"Are you sure this is safe?" Opellia asked.

I nodded. "It's pretty safe," I said. In truth, I was pretty sure that what we were doing was very, very unsafe… though, by Canal Canton standards, that wasn't so bad.

I had a brilliant plan for drawing out the child-murdering ritualists, and that plan was as follows:

1) I would act the part of a street-smart scamp guiding two wealthy girls from the nicer parts of the city.

2) Opellia and I would get into a public argument about some alleged wrongdoing on my part, and she and Nima would storm off on their own, providing a big welcome sign for anybody looking to kidnap naïve and unattended children.

3) Then, once the nefarious parties revealed themselves, the four of us would scare them off with some combination of knives and magic.

4) Finally, we would follow them back to their hideout, upon which we would rendezvous with the boys and figure out how to rescue the kidnapped children.

I tried to look like I knew what I was doing as Mailyn and I lead the two artificer girls into the ramshackle aggregation of warrens that was the northern canals. The roads of the Foreign Canton continued for a bit until they were swallowed by the press of makeshift buildings.

I assume there was still pavement there somewhere underneath the wood, tin, and fluttering canvas of the buildings, but any rhyme or reason to the streets was long gone. To get cargo or people into the canton by land, carriages pulled into the big dusty roundabout just inside the canton and unloaded their contents, teams of shifty-looking men and a few brawny women hauling off the goods into parts unknown. Others would load merchandise in flat, unmarked crates.

More was always loaded onto carts at the roundabout than unloaded, most of it smuggled into Floria illicitly via the canals. But the smugglers knew what they were doing, and the moment any canton inspectors were nearby, lookouts would signal and all of the carriages would roll up into the Foreign Canton beyond their jurisdiction.

"This doesn't look so bad," little Nima said.

"Almost all this stuff's illegal," Mailyn informed her.

I waved at random to one of the laborer foremen - one of the less sketchy-looking ones, a man with a few tattoos but none of the lumpy scars that suggested he participated in underground bareknuckle boxing matches. Many of the nearby laborers clearly did. After a moment, the man shrugged and awkwardly waved back, essentially establishing my bona fides in the neighborhood. That was a trick that Aldo had taught me - people are much more likely to 'recognize' a stranger than risk annoying an acquaintance.

I pointed past the roundabout and into the mess of warrens just beyond. "My map says it's this way toward the canal open market," I said.

"You've never been this way before?" Opellia asked nervously.

"I memorized the map," I said. "I know where we're going."

I did not mention that there were quite a few question marks between our current location and the Green Stones, where we were most likely to be spotted by the sorts of sketchy people who might take kids.

We ascended a rickety staircase and crossed a wobbly 'bridge' of tin siding haphazardly welded together. Despite our small sizes, our weight made the bridge buckle up and down with every footfall. Below and to our right was an impromptu open-air market around a mud pit perhaps twenty meters across. Children our age and younger played and splashed in the mud while vendors hawked produce that would have been considered past-ripe in any other canton (aside from parts of the Mendicants Canton, I suppose). Aside from the slightly browner and softer fruits and vegetables, the trade was strikingly normal - one booth sold trinkets that our artificer friends would have scoffed at, but that I eyed with mild envy. My very own glowglobe lantern? A self-cleaning bathing scrub? Yes, please!

The most popular stall belonged to a water-seller, who owned a largish rock filter artifice, in which fetid canal water could be poured into the great bowl at the top and cool, clean water would dribble out the bottom for as long as the charge held. Water went for a tollo for two liters, plus a one-tollo deposit on a clay amphora. If you could get your hands on a rock filter, it wasn't a bad business strategy - rock filters were too big to easily steal and most folks could barely operate them, let alone keep them charged long enough to be worthwhile.

We passed along market and into a long block of lopsided rowhouses, where people sat on their little stoops, conversing, drinking, and people-watching. More than a few heads turned our way - two girls wearing the finery of minor nobles were bound to attract attention. Mailyn and I huddled in close to the artificer girls, as if to establish 'ownership' over these obviously out-of-canton youths. We proceeded down the narrow, muddy road between row houses, whereupon we caught our first glimpse of canal, glinting like gold in the sunlight.

For the record, normally, water should not glint like gold, at least not when it's still three hours until sundown. A silvery glitter is fine. A more burnished appearance, though, suggests that the water is quite adulterated. There's a reason why you can make a profit selling potable water in the Canal Canton.

"You girls lookin' for anything?" an old woman drawled. She squinted at us from her rocking chair, lazing in the shade and swatting at flies when they drew too near. Actually, she probably wasn't much older than thirty, but it was a rough life in the miasmic atmosphere of the canals.

"We're fine," I said, giving Opellia a little tug on the sleeve.

"You new in these parts?"

"We're experienced guides, ma'am," Mailyn said, playing up her own brogue. In reality, she'd lost her provincial West Wext accent, even when speaking Gionian, but she could still sound the proper yokel when she wanted to.

"I hate the smell," little Nima whispered, holding her sleeve to her nose.

"Just a little while longer," Opellia said.

Despite the smell, we continued toward the canals. From my liberal reading of spatback adventures, I knew that the canals proper, and especially the Green Stones, were where criminal activity and shifty characters congregated. So, in my mind, it was a no-brainer that the cultists who'd been kidnapping kids would be there. Mind you, the canals proper still occupy about a square kilometer of city, but the extent of my thinking at the time was: go to canal, find bad guys.

We made our way out to the first canal, at which point I figured we'd gone about far enough to try our hand at luring miscreant cultists. Any further into the canton would have required crossing canals via the chaotic crisscrossing of jury-rigged bridges or by hiring a patched-over sandolo - absolutely nobody swam in the canals, as that would have been tantamount to suicide by toxic sludge or canal slugs (take your pick). Yes, we'd gone far enough - any farther into the canton, and I worried that the smell might, somehow, get even worse.

Our side of the canal was packed with dense tenement housing, while the opposite side consisted of what I would charitably call storefronts. The buildings themselves were solid limestone things built a century ago. They would have looked far too stately for the canals, were it not for the slapdash additions to the front of the buildings, as if somebody had tried to gird the building itself in a brigandine of wood and tin. The additions squeezed out the canal-side street from an avenue wide enough to drive carts down into one where, if two adults tried to walk past one another, one errant bump would send somebody into the canal.

Mailyn and I shared a look. "Alright, I guess we'd better start," I said.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Start what?" Opellia replied.

"The argument? You have to get angry at me and then storm off?"

"Right… but what are we arguing about? We can't just argue about nothing?"

"People argue about nothing all the time," Mailyn observed.

"But not when we're trying to make a big scene…"

"Just shout that we cheated you out of money, that we're the worst guides in the city, and you can find your, um… uncle's shop without our help…"

"Girls dressed like that don't usually have uncles who work in the canals…" Mailyn said.

"Hmm…" I scratched my head - it was a good point. "Can you do a Gionian accent?"

"Um… Ay theenk saw," Opellia said, perhaps overplaying it just a bit.

"Maybe a bit less bad?" Nima said.

"Ay can doo Gionian accent," Opellia said.

"Passable," Mailyn and I both said, and then we both giggled.

"Okay, so then add that you know we aren't even in the right canton because you can see the stinking canals," I said.

Opellia nodded, lips quivering as if she was taking mental notes. She squeezed eyes shut and balled her fists as she emotionally prepared herself for the 'argument'. She took a few steps away before storming over to me, eyes fiery and nostrils flaring.

"You! You are the worst guides in this whole city!" she shouted… though her accent had gone decidedly Wext for some reason. She gave me a shove - a pretty hard one that sent me sprawling on the slick stone of the canal byway.

"What's that for? I ain't never showed you nowhere but true, miss! That were uncalled for!" I shouted back, springing back to my feet.

"You are a cheat! I want my money back!" she said.

"You ain't seeing a single red tollo from me!"

"And you'll never find where yer goin' without us!" Mailyn added.

"Oh? Do I look a fool? We are not even in the right canton - I can see your famous canals, and they stink even worse than I thought they would! We will find my uncle's shop without your help, and I will tell him what a charlatan you are! Good day to you!" Opellia pulled Nima close to her and shuffled off down the canal.

Internally, I congratulated myself - we'd managed to snag even more attention than I'd expected. Even if the kidnappers weren't present, word was bound to get to them soon. I huddled up with Mailyn to look like we were discussing what had just happened - which in a way we were - before slipping into the nearby alley.

"Okay… so we just give them a minute and then follow-"

"I'd give them less than a minute," Mailyn said. "Like… we should go right now. They've got people on them like flies on dung."

"You think so?"

She nodded. "I know so. There were a lot of eyes on us, and I saw at least three or four people skulking in our direction after the 'fight', and now they're nowhere to be seen. So… I figure we should start after 'em now before we've got two more missing kids to deal with."

"Right. Let's go!"

As Mailyn and I exited the alleyway and made our way down the canal, I discovered the first of several shortcomings in my plan: we'd agreed to meet up with the other girls in 'the alleyway', I hadn't exactly specified which alleyway. In, say, River's Run or the Foreign Canton, this wouldn't be much of a problem since there are only one or two alleyways per city block. In the canals, though, there's no clear delineation between a path, a road, an alleyway, a culvert, and any number of other places where buildings happen to not be.

We checked the few grottos, paths, and crawlspaces past the site of our staged argument, finding nothing but reeking piles of garbage that would have been better off tossed into the canal - it would have, if anything, made the canal cleaner to have River's Run's garbage tossed into it. I shot Mailyn a worried look and was about to suggest a different strategy when we heard Nima cry out. Quite loudly.

Fortunately, Nima and Opellia had been brought up to be proper young women. As such, their shriek-during-danger reflexes were very much on point. Mine had decayed over a year on the streets and, if Mailyn had ever had such a reflex, she'd lost it before I even knew her. Mailyn and I dashed toward the screen, bounding around the edge of a burnt-out storefront and into a culvert that might well be interpreted as an alleyway, too. There, I spotted Opellia guarding Nima behind herself while three neighborhood toughs prowled toward them - two teenage boys and a girl, all of them probably between fifteen and seventeen.

"For a few octavos, we'd be happy show you out of the neighborhood safe as you please," Boy One chuckled.

"We'll need that jewelry for safekeeping, though," The Girl said.

"Yeah. Somebody might get the wrong idea and hurt a kid over that," Boy Two said.

Opellia's look of terror relaxed slightly when she spotted us sneaking up on the toughs. Her brow furrowed in resolve. "I'll have you know I'm an expert in magic!"

"Hey, what happened to her accent?" Boy One asked.

Mailyn and I unsheathed our knives. "Show us where you're keeping the other kids or else!" I shouted with as much bravado as I could manage.

The Girl eyed my knife and backed away a step, "Um… other kids?"

I had forgotten the second rule of bait in a sting operation: make sure your bait is specific to your target. The first rule is, of course: don't get your bait killed! We'd just cast out the most generalized 'steal from me' signal in the world, and so we'd attracted attention from anybody willing to use the threat of violence to secure a quick payday… which, in the Canal Canton, is just about everybody.

"Well, well… whadda we have here?" a deep voice grumbled behind us. A pair of beyond-sketchy men dressed in what might have once been buckskin leathers and what might have once been rust-free blades sauntered in.

"Hey, we found 'em first," Boy Two said.

"Yeah, finders keepers!" The Girl added.

"Oh yeah? I heard it's the biggest blade wins," Creepy Guy One chuckled. He drew his rusty cutlass and waved it about with loopy coordination that indicated he'd been drinking quite a bit (and, gauging from his breath, it was something cheap, strong, and possibly made from fish).

"I reckon ours are biggest," Creepy Guy Two added.

"Hey, yeah, I found 'em! They're down here!" somebody shouted from above. A trio of canal denizens peered down from the roofs on either side of our alleyway. One of them leveled an arrow in our general direction.

"Hey, you lot buzz off! This is our find!" Archery Lady shouted down.

"Like hell it is!" The Girl shouted.

"Yeah! We've got the big blades!" Creepy Guy One shouted.

Mailyn squeezed my shoulder, reminding me that we were very much active participants in this quickly-escalating disaster. I glanced at Opellia and mouthed the word: magic. It took her a moment to process my meaning. Her brow furrowed in determination as she raised her hand.

"Pneumatis Pyrexia!" she shouted. One of the rings on her hand blazed fiery yellow and a great gout of flame issued forth. And by great, I mean, well… it maybe went a meter out in a little plume. Enough to surprise Boy Two, who yelped and toppled down onto his behind, frantically patting down the front of his shirt to put out the flames.

"They're mages?" Archery Guy shouted down.

I grabbed Opellia's hand and tugged, bringing her back toward the edge of the culvert. I pulsed my thaum, willing us away from the gathering of miscreants, willing us to safety.

I sank into the Shadelands - all of us sank into the Shadelands. In magic, intent is everything, and I'd intended to bring us to somewhere far from the gathering of angry and well-armed older people arguing around us. And, clearly, the other three wanted out of there every bit as much as I did or I'd have faced resistance instead of assistance. Given the untapped magical potential of all three girls, it was a lot of assistance.

I suspected that contact is important, too. Mailyn's hand was still on my shoulder, I had Opellia's hand in mine, her ring still uncomfortably hot from shooting flame, and she had Nima's hand clasped in her other one. Somehow, the magic had resonated through all four of us. Opellia tried to say something, but the sound was hopelessly muffled in the artificial silence. Dragging them along, I dashed through the Shadelands four, five, six paces until I ran headfirst into the sun filtering down into the canal side of the block… the force of falling back into our realm of shape and color juked me to the side and sent the four of us stumbling down the canal, northward back toward the open market rather than westward right into the stinking canal.

"Where'd they go?" Creepy Guy Two shouted from a few alleyways over.

"Spread out and check they alleyways!" Archery Lady added. It wouldn't take them long.

"Run!" I hissed.

We sprinted back the way we'd come, up slick, crumbling stairways and across wobbling causeways, through the press of densely-inhabited warrens past the canals. I kicked at least two of the makeshift bridges down after Nima had gotten across, hopefully slowing our pursuers. Finally, a harrowing minute later, we made it to the big dusty roundabout where wagons dropped their cargo off, only for teams of grimy laborers to cart it off into the canals and replace it with the canton's illicit industry. I looked back south, confirming that I hadn't lost anybody and that, more importantly, we weren't being followed.

Somewhere in the distance, somebody shouted: "Shit! There's no way across! Find another way around!"

I breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay… so that didn't work out so well. I guess we regroup with the boys and come up with another plan?"

Opellia pursed her lips. "No offense, Vix, but I'm not sure I want to do that again. There has to be somebody we can talk to. Maybe the grown-ups were right about going to the proper authorities on this."

I was about to agree that, yes, this task was beyond our capabilities and we should probably get adults involved in the mix. In fact, the words were on the tip of my tongue when three of the five boys chose that exact moment to approach us. Zev was in tears, his lips trembling beyond any ability to speak. Instead, Aldo spoke for the group:

"We reckon we've found the bastards… and they got Nate and Rafael."