There had been a celebration that night in town for Con and Pringle’s work with the pirates. Mean Jim still refused to pay them a single chip more than he initially offered, stubborn and mean like his name indicated. It was the kindness of the townspeople who offered them a deserving reward. One they blew immediately, throwing the wildest party this town had ever seen.

Enough ale and whiskey to fill in the Deep. Stacks and stacks of roasted lamb legs made mountains of meat on the tables, Con questioning if he had bought the shepherds out of business. And then there were the women, too. For the most part, Con kept his gaze away from the scantly dressed individuals, even when they engaged with the town’s heroes personally.

Looking at them felt odd when they sat in the booth with Belle. These types of parties didn’t seem to be her cup of tea. Not in an angst way, as most teens opposed to these parties would feel, but more of a can’t-be-bothered way.

Those among the raiders who survived were arrested, interrogated, and dealt with in manners not revealed to Con. Instead of worrying, he enjoyed the free whiskey and meat that came with the feast.

Con, Pringle, and Belle moved upstairs when the party died down, stepping into their single promised room.

There was plenty of empty space between the queen-sized bed and the walls. Con fumbled behind his pocket square and pulled out a card. “Your turn on the floor,” Con said, pleasantly smiling towards Pringle. He held the card face down toward the floor. A sudden glimmer of light formed in the empty air, expanding into a rectangular shape with a wavy pattern over the top. In seconds, a mattress plopped onto the ground, brushing a gentle breeze across the floor.

“Whoa!” Belle said. “Conjurers can do that?”

“Good conjurers,” Pringle said. He sat down on the generated air mattress, which sunk slightly under his slender weight. “Too lazy to make a new mattress every time, though. Says it’s too much mana. I’m left sleeping on an old magical bed.”

Con grinned. Mana was a coarse texture when used to craft textiles, something you sacrificed when you made flexible material. Without sheets or blankets to spread above, it was a terrible night’s sleep for anybody. Con had his fair share of sleeping on the junk, yet it was still preferable to the floor.

“Why not just share the bed?” Belle asked. Both sets of eyes crossed over to Belle, followed by two frowns. She had a look of regret on her face like she had just said the wrong thing to the wrong pair of people.

“We are Con and Pringle,” Con said adamantly. “Not Willard and Elsa.”

Pringle nodded his head in stern agreement.

“Afraid you both would cuddle on the same pair o’ sheets, do ya?” Belle giggled to herself. When nobody else was laughing, her joy turned over to nervousness.

Con sighed. Their relationship on the stage might suggest they were best friends. No. There was love between them, one of their mutual passion for their craft. They were two separate socks that fit into the same pair of shoes.

Con reached into his jacket chest pocket once more, feeling the cards tingle. “Best to reset my load, I suppose.”

He conjured three blank cards. The black and red swirly patterns on the back were still there, but the face was solid white. After, he put the few cards remaining in his chest pocket and set them out on top of the others, but these had various pictures of items etched on top. With his index and middle finger, he tapped the finger on an image of a pile of coins.

The card on top flickered a blue light before vanishing, contorting into a pile of gold coins stacked on top of the bottom card neatly, like chips to a game of Holdem. He cupped the top of the stacks, and his fingers guided the coins back to the blank card underneath, the collection shrinking out of existence, leaving behind only their image on top of the blank card. He picked the card up, the items Stored expertly for him to store in his breast pocket.

A small treasure of useless currency. Tokens called chips were the currency of the Merketheil and all the kingdoms and country inside. Con had yet found the appraiser who would appreciate the ancient treasure, but when he did, he’d get a good deal out of them.

He caught Belle looking at him curiously. “I can Store cards for a month at a time, but if I neglect them, the spell wears off. Don’t want a bed of coins exploding out of my chest. Or…” Con pressed the card in the middle. The ground shook and rumbled as blue, glowing mana took shape into a large round dome shell. Like an umbilical cord coming out of a belly button, a chain blurred as it dangled out from out the top.

The color formed simultaneously as Belle’s face grew pale. “What is that?” she pointed to the heavy black shell on the ground, the linking chains clattering to the floor.

“It’s a cannonbomb,” Con said easily.

“C—cannonbomb?” Belle shivered. “W—why do you have that?”

Con shrugged.

“In case he finds a cannon,” helped Pringle.

“Then I would need to find a wall worthy of destruction,” Con smiled, playing with the chain. On his side of the bomb, an atomic timer with buttons below. “I stole this a few years ago, been carrying it with me ever since.”

“Stole it?”

“I know, and yet he always calls me the thief,” Pringle said playfully, though Belle wasn’t having any fun so close to a military-grade explosive bomb.

“Can you… put it away?”

Con looked up to her. “If you want to team up with us, you gotta get used to fright, darling. If you’re scared now, imagine if it was armed.”

“Why would we need to arm a bomb?”

“Suppose you don’t know yet. Can’t blame you.” His hand touched the cold steel of the bomb, his other hand touching under. The bomb shrunk and deteriorated back to its blue blur, draining down into the face of the card. The image on the card was taken from Con’s very eyes, his hand just above the timer. “We have enemies.”

“Mostly you,” sighed Pringle.

“Mostly me, but enemies all the same. We’ve done things we aren’t exactly proud of. Killed men. Important men. Unimportant men. Men who deserved to die. Men who didn’t deserve to be killed at all. I won’t speak for Pringle, but I’m trying to leave that life behind. But be it the Watcher hates me, or just shit luck, it’s followed me into my thirties after I tried running from it in my earlier twenties.”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“Oh…” Belle had an ere of concern about her face, a look a little more disturbed than when Con summoned the bomb.

“If this ain’t the life for you, I don’t think you would be wise to travel with us, no matter how valuable you imagine you are to us, or us to you. There are warrants for Pringle’s arrest in Westerland, possibly warrants for me in Trass, and I’m sure I’m to be killed on sight in Kregel.”

Deserting Trass had been by far the best decision I’ve made in my life. Unfortunately, even a good decision can bring bad repercussions.

“You want to go to the Granplex?” Belle asked.

Con and Pringle shared a look. The Granplex had its own island ungoverned by the nations of Merketheil and was the last stop of any aspiring performer. Musicians and actors took the gigs mostly, but the world hadn’t yet heard of Con and Pringle’s magic. Their act was new, not yet hot enough to feasibly try to reach that stage. Despite how good they might be at what they do, getting there would take a lot of effort and networking Con and Pringle couldn’t handle by themselves.

“We do. But it doesn’t matter much about us. We could use a manager, but not one who can’t handle our grievances and bring us and themself to the other side of these mentioned problems.”

“Trass, Kregel, and Westerland will be difficult to spread your influence through,” Belle noted. Especially when we’ve already influenced them plenty ourselves… “Can you take on stage names? And when we enter the country, pretend to be someone else?”

“Con and Pringle are our stage names,” Con said.

“Then we deny ties to your past and continue on,” Belle said. Like she flipped a switch, any fear she had in her face vanished, leaving behind only palpable confidence. Her swagger reminded Con of the Trass Generals when he served. All of them knew why they were in the positions they were, and their demeanor expressed that absolute.

“That means you still want to be our manager, despite all of this? I was expecting you to say we stay out of those territories and just work on Perdo and Oasia, maybe Stardell.”

Her mouth twisted into a wicked grin. “I spent most of my life playing safe, with safe, although amazing, performers under my thumb. I’m desperate for a challenge, and you two are worth any chaos your baggage brings.”

Con finished summoning a red toolbox before Storing it into the final blank card, stuffing the cards into his chest pocket. He stood, then dropped himself back to relax on the bed. “That’s good. But we haven’t decided you’ll come along quite yet.”

“Excuse me?” Belle winced. She changes emotions quick, this one. First a face of terror at the prospect of a bomb, and now one of utter contempt at the thought alone she wasn’t worthy of joining them. “I’m the greatest booker this side of the world!”

“How long have you been a booker and agent for?” Pringle asked, his voice low. Con couldn’t see his partner as the foot of the bed blocked his sight.

Belle looked thoughtful for a second, her arms crossed as she searched her mind. She has to be wise here if she’s trying to manipulate us. She can’t be much older than twenty, at the most. Four years would be too many, but any less would make her boastful claims seem preposterous. Was it three magicians she said she brought to the Granplex?

“Around twenty years at this point, I imagine,” Belle said. Either she was dead serious, or she had in her possession the world’s greatest deadpan delivery.

“You’re kidding, right?” Con scoffed. “Twenty years? You’ve must have scheduled gigs while you were still in your father’s pants! Bullshit.” Con found himself laughing at the absurdity.

“How old are you?” Pringle asked.

“You don’t ask a woman her age,” Belle tapped the floor with her foot. “Though an accurate guess would be somewhere in the forties.”

Con stopped any trace of laughter. Damn. “You drink some sort of mystical potion or something? Swim in a fountain of youth?”

“No, I guess my family just runs our youth a little longer,” Belle shrugged. “If you doubt, ask me a question from when you were a kid.”

“What three former nations make up the Trass Confederation?” Con asked. He himself was from Mercal, sandwiched between Ubranth to the east and Hemal to the south and west. They joined sometime when Con was about seven.

“Ubranch, Mercal, and Hemal?” Belle pronounced the last one like she got that one wrong, though it was her first nation she mispronounced.

“Good enough, I suppose. Still hard to believe…” his voice bore concession, but the doubts sunk deep in his chest.

“If you wish, ask some more. Maybe even manager and booker-specific questions. I can name every Granplex administrator over the past fifteen years. Three of them live here in Perdo, if you wish you go speak to them.”

Con shook his head. “I’ll believe you until I don’t.”

She smiled victorious, flicking her light pigtails from her shoulders.

Belle was a pretty girl, visually striking, and she seemed to have an adventurous personality. On Con’s checklist, she checked off two of the three boxes he sought out of a woman, but she failed to tick the third. How would she make me look, out in public, with my arm over her shoulders? A predator, that’s what. No good. A terrible turn-off.

Not her fault. Con’s always finding something wrong with women these days. Maybe it’s time to accept that he himself was the problem. Fuck that.

Belle crossed the room to the other side. A basket full of bottles, whiskey, ale, and anything the townspeople would gift them, sat center of the desk. She took one, then glanced at Con. He dropped his chin, and she brought over a bottle of ale. Con popped the bottle and sucked at the neck. She bounced back to the desk, now delivering Pringle a drink before taking one for herself.

“I suppose you need a mattress too,” Con sighed, leaving his half-empty bottle on the nightstand. He stood up from the bed and decided that the space between the two beds and the desk was the most spacious room left.

He put out his hands and concentrated. The mana flowed through his hands like fabric through a weaver. First came the amount of material, which he produced all at once. It spread as a sheet that floated in the air like a flying, blue magic carpet.

Second came the shaping. The long and wide sheet of mana folded and wavered as it boxed into a rectangular shape. Part two was molding the waves, up and down, making multiple valleys from the left border to the right.

To end it all, he altered a piece at the side, willing a hole at one end, fitting a detachable cap to breath air into so to inflate. When he was done, the air mattress was fully conjured, solidifying from its mana form, falling to the ground. Fortunately for Belle, the bed was already inflated.

“Sheets?” Belle asked.

Con shrugged. “No point in making blankets rough as sandpaper,” Con pointed to the closet. “Might be some blankets and towels in there. You can decorate the bed however you wish.”

“You get used to the feel,” Pringle said. “These suits are of Con’s making as well.”

Belle eyed from magician to magician, wondering if the claim was genuine. Oh, how regrettable that it was. They were poor, with only old coins to their name. And they were terrible with money, hence this party that ended in a single night. It might do them good to have someone keep their wallets in their purse. Con and Pringle had to make do with what they could. The suits were as much a part of the show as they were.

Belle searched through the closet, pulling out two blankets. On her way back to her bed, he handed one to Pringle, who thanked her as she passed.

“You think you can bring us to the Granplex?” Con asked as she was making her bed. The very word sparked images in his head. The Granplex theater held hundreds of thousands of people. Every word carried across the stands and rippled across the lower section up to the rafters hundreds of feet above. He imagined the laughter, cheering, and joy of the audience. He imagined the stage and how the whole building was set on top of a mountain. The glass behind his back looked over the whole world. It would certainly be the peak of his life, let alone his career in magic.

“I imagine I could,” Belle said. “I have a knack of what audiences want what, and how to tune my performers to meet those expectations.” She turned her head while laying on her bed, a wide grin on her face.

“If you’re our manager or agent, or booker, and whatever, what’s next for us?”

“Well, we’ll need money. A lot of it. How much do you two have saved?” Belle asked, though winced when Con was too ashamed to admit they were broke. “Whatever, we’ll start saving from now on. We could make agreements with bookers for gigs, but we have to start treating your act like its a real if we’re going to get anywhere. We won’t be making the Granplex without opening venues independently, and to do that, we need the chips, if you catch what I mean. But that’s future speak. It doesn’t change our current course.”

“And that is?” Con asked.

She laughed. “It’s obvious. We travel, coast to coast, deserts to mountains to plains, we see the whole world, so the whole world sees us. Con and Pringle are going on tour.”