I''d checked the fate strings first thing after waking, of course, but leaving them up was just going to stress me out and over the course of the day it would drain my mana even though the immediate draw was quite low. So with no visual aid and the "trail" being made by wandering animals rather than being properly cleared and maintained I took a wrong turn - just as I''d worried might have happened to Katrin and Errod. My first clue was Dopey getting spooked and bringing the wagon to a halt as a foreign smell hit her nostrils.


    "What the fuck is your problem, Dope? Come on, we need to... oh. Motherfucker, I know that smell. Shit. Shit! Okay, yeah, turning around."


    Tixmin didn''t smell all that strongly, though there was for sure an unpleasant musk to them. What I was finally catching as the breeze shifted was unmistakable, but also very potent - this wasn''t just one or two passing by, it had to be their nest. If I went any further I was guaranteed to get ground into paste. Turning the wagon around took a moment as the wagon caught on roots - the gravity plates that made the wagon lighter was a huge help, but it was still a whole ordeal. As I was trying to figure out the best way to do a twelve-point turn I heard a hooting from the direction I''d come from and was now trying to head back to - a pack of tixmin were announcing their arrival at the border of their territory, meaning I had them on both sides.


    They hadn''t been super aggressive before, but I wasn''t comfortable about being pincered between two groups - especially not this close to their nest. "Okay Dope, Shitheel, here''s the plan. We''re going off-roading, and just crossing our fingers that we don''t get the wagon hopelessly stuck." Shitheel hissed in what I decided to interpret as approval, and we set off into the trees. The wagon was small and the moskar were agile, but a jungle isn''t a great place to try and force your way through with no path. Travel was excruciatingly slow and noisy, and I was sure at any moment we''d be impaled by a thrown log. There were a few more hoots behind us, from more than one direction, but after the first fifteen minutes they stopped and I was able to eventually relax.


    The path we were taking, based on the fate threads and my feeble mental map, was actually extremely close to the town as the crow flies. The issue was the wagon, which was forcing me to go sideways or even occasionally backwards in order to make progress. I watched for landmarks, not sure that I trusted myself to avoid going in circles, and after a few hours I was able to see the town through some trees. I got the wagon parked behind a boulder just beyond the edge of the jungle where it wasn''t too visible, and headed along Katrin and Errod''s threads as stealthily as possible - as was so often the case that meant mostly just walking along and acting like everything was normal, since actually hiding was likely to make me look more suspicious if I fucked up.


    The main street of the town, near the Nubasarri river, was far more built up and busy than the rest and so I just avoided that and kept to smaller streets or the narrow alleyways between buildings. I just didn''t expect someone to spot me from a rooftop.


    "The foreigner! Not dead yet, eh?" The old woman was covered in blue ink tattoos, and leaned precariously off the edge of the roof ahead of me. I recognized her from our trip up the river to get here, she''d been the one that owned the barge and gave us some advice as we traveled.


    "Kalyssi! Yeah, had a close call or two but it''ll take more than that to put me down. Anything fun come down the river in the past few weeks?"


    She sat, dangling her wrinkly legs off the roof. "War''s all but over. Halenvar is under siege, and they recalled all the troops. Lord Protector Hammersmith is there herself, smart money says they surrender any day now. Big bounty on the Behemoth and a few others. Let''s see... Hellar, a merchant here in town, was selling tainted grain. He tried to pay off the town council, they took his money and then declared him guilty anyway. Strung him up behind one of the boats, a river monster got him. Good riddance. Oh, and the auction house in Erathik got robbed - probably an inside job, they said one of the people whose shit was stolen paid for the funeral of the one thief that got killed in the attack so I''m thinking it''s some sort of scam. I think that''s all the news."


    "Yeah that''s... interesting. Cool. Well I''m just here for some supplies, but I owe you one so if there''s any merchants here that you''ve got some sort of deal with just let me know and I''ll tell them you sent me."


    "Hah! Clever foreigner. Yeah, I know a guy that''ll owe me one if I send him business. Are your friends still out there by themselves? I only saw the one wagon."


    I didn''t think she could have possibly seen my wagon, which would mean she''d seen the other one. I could just ask her where it was, tell her we''d come up seperately. Surely that would be fine. But... I was nervous, and feeling secretive, and I still had the fate threads to follow so I didn''t really need her help. "They''re around. Well listen, I''m not getting the supplies just yet, but gimme that name and I''ll hit them up later."


    She gave me a name and vague directions, and I thanked her before heading on my way. She followed me, obviously, hopping from roof to roof with a confidence that I wouldn''t have expected given the ages of both her and the roofs. I turned, she followed. I turned again, she did too. Finally I had to just turn around and adress it. "Hey Kalyssi. Funny meeting you here. Still behind me."


    She smiled and scratched her ass. "You know where your wagon is, foreigner?"


    "Roughly."


    She gave me a considering look. "I can get you out of here, shove you in a barrel or sack and drag you onto the boat. Maybe even meet you further down the river, if you''re too good for hiding."


    Uh oh. "And why would I want to do that?"


    "I just got into town a few days ago, planning on heading out soon. Had some passengers, some assholes and their mounts. They''ve been poking around in the jungle looking for something. Or someone. They paid me to wait for them, but their time is up, see? I was going to ask them for more money since I don''t mind getting paid to do nothing, but I haven''t yet. So I''m up for hire. Maybe if I didn''t like you, or if I liked them better, I would have told them about a certain abandoned town off there in the jungle. But like I said, they''re assholes."


    "And you wanted them to keep paying you to wait."


    She cackled. "That too, foreigner. Anyway, think about it. The wagon is locked up all nice, over there by the courthouse." She gestured, and then skipped away over the rooftops.


    I considered running, hiding, something. But as always there was that little voice, telling me not to be a piece of shit. Fine. But if it was a trap I was going to be very mad at my conscience. When the fate threads started to move more rapidly I could tell I was close, and finally they turned to point at a right angle to the little street I was on. The first thing I saw when I cautiously ducked around the side of the building next to me so I could check out where Katrin and Errod were was the other wagon - it was in an enclosed stable with heavy duty steel bars, so Kalyssi had been telling the truth so far.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    I unhooked Mister Creepy and set him down, then closed my eyes and focused on him so I could see through his eyes. As always it was blurry, but my new divination ability only extended about twenty feet from my body and I felt certain I couldn''t extend it to Mister Creepy since whatever connection we had didn''t move my lutore. I sent him across the street without incident, and under the locked gates of the stables. There was the wagon, and off to one side another wagon that was way shittier but loaded with crates. In the other direction there were moskar, and while I didn''t want to get close enough that they could eat Mister Creepy I was pretty sure the blurry forms were wearing familiar harnesses. So that would be Sleepy and Sneezy.


    I sent the nearsighted Mister Creepy climbing up the wagon, checking for signs of violence, and on a quick pass I didn''t see any blood or smashed planks or... I don''t know, arrows sticking out I guess. I wasn''t actually sure what I was specifically looking for. I checked out the rest of the stables and as I suspected based on what I''d seen from my spot across the street there was a door leading into the building it was up against. Mister Creepy couldn''t fit under, so I sent him around the side to look for a window while nervously expecting some large bird to swoop down and carry him away.


    There were a few windows on the side of the building, but I headed right for the one with metal bars - and sure enough I could see blurry shapes that were the right general shades and sizes to be Katrin and Errod. I made a little spider leg tap on one of the bars, and the blurs shifted in a complicated way - I suspected they were looking around to see if anyone else was watching them. Errod came over and stood near the window, facing away, and I navigated Mister Creepy down behind his back. Errod went to sit back down next to Katrin, and up close I could see that they were talking about something - sadly the device wasn''t transmitting audio, or the spider was deaf, or something.


    Katrin turned to block the potential view from what I could now see was jail cell bars looking into a sort of office area, and she shifted her clothes so I could see her Dumine - it was covered by a blueish-gray metal device. I''d never seen one before but its purpose seemed obvious and Connie had mentioned the idea of putting a lock on a Dumine when I asked her about gambling. Come to think of it I wasn''t sure why Hammersmith hadn''t kept one on Connie, but I suspected it was part of the much-referenced contract between them.


    Katrin was trying to sign something to me, but despite being pretty fluent in the language after spending the past month not wearing the bracelet I was still really shaky on reading and writing. I''d been taking the bracelet back from Katrin to read The Paradox of Fate most of the time, and otherwise - such as after they left a few days back - basically just staring at the page and getting frustrated after a few sentences. Still, I did my best to piece it together and tapped her arm to get her to back up as needed and after a bit she paused and then continued in English.


    Comprehension - and the competition between her and Errod - had helped to speed her progress along, and she was better at it than I would have expected after such a short time. She spelled out words slowly, and I bobbed Mister Creepy up and down when I got each word.


    ''People hunters'', she spelled, and then held up four fingers. ''Looking for you'', she continued, and then paused a moment before spelling ''also'' and pausing again. Something she wasn''t sure how to spell? Something she didn''t want to tell me? ''H... u, y... w'' she wrote in the air, and then kind of shrugged like she wasn''t certain. Hyuw? Errod leaned in and mimed stroking a mustache.


    Hugh was there. I bobbed Mister Creepy frantically, and then climbed him into Errod''s shirt and disconnected. There was a moment of disorientation, and some shock that I could suddenly see so well, but it passed quickly. I had trouble imagining that Hugh was working with the bounty hunters just based on what I knew about him - he was semi-retired royal guard and had talked as if he was only doing jobs if they were super important or as a personal favor to someone he respected, so bounty hunters would probably not be his crowd.


    Also, what was the bounty for? Were we in trouble for the incident in Sentortzi? Had those same people we fought in Sentortzi now sicced bounty hunters on us? Was Hammersmith trying to find us because she was panicking about getting into Brynnklar? Had the remains of the Halenvar forces sent people after us? Was this about the auction house thing? As the list grew I could feel a panic attack starting - how had I managed to end up in a situation where I had so many people that would potentially send bounty hunters after me? One thing was for sure, I was glad that I''d taken a strange route into town.


    I circled around and found a place to sit and watch the building from the front, watching the few people that wandered in and out. I didn''t see anyone that really screamed ''bounty hunter'' to me, nor did I see Hugh - just a few normal looking townsfolk popping in and out. What I wanted to do was sneak in and do a jailbreak, but I couldn''t imagine I would get away with that unless I - at a minimum - found a good distraction. Even then, it was a tall order. I could get closer and go into my memory palace so I could use my new divination powers and look around on the other side of the walls, but I''d have to be right near the building and I wouldn''t be able to watch my body at the same time so it could just get me captured.


    "You could wait until night, and sneak in through the upper floor," a voice by my ear suggested. I froze, hands twitching as they almost went for my knives, and then I forced myself to calm down.


    "I thought about it, but getting into the building isn''t really my biggest issue. It''s getting out of town."


    "Ah," Hugh said as he sat down next to me, "that is why you arrange a boat ahead of time, yes? And you have it wait a little ways downstream."


    "I''ve got that basically arranged, actually, but with two of the moskar locked up we''d be running on foot, and I don''t think the boat would take us if it''s going to get her in trouble - I trust her to help, but we need to be basically in the clear."


    He nodded. "Good, good. Having an ally in the area is a very good start."


    "Ally might be a bit too strong. Kalyssi was nice enough to us, and she won''t rat us out if we''re paying her, but I wouldn''t want her to be in a position where people could get into a bidding war over us. I do think there''s probably one ally around though, there''s this guy I met a while back that seemed pretty cool. Older dude. Great mustache. Likes mushrooms a lot."


    "He sounds handsome and intelligent. But how do you know he isn''t the one that captured your friends in the first place?"


    "Well first of all, he''s too nice for that. Second, he''s too smart - he would have just convinced them to take him right to me rather than locking them up. And third, I considered it for a second but I can''t really see him working with bounty hunters. Maybe hunting a bounty himself if it was for the right reasons, but not like... as part of a group."


    "And you know that there is a group, eh?"


    I hesitated. "Trying to get me to reveal what I know? I like you, Hugh, but I don''t know that it''s a good idea for me to say too much just yet."


    "Hah! Smart girl. Yes, keep your resources and abilities secret. I know some already, however - you visited a Duminere, came into some money, and most valuable of all you became a citizen of the great kingdom of Erathik before your... departure." There was something strange about how he said that. We''d literally just left through the gates.


    "You have a problem with the fact that we left?"


    He was quiet for a moment. "I am impressed at your vanishing act, but my problem must be with the ones in charge of security. For you, my disappointment is with the fact that you are not wearing your nose ring, yes?" He sounded disapproving.


    "I''ll make you a deal. If you help me get Katrin and Errod out of here, I''ll let you pierce my nose yourself and will never take that nose ring out as long as I live. How does that sound?"


    "A tempting offer. I have been arguing that they should be released to me, but I arrived just too late and the bounty hunters have their papers in order. There is one from Lord Protector Hammersmith, with very specific language insisting you are not to be harmed in any way, and another from some mystery client that can be collected dead or alive - but that one would be hard to get away with in most towns since it is not officially endorsed by any government and is, therefore, not really a true bounty. I can get Errod and Katrin out if I tell them where you are - they are worth practically nothing compared to your bounty. Would that help?"


    I thought about it for a moment, mentally reviewing my resources. "Okay. Here''s what we''re going to do..."