They wore their welcome thin. Last night they were heroes saving their town from plunder and devastation. Today they were troublemakers. Con and Pringle had made corpses in the middle of their streets they weren’t keen on cleaning themselves, and mage’s often magnetized further trouble.

It didn’t bother the crew one bit. Their morale was high, as high as the first day Con and Pringle performed and fell in love with their newfound craft. “Just for today, we will wear these uncomfortable suits,” Con had said years ago. “The whole world will love us in only days!”

How ambitious. Con was starting to tire looking back and finding his younger self ignorant. Perhaps it was about time to just accept the fact that he knew nothing and never will. Perhaps Belle’s promises would falter just like everything else in his life had up to this point.

But here was hard to not be optimistic. Belle was a good seller of her promises. Con imagined even a man not ignorant would fall for her words. She knew her business, as she laid out.

“We’re going north to Eastcreek,” Belle said.

“Our first stop on the tour?” Con asked enthusiastically. They were walking through the plains on a narrow stone road, the beginning of summer welcoming them with sunflowers past the sides of the ditches. Deer prowled about, taking sips at the streams with their offspring. Con and Pringle wore black street outfits, their suits discarded in the middle of the plains, where they would disintegrate. They were too filthy to Store and wear later. Con would need to conjure their outfits from scratch.

“Eastcreek is a good city,” Pringle said. Out in the distance, the city’s walls raised only an inch high, climbing taller as they drew closer and closer. Two hours walk, maybe, but Con wouldn’t complain. There was a lot to look forward to, stepping into a city as big as this, especially as performers.

“Huh? No way!” Belle laughed. “The people in there wouldn’t even think about allowing you guys to perform. Nobody wants to see what you guys have to offer. Not yet, anyway.”

“What are we doing walking here, then?” Con asked. Too good to be true. Always is. At least now I feel a little less ignorant to the circumstances.

“We need a ride to Oasia,” Belle said. “Our tour starts in the desert.”

“The desert!” Con growled. “In the middle of summer?”

“We could wait around for a season, getting nowhere, if that’s what you prefer,” Belle glanced behind her shoulder with a stern face. “No cities will give you the light of day. Music is a big part of our world, and there’s little room left for creativity. We start with the small towns first, and then we work ourselves into the cities.”

“Why start so small?”

“Are you listening? Okay, here me out. Our end destination is the Granplex, correct?”

Con nodded.

“Now, imagine this. Let’s say we do start our journey in the cities. First we would have to spend a great deal of effort just for the chance of performing, and what then after? Just because we won over one tavern doesn’t mean we would have one foot into the next. We have to be realistic. We would be in graves before we could tour Merketheil starting out with the cities.

“Instead, the towns will welcome us a hell of a lot easier. They are starving for talent, and anything above lackluster they will love. We could easily find work this way, and by the time we circled the continent, our act will have grown enough in popularity that the cities will actually work with us.”

“So starting in the cities is like shoving a square into a triangle-shaped hole,” Pringle added.

“Exactly. It’s not impossible, mind you, but it’s costly. Who knows, by the time we finish, we may have enough funds to rent out theaters for ourselves when we go place to place. How does that sound?”

“Ludicrous,” Con said. “The owners hardly pay us a silver chip.” I wish that was an exaggeration.

“A silver chip?” Belle asked, with a face that was less confused by the amount and more dumbfounded that Con said something so incredibly stupid. Con didn’t like her expression at all. “Where did you go to business school, the College of Bad Deals?”

Con winced. “No, I went to How to be a Snarky Bitch University, and I think we shared a class on Terrible Insults.”

Belle’s flashed back a grin. “They had a good course on negotiating, thankfully. How much did Mean Jim pay you?”

Con hated being talked down to. Belle talked down to him like she was his mother, yet looked old enough to be his daughter. “I don’t see how that’s—”

“Three silver and a night’s stay,” Pringle added unhelpfully. His dark bald head gilded in the sun, eyes forward down the road, avoiding Con’s eyes.

“A bad deal on your end,” Belle said. “Could’ve squeezed a gold chip and maybe two bedrooms, considering he had some more unbooked.”

Con’s stomach twisted. If what she said was true… Has all our poverty been, all this time, me being a terrible negotiator? A gold chip a performance would have gone a long way about now. They could have been riding horses right now, with backpacks full of authentic, unconjured suits.

Then again, we spent our rewards from handling those pirates in a single night. If we made a gold chip a day, my suit would have changed sizes every other week.

Belle was at the front of the group, walking confidently ahead. There was something about her Con couldn’t quite put his finger on. He walked for years going in circles, chasing his tail and calling it his dream, never reaching anywhere but where he started. But with Belle, it seemed like they actually had a destination in sight. There was a path there, to the Granplex, and Con was starting to believe Belle could take him there.

***

The surrounding walls were among the smallest structures in the city. The buildings for the most part towered twice as high, with stores cramming every corner. Workshops made stone blocks, separated by brick streets and concrete sidewalks.

The homes had slanted roofs, flattening out as they reached the commercial district center of town. The trade market.

The whole open area rounded out a large sphere. The road stretched twice as wide here than in other parts of the city, circling in a loop around the large, water-spurting fountain in the very middle. Stands set up to buy goods coming off the caravan wagons parked on the other side. From there, a sea of people joined their voices together to make a hectic, chaotic noise of bartering and demands.

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Horses sat idly on the outskirts of the open market, strapped to their wagons while men in uniforms half as fancy as Con’s suit conversed amongst each other. Men offloaded crates, some large and heavy, needing multiple men and wheels to get the job done, others small and handled by individuals, stacking boxes or burlap sacks.

“Come here, get your cotton! Right here! Cotton, everybody, right here!” a merchant called from near their pile of boxes. In the busy crowd, hands rose with every call. They crawled through the crowd to do their business.

“Stay here,” Belle said, walking through the crowd. In only a second she was gone into the sea of moving bodies.

“She vanishes quicker than I can,” Pringle mused from Con’s right.

They moved over to the wall, leaning against the brick to keep out of everyone’s way. “Imagine we’re going to be busy men, from here one out.”

“Em,” Pringle grunted. “She’ll turn our passion into work, that one. Good things, good rewards. Just hope the passions sticks, my biggest concern.”

“Really?” Con looked at his partner, grinning. “Mine is getting her killed with our recklessness.”

“We can work to be more careful, I suppose.”

“I was recognized yesterday, conjuring cards instead of knives. It might happen again. How long before I’m hunted?”

“Maybe those bridges you’ve burned were repaired while you were away.”

“Maybe,” Con sighed. Probably not.

Grudges weren’t bridges. No, they were limbs. The only way to get rid of a grudge was to sever it off. Such was life. For this subject, Con wasn’t ignorant. More like a master.

Speaking of bridges burned, there was a poster across the street Con struggled to read against the rapid flow of traffic passing through the streets. But on the sign, he noticed an old, grizzled wizard extending a hand down to a poor orphan boy who was handling fire in his hands. The text read, “The Union Needs All Mages.” That was the large wording at the top, some smaller plain text at the bottom.

Con recognized this poster, as the Union had used this very sign since he was a small boy. The fine print read, “We’ll make a man out of the rich and make the rich out of the poor.” Con felt bitter seeing the sign. A long time ago, the Union didn’t give a man a choice. If you were a mage, you were drafted. If you disobeyed, pray you were enlisted in a nation’s army. Otherwise, you’d be slaughtered for treachery against the human race.

Con lost friends who refused to enlist in either. Then he lost more when Trass turned on the Union, where friends on his side were killed by friends on the other. Ultimately, in the end, Con killed more of his friends than anybody. He cursed the Union every day when he woke up, then once more before bed. The time between, he blamed himself.

The shouting continued from the open market. Goods from all over the world were changing hands, swapping wagons like whores switching beds. The crowd seemed to get bigger, even when the caravans left the center in their chain of horses and carriages. Cities, especially market cities like these, had the tendency to smell like horse shit.

Con materialized a deck of cards behind his back, where nobody would notice his magic. He shuffled the cards, fidgeting with them like a toy given to an easily distracted child. The art of moving a deck was handy in their act, used in many tricks. He listed every card in his head, and over the years, he memorized the deck order even after shuffled, the list piecing together like building blocks in his head.

In essence, this was another mechanic in which Con would cheat his audience, primarily his target. Let him bring the cards; just don’t let him shuffle…

“Boys!” Belle whistled from amongst the training. “We got a meeting!”

Con and Pringle walked away from the wall, moving toward the busy crowd, eventually finding Belle’s small shape, keeping behind her as they squeezed through from wagon to wagon. Where they were heading, men in various sets of armor hauled sacks over their shoulders. A sort of dark orange dust misted out from one of the bags a young lad carried.

“You there!” A sharp voice called from the wagon. “You’re wasting spice!”

The young lad in leather froze up, then carried the bag more carefully. They were among the only ones in the markets to be mostly armored. Con would have mistaken them for arms dealers if not for their large supply of spice.

“I’ve talked to a few head merchants, but this is the quickest ride to the desert we have,” Belle said, walking toward the very carriage where he heard the voice shout at the young boy.

They approached the back and saw two men sitting inside. One was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a grizzled face, a long scar from the corner of his mouth to his jaw, a thick black mustache, and a full set of hair. Across from him sat a man half the height and width, but the muscle was replaced with fat. A red beard connected to his short head of hair. Despite his physical appearance being less, his uniform expressed more; a gold jacket and silver buttons. He stood up, head not even high enough to scrape the roof, then bowed.

“You are the two the young lady spoke of?” the man eyed up from his bow. “Please come in.”

Con and Pringle climbed in the back, taking their seats. Unfortunately, Con was next to the giant, who breathed like a bull. His armor had black iron over dark-brown leather, his chest plate foggy from the air bursting out of his nose.

“The lady tells me you are mages capable of a fight, yes?” the red-haired man grinned. “I could use all the help I can get.”

“We are capable,” Con said.

Pringle nodded.

“Might I ask for a demonstration? I need no fireworks, just a confirmation.”

Con formed the deck of cards in his hands, not subtly as he very well could. Blue light entered the air between his two palms and left behind fifty-two rectangular sheets of manamade iron.

“Hm,” the man frowned. “What? Do you plan on gambling our goods away in exchange for our freedom? What good is a deck of cards?”

Con nodded. He took two cards on top, then rubbed edge on edge. Sparks flew from between, embers dropping down like tiny meteors between his legs. “I can throw these easier than how most bowmen can pull their strings. Though a little is sacrificed for distance, I can lend these out a lot faster. Need you see me throw these?”

The man laughed deviously, waving a hand dismissively. “I trust a mage knows how to use their weapons effectively. That leaves me with you.” He looked over to Pringle on his side.

“I’m an illusionist,” Pringle said. “I can practically remove myself from the perception of others passively. I’m also good with the dagger.”

“Is that so? Show me your magic.”

Pringle had a slight smile but did nothing but stare at the merchant.

The merchant frowned, looking over to Con. “What, is he a moron? I said show me—” He paused as his head turned toward Pringle. Pringle held the same smile, maybe a tad wider than before. “Where did he go?”

Pringle poked the merchant on the head.

“Ah! What the?”

“As I said, I can remove myself from the perception of the common blood,” Pringle said. “Only certain mages can reliably see through my magic. Understand now?”

He’s capable of far more, but it would take several minutes to explain, and Pringle’s not the type to speak for that long. If I could sum it up into a single sentence… Pringle makes nightmares.

“I do… I do. Very well, you’re more than acceptable for the task at hand.”

“Eh,” the giant next to Con grunted in agreement.

“The name’s Flake,” the merchant extended out his hand. Con took it and added a polite shake. Flake gave the same privilege to Pringle. “Spice trader and captain of this expedition. The big gentleman in the corner is Scruff, my personal guard. Don’t eat his toast in the morning or he will snap your neck like a twig, you hear me? May not be a mage sort, but he’s killed three of your kind, so don’t get on his bad side, aight?”

Scruff grunted.

Con nodded easily. Wasn’t hard to not want to make an enemy that big and burly. His hands could squash his head to a pulp. Laying to his side was a heavy sword covered in a black linen wrap. The hilt was intricate and jeweled, contrasting with Scruff’s jagged exterior.

“So you’ll take us to the desert in exchange for help protecting your caravan?” Con asked.

“More or less, mostly more,” Flake pulled a cigar from a satchel around his side, brought it to the flame of a lighter in his other hand. He puffed the smoke, coughing lightly before speaking. “We are spice traders, friends. We are rushing to the desert, which from the sounds of it, suits your young friend.” He looked over to Belle, who still stood outside.

She nodded pleasantly. “He’ll bring us to the desert quicker than anyone else here. Estimated three weeks sooner.”

“Indeed. Speed benefits us both. It’s just now summer, and that means spice season for good old Flake and his crew, ain’t that right, Scruff?”

“Aye,” Grunted Scruff.

Flake smiled, cigar smoke leaking from his mouth and nose. “Unfortunately, there are only a few roads of stone going through the desert. You understand that when a season begins and ends is when the demand is highest. Oasia is hungry. No, starving, and will pay a fortune to whoever gets there first.” He chuckled softly, flicking his cigar in the ashtray attached to the wall. “There are two paths. The long path needs us to go all the way to the border of the Trass Confederation.”

“A long journey,” Scruff said. “Faster horses beat us.”

“Mm.”

I don’t like where this is going, Con thought.

Flake puffed his cigar once more. “That’s why we must take the short path few dare attempt. In about thirty minutes, we’re leaving toward the east, then we’ll pass through the Blood Swamp and join the Eastern road to head north into Oasia.”

“Do I have to ask why it’s called the Blood Swamp?” Con asked.

Flake said nothing, pursing his lips to his cigar. He blew a screen of smoke, by the time it dissipated, underneath revealed to be a ravenous smile.