“I’m really sorry!” said Kelima for at least the ninth time in a truly pitiful voice.

“I heard you the last eight times,” said Terry as he scanned the market square.

“But you’re still angry,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m still angry. I’m really angry. I asked you to do exactly two things. That was it. Two things. I fought the knight and the squires and even dealt with the gryphon. All you needed to do was protect my cat and my hat. And you didn’t manage to do either of those things.”

“What?” shouted Kelima. “Your cat is fine.”

“Really? Where is she?”

“She’s right here,” said Kelima, holding up Terry’s pack.

Without a word, Terry reached over and flipped open the flap at the top of the pack. The girl’s refusal to look down told him that she knew what she was going to see. Or, more precisely, she knew what she wasn’t going to see. He just waited, meeting her eyes with a steady gaze. Unable to withstand that protracted staring contest, she looked down into the pack. The pack that did not contain Dusk.

“Oh no,” she whispered. “Did she—”

“She’s fine. No thanks to your superior babysitting skills.”

“How do you know?” asked Kelima.

“Because she’s over there, eating away your share of any treasure we might find on this little job of ours,” said Terry.

He pointed to a stall where the little cat was chewing on an unattended piece of raw meat. Kelima managed to look both relieved and frustrated. Satisfied that he’d made his point, Terry went back to looking around the market square. There has to be someone here selling those damn hats. There just has to be. Yet, look as hard as he could, there wasn’t any sign of the hats. In fact, there wasn’t even any sign of a hatmaker. His eyes traveled over to where the gryphon had crushed a number of stalls. He didn’t see piles of wrecked rice hats in the debris, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. Of course, even if there were any, it seemed painfully unlikely that they’d be undamaged.

“Why is it so goddamned hard to keep a hat in one piece in this world?” he grumbled as he mentally resolved to give up the search.

He’d have to get one somewhere else. In the meantime, it might not be the worst thing ever to just keep wearing the one with the hole in it. It’d be useless to keep the rain off, but it would still keep the sun off his face. I wonder if I could patch it with some canvas or something like that? He didn’t know anything about weaving straw or whatever the thing was made of. That meant that a true repair was out of the question. Even so, he was pretty sure he could find some kludge method to attach a piece of cloth. It might look stupid, but he could live with that.

“Could I sew it on?” he murmured. “Do they have waterproof glue here? If I could glue some waxed canvas on, that might do it. Shit, can I glue waxed canvas? Fuck, do they even have waxed canvas here?”

“Who are you talking to?” asked Kelima.

“The gods of fashion,” said Terry.

“They had gods of fashion on your world?”

“Yup,” deadpanned Terry.

Lifting a skeptical eyebrow, Kelima asked, “What are their names?”

“Versace, Dior, and Cartier. Why?”

“I thought you were lying.”

“Well, that’ll teach you to doubt me, won’t it? Come on, let’s get the other things we need and get out of here. The city guards are bound to show up any minute now. I’d like to be gone by then.”

“Wait. You’re not going to talk to the city guards, again?”

“Obviously not. I don’t want to get bogged down with this disaster.”

“That knight was bellowing your name. Someone is going to remember.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“I know. Which is all the more reason for us to finish shopping and get the hell out of here.”

“What are you going to do if the guards try to stop us at the gates?” asked Kelima.

“Stop us? What in the world makes you think I’d let them stop us from leaving? Now, let’s go.”

Despite the market still being a chaotic mess, Terry managed to find the handful of things he’d missed earlier. He cheerfully allowed himself to be overcharged and then paid with the Douche Knight’s money. It was almost as cathartic as breaking the man’s sword had been. He was a little less happy to overpay the woman at the stall where Dusk had been eating her wares, but he didn’t quibble. The cat had technically been stealing.

They were walking away down the street when Terry spotted city guards rushing up in a small group. He could practically feel Kelima eyeballing the approaching people.

“Stop staring at them, dammit,” he growled under his breath.

Kelima jerked her eyes away and the guards ran by without giving them a second look. Terry was actually kind of surprised. Given how Kelima had all but given Murphy, Patron Saint of Catastrophe, the middle finger, he’d just assumed that every single goddamn thing would go wrong for the rest of the day. He decided that the gryphon must have sucked up most of the bad luck mojo. Whatever the cause, Terry was more than happy to let bygones be bygones with the forces of chaos.

“Where are we going?” asked Kelima.

“The Adventurer’s Guild. I need to collect on these monsters if I can,” said Terry, giving Head Sack a shake.

“But—”

“Don’t!” ordered Terry. “Do not say whatever doom-inducing thing is in your head right now.”

“Really? You’re still on about that?”

“Did you not see a gryphon drop out of the sky?”

“I did,” said Kelima.

“Did you not see a knight with a personal grudge appear out of nowhere to challenge me to a duel?”

“I did,” said Kelima sounding sullen.

“You might want to pretend that you didn’t cause all of that, but you did.”

“It was just a coincidence,” insisted Kelima.

“No matter how many times you say that, it will never be true. Now, when you go home and it’s your family that has to deal with the fallout, challenge the demon princes of calamity all you want. But while you’re traveling with me, you will refrain from calling down the angel of ruination on my head. I don’t feel like this is a big ask on my part.”

“But what if—”

“Kelima,” said Terry, his tone as cold as glacial ice, “by all that is holy, I will gag you.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” said Kelima in a scandalized tone.

“Try me.”

Kelima took in the look on his face and seemed to conclude that he was not just saying the words. He meant it. She fell silent for several minutes before daring to speak again.

“Do you even know where the Guild hall is?” she asked.

“I do. I asked for directions back at the market. It’s the other reason I want to hurry. Someone is bound to tell them where we were headed. That means the faster we can get to the guild and get going, the better it will be for everyone.”

“We should really talk to the city guards about what happened.”

“Why are you so worried about that?”

“It’s what you’re supposed to do.”

“Says who?”

“The king,” snapped Kelima.

Terry thought it over, shrugged, and said, “He’s not my king.”

“That doesn’t make it okay,” insisted Kelima.

“It doesn’t make it not okay,” said Terry.

“I… Wait. What?”

“Yeah, double negatives. They’re great distractions. There’s the Guild,” said Terry nodding at a building.

Things were much busier inside the guild building than the one back in Miner’s Mark, but he supposed there were a lot more people living in the city. It would make sense that there would be more adventurers. They waited in line. Terry was more impatient than Kelima. In fact, he suspected that she was hoping they’d be stalled long enough that talking to the city guards would become unavoidable. They inched forward until they, at long last, found themselves standing in front of a distinguished-looking man with silver hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. The man eyed them curiously.

“I don’t believe I’ve seen you here before,” said the man in a deep, sonorous voice. “Are you guild members?”

“We are,” said Terry.

“Guild identification, please.”

Sighing a little, Terry put his identification on the counter. The silver-haired man looked at the identification and lifted an eyebrow. Terry waited for the man to do something to draw everyone’s attention. Instead, the man simply muttered a few words under his breath while holding a hand over the identification. The metal insignia glowed briefly, which caused the eyebrow to lift even higher. Oh, fuck. Here it comes. Again, the man surprised Terry.

“How can I help you today?”

Terry did not look a gift horse in the mouth. He simply unloaded the heads onto the counter and waited. The guild representative handled the entire process efficiently and, much more importantly to Terry, quietly. When asked about payment, Terry took a token amount and had the rest applied to his account. They were almost to the door when Kelima did the unthinkable.

“See? Nothing to worry about. That all went smooth as glass.”

It took all of his self-control to not strangle the girl. His murderous fury must have been apparent on his face because Kelima took several steps back from him. Once he trusted himself to speak again, he just gestured to the door.

“Ladies first,” he said.

She eyed him warily before walking out the door. Shaking his head, he followed her outside to where there were dozens of city guards waiting. They all pointed weapons at them.

“Terry Williams! You will come with us,” shouted one of the guards.

Terry turned to look at Kelima, who had pure panic on her face.

“This isn’t my—”

“Oh, it is. It absolutely is,” said Terry before he returned his gaze to the guards.

“You will surrender your weapons!” shouted the same guard.

“Yeah,” said Terry, drawing two jian, “that’s never going to happen.”