The next day Isabelle took them into town. Ratface had knocked on Suncat’s door to see if they wanted to come back and gotten a series of grumbling in goblin.

The mansion was separated from the town by a short path where the demon plants were doing their best to look inviting. It was clear they didn’t know what inviting looked like as more than one of them had a hand reaching for them. At least their palms bloomed with flowers when she got close.

They crossed a line of plants and suddenly Ratface was assaulted by noise. There were so many people in the crowd, a lot of them human. She reached for her helmet before she remembered she’d left it at home.

Fear welled up in her instinctually. She hadn’t had a fear of people before but being chased by a literal mob put everything into perspective.

Isabelle walked on like nothing was wrong, and no one blinked at Ratface’s presence. They spared her a glance as someone new, but she got the same amount of attention as Albert or Tiffany.

To be fair, they weren’t even close to the most interesting people here. A few people had prosthetics on. At one of the counters a person pulled out their money with a metal hand. There were others wandering around when before today she hadn’t seen any.

A lot of horns as well. At least a third of the crowd were demons, though they lacked Claudette’s burning eye. There were plenty of species milling about with one another. Ratface hadn’t been to many places, but this was the most mix of different groups she’d ever seen.

The real surprise was the number of goblins in the crowd. They wondered around and no one seemed to care. A few saw Ratface staring and grinned at her reaction.

“Newbie,” they’d tease her in goblin when they got close enough.

Some of them were red, like Suncat, and it was interesting how the normal goblins and them interacted. The red ones were always careful around the green ones. She saw one bump into a normal goblin and quickly look them over to the normal goblin’s obvious irritation. It reminded her of how Suncat had held her hand.

Isabelle bought them some snacks and handed them out to them. It was meat on a stick and it had a lot of spices mixed into it. It was hot and greasy, and she loved it.

“My master is still sleeping in so I’ve been given the wonderful task of getting you all to your respective places,” said Isabelle. She didn’t seem particularly bothered by having to show them around and Ratface got the feeling she was essentially babysitter which rankled.

“Albert and Tiffany, Claudette has suggested the two of you hone your magic, so I’ll take you to some places.”

“I don’t have any magic,” Albert said.

“All humans can learn a type of magic. How would you feel if your strikes were a little bit quicker, more deadly?”

Albert grinned at that.

“It’d be cool to learn magic,” he said. A sense of wonder in his voice at the idea that he could. It was hard for Ratface not to be jealous. No matter how much effort she put in, she wouldn’t be able to learn it.

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Isabelle tapped her cheek as she stared at him. He didn’t squirm under the pressure and met her eyes.

“Let’s kill two birds with one stone,” said Isabelle.

She grabbed the two of them and led the across the town. Ratface followed. Isabelle led them to a park in the middle of the town. Ratface blinked, the plants here were normal. It was weird to see a tree that just grew from the ground.

Isabelle gestured to the other two.

“You should go in here, don’t freak out.”

They glanced at her and walked into the forest. Ratface went to follow them, but Isabelle held out a hand.

“You definitely shouldn’t go in there,” she said.

“I suppose it’s not useful,” Ratface said. Her tone was bitter.

“Well, more importantly I don’t think you’ll like who’s in there.”

She pulled out a list.

“Suncat has left me a grocery list of things to grab while we’re out here. Fancy a shopping spree with me?”

Ratface shrugged and they set off.

The first place they went to was a tailor of all places. Isabelle handed over a bunch of measurements while Ratface had a look around. There was a nice green cloak that had a good hood as well. It looked waterproof so she ended up buying it and putting it on.

“Green on green?” Isabelle asked. She was judging but Ratface gave it a swish. The cloak was a nice forest green which complemented her dark green skin.

The next place they went to was a herb store and Isabelle handed the list over again. This store was owned by a green skinned goblin, and she waved a hand in greeting.

“Name?” she asked.

“Ratface, yours?”

“Dirthand, surprising to see a rat on their own.”

“Suncat is sleeping.”

“Suncat,” Dirthand said. She nodded at the list, “Her hand writing’s bad.” She showed it to Ratface and she had to agree with the other goblins assessment.

It was all in goblin and when Ratface looked at Isabelle’s other list she found it in neat common. The girl was multilingual.

Isabelle watched the two of them.

“What are you talking about?” she asked. Ah, they must have switched into goblin without noticing. The two goblins glanced at each other then gave the same wide grin to Isabelle.

“Secrets,” they said.

Isabelle groaned.

“You all do that whenever I ask,” she complained.

Ratface grinned and Dirthand chuckled.

“You from Lurian? Inner trees?” she asked.

“You can tell?”

“Fancy accent,” said Dirthand.

Now that she was listening for it, Dirthand was a lot more casual with her speech to the point her words had a bit of a twang to them. Ratface in comparison sounded like she was singing when she spoke.

“My first time out of Lurian,” she explained.

Dirthand snorted.

“Out of.” She made little quotation marks with her hands, “You mean escape.”

Ratface shrugged. In hindsight, the other goblin wasn’t wrong.

Dirthand finished grabbing all the herbs and plants for Isabelle and handed them over.

“There’s a goblin party in two nights under the kauri. It’s in the park,” Dirthand said.

“I got told not to go there.”

“Other girl disappears on goblin night. Shy I guess.”

Ratface thought it was probably a little more than being shy if she hid from the goblins and Ratface had been warned away from here.

“I’ll come maybe,” said Ratface.

“Maybe,” teased Dirthand.

Isabelle and her left and started making their way back to the mansion.

“You always say secrets,” grumbled Isabelle.

“You could learn goblin,” suggested Ratface.

Isabelle squirmed.

“It’s hard, I’m terrible with languages. It took me ages just to work out what Sneakygirl meant when they all kept calling me that.”

“because of the illusions huh?”

“Yes,” Isabelle grumbled, “everyone expects us to be crooks. I can do fun stuff with my illusions you know. It’s not all hiding.”

Ratface patted the other girl in sympathy. To a goblin being sneaky was a point of pride, but it was clear Isabelle didn’t take it as much.

“We should get this back to Eliana, or she’ll get all fussy.”

It took Ratface a second to remember she was talking about Suncat.

“But goblins can’t do magic?”

“Red ones can, but this isn’t magi anyway. Most of this is alchemy and pretty much everyone could do that.”

Ratface paused in shock.

“Suncat can do magic?”

“Did she not tell you? Oh… well I won’t say anymore.”

She was true to her word no matter how much Ratface needled her.

That was fine, she could go straight to Suncat to get the answer. The other goblin had made a mistake if she didn’t want to be annoyed too.

She’d shown Ratface where her room was.