Wandering the streets made Magic’s skin crawl.

He never liked attention, didn’t enjoy having a spotlight aimed directly at him, but now people took notice as he roamed the streets, keeping by the walls of the nearby buildings to stay as far away from the diminishing crowds as possible. Their eyes snapped towards him like he was toting a bad omen beneath the flutter of his coat. Magic kept his head down, adjusting the duffle bag on his shoulders. It made navigation far harder, but it did wonders for his sanity.

Ori’s feathers, he didn’t want to be here.

Frankly, he didn’t quite care where he was in Droidell—hell, even in the continent—so long as it wasn’t here or the mining districts. Circadia had plenty to offer in its four regions; Magic often wondered what the southern Maribyssian waters would feel and sound like or if blood-red stones of Jaggian Peaks housing the canyons of Subsidia further north were as sunburnt as he’d thought. Why they had to be stuck here in all towns with insufficient cash to get them out was beyond him.

But while it was everything he wanted to be hiding out and waiting for his sister’s return to build up their funds, he had to admit that Mira was right.

And Magic hated admitting that she was right because then he’d never hear the end of it.

There was no reason for them to hoard their funds like a bunch of hibernating rats. Money was better when it was spent, though Magic liked to believe that money was also better when there was enough of it. Still, the coins weren’t useful to them if they couldn’t buy anything. Mira was right. They needed supplies.

The crowds weren’t as bad the closer to the center of town, which meant that, if he wanted to, he could bargain with the merchants at the stands for materials that they would need to get them through the upcoming winter nights—assuming they couldn’t make it out of here and to a more decent town before that happened.

The streets were filled to a healthy degree. The townsfolk seemed passably cheerful in their appearance—a drastic change from what he’d expected of the Elnoirans at this hour—but Magic knew he stuck out like a sore thumb in these parts and all their warm eyes and smile lines were just for show. The people at the market were all wearing ragged, worn-down clothes that, were he in their place, he would have just fixed himself if he’d had the foresight to bring a needle and thread with him. Their shoes were dusty, ripped at the soles to expose equally as shredded socks, and many of them sought additional warmth in the form of a frayed sweater or large blanket coiled around their bodies.

And here was Magic in the clothes his mother had gotten him from her most recent capital trip—clothing she had spent nearly half of their saved funds for. Clothing that she didn’t need to get him but did so anyway.

The make of the coat was simple: plain black wool save for the bronze buttons and gold trim along the edges of his lapels and coat that reflected the red evening sun. Even the pocket flap had a band of gold across it at the lip. The only non-capital—non-wealthy—thing about it was the embroidered pattern at the left breast: a stitch resembling flames consisting of two symmetrical, upturned half moons, the tip of the flame between them at the top.

People eyed his jacket hungrily as he passed; Magic wanted to melt further into the shadows of the market. All he could do was seek refuge beneath its town tarps, purposefully staying in the shaded corners. He tightened his hold on his bag and pressed one hand against his pocket, feeling for the outline of the knife handle as a precaution, which rested beside the cloth pouch of coins.

The commerce plaza was shockingly large. From the looks of it, Magic wouldn’t have been shocked if it had taken up most of the town’s center. When his sister had advised him to keep his focus here, he assumed it was for the lack of crowds. A buffer zone to keep his nerves and anxiety in check. As he scanned the different stands, though, Magic realized something else about the location that must have caught his sister’s eye.

Elnoire’s market was set up the same way as Chrome’s. For a fleeting moment, he felt like he was. The layout of the houses, most of which were two stories tall and shoddy from wear with windows limed with yellow-brown grime, were set up in the same way that the business-residential houses of Chrome were. Buildings that Magic assumed to be textile shops—based on the inclusion of a single room at the sides of the homes—made him feel shockingly at ease.

A twinge caught in his chest, a knife’s point twisting against his ribs.

Stars, it was so much like home …

But he couldn’t get distracted here. There was a job to be done, and he wasn’t going to give Mira the satisfaction of knowing he couldn’t handle something so irritatingly simple. He stuck to the corners, judging the flow of human traffic to take a spot near the stands that gave him the most personal space.

Fabrics were a practical choice—he wouldn’t have minded settling for a thick blanket or even another coat to wear beneath his own—but the nagging pinch in his gut directed him toward the fruit stands.

The basket spread was commendable; Magic spotted one filled with flickerfruit, the skin already pulsing a vibrant green in the shade, the calming leaves of waterstalk and aerityne, tangy jyan berries (which Magic knew were a pain in the ass to import, let alone grow naturally in Droidell), along with grapefruits, lemons, and a wide selection of mixed up berries.

Ori’s feathers, the selection of goods was taunting; suddenly, he was a kid again with his mother in the marketplace, taking only what they needed and painfully ignoring what they wanted.

All he needed to hope was that buying the fruits would be quick and easy.

Once he considered his options and settled on a combination of jyan berries, grapefruits, lemons, and the herb mix, he cleared his throat to get the shopkeeper’s attention. A man behind the stand straightened up and glanced over his shoulder. Magic took a step back and felt himself shrink.

The merchant was about one head taller than Magic, and as burly as he was tall, arms all corded muscle with shiny lines of scar tissue that jutted out in pale lines against his dark brown skin. A foreigner, Magic assumed, probably from the south, which would explain the prevalence of the jyan berries. The man had a haggard face, chin lined with brown stubble that sported a miniature spread of silver patches. His skin had a wizened texture that suggested old age, but Magic didn’t feel like that was the case considering the hair atop his head was solid black. It complemented the consistent, clouded white in both eyes, which were tinted amber by his sunglasses. Why the merchant needed them, Magic didn’t know. Perhaps he found the glare of the Eastern Curtain hard on the eyes.

The shopkeeper eyed Magic up and down. The intensity of the glare made Magic nervous. His palms were sweating, tingling with an ache he wanted to pick at purely for the sake of a distraction. Settling for his jacket sleeves, Magic snagged the edges, curling his fingers around them as the merchant leaned over. “Looking for something, mutt?” he growled.

Words vanished. They wouldn’t even do him the courtesy of being a thought in his head. Magic stammered uselessly, pantomiming with his hands as the taller man laughed. “You got a mouth, don’t you? Use it.”

The voice that finally left Magic was mousy. “Yes.”

“Sa? Can’t hear you, boy. Speak up.”

“Yes.” He forced his voice louder, but the way it squeaked and cracked elicited a snicker from somewhere to the side of him that made his face heat.

The merchant’s lips curled, a few of his teeth showing. “Would you look at that? The pampered whelp is nervous.”

Pampered whelp. What was this guy getting at? Magic forced his posture upright. Maybe if he faked it well enough, they’d think he was more than just a cowering customer who turned tail at the first sign of trouble. Even if that was exactly how Magic felt. “Not nervous,” he said. “But I am observing.”

“Observing what?”

“That taking a jab at a customer is bad business.”

The man scowled. “What would you know about business, caneo?”

Plenty, he thought, and Magic was going to open his mouth to say that but was interrupted by a sharp pain in his stomach. It growled relentlessly, and he curled inwards, wincing. The people nearest to the fruit stand began to chuckle. Magic immediately felt his face warm. He kept his gaze on the floor, allowing his hair to shield him from prying eyes.

Now it was starting to remind him too much of home, and the thought made him unbearably angry.

“I’d love to see you try and threaten my business, ladziosoldoro,” said the man. “But it seems you’ll betray yourself if you do.”

A gear turned in his head.

Caneo. Ladziosoldoro.

He recognized those words. It wasn’t complete knowledge, but he was familiar with their parts from books his mother used to read to him as a kid when she could afford the fairytales during her capital trips. Magic didn’t know what a caneo was; as for the second word, he recognized its ending. That word—soldoro—came up constantly in stories of people leaving rocks outside their windows so Ori could bless them and transmute the earth into golden coins for the poor.

Which meant that the man was going on about something related to money, though it didn’t seem particularly kind given the circumstance.

The merchant was staring, waiting for an answer, the look of a cat chasing down its prey. Except this cat didn’t seem intent on eating him. It wanted only to play with its food.

The flaring itch in his palms resurfaced, burning with discomfort. Again, Magic distanced himself from the temptation of release and wiped his palms along his pants. But he still couldn’t muster the strength to conjure a voice, so he motioned to the fruits instead.

The shopkeeper only laughed harder. He elbowed the storekeeper to his left: a small, bony woman who only glared back in response, low sunlight glinting off her brown eyes to make them slightly amber in the evening light. Magic couldn’t tell if she was annoyed because she found the whole thing to be below her, or if he was tearing her away from her job to watch Magic be made a fool of.

“Sa? Use your voice, cretzin. Or have you gone small?”

It was all he wanted to keep his head up, look the man in the eyes and tell him off. Be composed, be collected, offer a bargain. But his eyes went immediately to the ground.

This wasn’t how the plan was supposed to go. He was supposed to get what he needed, go back to the crates at the hideout and wait for Mira to come back. What was he gifted for his efforts instead? Humiliation and shame.

He should’ve stayed in the alleys. He should never have shown his damn face and just waited for his sister to return, should have, should have, should have. Would have saved him a whole lot of trouble.

Words stumbled along his tongue. Nothing seemed to make its way out coherently. “That … I just want—”

“I don’t care for what you want, capital lapdog.” He waved a dismissive hand and turned his back. “Lezzit de scarpeda ada traditze. See what I care. I don’t have nothing to offer pets like you.”

Again, the stranger’s words came in broken slabs of understanding—something about shoes and traitors—but Magic didn’t need the context of the language to understand. The merchant wasn’t just dismissing him. This was something dirty, degrading. Growing up, he could remember being called every name under the sun. A ghost that never showed its face. A duster that relied on a single parent coal mining revenue and hand-me-downs to get through a single winter with the heat on.

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But never did he think he’d be called a traitor.

Which was fundamentally incorrect.

Magic would rather die than pledge any sort of allegiance to the capital city. Not after everything they took from him.

A mixture of anxiety, anger, and what he thought to be fear, brewed violently in his chest. If the merchant wanted to believe that Magic was the shit beneath his shoes, then so be it. But that didn’t mean he had to take it lying down—certainly not from a man who got off on knocking his consumers down a peg.

Without thinking, Magic unsheathed his switchblade and jammed it into the wood in front of the fruits with enough force to make the bowls shudder.

Eyes turned to him and again he wanted to crawl, wanted to hide, but he stood there, gripping the handle of the knife white-knuckled. If the man wanted a fight, so be it.

The merchant was halfway turned, glancing over his shoulder when he spoke. “Sa?”

“Ailoa non traditza,” Magic whispered through gritted teeth.

I am no traitor.

The man raised a brow. “Look at that,” he said with something that almost sounded like respect. “The pet knows our tongue.”

“Small bits. The fruit. I’ll pay.”

Magic watched the man return, his stride slow, calculating like a prowling animal. To his horror, the merchant slid the bowls away and off to the side, elbows propped against the edges like he were considering the best way to make Magic flounder.

Had he been too aggressive? Too forward? Did he make a wrong step somewhere? He imagined that Mira might have been impressed with the bluntness of it all; his sister’s fondness for picking fights regardless of whether or not it was necessary was always one that confused him. But just because Mira might have approved, it didn’t mean the Elnoirans did, that he was certain.

“I do not deal with those who roll over at the capital’s word,” the merchant snarled. “But you … you’re weird. You speak our forbidden tongue yet you wear their work.” He considered Magic carefully, who straightened, hand still clenching the switchblade. Something in those pale eyes made him nervous. “Whose side are you on?”

“Neither,” Magic muttered. “My own.”

“Then perhaps you would not mind parting ways with their mark. Hand the craftwork over,” he said, and Magic felt the slightest bit ill. Yanking the blade out of the wooden stand, he took a staggered step back, feeling unsteady on his feet. His eyes flashed to the embroidered fire on the wool. “Hand it over, and I will give you a pass. For now. You cannot speak our language and be one of them.”

Magic shook his head emphatically. “Bought and paid for with honest coin. It’s mine.”

“Honest coin doesn’t mean a damn thing, boy. I’ll skin it off your corpse if I have to.”

Magic clenched his fists, hiding them in his pocket to conceal their vicious shaking. His ears were starting to ring and the burning sensation in his palms was agonizing. It’s just like running shop, he reminded himself. He’s just a bad customer. You don’t lose anything by not taking his shit.

It took everything in him to push words out of his mouth. “I don’t barter goods,” he said carefully, slowly. “I pay in coin. If you don’t want the cash, fine. I’ll take my business elsewhere.”

“And risk starving to death? Don’t be stupid, boy.”

Magic almost laughed at that. “I’ve done that plenty. I have no issues doing so again. Are you going to take the coin or not?”

A muscle jumped in the merchant’s jaw. His hands gripped the stall with enough force that the wood was starting to splinter. He couldn’t take being beaten at his own bargain and it was taking all of his restraint to keep himself grounded. “Bartada.”

“I’m pretty sure I was a wanted child.”

The merchant lost it.

He reached across the stall, shocked shouts and yelps from nearby ringing in Magic’s ears as the shopkeeper snagged him by the lapels. Fear and panic rang an alarm inside his head; he writhed and tried to pull the jacket free but the man’s hands were large and solid—so was the grip he had. The merchant shook him; in spite of himself, Magic whimpered.

“Make a fool of me at my own store again,” he snarled. “I’ll make sure you’ve no tongue to snap back at me with.”

If the man was saying anything else, Magic didn’t hear. The close proximity threw his nerves into overdrive. No, he was too close, close enough to feel the man’s breath, hot and uncomfortable against his face. The sensation of something squirming under his skin made him nauseous. He flailed and thrashed but he was unwilling to part with the coat. It would have been the most reasonable escape, and somewhere in the clammer he knew this. Get rid of the jacket. Leave it behind. Run to safety. It was advice he would’ve given to Mira.

Advice he was ignoring because of stupid sentiment.

“Feram!” shouted a voice and Magic registered another set of hands on his persuer’s arms. “Feram!”

The bystander wrenched the two apart. Magic staggered into the front of another stand and he gripped it for stability, his head pounding, ears ringing. Every part of him was shaking and he hated himself for it.

Beyond him were voices, rapid and terse, but he couldn’t care to tell them apart. Magic closed his eyes, allowed his legs the privilege to stop carrying his weight and slid slowly to the floor, still huddled against the adjacent stand. There was no solid ground. His head was spinning and the itch in his palms demanded to be met; he punctured his skin with his nails, knuckles pressed against his temples. Blips of static coursed from the junction between his hand and wrist down to his elbow. A sense of calm followed, but not enough of one.

You are not dying, he reminded himself. You are not dying. You’ll live.

Heavy pressure pushed against his shoulder, a voice murmuring with it.

Magic lurched to the side, scrambling for something stable to hold onto and face the incoming threat. “Do not. Touch me,” he wheezed.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” replied the person in front of him—a woman, whose hair was held up by a scarf. Her voice was soft, smooth, rich velvet. “Put the knife away.”

He looked down. He didn’t remember drawing it on her. Nor did he remember standing. But his legs still felt awfully unstable and he couldn’t breathe, chest heaving for air. The woman motioned for him to sit and, reluctantly, he obeyed, returning the weapon to the folds of his jacket and resuming his full fledged assault on his hands, desperate for release. She crouched in front of him. “What were you looking for?”

Magic glared at her.

“Don’t give me that look. What were you trying to buy?”

What did it matter? The shopkeeper wouldn’t give the fruits to him anyway and Magic couldn’t find the words to express himself properly; they jumped around with far too much chaos in his head. He pressed his knuckles harder against his temples and turned away, biting at the inside of his lips. Magic could still see her out of the corner of his eye, watching him, waiting eagerly for a response he was too bitter to give.

“Mah. Leave the runt, Daphne,” barked the merchant. “He’ll scamper back when he needs it. They always do.”

“Let me do what I need to,” replied Daphne, still unwilling to break her eye contact with Magic. “In the meantime, you should be grateful I don’t force your stand closed.”

“You. Wouldn’t.”

“I would.”

“The last people on this soil I’d ever serve are the ones like him! You expect me to roll over and appease them? When they have done nothing but harm us?”

Magic dug his nails deeper, suppressing a cry of pain.

Ones like him.

He didn’t know that he’d live to see a day where he would rather be made fun of for the smudges of coal dust on his clothes and skin than the possibility of being a capital rat. Still, the jab landed uncomfortably close to home. He fought back aggravated tears.

Daphne stared back at the taller man. Magic couldn’t see her face from where he was, but he could see the merchant’s. His eyes went wide as though he’d trespassed in an area he shouldn’t have. “And if he was celevoltaio? What then? You’d rather he go running? Find the Vultures’ nest and ring for their help?”

“He wouldn’t.”

Magic didn’t think he sounded so sure.

“You watch your temper, Veck,” Daphne continued, her voice a snarl. “Or they will come for you and the rest of us.”

The man—Veck—looked from Daphne to Magic, a film of disgust in his eyes that roared with defiance. Then, to Magic’s shock, Veck dipped his head. “Dolena,” he muttered under his breath. It held the implication of an apology but sounded nowhere near close to one.

With a fascinated intensity, Magic watched the remaining merchants work on repairing whatever damage involved with the scuffle with little to no words asked from his rescuer. She just watched them with an approving nod of her head and a nagging envy roiled Magic’s gut. He wasn’t sure who Daphne was to them or what she represented, but whatever the case may be, she certainly had their respect.

When the mess was cleaned and the scene returned to normal—as normal as it could be, Magic supposed—Daphne adjusted herself so that she was facing him again and when she smiled, a small divot appeared on the left side of her face. “So,” she said, “what were you trying to buy?”

He still didn’t want to tell her. It was childish, maybe, but he didn’t like the idea of this woman coming to his rescue and buying his groceries for him. Magic shook his head, focusing on a small beetle in the dirt road to calm his breathing. He unclenched his fists, grimacing from the pain that had been blinded by panic.

Daphne groaned and threw her hands up. They collided loudly on her knees when they came down. “Fine. Be difficult. But just know that I tried to help because Veck is not an easy person to buy from. It’s a miracle that he manages to sell anything.”

“Dick,” Magic whispered.

Daphne scoffed. “Yep. You’ve pretty much summed him up. I don’t enjoy working with Veck, but his eyes come in handy sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

“Yeah. He’s got good sight.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know. But he’s never been wrong before and he’s helpful to my partners.”

He sat up a little straighter, focusing on the words, drawing his attention away from the nagging pain in his hands. Did Daphne just assume he knew what she was talking about? Or was this supposed to be a test? Some kind of elaborate trick meant to throw him off? “Partners?”

“Do you speak in anything other than questions?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to stop?”

Magic frowned. “No.”

A smile curled on her lips. “I suppose that’s fair. It would be rude of me to expect something from a complete stranger.” She pushed to her feet and extended a hand. It poked out from her oversized sleeve, riddled with thin, curious scars. “Daphne Cambell.”

Magic eyed her up and down. He bypassed the assistance and pulled himself up—much to Daphne’s dismay—placing his hands in his pockets. “Magic. Magic Cooper.”

“Interesting. Despite what Veck claims, I’m almost certain you’re not a capital city bootlicker. You look a bit too … ” She pantomimed uselessly with her hands as if silently asking if he’d looked at himself recently. “Out of place,” she settled, “in that outfit. It doesn’t look like it fits you right.”

“It doesn’t,” he muttered. Which was true. The coat was two sizes too large for him in a way that offset his shoulders and made him look bulkier, wider. It was an odd preference, but Magic liked it that way. “Not mine either.”

Daphne waved for him to follow. She stood in front of another fruit stand, the gaunt faced woman Magic remembered from before glaring at the two of them with blue eyes cold as a morning winter. “A gift, then?”

He only nodded, not that the woman could see; she was busy chatting with the merchant in the same, archaic tongue. The older merchant woman brightened at Daphne’s words and rummaged around her materials—materials that weren’t part of the stand—gathering them in a bag. Magic raised a brow as Daphne glanced at him over her shoulder and held out the supplies. “For your injury,” she said plainly.

Unbridled anger fluttered in Magic’s chest. He heaved a sigh, accompanied by a low groan. “I didn’t need the help,” he whispered, snatching it out of her hands to hide the wounds he carved into his own. It wasn’t very successful; the blood was seeping into the paper bag.

“That’s an odd way of saying ‘Thank you.’” Daphne shrugged. “Stars, are you like this with every person you meet?”

Stars.

Magic almost took a step back. The only people who used Ori’s terms were him and his mother—maybe Benji depending on the day. But considering the ease at which Daphne spoke a language other than the common tongue, that shouldn’t have shocked him.

He couldn’t help his curiosity. “Ori,” he mumbled. “You … you know her?”

“Look at that,” Daphne mused, a grin twitching on her face. “So you can speak.”

In that moment, Magic regretted opening his mouth.

“I do,” she went on. Daphne led Magic through the rest of the market stands, grabbing small trinkets and food that the merchants were happy to hand over as though it were something Daphne was owed by merely existing in front of them. Silently, he observed their bright faces, devoid of lingering malice. The wariness in their posture when they spotted him and the relief that made their shoulders drop when Daphne reassured them of their safety. “Her stories were how my brother and I learned to speak this language. I imagine the same happened with you, too?”

He only nodded, growing increasingly more frustrated with the number of materials he was collecting without having paid a single coin. Yet he could find no available pause in the conversation to offer her compensation, so he let it be. For now.

“Yeah. Definitely not a capital rat. No capital citizen would bother to take the time to speak it. Nor would they bother dirtying their tongue with it..”

“Is it common? In Elnoire?”

“Unfortunately. We try not to use it all that often unless it’s with each other. We don’t like the risk that comes with it.”

Magic squinted and was about to say something until he remembered how little he recalled his mother using these terms of phrase at home. In fact, Amelia had only used this language at home—and only used their translated equivalents when out in public. Growing up, Magic always thought it a code. A bit of language that he and his mother would use on occasion to converse over a meal or during a storybook reading. He’d never considered the fact that it was a dangerous bit of knowledge to have.

He was tempted to ask, and he would have, but the only thing that left his mouth was, “That’s a shame.”

Daphne nodded solemnly. She paused along the edge of the marketplace, the dying sun of the Eastern Curtain painting her clothes in red. A breeze settled in that ruffled the scarf along her head, revealing the smallest strands of brown from their hiding place behind the fabrics. “It is,” she murmured, her voice carried by the wind. “I try to find places where I can speak it without consequence. It’s the only way I can keep him around when he’s not here.”

Magic opened his mouth to ask her more.

Perhaps he would have been able to, if it weren’t for the sound of fireworks—or something very close to them—popping in rapid succession from the north.

They both snapped at attention; a tendril of smoke waved its tiny hand from behind the rooftops, hazy and dark against the clear, scarlet sky. The noise paused for about as long as it took for Magic to feel his heart beat twice before resuming, this time louder in volume, closer in vicinity.

Every soul in Central Elnoire stilled.

Then they fled, stampeding like a pack of startled horses.