Her passionate words, broadcast across the galaxy, sent her followers into a frenzy. At times, she even believed them herself.

• • • •

Wonders fill the Night Market.

In the next stall over, there’s a man who will engrave your entire life story on a grain of rice. There are books sewn with crow feathers, that flutter open and speak with the voices of the dead. There are diviners who cast sticks to tell your fortune, and the Great Turtle who heats and fractures His own shell to divine the future from the pattern of crack marks.

There are stories recorded in innumerable forms of media—encoded in electrical charges, scratched onto bamboo slats and palm leaves, painted on paper and silk and more. There are stories pulsing in the boxes in my stall. Secrets beating in hidden hearts.

I whisper these stories to myself. Secrets to the night air, in a voice no mortal can hear. And sometimes I open a box and lean my face in. I remind these pulsing fragments of where they came from. Of who they were and are, and of what they could yet be.

• • • •

It was a long time before she asked for the first piece back.

In the meantime, she crushed every world that resisted. She shattered an empire and made it anew. Carved out a new realm of peace. Each step dragged through a sea of blood and sacrifice, suffering mixed with exultation. Her name a prayer on countless lips, drifting heavenward in clouds of incense.

Her enemies dead before her. Broken, lost, or turned to her side.

The Red Queen of War became the Red Queen of Peace, achieving glory after glory, resplendent in shades of crimson and flame. Gardens bloomed on desert worlds. Scientists pushed the boundaries of knowledge. Artists reached new heights in poetry, song, the visual arts, and more. Stability throughout her empire. Prosperity.

There, she told the scared little girl from the streets of an exploited, impoverished, poisoned planet. You’re safe. You’ve won.

But the little girl never quite believed it.

• • • •

From time to time, among my boxes, I feel movement from hers. A stirring, a whisper.

The pull of an invisible thread. A sharp, silent call. The Red Queen, yearning for what she gave up, calling from untold distances. The heart-pieces in my care respond, beating eagerly. And then these pieces slow as the call falls silent, as the distance becomes too much. As the Queen turns her attention elsewhere.

• • • •

It was a soft summer night when she finally came back to me, her red skirts hidden beneath a light, white robe. Centuries had passed since we last met, but the finest, most expensive of youth treatments and spells kept her looking no older than thirty years standard.

Her face and bearing were both perfectly controlled. That famous glacial beauty, created of surgery and magic and will. The fall of her white robes, her graceful poise. But I could feel the wild beating of what still lived in her chest. I could sense how it longed to be whole.

Her voice shook when she spoke, just a little.

She was a Queen wavering on the edge of retirement. A new system of government ready to replace her, practical and just. People she trusted to continue the work. She’d remade the stars, and after blood she’d brought peace. She knew her sins, yet secretly still hoped for redemption.

She dreamed of a quiet, private life. A walled garden, the sound of running water. The scent of orange blossoms and jasmine, beneath white stars.

And someone with her in that garden. Someone she’d known a long time. Someone she thought she could perhaps dare to finally, fully love.

You’re safe, the Queen told herself. She tried to believe it.

She spoke to me, and I nodded and reached for her plain, lacquered box. I held it out.

She held it in her hands, feeling the beat of what lay inside. Longing and fear warred within her, perfectly matched. She bit her lip and stood before my stall for a long, long time.

In the end, she handed the box back. She could not take back the first piece of her heart. Not then.

But something had changed. A possibility was born.

The box remembered the warmth of her hands. The pieces within knew the call of their home. And from afar, the heart in her chest—that patchwork thing of iron and flesh, warmth and cold—sensed, however faintly, what it might feel to be whole.

One night, a mere decade later, she was ready. She returned. This time, she took back that first missing piece.

• • • •

Here she is again, now.

She returns every so often—once every few decades, or once every few years. She hadn’t realized, at first, how many pieces she’d given away. How many pieces there were to retrieve.

Here she is, still frightened after so many visits. It’s hard each time to learn that there’s still something missing. A hole, an absence, where you thought things were solid; a protective wall vanishing to reveal empty air.

“She’s much like you,” I say to her about her teenage daughter. That daughter—her eldest—is foremost in her thoughts now.

She gives me a wry smile. Her heart beating hard through her worry and fear.

A daughter raised in comfort and safety and love. Everything she herself lacked as a child. A daughter who has everything. How can she ask for anything more? How can she, how dare she, by what right does this daughter ask, demand, expect, need—

Need her mother’s whole love. Her mother’s whole heart. The heart that the once-Queen thought she’d already recovered. Already healed. And yet she keeps discovering that she’s wrong: that there is yet more tenderness, more vulnerability to be found. Armor peeling away in layers. She thought she’d shared her whole heart before: when she pledged herself to her lover, when their children were born. When their children were small. The demands of simply living life, as unafraid as she could. And yet at each stage she discovers new demands, new needs. And a fresh reminder of grief—for her past, and her own fractured heart.

But she’s here now. Willing to take another piece back. With all the pain that entails.

I hand her the box.

• • • •

Nearly anything can be bought or sold at the Night Market. Potions to forget. Potions to remember. The scent of ripe peaches from an orchard long gone, from a planet long extinguished. The poisoned rain that fell at night on a rusted, corrugated roof. The various scents of fear. The softness of a baby owl’s feathers. The light of a dying star, caught in a crystal pendant. The code for a targeted neurotoxin, to kill someone you once loved.

There are still things that cannot be bought or sold.

I sit in my stall, and I wait for those who wish me to safeguard their hearts. I wait longer for them to return.

My once-Queen is lucky: before she returned to me, she’d had centuries more than most humans. A century to conquer an empire and establish her reign. Centuries more to find peace. To struggle and heal. To change, along with her worlds.

As she turns to leave me this time, we hear gossip floating from the next stall over. A reference to a faction the Queen once wiped out. Speculation as to where the Red Queen lives now, to what hidden world she’s retreated, and with whom.

I see the flash of a cold smile on her lips. A hint of the ruthlessness of the Destroyer of Stars. She would still kill without mercy any who trespassed on her haven. Who threatened her life, or the lives of her loved ones.

She embraces me, and leaves.

• • • •

I write these words in smoke, on sea-silk bought from the vendor several stalls down. One day, I may share these words. When everyone mentioned in this scroll is long dead. When all the lights in this sector of the universe have gone out.

You may wonder then, reader-of-the-future, at this tale. And at the other tales I have, from all the hearts I have known.

Know this: there is one piece that the Queen never got back. Will never get back. She cannot, for I do not have it in my keeping.

It is the first piece every human gives up, before they even have words. The first piece that you exchange for cold armor. You do this, for otherwise existence itself would crush you. You gave up this piece of your heart to survive.

I do not know who takes these pieces. I do not know what happens to them—if they continue, somewhere, to beat. If there is a Market beyond this one, with marvels even the Night Market cannot fathom, where these lost pieces can still be retrieved.