Xaxac clung to Agalon’s arm as they walked briskly through the chill autumn morning and was a little shocked to see that the town of Basilglen was still alive and moving. It was a different crowd than it had been the night before, and Xaxac saw something he had never seen before.

Elven children.

Not children like Lorsan, not teenagers, real children, the kind that only came up to his waist, with pigtails and playclothes. There were very few of them, and each was accompanied by at least one human whom Xac suspected was a nanny, but they existed. He had always known they had to, but elves had seemed like adults to him, as if they were born with power and grace; he couldn’t imagine Agalon as a boy, certainly not as a baby.

The booths they passed now had barkers, as they had last night, but the attractions were different. These weren’t a ‘come and see this’ or ‘come and buy that’ type situation, they were all ‘come and do this’.

Agalon was walking with purpose and did not slow; he had said they were going to see the fighters and Xaxac knew they had a job to do, but something caught his eye and he stopped walking.

Dozens of tiny cages held small, white, fluffy, twitching rabbits.

The man at the booth shouted, and they paid him no mind. They all looked sleepy.

“Come, test your skill!” The man, an earth elf who, like the earth elves that had once shocked Xac, did not seem particularly rich or impressive yelled, holding three metal rings in his hand, “Five copper! Test your accuracy! Win one of these adorable creatures! Test your skill!”

Agalon snarled, and Xaxac realized that he could not move with Xac clinging to him, immobile. Every time he was forced to remember he was stronger than Agalon the information shocked him, though he had been warned over and over that he did not know his strength, and to be careful.

“What?” he asked as if he were as annoyed as he had every right to be, followed Xac’s eyeline and laughed, “Oh! Do you want a bunny, Honey Bunny?”

“I ain’t never looked at um real close,” Xac whispered.

“Those things are rigged,” Kyrtarr said, “Nobody ever wins them. The bottles are too big to hook the rings on.”

“Yeah, they are,” Agalon agreed, shrugged, and said, “but fuck it, let’s support the local economy. Besides, it’ll be cute to watch um throw.”

Xac turned to Alex and grinned at him as Agalon changed direction and moved toward the booth. He reached into the bag on his hip and pulled out a smaller bag, and as he did so, the man seemed to recognize him.

“Oh!” He cooed, “Nobility! Good eye, sir! I hate to even let you in, you’ll clean me right out.”

“Uh-huh,” Agalon rolled his eyes, counted out five small coins, and went to hand them to the man, but when he did the man grabbed his hand, bowed slightly, shook it vigorously, then bent to kiss it.

“Thesis’s eyes,” Agalon said, “Just give me the rings.”

“You want to play, darlin?” Kyrtarr asked Alex.

“I mean… I guess?” Alex said, “If Xac’s goin. You said you couldn’t win, though.”

“Of course you can win!” the man announced, “I had four winners yesterday!” he bent and picked up one of the cages, then stood and put it on the counter, “Get yourself one of these adorable little pets! Look how cute they are!”

“They look kinda sick,” Alex observed, and Xaxac thought he might be right. Xaxac had never really seen a rabbit up close, and they did look adorable from far away, but he noticed with alarm that the rabbit the man was gesturing to had teeth that had grown so long they were beginning to curl, and the sight made him angry.

“They need to chew on stuff!” he said, “If they don’t their teeth mess up and they can grow into their eyes!”

“If you win it you can let it chew on anything you want,” the man said.

“How do you play?” Xac took the rings from Agalon and stared out over the collection of bottles.

The man opened his mouth to speak and Agalon silenced him with a look.

“What’cha gotta do, darlin,” he explained, “Is throw one a’ them hoops on one a’ them bottles.”

Xaxac nodded, but he was skeptical. That seemed deceptively easy. There had to be some sort of catch. He had three, so the first would be a practice throw. He was trying to calculate the distance in his head when Alex threw, and Xaxac learned that Alex was very, very bad at throwing things. He apparently thought the object of the game was just to throw as hard as you possibly could, so his ring hit a bottle with a loud CLANG of metal on metal, bounced, and went ricocheting around the booth, hitting the back wall, the rabbit cages, and then bouncing off somewhere into the fairgrounds.

“Do I get to try that again if I find it?” Alex asked.

“You’re bad at this,” Xac blinked at him, “you done this before. I am in amazement at the badness.”

“I ain’t never done this before,” Alex said as he threw his next ring, much more gently this time, but still it hit with a clang and bounced off, “Goddamn it! I don’t even want a rabbit I just want to do the thing!”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“I think the secret is to like… don’t toss it, throw it like you’re skippin a rock,” Xac said, flipped his wrist, and his ring went sailing, hit first one bottle, then bounced off several more. He had a moment of hope, but it went skittering past the bottles and fell to the ground behind them. “Yeah I think that’ll work. I got closer than you did.”

Alex threw his last ring, mimicking Xac, with the same result.

“This is bullshit,” he said.

“Go find the one you lost,” Kyrtarr told him, “it has to be right close.”

Xaxac tossed his second ring and watched it bounce. It seemed like Kyrtarr was right, the bottles were too big for the rings to land on. It might be possible to win if you dropped one down directly from above, so for his last throw he tried that, tossing gently in an arc, but the ring fell between the bottles.

“Well, that was a successful waste of money,” Agalon said cheerfully.

“Alex!” Kyrtarr called.

“I can’t find it!” Alex lamented.

Xaxac crouched to stare at the rabbit in the cage and the more he looked at it the more he realized Alex was right. It was sick. It wasn’t just the teeth, it was also so thin it’s skeleton was visible under the fur, and its eyes had pink, puffy skin around them. This guy didn’t take care of the animals at all. They only existed for him to make money off of. Xaxac thought he didn’t like him very much.

“The holy texts say you’re supposed to take care of animals,” Xac said to Agalon. “This’in’s really sick…”

“They’re not sick,” The man said as if he had been insulted, “Every prize animal I give is guaranteed to live a long, healthy life.”

“Won’t you be picking up and packing off at the end of the week?” Agalon asked, “Following the rodeo circuit?”

“Yes, sir,” the man said chipperly as Alex came running back clutching the ring.

“So it’s likely that if one of your animals did die, the person you lied to wouldn’t be able to find you.” Agalon said, then to Xac he added, “That’s how they get you.”

“Goddamn it!” Alex yelled as his ring skittered between the bottles.

“Better luck next time,” the man said, “play again for just five copper!”

“No,” Agalon put a hand on the small of Xac’s back to lead him away, “Thank you.”

Xaxac watched the bunny in the cage, still lethargic and nervous, as the man slid it back with the rest of them and began to shout again.

“You can play some more games after we check in this morning,” Agalon said, “I’ll have to run drills… probably should spend the day doing that. I’ll write Lee a pass and you can come explore if you want to. Just be real careful.”

“Without you?” Xaxac asked. That didn’t make sense. Why was Agalon guarding the fighters, paying for extra security, for elves to work guarding them, but he was willing to let Xac wander alone by himself where he could be easily stolen?

...was it because Billy was right? Because the fighters made him money somehow? Because they were important, but Xaxac was just another pretty little thing Agalon owned?

Don’t think too much. Look pretty and smile.

Agalon led them to what Xaxac thought was a stable, because it had the appearance and smell of one, but the inside was actually a wide open space lined with barred doors on both sides. Lee was already there, standing beside an open door talking with Bobby, holding another piece of wood with a number of it, which he had slipped onto a ring of rope because he seemed to have accumulated a great many of them and needed to keep track of them.

The fighters were out in the open space, along with a great number of other tall, bulky, rippling, muscled humans, laughing, talking and wrestling.

Xaxac hadn’t realized he had tightened his grip on Agalon’s arm until they stopped walking and he almost kept going, but as soon as he did he loosened it.

“I’m gonna be here at least until after lunch,” Agalon told Lee, “Y’all take some free time, but you stay right with him. Every second. Don’t let him outta your sight.”

“Oh,” Lee said as if he had not expected this, “Well, yeah, if… if’in you want.”

Xaxac suspected he had more to say, but he didn’t. Agalon reached into his bag and produced the purse he had used before, took out a handful of coins, and handed them to Lee.

“Get y’all somethin to eat,” he instructed, “tell um Xac’s a vegetarian.”

“Yes, master,” Lee said and slipped the coins into his pocket.

“Here, let go a’ me a minute, Honey Bunny,” Agalon said, and Xaxac did, which freed Agalon up to use both hands. “I gotta write you a pass.”

He reached into his bag again and came away with a thin book and a pencil, and he began to write. Xac watched him making squiggles on the page in no discernable order, then he flipped it and made almost the same exact squiggles on the next page. He tore them both out and handed one to Lee and the other to Xac.

“Don’t lose that,” Lee told Xaxac as he folded his own up and stuck it into his pocket with the money.

“Be back after lunch,” Agalon said, cupped Xac’s face in both hands and kissed him on his forehead. “Run and have fun. Don’t get in no trouble.”

Xaxac didn’t have any pockets, so he turned to ask Alex what to do, but Alex had just received a similar piece of paper from his master, and he folded it up and stuck it in his boot, so Xac followed his example. Alex giggled as Krytarr kissed him on the forehead.

“Come on, Xaxac,” Lee grabbed Xac by the wrist and tugged him along, pulling him out of the building, “before he changes his mind. He don’t never do this.”

“We gotta wait on Alex and Bobby,” Xac said, dug his heels into the dirt, and Lee huffed when it became obvious he could not move him.

“I don’t know what you’re doin,” Lee said, and Xaxac liked the look on his face, one he saw often where the genuine delight was trying to break through his grumpy mask, “but he’s got a helluva lot nicer since you started workin.”

Xaxac wanted to listen to him, because he enjoyed being praised, but something caught his eye. From his position they could see behind the booths and tents that had been set up, and he saw the tailor, Mrs Sambrees. The last time Xaxac had seen her, she had been in mourning, but now she was huddled behind one of the tents, as if she was perhaps trying to hide, with another woman. The other lady looked about her age, with short, cropped hair that had been dyed a honied brown and sparkling green eyes, and she was leaning much closer than Xac would have expected. They were speaking in hushed whispers, and both broke out into a giggle, before the new lady pulled Mrs Sambrees in for a light, quick kiss.

Xac was happy for her.

He had liked her when he had met her, and he wanted her to be happy.