Mrs. Kine had produced a mirror quickly, but was searching for her pen.

“Mrs. Kine.”

I suppose the tone of my voice caused her to look at me that way.

“I should have brought this up earlier,” I said, “but I’m not okay with slavery. We won’t own any.”

She blinked at me before returning to her seat.

“I haven’t had a proper girl to see to my clothing or hair in almost a decade. Depending on the function I may need help getting into and out-” she cleared her throat and looked at her gloved hands.

“I can handle practical dresses on my own, but for more formal occasions a lady needs at least two sets of hands.”

“You can have servants. If we can afford them. They’ll just be paid, not slaves.”

“What does one, um, pay for something like that?”

“I don’t know,” I said with a grin, “I can’t remember.”

She had a hesitant smile on her face before she looked away.

“I can bond these, write down the descriptions, and then release them. Unless-”

“Unless?”

“Someone should be bonded to the cards. Once bonded the cards cannot be damaged unless the bond holder allows it.”

“How many can you bond?”

She blinked at me.

“All of them,” she said slowly.

“Oh. There’s not like a limit?”

“There is not,” she said slowly, “I think the record is currently fifty thousand concurrently bonded cards. Give or take.”

“Yes of course,” I said with a smile, “Give or take.”

When she smiled at me I really hoped we made it to Nightfyre this time. I didn’t think I had the emotional power or moral flexibility to go through this conversation and day again when she was sharing her pain to me for the first time.

“Let’s see what you got?” she said holding the mirror up.

It was a silver backed hand mirror, and in one of the loops she had said it belonged to her mother. She must have hid it from her father somehow.

“That’s nice,” I said.

She glanced at the mirror and then nodded.

“You know how to check for rarity?”

“I do not.”

She looked at me then became excited as she showed me.

A card reflected in the mirror that looked the same was damaged, common, or enchanted to look like a common card but would only have one use, like a wand or scroll.

Cards with a green coloring were uncommon, blue rare, orange Legendary, and Pearlescent were Master, the highest tier.

“Some people list them as tier, one, two, three, and the like but-” she stopped and looked at me. The fifth card she held up to the mirror was greenish.

She looked like a child opening Christmas presents.

She glanced around when we found a blue though we were some fifty paces from the other wagons and sitting in a ring of crates and luggage that was pulled from the wagon to make room inside for sleeping.

The next was green, then blue, and blue again.

She paused and looked at me.

“How dangerous were these men?” she asked.

She must have seen the answer on my face.

“This is true wealth here,” she said hurriedly, “hundreds of gold for a trash blue, over a thousand if they are highly sought after spells.”

More uncommons, another rare, and then commons.

There was a common card that helped with digesting contaminated water. An uncommon card that allowed you to know the direction of where you last woke up by thinking about it. And an uncommon card that make you less affected by alcohol. The rest of the cards were combat related, which drove their value through the roof.

“This is common card that marks a target,” she whispered.

“You can only use it-” she paused and consulted an invisible book open on her lap, “once every twenty days about. And it costs you all your mana, and reserves- wow eighty-one percent of your mana while tracking, but it will track anyone, anywhere they go for-” she read from the invisible book again, “almost a full year.”

She looked at me with wide eyes.

“Do you know what this is worth?”

I shook my head.

“This-”

“And this,” she touching one of the cards in the rare pile.”

“What’s that one?”

“Combat form,” she whispered.

Ahh. Werewolf pissing off the cliff. I only searched his body once. Some gold coins and a nice folding knife was all he carried. It might have been carried by Hatless. I’d taken to killing him with the crossbow as he had eight cards on him.

It was a common enough practice to bond a card that you were allowed to use, but didn’t own. Apparently I owned cards I allowed my apprentice to use.

One of the cards split a projectile after it was shot, into multiple projectiles. Since it was a common card it only worked sixteen percent of the time and created four to six copies.

“It’s not as good as you might think,” she was saying. I saw the pen she had marking the paper book.

“The mana cost is high and the resulting damage from a normal arrow- You be better using the swift shot card that increases reload and fire rate I think.”

“You seem to know what you are talking about,” I said with a smile. She was clearly into the cards.

She smiled a small sad smile.

“My family traded cards before we-” she shrugged.

“Cards are an investment. It takes time and capital, but there is always profit to be made so long as you can keep them. The cost is in securing the shop and the safe where the cards are stored. It is a large cost which is needed for a hundred cards or a thousand. We should put these in your card safe-”

She trailed off dropping her eyes again.

“I don’t know where that is,” I said, “I’ve forgotten everything.”

“I saw it once-” she cleared her throat, “but you refused to tell me about it when I asked. Not that I blame you, it can be difficult trusting others. It is in your belt buckle.”

“This belt buckle?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

The weapon’s belt was a wide heavy leather belt with a metal hook and latch contraction on the left hip that could attach heavier items like the canteen or hip pouch. The holster on the right could slide along the belt.

The belt didn’t attach to my clothing at all and was long enough it could be belted over much thicker clothing.

I worked the buckle until I could slide the belt out. There was a way to release it from the other side as well. The left side on the belt had a loop of leather sewn around a metal pin.

Except I couldn’t get it free.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I might be able-” she offered.

I got my hands out of the way and then leaned back on the crate I was sitting on.

“People are pointing this way!” I whispered quickly.

She jerked her hands back and whipped around.

Seeing no one looking this way she glared at me with a bring red face.

I was grinning, but it was clear I was going to have to get the belt buckle off myself.

Eventually it came free.

It was a thick buckles with a few pieces of metal seemingly stamped together with cut outs at each layer to make a landscape scene of a mountain.

I figured there were a few cards wedged in there.

She eventually found a lock of some sort.

She hit it into her hand like someone slamming a closed ketchup bottle into their hand to get the ketchup into the neck.

On the third time the buckle looked a bit thicker.

She worked a fingernail into a few places and something magical, in both the literal and figurative sense, happened.

The back of the buckle was the bottom of a metal bin. She pulled it out of the top of the buckle like a coat hanger out of a magician’s hat.

Once free she set the top aside and stuck a finger into a hole drilled into the wood.

Pulling it out a bit she orientated it so the opening was up and pulled the thin walled wooden drawer out of the metal bin.

It was half full of cards. More than the sixty-four cards I’d looted by twenty or thirty percent.

She was staring at me.

“I don’t remember,” I said.

She grinned and held up the mirror.

Eighty-one cards, twenty-two of which were still bonded to someone else. Likely my apprentice. Those were a mix of common and uncommon cards.

I owned two rare cards that showed up as blue in the mirror.

One of which helped refine aspects of mana. The other was likely the key to my alchemical success. It boosted the positive benefits of potions, while limited or eliminating the negative effects. It also doubled the shelf life. It was an aura card that reserved thirty-one mana plus and additional twenty-two percent of mana. It further reserved nine percent of stamina and eleven percent of health.

“I’ve never heard of a card that reserves more than just mana,” she said, “but with no mana cost per use-”

She looked up at me with wide eyes.

She very carefully set the card down in the wooden tray and then used her pen to write on a new page.

“We should never speak of this again. There are cards that allow people to hear over great distances. This is valuable enough to kill for.”

“I will bond the rest of the cards and write down their descriptions. We can talk about them later,” she wrote.

I nodded.

Eventually she joined me where I knelt feeding the small fire I’d started in the small fire pit I’d dug when we set up camp.

I went back and put the weapon belt on.

“How does it compact like that,” I said bringing my hands together.

“Dimensional storage,” she said with a shrug, “It’s crafted, but only in the old world. What chests and wardrobes we have this side of the great see are mostly used to store food, assuming that time is shunted, so it won’t spoil.”

“Okay,” I said as I slowly added a few sticks, “now imagine I lost all my memories and don’t know what any of that means.”

She looked up at me, perhaps judging my mood, and then mirrored my large smile with a small one.

“Think of a trunk you can open that is bigger on the inside than the outside,” she said, “I know it can be hard to imagine but-”

“Actually,” I said, “I can grasp that well enough.”

She paused and I realized the sin I had just committed. It wasn’t interrupting her, which was rude in any universe, but I had robbed her of explaining it to me, something she clearly enjoyed.

“I apologize,” I said quickly, “I assume because I have an idea of a thing I know it. Please explain and I will listen.”

Dimensional storage was a way to shunt parts of reality into other dimensions. The most useful of which was space. Shunting that allowed the inner space to be larger than the outer. But weight could also be shunted making the weight when carried a fraction of the weight inside.

The most useful of the three was time. Unlike the others time could not be fractionally shunted. It either flowed at the same rate as the rest of the world or was fully stopped. When stopped, food did not spoil, hot tea did not cool, ice did not melt, and life did not live.

Someone had killed a large animal and dinner was what amounted to huge steaks.

Gus stood up as we all ate.

“I’ve thanked you all for your effort, but I wanted to do so again. These animals will hopefully survive here until my return. I’ve put off the division of Mr. Wellworth’s wagon, animals, and goods.”

He took his hat off, and slowly everyone else did the same including Mrs. Kine and the women who had to remove their hat pins.

I slipped mine off by pulling up on the back.

Most people had bowed their head and I did the same.

Gus cleared his throat and told a small story about the man that painted him in a good light. Two other people chose to speak up as well.

The silence stretched and Gus cleared his throat again and put his hat back on.

He waited for the women to secure hat pins before he spoke.

“I’ll let you get back to dinner. Tomorrow morning after breakfast we will auction the man’s possessions off. Per the contract the winner pays immediately with coin. Once every item is accounted for, the coins will be divided among us. Per the contract everyone, including the children, and myself, will receive two shares, while the guards will receive one share. In addition each wagon earns two shares, this includes the two supply wagons I own. Unfortunately the contract stipulates it is the owner of the wagon. Since the Tart’s are renting their wagon from me for the duration of this trip. That wagon’s shares will come to me. In addition, as the leader of the expedition I will receive five additional shares. Also laid out in the contract are two shares for a tracker, that is Henry, and five shares for a Brute, that is Pip. If anyone believes their contract reads otherwise please bring it up before we begin the auction tomorrow.”

He took a deep breath and let out a sigh glancing at some of his men before looking at me in a way that drew other eyes to me.

“In the contract, should we all agree by open vote, including the children and guards, addition shares can be given before the auction begins. I propose we give twenty shares to Mr. Kine, whose keen eyes spotted the men and whose quick thinking poisoned their meal. Without his actions it is very likely we would not be here today.”

There were mummers and spoken agreements.

I opened my mouth, but said nothing. On Vel that was the same as an Earth child raising his hand to indicate he wished to speak. With a nod from Gus I stood.

“Thank you. I already have more than enough. Likely Gus, or others could have argued with my claims on the wagons and onya. While I have plans for the cook wagon I would like to add the other wagon and onya to the auction pool. I would also like to decline the additional shares. Like the wagons, I came to own several new books”

The auctions would take place in stages. So that the money after each auction could be doled out to people so they might have more money at the later auctions.

Upon further discussion Mr. Wellworth’s items would also be broken up into four smaller auctions.

“We should buy breeding pairs of the animals,” Mrs. Kine said as we walked back to our wagon.

“I’m sorry I didn’t speak to you before I turned down-”

The animals went first. Mrs. Kine bid two gold coins for each breeding pair. Chickens, goats, and pels. Most of the others went for a quarter of that.

One of the horses was auctioned off in the first round as well. Jackson won the bid and the boy couldn’t stop smiling.

Food, tools, and Mr. Wellworth’s clothing was auctioned off in the second round.

Everyone agreed the wagon and onya should be sold as a pair, and they also voted to sell those last.

Three more horses were auctioned and the money split again. Then some weapons.

Gus out bid everyone at thirty-one gold for Mr. Wellworth’s wagon and Onya. The money was passed out. He paid thirty-eight gold for the wagon and onya I had recovered.

I bid ninety gold pieces for the sword with the see-through blade, and eighty-five for the quiver of arrows. The other enchanted weapons were going for forty gold, but I spoke with Mrs. Kine and she was willing to let me bid high to help spread some wealth around.

I invited Mrs. Kine to join me on a ride.

She was surprised to find we had saddles in our luggage.

I knew Wesley by now. What I didn’t know was that the males were both smaller and more gentle on this world.

Mrs. Kine was almost thrown trying to mount one of the bandit horses, so I give her Wesley and road the larger female.

She took the rifle and I took one of the bows recovered from the bandits. I had a quiver or normal arrows and intended to practice as much as time allowed.

The river we found was beautify but the insects were so overwhelming that I couldn’t imagine living there.

We find a place where the water is wide enough to cross.

“Stop!” She is almost thrown again when she saws backward on the reins.

“What? Gentle. Horses are not dumb onya, you only need to suggest with the reins and they understand.”

“Slime,” she said point across the flowing water. Sure enough there was a small melon sized slime near the water’s edge.

We rode up a hill and I pointed out plants. When she insisted we dismounted and I showed her how to harvest them.

“And now what? What do you use it for?”

“Honestly, I can’t remember. I only know this much because it was in a book in our wagon.”

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, “sometimes I forget.”

She didn’t ask when I would have read it.

We returned to camp late enough we missed the communal dinner.

I helped her load a few more crates and chests into the cook wagon, which we had emptied and reorganized.

The cook wagon was built like a food truck. It was there to cook a large amount of food in a small space. It had chains to hold pots to the stove tops and lids that could be secured to the pots. It was designed to cook while on the move.

Gold and monster parts were still hidden in the ash tray under the stove.

“I think we should exchange our gold for Gus’s copper and silver,” Mrs. Kine said as we took a break to rest and sip water.

“Why?”

“No doubt he wishes to haul fewer coins around and silver and copper will be much easier to spend in Nightfyre without drawing attention.”

“Smart,” I said with a smile.

Gus was amenable to the idea but it was clear, to me at least, that he did not like negotiating the exchange rate with Mrs. Kine. Perhaps it was because she was a woman, or perhaps because she dismissed his offers so easily.

They came to an agreement and I spent my night hauling coins between Gus’s cabin and my wagon as the two of them counted and traded in small batches.

We grew closer on the trip. We paid others a few coins to drive both our wagons during the day while we spent time on the horses.

We didn’t any but we found bones of a huge elephant sized animal near a river. She spotted a fishing spider and we waited all day watching it hang on a branch over a stream. It never did shoot it’s web into the water to catch a fish but it was a great day of doing nothing.

We collected plants and she expanded my knowledge by showing me some of the edible ones. We kissed a bit and did a lot of hand holding. So long as we were alone. Apparently that was scandalous otherwise. She took off her gloves in front of me and I kissed her hands and arms and held her as she cried.

“Something is odd this morning,” Mrs. Kine said as she joined me. I had just finished packing the wagon and feeding and watering all the animals.

I took the bowl of stew from her and ate mechanically as I watched the chickens eat. They had what amounted to a very large sock over their bodies so they couldn’t fly. They’d hang from that sock as we traveled. The stew was mostly meat cooked long enough to kill anything the wild animals had. The best part about it was it was cut small enough you didn’t have to chew it much.

“Most of the guards missed breakfast, and as I walked around at least half of them are missing. Gus has his maps out.”

“I’ll go see what’s happening.”

It wasn’t the normal routine at all. By now Gus should have his two supply wagons packed and on the road setting an example for the others.

“Gus,” I said as I approached, “I can’t help notice some guards are missing and you aren’t packed?”

He stood up leaning back and stretching.

“The man who is paid to meet me and give me local news hasn’t arrived. It could be nothing but with the trip we’ve had I’m taking precautions. I’ll tell everyone we are staying here for another day.