Jose de Gazara de Kopesh sat with his feet propped on a table in a tavern, smoking a foot long pipe while all around him the King's finest got absolutely shitfaced. It was a funny thing, watching elites off duty. Without all the fancy magic armor, they really were just people.

People who worked for a tyrant and used their position and power as opportunities to exercise their worst impulses, but still, people. Without the uniform of their station, you never could have picked them out of a crowd.

He was scanning the tavern for any that might have crossed the threshold into blackout drunk when the front doors of the tavern burst open, and Jose's newest boss strode in.

Catalina Zhao was a bard's bard. She dressed in flamboyant, eye-catching cuts, she partied hard, loved harder, and she lied as easily as she breathed. She was the kind of beautiful that could make you forget everyone else in the room if she smiled at you, with an hourglass figure, smooth bronze skin, and gently waving dark hair. Where she went, song, stories, and laughter followed.

And she was Emir Zaman's spymaster.

"Third Royal Regiment!" Catalina shouted with a voice that could fill a stadium, and every elite in the tavern stiffened.

When it was clear she had the entire tavern's attention, Catalina lowered her voice to a more normal volume.

"Break time is over, boys and girls." Catalina's tone was playful as ever, but she produced a roll of parchment bearing the seal of the King's Chosen. "By order of the Chosen, you're officially returning to duty effective immediately. There's been an escape from the House of Bells."

Jose's eyebrows shot up, and he sat up a little straighter. The House of Bells wasn't a prison, it was a statue collection. Maybe someone could steal one from it, but escape was something else entirely. It wasn't as if a petrified person could walk out.

A smile slowly spread across Jose's face. Already, this job had gotten him some interesting information. If there was somebody who could break out of the House of Bells, Jose's friends would want to meet them.

He just had to find them before anyone else in the regiment.

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Matilda Mayflower was not a particularly confident young woman. In fact, most people who met her got the impression that if they stared directly at her for too long, the girl would burst into tears. But ever since moving to a new town in the back country of the Lochmire province—she and her mother were trying to escape Matilda's abusive drunk of a father—she had been smitten on a boy about her age here in town.

And today was the day she would finally work up the courage to speak to him.

Matilda's crush was a stable hand by trade, though with his stables temporarily co-opted by one of the Chosen's Royal Regiments, he had been more or less conscripted as a servant of the army. It was now his job to ensure any of the regiments mounts were loaded with supplies and ready for use whenever an elite or bard required one.

He looked so strong and determined, carrying all those supplies for the soldiers.

Matilda stared at the ground as she walked, like she always did, whispering to herself as she practiced what she would say to him.

Which was why, as she was nearing the end of her walk to meet him, she—completely by accident—walked straight into somebody on the road.

"Oh!" she gasped, her voice small and breathy. "I-I'm so sorry! I wasn't watching where . . . I . . ."

Her voice trailed off as she realized just who she had run into. The man she'd just been going to see.

He was even more handsome up close, and panic suddenly gripped Matilda's heart. She couldn't think. So she just stared up at him, lips parted, her words drifting off to a soft sigh.

Matilda was shorter than average, a fact exaggerated by her demeanor. She had smooth, cream colored skin, large, innocent looking eyes, and raven dark hair that came down past her shoulder blades. Her features carried a delicate beauty to them, like a flower made of glass.

Her dark eyes met his steely blues, and a slight flush spread across her face. For his part, he seemed briefly as stunned as her.

"It's alright," he said, blinking as if remembering something. "Just, uh . . . be careful."

She nodded as he turned to leave, no doubt heading to work. He was walking away. Once he got to the regiments, he'd be busy all day, and exhausted afterward. This was her only chance, the only moment of his time she might be able to steal.

Summoning courage she never knew she had—almost as if it had been donated to her by another person—she called out, "Wait!"

To Matilda's surprise, the young man actually stopped and turned around.

All the things she'd practiced saying vanished from her mind. Desperately, she fumbled for something, anything to say.

"I'm . . . Matilda," she introduced. It was a start.

He nodded again, and smiled. "Gregory."

She drifted imperceptibly toward him, pulled by an invisible string. Her eyes darted to the side for a moment, looking past Gregory instead of at him.

The stables were just down the road, and—and somebody had hastily painted a symbol in bright red paint on the side of the building. A shield with three splotches of paint that might have been flowers, and a pair of arrows crossed behind it. The sight nearly made Matilda forget what she was doing, and she gave Gregory a nervous smile as she realized she'd been silent for an awkwardly long time.

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"I just moved here," she said, hurried getting back on task. "And I don't know very many people. But, um . . ."

"Are you okay?" he asked, a cautious smile on his face. After a moment, he rolled his eyes. "Did Russ put you up to this?"

Gregory started to look around, as if searching for somebody nearby.

"No!" Matilda shrieked instantly, and her hand reached out to cup his cheek and turn him back towards her.

"I mean, well, my mother did say I should . . . oh, by the Light, this is so embarrassing…" Matilda bit her lip, and she noticed she had Gregory's full attention. She let her flustered expressions and half-finished syllables buy her the precious seconds she needed to get her story straight. "Would you like to come to my family's home for dinner sometime? Maybe this Sixday?"

Matilda shrank into herself, as if getting the words out had cost her physical strength. She looked away from Gregory's face, and glanced over his shoulder again.

She needed to buy more time.

"My mother makes incredible dumplings!" she added. "And I have a shortbread recipe I learned from my grandmother that everyone loves. We don't have any wine, but I could—"

She was wringing her skirt in her hands by this point, and it was a relief when Gregory cut her off.

"Your. . . mother?" he asked, trying to process "Are sure you're okay?"

Gregory looked like he was about two seconds from beating a hasty retreat. Matilda was fast running out of ideas to keep him here, and focused on her. Desperate, she tried the first thing that came to mind: fainted on the spot, straight into Gregory.

He caught her in an instant, gently guiding her down. Her long lashes fluttered as the world came back into focus for her. Gregory's anxiety had been replaced with genuine concern. Perfect.

"I'm . . . so sorry," she breathed. "I don't know what happened there."

"Do you need to see a priest?" Gregory asked.

"I . . ." Matilda's eyes went out of focus, and she wasn't looking at Gregory, but past him.

Behind him, someone gave her a thumbs up.

Instantly, Matilda's gaze snapped back into focus, and her previous limp body flooded with clear strength. With confidence that had been totally absent from her voice an instant before, she nodded and pulled herself to her feet.

"Nope, perfectly fine," she said, brushing herself off. "Lovely meeting you, see you Sixday!"

And then she sped off, walking away as fast as a person could without breaking into an actual run, and leaving a very confused Gregory in her wake. He tried to remember when he'd actually accepted the girl's invitation, or if she'd ever mentioned where she actually lived.

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"Matilda" moved quickly through the streets, looping around and doubling back over her trail more than once. When she was certain that no one was following her, and that anyone who'd seen her would have no idea where she was headed, she finally made her way to an abandoned barn at the edge of town. When she was safely inside, a crackle of red light passed over her whole body, changing her appearance.

Red streaks of color returned to her hair, and her eyes went from ordinary dark irises to solid red orbs. A red, fiendish tail materialized behind her, and her clothes changed from a simple farm girl's clothes to a tight-fitting, dirty, and battle-worn white and red ensemble.

List gave a brief shudder as she finally let the illusory appearance drop. Ever since Arden had explained to her that her magic was fundamentally rooted in the concept of change, she'd wondered about altering her appearance.

Personally, List thought she was rather fetching. Lots of people agreed, but there were some backcountry folk like the ones in Darshan's village, who looked at her hellborn features and saw a monster. Whenever she ran into people like that, it was hard not to want to be able to look like a normal human.

Months of trying hadn't produced any ability to enact stable physical change, in herself or anything else, and she'd more or less abandoned the idea a while ago. But now that their descriptions were in circulation as the province's most wanted, it had seemed like a good idea to give it another go.

As it turned out, light could be much more easily bent than flesh. Once she'd learned the trick of it, disguising herself in illusion had been as easy as slipping on a silk robe.

"Tell me you got it," she pleaded.

"We did."

Valerie, Arden, Xigbar, and Kaleb were all waiting for her in the barn already, with Xigbar twirling a set of keys around his finger, and Kaleb and Valerie both carrying freshly stolen Royal Regiment provisions.

A victorious smile broke out on List's face. Poor Gregory was going to be very confused when he got to work, but they were going to eat tonight.

"Thank the spirits," List said. "I kind of wrote myself into a corner with that performance. I'd have needed a new character if we had to go back into that town."

"I still say we should have burgled the bakery," Xigbar said, pocketing the keys. "Would have been way easier, and they'd have deserts."

"Stop it," Valerie said. "The Chosen's army is one thing, but we shouldn't rob people just trying to get by just so we can eat."

"Spoken like someone who hasn't gone hungry," List said.

A wounded expression fell on Valerie's face, and List coughed before adding, "I mean, it is a very admirable principle. Just . . . a lot easier to hold onto when you're not desperate."

"If you only uphold your principles when they're easy, they're not really principles," Kaleb said. He spoke softly, and he was looking at his shoes when he said it, but everyone still caught it.

List arched an eyebrow. "Didn't take you for a philosopher."

"I'm not," Kaleb said hurriedly. "It's just…something my dad used to say."

The frown on Kaleb's face clued everyone in that he'd said all he wanted to say on the subject, and an awkward silence fell on all of them for a moment. Eventually, it was Arden who broke it, clearing his throat and nodding to the bags of pilfered rations.

"So," he prompted. "Dinner, then?"

The group took the opportunity Arden had given them all to change the subject, and set down to devouring their stolen food. It was a far cry from a meal at the Scaled Maiden, but compared to what they'd been able to forage from the surrounding countryside, it was a feast.

"So," List said as she finished off a dried biscuit, "did anyone else see that little bit of vandalism outside of the stables?"

Valerie nodded, her eyes darting to the bottomless pocket on her belt, which bore an engraving of her family's crest. Three roses arranged on a shield, with crossed arrows behind it.

The rendition had been a little sloppy—but it was hard to call the graffiti anything other than the Waymire family crest.

"Maybe it's a coincidence?" Kaleb said.

"I can assure you, my friend," a new, thickly accented voice said, "it is most definitely not. In fact, it's quite the story."

Five heads whirled to the source of the voice. Sitting in the windowsill of the barn, blowing smoke out of his absurbly long pipe, Jose de Gazara de Kopesh gave the outsiders a broad smile.

"Would you like to hear it?" he asked.