The world outside the Bel Ilan manor shone bright as a painting. Yesterday's haze had blown away, and the sun poured down, warming the ground until it radiated its own heat back up in waves. Niccola breathed deeply. The air was scented in a mix of summer and fall: warm grass and greenery, late-summer flowers, and just a hint of the rich, earthy perfume of damp soil and coloring leaves. Niccola had spotted the first reds and yellows on her last trip to market. The colours brushed the tips of leafy branches, like someone had made giant's paintbrushes of the Talakova's trees.

Like all realms in the Ring of Thirty, Calis's land tipped gently down from the high hills at its back to the Talakova at its feet. It followed the forest's edge for a day of walking. Calis and Varna were among the smallest realms in the Ring of Thirty. Small enough that both had done away with town names in favor of amalgamated road networks, and supported more than half their populations in their lowlands, within a half-hour's distance of the Talakova's edge.

Like sand in a jeweler's sieve, that population sorted itself, too. Up here were the upper class, who'd long ago deemed higher ground to be equal to higher status, and built their manors further up the hill. Large houses with manicured meadow-lawns edged both sides of this street. Niccola reached the end of it and stepped onto a dirt path that wound between a scattering of stout wooden buildings, then stepped out onto another. Here, shops replaced manors. Mid-sized houses spread out into the yards of the chicken farms for which Calis was known, then began to condense again.

A half-hour from the Talakova, the busiest part of the realm began. Houses shrank in size and clustered together like songbirds, and thick gardens replaced meadow-lawns. Chickens pecked and scratched in the street. They scattered, clucking, as people strode past them: just a few at first, then more, then dozens. The bright colours of Calisian clothing filled the lowlands like summer flowers. Niccola had enjoyed partaking in such fashion since arriving here. From her first day in Calis, she'd donned well-dyed dresses, skirts, sweaters, and the rolled-up kerchiefs women tied about their curly hairlines. The dresses were Niccola's favorite. Calisian fashion saw generous folds of fabric sewn into their skirts, and she did not understand why anyone would wear pants alone when such dresses twirled so delightfully.

The streets continued their gentle decline. Once level with the houses, the treetops of the Talakova rose tall enough to overshadow even the spires of the shrines. People flocked to these with their tithes. Niccola navigated the humming crowds with ease. Less than an hour after she'd left the manor, the street ejected her into the main marketplace on this end of the realm.

Unlike the roads above it, the square's activity was more subdued than usual. The market crowd, normally disparate, condensed into clusters as though nobody wanted to walk alone. Niccola tuned in to the patterns. The first stall attracted its normal share of customers. The next, co-owned by two barrower families, was exceptionally low on clientele. Cilicia, matriarch of one of the families, perched on her stool behind the counter, weaving a basket with fingers that turned brittle twigs to pliable weaving material. Her daughter leaned on the counter, watching the crowd go by. She wasn't smiling.

The next stall belonged to the Broder family. Dathan Broder was deep in conversation with a client, a grim look on his face. "We're sold out, I'm sorry," Niccola heard him say as she drifted closer. "The missus and kids haven't felt safe venturing further than a stone's throw into that there forest, what with the beast roaming about. We exhausted our stores this morning."

His family hunted truffles just inside the Talakova's edge. With their days spent within touching distance of the forest's time distortions, they were all known for their youthful looks, but today, Dathan looked his years. As he pulled back, he murmured something to his son nearby. That son was the only other non-barrower in the family. He didn't normally help run the market stall alone, but there was no sign of his brother or sisters with magic in their veins.

Even after all these years, the association still caught Niccola beneath the ribs. Once a person made a deal with the Talaks, their resulting magic was heritable, but only to a point. It was heritable the same way dimples or height or family diseases were: liable to pass to half the children and skip the other half, unless the non-barrower parent opted into the magical lineage at the cost of a new one. That cost was too steep for most. Steeper than the shame brought on by a child being unable to carry on the family legacy, or being shown up by a younger sibling every day of their lives. Steeper than the pain of watching that sibling draw their parents' warmth like moths to flame, simply because they were a barrower.

Niccola's younger sister Phoebe had been born with their family's magic. She had been the first.

"Does anyone know a wayfinder who can help me?" called a woman's voice. Niccola looked up. A middle-aged woman with the build of a bird wandered up the market row, her shawl clutched tight around her. She called again, "Does anyone know a wayfinder who can help me? I've lost my message-crow; she didn't come home for dinner last night, and the Pereira family all say they're occupied. Please? I need to send a message to my son."

Those that answered her did so with regretful head-shakes and downturned eyes. Some glanced nervously over their shoulders. In the woman's wake, the market noise dropped to whispers. It lasted some while before people regained their chipper masks and went back to their shopping.

The beast in the forest. Its imprints were stamped all over market day. Niccola spotted more and more signs the further she walked. Vendors who harvested what they sold from the Talakova's edge were absent or low on wares. Neither of Calis's prominent wayfinding families were present, and people in search of their tracking and navigation services flocked outside their empty stalls.

Niccola weighed the chore list burning a hole in her pocket against the prospect of further investigation before she reached Verde. If she lingered in the marketplace, only she would suffer the consequences. Tardiness was not a fault punishable by firing, and any whisper of unrest in Calis was a potential lead on Phoebe's disappearance. Niccola dallied to a halt in front of the nearest vendor. "Are neither of the Pereira or Pasternak families in today?" she asked.

The vendor's face sobered. "Aye. And you're not likely to see more than the odd child of 'em until they've sorted out their current commission. They're all hired out by the City Guard. There's been another disappearance."

That explained the nervous energy of the marketplace. "Do you know much about it?" said Niccola quickly.

"I don't, not yet. But he does." The man nodded past Niccola's shoulder, down the market row. Niccola followed the gesture. A man about her age had gained the attention of the crowd. He'd been waylaid by an elderly couple: two old women, both of them distraught and speaking with their hands as much as their words. The man nodded empathetically. Niccola thanked the vendor and made her way towards him. He held himself like nobility, but was dressed in plain clothes, with a long cane in hand and a cat-sized dragon perched on his shoulder. A blind-guide. The dragon bobbed sideways as another citizen pushed past, and the man stepped out of the way without breaking from his conversation.

Niccola wove through the tightening crowd until she was close enough to eavesdrop. She could only see him from the back, but she already knew she'd never crossed paths with this man before. He seemed well-known and well-liked among the townsfolk, however. Many were listening in like she was, their silence respectful.

"Contact the City Guard," the man was saying now. "Tell them I sent you. They will pass your case on to the Pereira and Pasternak families, and get an investigation started immediately. If you haven't seen him since yesterday evening, and he was last spotted along the Talakova's edge, this is serious."

One of the elderly women flapped her hands. "I knew it, I said it, I told him not to go alone, but did the boy listen? No, it was all, 'business this' and 'family that' and now he's gone and I swear to you, the crows haven't been acting the same since I last saw him; there's something foul in that forest, I'm telling you."

Niccola perked up at the mention of crows. She'd noticed the same.

The old woman was spiraling into her worried convictions. The man placated her with soothing words and a hand on her shoulder, telling her this would be handled with the best resources the realm had to offer. His guide-dragon seemed soundly uninterested in all of this. She sniffed the air and stalked passing bugs from his shoulder, and only looked down when someone risked bumping into her master. By this point, the crowd had coalesced into enough of a ring that these instances were false alarms, but Niccola already liked that little dragon. She had the same air of intelligence as exceptionally smart crows, and maybe even then some.

When the old woman had resorted to wringing her hands, the man turned to her partner. "I know this won't ease any worries about your son, but there is money available for you to tap into if this puts you at risk of financial hardship. If you need it, just pay a visit to the nearest collecting booth and tell them your situation. They'll take care of the rest."

The second woman nearly broke down at that. It took several rounds of thanks and reassurances for the man to excuse himself from the exchange, and he finally turned around. Niccola's blood ran cold.

He looked like the drawing.

Never once here had she met a citizen with even a passing resemblance to the woman she had crossed realms and posed as a serving-woman for three moons to find. This wasn't just a passing resemblance. This was familial.

The man clearly had other places to be. He extracted himself from the crowd with difficulty, addressing pleas and questions from all sides. He hid it well, but practice with such masks told Niccola he was harried. His dragon felt the same. The next time someone reached for his shoulder, she hissed.

"'Scuse me," rumbled a voice from across the crowd.

A pair of thick hands appeared between two citizens and hauled them apart. They jumped back. Niccola grinned as Verde the coppersmith single-handedly cleared a space around the man. They exchanged smiles and a friendly greeting. This whole situation grew more intriguing by the minute. Verde knew nearly everyone in the marketplace by name—vendors and customers alike—but the thump he landed on the man's back spoke of a stronger bond. This was reinforced moments later as the guide-dragon bobbed towards him with tail flicking happily. Verde asked a question, then tickled her chin. No mere acquaintance would have permission to interact with a working animal that way.

The two men turned and, with Verde still parting the crowd, made their way back towards Verde's market stall. Niccola tailed them both. She didn't just want to find out who the strange man was. He and Verde were already deep in important-sounding conversation, and she wanted to know what about. 

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