Brakkus, Voadam, Maelicent, Pilgrim, and H. Lewit escort an unhappy and limping Rancid east through the warehouses back toward the Golden Cockatrice. Before the Cockatrice can be passed, however, Rancid takes a jog south and east toward Nickleby Bar. While the Bar's grand arched gate is still hidden from view behind a field of warehouses, the city's 70 foot outer wall looms near. The wall in this section is crenellated and Guard archers stand duty atop the wall's catwalk. As the companions walk, the wall provides no shade on this side and the sun beats down harshly on armor and blade. The city rises in elevation to the east, and the ramshackle maze of shanties known to locals as Teg's Throat that sits to the east of the Rivermark comes into view.
With Rancid in the lead beside two of the party, the warehouse district gives way, finally yielding in full to Nickleby Bar and Overtegyrn Byway, the city's main north-south thoroughfare. After crossing the very busy Byway, the companions find themselves in the labrythine Rivermark, the city's open marketplace. A bizarre jumble of buildings with shops on the street level and residence apartments on the second or rare third storey, the River Market, or Rivermark as it is colloquially known, is Teggest's primary entreprenurial district. To fascilitate ingress and egress via wagon and cart, the byways that criss-cross the market are wider than in other districts. In addition to the established shops, the market sports many hundreds of small, independent canvas merchant stands which offer anything from steamed buns to the wispiest silk scarf from The Continent. The Rivermark is truly an international crossroads; nearly every race on Middanmearh congregates in the market.
The shop to which Rancid guides everyone is Moss's Agates and Gewgaws, a small but proper shop in the market that, from the outer window, seems to sell handcrafted jewelry with semi-precious stones. A woman, her black hair long and luxuriously flowing free down her back, wears brightly colored silk scarves and plays an exotic reed pipe of some sort while seven white rats dance on hind legs upon a raised pedestal in time to her melody. The woman's green silk scarf laying on the ground near her feet has a mix of copper pennies and silver marks tossed casually into its folds. Rancid stops and points at the woman. "That's her alright. Arquesta."
