Chapter 1-2

The first written rule of scamming was that you never stayed around one place for too long. So at the end of the day Leonas and Anjanette packed up all of their merchandise and equipment into their caravan and left town. They had another two towns on the schedule before they returned to Tereton to pawn anything they picked up along the way and restock supplies for another run. Theoretically they would eventually run out of small towns in the Dutchies to run scams in, but
at the moment they seemed to be limitless.

They stopped well before sunset – the sun was beginning its walk offstage, but had yet to show its colourful back. It reflected out over an endless expanse of farmland and grain. The Dutchies were as flat as year-old beer, and about as enticing. The road they travelled on was allegedly paved, but looked more like a line the plants had sort of given up on than any sort of human artifice.

It was the horses who determined their hours. Using stallions or thoroughbreds would have drawn too much attention, and also struck Leonas as needlessly gaudy. Instead they had two cheap rouncies who grudgingly pulled the caravan from one place to another... when they felt like it.

“These assholes are almost as lazy as I am,” said Anjanette, swinging at one with a stick. The horse whined, offended, but refused to budge.

“Does that mean I can hit you with a stick next time you won’t get out of bed?” said Leonas.

“Sure. If you don’t mind that stick being lodged up into your intestines.”

Leonas winced. “Why must you be so vulgar?”

“Well someone’s gotta be,” said Anjanette with a shrug.

“I guess so,” said Leonas. He pulled the cart to a stop before getting off. “Someone also needs to go get firewood.”

“Not me!” Anjanette said quickly, as if it would settle things.

“Well I did it last time,” said Leonas

“So you can handle it again! Come on, you’re a big boy now.”

Leonas refused to budge. “Anjanette, please tell me you’re willing to do more in this operation than look pretty.”

“Lying. I’m also pretty good at lying.”

There was a terse but familiar stalemate, and then Anjanette produced a small, faintly growing scroll. The writing on the binding read “The Noble and Beautiful – Floreal 12, CCXI.”

“No,” said Leonas, backing away with shaking legs.

“You knew it was coming,” Anjanette said. “I’m going to watch my soap. You can stay here and join me, or you can go out and get some firewood.”

Leonas was gone before she had finished speaking.

Anjanette smirked the smirk of champions. She took the ilsc and placed it on the ground in front of her. After striking flint and steel together for a short while, she lit it on fire. The fire glowed green with magic, and in the smoke that billowed out, there formed all the beautiful people and their glamorous world, a world of nobility and constantly shifting and scandalous events.

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