Did you spot it? Did you spot my plan?

It wasn't the most elegant plan, I'll grant you that, but my plans had come a long way since the River's Run market. I'd learned a few things since that nearly-disastrous episode that saw me banned from Floria's northernmost marketplace… namely, how to use your friends and how to use your enemies.

Tizzie Drake knew that I was up to no good - she felt it in her bones. Therefore, she took it as the gospel truth when Mossy Lakes told her that Mr. Hianchi, whose greatest criminal aspiration was semi-illegally publishing translated foreign books, was a hardened criminal. She told him the man was in charge of a racketeering ring and that I'd be transporting the records for - records containing his illicit betting and extortion rackets. It was said to be a beautiful, mid-sized book bound in sleek blue leather, for that perfidious Mr. Hianchi took his betting and extortion seriously.

The Gionian crime boss would be quite irate at Vix Altorelli when she allowed the valuable book to be stolen. Vix would never be safe in Mini Gionika again!

Yes, Mossy was an excellent informant - she even told Tizzie to expect Aldo's interference and that I'd probably have a decoy book. She told Tizzie that we'd be making our way to one of the shops at the little square plaza at the terminus of Apiary Way, though she wasn't sure which one. The beauty of the plan is that we'd given Tizzie a lot of useful information, and a lot of it was actually true. Really, the only bit that wasn't was that I was up to no good. Well, I was up to no good, but that no good consisted of getting Tizzie and her little goons ousted from Little Gionika.

With that information safely in Tizzie's hands, that left me with the task of getting the book out to the roundabout at Apiary Plaza, where Tizzie was likely to be. Even Tizzie couldn't have any illusions that she'd be of much use in a straight-up street chase against any of our trio. I'm pretty sure that, if I was barefooted and she had the best (non-magical) boots in the world, I'd still have beat her in a footrace… and I wouldn't have been barefoot. My twelve-tollo shoes were very comfortable, thank you very much.

Between Aldo, Mailyn, and myself, our goal was to keep as many of Tizzie's Scamps distracted and running after us without much time for critical thinking. And, should any of us fail to attract enough attention, our inside girl, Mossy Lakes, was there to keep a few of the Scamps on each of us.

Then, at the end of our little chase, Tizzie Drake would have her moment of glory and take us by surprise, ripping the book from my desperate hands and using the tome to prove, once and for all, that I was a nogoodnik assisting Mini Gionika's seedy underbelly and not the polite little princess I pretended to be. She'd surely get me banned from the district.

Only I wasn't carrying a book of racketeering numbers… no, I was carrying a second edition copy of Baulaire's Rarefied Reagents, valued at around three kronettas nine. A book that allegedly belonged to the 'uncle' of Opellia Wistern, apprentice artificer. When she, in her finery and enchantments and looking every bit the mercantile debutante, shouted 'thief', every guard within earshot came running to the scene of the crime. And she would, of course, point to the true culprits of the deed: Tizzie Drake and her band of miscreants (minus Mossy Lakes, whom we would all swear was a good friend of ours).

All seven of them got banned from Little Gionika. The perfect conclusion to a pretty good plan. I hadn't planned on Gabriella Decimo being a kinesomancy powerhouse in the making. Fortunately, I was no slouch, myself, and it hadn't been a plan-breaker.

And, of course, a 'lifetime ban' from Little Gionika had a lot of conditionals attached - only the Sons of the Winter Rose would actually enforce the ban, and not the three or four lesser companies that patrolled the neighborhood. And that 'lifetime ban' would only last so long. Once you made Sneak and got your sandy Collegium token, it would take more than the say-so of a mercenary company to keep you out of a whole neighborhood. But it could still be plenty inconvenient.

All things told, I'd neatly nipped my Tizzie Drake problem in the bud, and she wouldn't be bothering again. No way. Not a chance in hell or heaven.

"That was probably my best plan to date," I said, drunk off of success and perhaps a bit of manzaroqo diluted in a lot of fruit juice. "Just like Silvia Valia!"

"And so humble," Mailyn said, nudging my shin with her foot.

"It was a pretty good plan," Aldo admitted. "Still don't understand how you got old man Hianchi to agree to give you Opellia's uncle's book…"

"It's his book and he trusts me," I said with a shrug.

Opellia had joined us for the celebration, as had Mossy. I'd pooled my last four tollos with Mailyn's last six, plus another four from Aldo (who certainly had more than that) to take everybody for a celebratory feast at La Platta Prosecay (The Prosecan Courtyard), a cheap but clean restaurant near where Little Gionika met River's Run. We got our own little room, paneled in lacquered pine and with just enough room for the five of us around an oak table. Opellia had chipped in a few tollos of her own for the 'wine', which probably had about half a glass of Proseco diluted into an entire bottle of plum juice.

"Mr. Hianchi don't… doesn't trust you," Mossy said, correcting herself just like Zev used to do.

I glowered at her. "Of course does!"

"I mean… maybe," she said, swishing her 'wine' about her little goblet. "But, I mean… that's not why he did it. You promised you'd have another translator lined up for him…"

"So he needed a little push to trust me," I shrugged and swirled my own glass goblet. "I told him you'd work for him when I made Sneak and I'd tutor you in any two languages he liked."

"I was wondering why he agreed to that so readily," Opellia admitted. "It seems like everybody got something out of this but me…" she made a little, petulant frown.

"You got the greatest gift of all, Lia," I said, using the nickname that, as far as I know, I was the only one to ever use.

"Oh? And what 'gift' is that, Vix?"

"The friendship of three future Shadows," I said.

"Four," Mossy added with a shake of her green-tinted hair.

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"I stand corrected."

The four of us finished our meal and allowed Mrs. Alionz, the proprietor of La Platta, to gently urge us out of the restaurant. Normally, if a group of students from the Collegium occupied your establishment and paid good coin, you'd let them stay for as long as they liked. But us Scamps weren't quite official yet - yes, the Collegium had ever-growing folders on all of us, but you weren't officially a student of the Collegium until they handed you the sandy glyph stone that proclaimed you a Sneak.

It was time to leave, anyhow - it was getting late and Opellia had to be in by curfew. Today was her day off from classes (the students at FACT took classes five days a week, taking Saintsdays for rest and Crownsdays for study), and she'd spent what should have been a day of studying and workshopping helping us out with my little scheme. Hopefully, she wouldn't get into too much trouble for that.

She checked her little golden pocketwatch, as if we hadn't just heard the temple bells. "Damnation… I'm going to be late if I don't hurry. I'll see you all later. We'll have tea?" With that, she hailed a carriage and directed the driver to the artificer's guild building ensconced within the Mercantile Quarter.

"Tea?" Mailyn chuckled.

"Doesn't she know we're Gionians?" I said. Opellia had Wext sensibilities, which meant she liked tea. The three of us were born and raised in Gionian Barsoa and coffee was more to our tastes. Well, Mailyn's and mine. Aldo didn't like anything with a hint of bitterness.

"We're Gionian? I ain't got citizenship papers, have you?" Aldo commented.

That was a valid point. While most Gionians don't have much in the way of an official existence beyond a few lines in the census registrar's tome every five years, anybody undertaking international travel is expected to have a citizenship booklet (called a passport or pass-papers in some nations) and the prince's token, which has an official glyph on it and a serial number to be stamped in your booklet. When we'd been spirited off to Perdita, Rook the Shadowbroker hadn't thought to give us travel papers and, if he'd given them to anybody, it was to Mrs. Sealie who was Asuna-knows-where these days. She might not even be on Perdita anymore - she might have ignored Oumaa Dead-Eyes advice and returned to Barsoa.

"We can buy citizenship papers. Fake ones but good ones," Mailyn observed. "Or so I heard."

Aldo nodded sagely. "Yeah. Pa Akraszovic sells 'em for three kronettas. Says they're good as the real deal to anybody without a registrar's tome."

The Registrar's Tome was a huge book that all of Gionia's census data was stored in, including the serial number of your prince's token and a brief physical description. Most major nations have something similar…

The Gionian tome is over 50,000 pages long, spread across a hundred volumes, and only a handful of places have a full copy. Most customs inspectors just take your papers at face value, and a few dozen major ports of entry and exit possessed artifices linked to the original tome. With a bit of thaumaturgy and an officer's glyph, officials can request a copy of a page and a clerk in the tome office will send it to you. Of course, there are all sorts of limitations - the linked tomes won't work at all in Perdita, for instance. Something about the Black Well, that expanse of cold abyssal depth just to our southeast, blocks all attempts at linked magic from the Slartibarican continent to Nurass's delight and the high prince's ire. In any case, a fake Gionian passport is as good as the genuine article on Perdita and most of the Turan colonies. But they cost three kronettas.

"Well… I guess I'm Florian through and through, then," I concluded. "I'm not going to have three kronettas anytime soon."

"You should ask your girlfriend," Mailyn said.

"Opellia is not my girlfriend," I insisted.

"Hmm…"

"You're just jealous," I added.

"What?" Mailyn sputtered, her face going beet red. Aldo thought it was just about the funniest thing in the world.

I stuck out my tongue at her. "Sorry, I don't like girls!"

Oh, sweet, naïve little Vix. I didn't like girls yet. Or anybody in that way, for that matter. Though come to think of it, my own incipient sexuality may have been influenced by the sundry works of Mrs. Perdita X. Nix, too, to gauge by its breadth and depth. But I digress - at the time, Adult Thoughts were a thing to tease Mailyn about and not much else, because she'd quickly decided she had them and I still didn't.

And Aldo? He insisted that he liked girls, but insisted just as vehemently that we couldn't be his girlfriends because he thought of the two of us as sisters. Which was a bit odd to me, because I thought of him as a cousin at best.

"But we are your friends, and we're girls," Mailyn observed.

"Yeah, but that ain't what it means," Aldo said. "Look, if you don't want to be my sister, just say so."

"No, that's fine," Mailyn said. "My blood relatives can go jump in the Pelagic."

"I hope I find mine someday," I added. "But I don't know how…"

"You should ask Mr. Hianchi. He seems to know lots of people," Mossy cut in.

"Yeah, maybe I should," I said - but I knew that, even in Floria, you just didn't bring up your Selenite heritage in a Gionian neighborhood.

We made our way through the darkening evening, past shops shuttering their windows for the day and restaurants and taverns just getting things started for the night. Groups sang in the wine-gardens, very few of them stumbling out into the streets since the night was yet young. People tossed tollos into the tins of street musicians and restaurant acts. In the Grounds of Gionika's main yard, a bald, mustachioed man strummed on a mandola while a pair of chestnut-haired twin girls, just a few years older than me, belted out Sonna Vinta Hivervyn (Wine Song of the Winter Vine) in perfect pitch.

Most of the songs we heard were familiar, if not from my sheltered upbringing on Barsoa, then from the two years I'd spent my days in little Gionika. If you didn't tally the hours I spent sleeping, I spent more time there than I did on Collegium grounds. Sometimes, it was hard to remember that we were on Perdita at all.

"Hey, Vix! Vix, a moment!" a man shouted from the wine garden in front of Grounds. It took me a moment to recognize him as a slightly-inebriated Mr. Hianchi.

"Good evening, Mr. Hianchi!" I enthused - always be polite and enthusiastic to your employer whenever possible. That was a rule straight from my mother's mouth (well… she'd specified 'your husband's employer'). "It's a lovely evening."

"That it is," he said. He waved back at somebody who might have been his wife, or perhaps a relative or just an evening tryst, indicating that he'd be just a moment. "I just wanted to ask how your little delivery went earlier. The book got where it needed to go, I take it?"

Mr. Hianchi's inebriation-fueled grin flickered ever-so-slightly. His was a legitimate concern - Mr. Hianchi had many qattrokronos worth of books in his shop, but he owned only half of them. Many of the rarer and more valuable books were owned by far wealthier people, who would split the profits of sales and rentals with Mr. Hianchi. If I'd allowed a three kronetta book to be stolen, he'd be out that much - probably about as much as he personally brought in across a month.

"Oh! Yes, absolutely!" I patted at my vest pockets before remembering that Mailyn had been the one to deliver the book. Since she sometimes acted as a messenger for Yakopo do Boulanio, it was desirable that she was the one he saw, since that might lead to more courier jobs for her, which paid better than simple message delivery.

"Here you go, Mr. Hianchi. I was going to deliver it tomorrow," Mailyn explained, handing him the receipt.

He looked it over, checking Yakopo's signature. "Excellent! In that case, I've got a tollo for each of you…" he fished around in his pocket before presenting a single copper coin. He offered an apologetic shrug. "Sorry… I've only got the one."

"That's okay, Mr. Hianchi," I said, hiding my disappointment. After the expenses of Operation: Comeuppance, I was officially broke. "I'll see you tomorrow!"

"See you tomorrow, Vix!" He tousled my hair and turned back toward his table before thinking better of it. "Oh… and I'll be seeing more of you, Moss!"

"Mossy!" Mossy corrected him.

"Mossy! Of course!" He made his way back to his table and we made our way back to the Collegium for the night, our bellies full of restaurant food and, collectively, one copper tollo richer.

None of us had any idea that somebody had been watching much of our little operation with curious eyes. Watching and scheming.