Chapter 5-5

To Anjanette, being in the auction house was like being a dinosaur in a city. She was surrounded by people who were all staring at her as though her existance was some sort of faux pas. She was dressed up in furs that covered almost her entire body, still one of Golden Street’s most wanted. The shock of red hair poking out from under her cap and the large sword strapped to her back were a bit of an attention-getter.

Leonas and Milly fit in little better. Although it was theoretically an open auction, it was populated almost exclusively by nobles and rich business people.

“The chair I’m sitting on probably costs more than my parents’ house does,” muttered Leonas as they waited for the auction to start.

The auction began, a ritualized and dull affair. They moved up from cheap but curious trinkets into jewellery and works of art. Obscene amounts of money were being thrown about, with one statue going for 225 gold crowns.

“Um, Leonas?” asked Milly in a whisper. “How are we going to afford this?”

“We can’t,” he said casually. “I’ll make the winning bid, go up on stage, and cast a smoke spell. Then we run like the devil himself was at our backs.

“Are you sure that’ll work? I mean, they have pretty good security.”

“Well, we won’t know until we try.”

Milly sat there, nervously playing with the hem of her robe. Finally, the proprieter got to the shard. “An Ancient text of unknown origin, in fine condition, being sold from the de Catalan’s estate,” announced a bored-looking auctioneer. “Bidding shall begin at one gold crown.”

“Four crowns,” bid a fat man dressed in the indulgences of nobility.

“Ten crowns,” bid Leonas, drawing a murmur fron the crowd. He sat back down, face unreadable.

A tall, aristocratic man stood up from the crowd. “Fifteen gold crowns.” Milly gasped. It was Valgard. She shrunk into a ball.

“Twenty,” Leonas bid, gritting his teeth.

“Thirty,” said Valgard with a nonchalant shrug.

“Forty,” said Leonas. They had probably now passed the street value of it as an antique.

“Fifty gold crowns,” bid Valgard. The auctioneer grinned, these sorts of squabbles were what made auctions so profitable. That sculpture from earlier might have fetched twenty crowns in a pawn shop, but the sculptor happened to be the favourite of two of the bidders.

It was at that point that the guards bust in.

They surrounded Leonas, Milly and Anjanette in a moment, spears pointing at them like a mouth of sharp metallic fangs. “You three are under arrest for multiple counts of fraud. For your protection you should remain silent and compliant, as any actions or words you take now will be—“ Anjanette had already broken her chair over the head of the speaker. He fell with a dull thump.

There was a brief half-second before the fight broke out, which seemed to stretch into eternity. The guards gaped. The nobles and merchants gasped in shock and muttered in scandalous tones, those near the fracas fleeing as well as they could in high heels and suits. Anjanette drew the oversized sword from her back, metal angrily shrieking as it scraped metal. Milly silently and efficient struck a fighting pose, producing from her sleeves a hooked knife for each hand. Leonas bolted up and looked for any sort of exit. Valgard just sat back and waited for the curtains to rise.

Anjanette moved first. She tossed her broadsword carelessly at the nearest guard (it was only good as a bluff, the huge thing was hollow) and then laid into another with a roundhouse kick. The stiff kick hit his jaw with a resounding oomph, and he sunk to the floor like a deflated baloon. Then the storm broke.

Milly’s blades flashed as she attacked the nearest guard, avoiding his clumsy thrusts. Her blades neatly sliced the guard’s armour at the seams, until the breastplate fell apart like a beetle’s shell. Another quick stab to the gut downed him with a wet gurgle. She moved on to the next guard. Her awkward movements were gone, her body moving with an inhuman grace.

Anjanette swung her fists and feet around seemingly wildly, but seemed to hit more often then not. The guards surrounded her, drawing swords to fight in close. One blade struck her in the shoulder, tearing flesh with a sickening scrape. Anjanette’s shoudler was on fire, blowing crimson smoke, but she ignored the pain and hit the offending guard with a haymaker and he crumpeld immediately.

Leonas was not a fighter by professsion, but the guards were still having a hard time with him. They swung with their swords, but somehow none of them so much as scratched the scammer. For his part, Leonas once tried an incantation, but while pausing to make the hand motions the broad side of a spear caught him in the chest. He fell onto his back, air rushing out of his lungs like a panicked mob, head spinning. Another spear very nearly pinned him to the ground, but Leonas managed to roll out of the way. Still, he made a note not to try that again.

The crowd of nobles watched with an increased fervour. They roared when one of the guards landed a hit, and jeered when one went down. They seemed to be doing a lot more jeering. The remaining guards regrouped, looking at their downed fellows. The trio, keeping an eye to them, starting to hustle towards the exit.

A huge gold blur barelled out of nowhere, impacting into Leonas and driving him back. He felt his bones jostling with vibrations, and then he was tackled into a bank of chairs, which collapsed in around him. He hit his head somewhere on the way down and everything went black.

The girls spun over to see what happened. Standing triumphantly over Leonas was a man three times his girth and probably twice his weight. The mammoth warrior was wearing gold and silver armour with an ornate crest lovingly carved into the back
Another gold-plated warrior, this one much more lightly armoured and no more than five feet tall, sprung at Anjanette. Anjanette threw a flawless right hand, but somehow the small warrior caught her hand and used it as a base to spring around, kicking Anjanette in the back of the head. She slumped over, and was soon caught up in a hurricane of blows by the strange man.

Milly turned to the two, but found that she had her own opponent. A tall swordsman, clad entirely in golden mail, stared down at her, longsword in hand. She nodded and store him down – at least as well as she could. Both watched each other for any sign of movement, waiting for someone to make the first mistake.

And then something caught Milly on the back of her head, and down she went.
Valgard stood above the fallen body of Milly, blunt end of his sword extended. Everyone stared. “The House of Alleria is always willing to aid in enforcing justice,” he said, the golden warriors bowing behind him. “Now take them away.

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Chapter 5-4

The outdoor cafe was trendy and energetic, young people chittering in pseudo-intellectual banter, mostly those who had just come from the University. Exotic multi-coloured flowers bloomed around the tables. A thousand fragrant scents wafted through the street. Milly felt strangely both out of place and in her element at the same time: the people here were the intellectuals, those she could discuss things with, but she still didn’t have the courage to greet any of them.

Across the table from her, Valgard leisurely read through the volume of [i]Shamich[/i], sipping his tea. Milly’s tea sat nearly untouhced. The one gulp she had taken had burned her tongue.

“Fascinating,” said Valgard, before closing the book with the care of a collector. “I must thank you for allowing me to read this small part.”

Milly blushed. “You don’t have to thank me... I mean, you paid for it. You can keep reading if you want.”

“Ah, I fear I have infringed upon too much of your time already,” he said, beginning to get up.

“Wait!” Milly said. “Um... stay and talk for a while. You’re not bothering me at all.”

Valgard checked his watch, a fancy mechanism dangling from an exquisite gold chain. “Well, I suppose I may be able to spare some time.” He sat back down, and Milly breathed a sigh of relief. “So what brings you to Nariev, besides books?”

She found herself telling the whole tale of finding Anjanette and Leonas, their journey so far, and all of her opinions on it. He coaxed the words out of her, never speaking of himself. Eventually she finished the story, trailing off into a mumbled question about what had brought him here.

“Well, it’s quite the story, but I really must be going,” he said, checking his golden watch again. “It was nice meeting you, Millicent.”

“Milly,” she said. “Only my grandma calls me Millicent.”

“Well then Milly, I really must be going, but I hope that our paths interesect again one day,” said Valgard, bowing to her before sweeping out of the room.

“What... just happened?” she wondered.

* * *

They met back at their inn room. Anjanette had carried a tower of clothes in her arms, mentioning that have the shops in the city were looking for her now. Milly and Leonas looked none the worse for wear physically, but emotionally was a different story.

“I didn’t find out much about the sword, but I did meet this amazing guy...” Milly trailed off.

“Funny enough, so did I,” muttered Leonas, before snapping back to his usual volume and posture.

Anjanette sat on her bed, laying on crossed arms while staring at them eagerly. “Oooh, details!”

“I’d really rather not talk about it,” both of them said, nearly in unison.

Anjanette pouted. “Fine. What about the books? I was too busy running from shopkeepers to dig up any decent info.”

Leonas produced a ruffled flier from his pockets, laying it out before the girls. It was an advertisement for an auction, to be held in two days time, with the prize piece being a classic origin-century painting.

“What are we looking at this for?” asked Anjanette.

“Three down,” said Leonas. There, advertised as simply a “mysterious ancient text” was a tome that matched exactly the one they had on them.

“You think this is it?” asked Anjanette.

“I think it’s a pretty good bet, “ said Leonas.

“Well then, it’s time for some more shopping,” said Anjanette.

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Chapter 5-3

The apartment buildings of north side Nariev stretched up on rickety foundations, floors haphazardly and unevenly built atop each other. From a distance, they looked like broken fingers poking into the sky. Up close, they looked like they might collapse at any moment.

“And he lives here,” muttered Leonas. He checked the songbird message again, and confirmed the address. He shrugged and began climbing the stairs all the way up to the seventh floor. Leonas wasn’t out of shape, but he was panting by the time he reached the end and knocked on door 709.

The man who answered it was thin and willowy, with long brown hair and soft features that had made the other kids tease him about looking like a girl. His clothes probably cost more than his apartment. The man blinked and then smiled. “Leonas! Good to see you.”

Leonas smiled. “Good to see you too, Pericen. How goes it?”

“It doesn’t completely suck,” he said with a grin, motioning to let Leonas in. His apartment was sparsely decorated, but there were two chairs that they sat down on. “I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer you in the way of refreshments.”

“Ah, so you’re the classical starving artist, are you?”

“I’ll have you know I am neither starving nor an artist,” said Pericen with a sense of pride. “If you saw any of my plays, you’d understand.”

Leonas chuckled. “Still turning out... oh what was the word... ‘commercial crap to make a buck?’”

“People tell me it’s not so, but no truly great artist would be able to afford an apartment in Nariev,” said Pericen.

A tall man emerged from what must have been a bedroom. His black hair was unkempt, stubble cropped up sporatically on his face, and his clothes, while indiviudally fashionable, were worn in a random patchwork. The man yawned before casually walking up to Pericen and giving him a kiss on the cheek. “Who’s this, Per?”

“Old friend, from back in Haversham,” chirped Pericen. “In town on some sort of quest. Blake, this is Leonas, who once had to act out my crappy adolescent plays. Leonas, this is Blake, my better half.”

Leonas felt a pang of jealousy that caught him off guard. “Nice to meet you.” He offered a hand, which Blake shook entirely too vigorously.

“So, last I heard you were going to study magic,” said Pericen. “What happened with that?”

“I graduated. You’re talking to a fully-certified first-circle mage,” said Leonas without any particular pride. “I didn’t like any of my options from there though, so I went back to lying for a living.”

“Acting? If you’re looking for work, I know many people who are looking for—“

“No, the much more profitable profession of a conman,” said Leonas.

Pericen laughed, before he realized that Leonas was serious. “Well, that’s one way to make a buck. So what brings you to this hole in the wall?”

“Anjanette somehow convinced me to go on this quest for a bunch of old books or something,” said Leonas. “Not really my thing, but there’s a lot of money in it, so I went along with it.”

Leonas fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat. This had been a bad idea. He and Pericen were lovers, back in those awkward adolescent days. He couldn’t see why he had been so attracted to him now, other than the self-righteous passion of first love and the thrill of what had been taboo. He was gratingly modest, ineffectual and far too wrapped up in his art. And yet the presence of Blake had sent him into a spiral of longing that he had been sure he had matured out of.

“You’re working with Anjanette? How is she?”

“About the same as she ever is,” said Leonas.

Pericen grinned, nostalgia in his eyes. “Still the baby of the group? Still doesn’t know it?”

“More or less, but we seem to have picked up a new baby, so that may change,” replied Leonas. He felt hemmed in, Blake’s silent observation making him feel on display. “Anyway, I would love to stay, but I have to look for this book. It was nice seeing you again.”

“The same here,” said Pericen. “If you’re in town on this Nonidi, you should come see my play, ‘Two Knights Short of a Roundtable’. I’ve been told it’s not terrible, and it would line an old friend’s pockets.”

“I will consider it,” said Leonas, before hurrying out of the apartment.

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Chapter 5-2

Milly was in her own personal heaven. [i]Ex Libris[/i] was a gigantic bookstore in the market district which seemed to stretch on for miles. Lining each shelf, in between the usual mass-duplicated novels, were rare and obscure tomes. They were all expensive, but all so lucrative and seductive. She halfway considered sliding a few books up her sleeves.

Out of her corner of her eye she caught a long shelf full of purple bookedges. “Is that...” she wondered aloud, before walking over to confirm that it was. The entire 28-volume epic [i]Tale of Shamich[/i]. The traditional ballad, told in a thousand different versions by various ministrels over the years, but this was the original, penned by a bored monk centuries ago. Many households had one or two volumes, but an entire collection was considered an impossibility. She had collected as many as she could, but still only had ten or eleven.

She saw the earliest volume she didn’t have, number three. Milly reached for it, but found her hand blocked by another – this one soft and manicured, but with a strong masculinity to it.

“Sorry, milady,” said the man, stepping back. “You saw the book first, I believe.”

“Um, no problem,” said Milly. The man was handsome in an old, aristocratic way, with gentle feminine features and long blonde hair. His body was burly and muscular beneath an immaculately smooth dress shirt. It looked awkward on him. Her face flush, Milly felt the urge to say something else. “I w-was just surprised to see that they had the whole series here. I mean, I’ve always loved these, but it was so hard to find most of them, and now there’s a complete set just sitting here...” She trailed off, realizing that she was babbling about books again.

The man smiled. “It is good to see a young person who appreciates the classics. So many are turned off by the ornate language, but I think it is rather beautiful myself.”

“Of course!” Milly agreed. “Um, you hear the modern adaptations by ministrels and it just, like, sounds wrong. Uh, not that I don’t like some modern books as well...”

“I find little of it is worth my time,” the man said with a shrug. He picked up the third volume again. “What is your name, young lady?”

Milly blushed. Nobody under the age of sixty called anyone “young lady” nowadays, but she found it strangely flattering. “M-milly,” she said out.

“Well Milly, I am Valgard, and I shall make you a deal,” he said with a bow. The name tickled at the edges of her memory, but she couldn’t put a finger on where she had heard it before. “I shall buy this for you, on the condition that you allow me to read the first chapter. The second one ended with a dreadful cliffhanger, and I simply must know how it was resovled.”

“Um, uh, sure!” Milly said, then winced.

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Monday Bonus: The First Deal

[i]Hello, my readers, if indeed such creatures exist. This is the first Monday Bonus, which is a short sidestory or something that I felt like posting. They're on occasional Mondays because everyone needs a little extra to get them through Mondays. These aren't really a regular thing, and I was planning to do a lot more than I've done so far, but enjoy anyways.

I'm working on exposing Crooked Swords to a larger audience, mainly through advertising. That should be coming along sometime this week or next -- I just need to get money transferred over to my PayPal account. Also, if anyone could leave a review at CS's page on Pages Unbound, that would be a huge help. But enough with that, on with the story.[/i]

If you asked him, Tokan wouldn’t say he was miserable. People generally weren’t miserable back in those days, unless a lover or child had just died, which was all too often. But even then, they had less grief than we do now, where we have hidden ourselves away from death.

Tokan had only eaten one meal that day, a scavenging of fruits and small animal meat. It would barely be enough to fill a bird, but Tokan had never been full, so he would have never thought of himself as hungry. Hungry wasn’t even a word in the dinosaur days. He also wandered around naked, feet worn into fine calluses by the underbrush, had no home or shelter, and stank to high heaven. But such was the way of things.

On this day Tokan was particularly happy. He had just had great sex with his wife, and was currently leading a hymn. He had no business being the shaman, but the shaman and his apprentice had been killed by a tyrannosaurus two nights ago, so it was his turn to step up. He was managing to fake it, imitating the old shaman and the ones before him. It was then when he appeared.

The demon appeared as a man, but not a convincing one. His appearance was uncanny, a statuelike replica of a human that lacked flaws, lacked character. He appeared as the prototype, not the final product.

Tokan grabbed his axe, interrupting the hymn. “Who are you?”

“A friend, I hope,” the demon said. “I wish to speak to your leader. I would like to make a deal with you.”

“A deal?” Tokan said, confused.

“You know, a trade,” said the demon. “So, who’s in charge here?”

Tokan looked to his fellow nomads, still puzzled. “You are the shaman now,” one of them said with a shrug. A wave of dread and anxiety washed over Tokan, but he shook it off.

“I am the leader. Explain this trade to me.”

The demon slung an arm around Tokan’s shoulders. “Let me take me to my home, where we can deal in comfort.”

And they stepped through worlds. The demon took Tokan to a mansion like we might say today. Tokan marvelled at the smoothness of the ground, the closeness of the sky, and the unknown inventions of walls and doors, tables and chairs. He looked out a window, and gaped open-mouthed at how it could be night and yet be so bright and so warm inside, even when there was no fire that he could see.

The demon motioned him into his bathroom. Tokan settled into a warm bath, as the demon washed all the grime and dirt off of him. Then he fed Tokan a huge feast, with delicious meat, cheese, vegetables and wine. Tokan devoured it all, having never tasted much of the food before. Then the demon dressed him in a smooth silk robe and they sat down on comfortable couches.

“Tokan, I know that your people can't afford this luxury,” said the demon. “It's because of the dinosaurs that constantly destroy your lands, kill your people, and force them to flee.”

Tokan nodded. “But that is life. What is your point?”

The demon offered up a scroll and spread it across his table. “What if I told you that if you had this scroll you could keep the dinosaurs away from your camp forever?”

“I would call you a liar, and a bad one at that.”

“I would never lie,” said the demon. “Just say the words on this scroll and invoke my name and I shall protect whichever area you wish. If it doesn’t work, I will trade back with you.”

Tokan was excited at the prospect, but he had more sense than to agree right away.

“You keep talking about a trade, but you have not said what you want in exchange.”

“A mere trifle,” the demon said with a dismissive wave of your hand. “But when you use this magic, the souls of everyone it protects will become property of us demons.”

At the time the people worshipped animal spirits, and believed that everything had a soul, so losing his soul was quite a concern. “What will that do to us?”

“In this life? Nothing. But when you die... and I can promise you that you will die fat, old, and in bed instead of tomorrow at the teeth of a dinosaur... you will spend the afterlife in our realm, Hell.”

Tokan considered it for a moment. He considered the danger of the deal, but he also considered the fear and death that he lived in. After the demon’s treats, he was for the first time in his life clean, full and comfortable, and couldn’t imagine going back to it.

“I agree,” said Tokan.

The demon grinned and shook Tokan’s hand, then gave him the scroll. “A pleasure doing business with you, my friend. I’ve attached to the scroll a simple incantation to summon me if you ever want to make... further deals.”

“I will definitely consider that,” said Tokan.

Tokan went back to his tribe and showed them the scroll. They protected their tribe, and grew into a village. They built farms and houses and shops. They sold copies of Tokan’s scroll to other tribes, at exorbitant prices – prices that were always paid. True to the demon’s word, no dinosaur set foot near a protected town. And true to the demon’s word, every soul that stepped foot in a protected town ended up in Hell after they died.

That village eventually became the city of Homestead. Tokan indeed made further deals, and became known as Tokan the Ancient, the originator of wizardry. And that world became our own.

Chapter 5-1

Nareiv was not the capital of the A. O. K. – that honour belonged to a sedate town by the name of Ironbridge, where the serious business of governing was done. But Nareiv was the heart of the Alliance, and on a grand scale the heart of society. Bustling with daytime business and nightlife, the metropolis beat with the heart of the masses that crowded into its every metre.

“Sweet mother...” Milly muttered as she stared down at the city from atop the hilltop road. It stretched out for as far as the eye could see, an endless expanse of brick and iron. The streets were packed like a slaugherhouse. The sounds of a thousand conversations and hawking shopkeepers was already audible, their dull roar that of a hornet’s nest.

“It is pretty damn big,” said Anjanette.

“Meh,” said Leonas. “Too crowded for my tastes.”

“You been here before?” asked Anjanette.

“No,” said Leonas.

She laughed. “Then enjoy it. If you can’t be a slack-jawed yokel on your first trip to Nariev, where can you?”

Leonas shrugged. “You’re probably right. But remember, we’re here on business. We need to find that shard. So don’t spend money frivulously, no matter how much you want to try the latest fashions.”

“You never let me have any fun,” said Anjanette in jest.

“Just don’t get mugged and I’ll be pleasantly surprised with both of you,” he sighed. “Now, let’s find a place to stay and then hit the shopping districts. We’re just looking for the shard, remember.”

Their horses continued trotting along the crowded road. The line for entry looked to be at least a mile long. “Um, Leonas, if you don’t mind me saying so,” said Milly. “I thought you were against the whole quest thing, but now you’re really serious about it.”

“If you’re going to do something, you may as well do it right,” said Leonas.

“I hate to say it, but Milly’s right,” said Anjanette. “Stop being such an asshole and let us have some fun. We might never be back here again.

Leonas sighed. “Maybe you’re right. Alright girls, go wild.”

“Yay!” Anjanette said, already scheming up a shopping list.

* * *

A chaotic mob filled Golden Street, everyone going in different directions and in a hurry to get there. Street musicians were barely audible over the chatter of the wealthy and the vendors hawking out their prices. The street was like a living fashion show, every outfit stunning. Some were enchanted, patterns subtly shifting as Anjanette stared at them, enchanting like a snake charmer. The people were pretty too, looking like they had just stepped out of one of her soaps.

Anjanette caught more than one person trying to cop a feel or grab her purse in the crowd, but they all earned a stiff roundhouse kick to the head and she moved on.

She stepped into the first store, a brick shop full of exotic dresses and accessories, enraptured by the spell of Golden Street. And then she saw the price tags. A single piece of clothing could go for three or four gold crowns. She had about seven.

Anjanette hoped that her thieving skills weren’t rusty.

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Chapter 4-5

“If I may have your attention please,” announced Leonas, his voice booming like a divine commandment. “I have in my posession, fresh off the Durobian presses, five genuine copies of the latest chapter of Mahore Ii Dena! Untranslated and with all original meaning in tact, I am selling these mint condition scrolls for only one gold each!”

Almost immediately a crowd formed around him, a gaggle of trend-following obsessives. The first got their scroll for one gold crown, then someone at the back of the line shuoted that they would pay one and a half, and after that it was an all-out bidding war. Leonas sat back with a predatory grin.

“Are you sure they’ll fall for it?” whispered Milly. She and Anjanette watched from the inn lobby. Anjanette sipped cheap ale, while Milly restricted herself to water.

“How many of these people do you think actually know more than a lick of Durobian?” Anjanette scoffed. “Besides which, Leonas could sell milk to a cow. I’ve known him pretty much forever, and he’s always been a great bullshitter. Or ‘the gift of gab’ as he calls it.”

Milly fidgeted. “You two come from the same dutchy?”

“Yep. Haversham, the middle of fucking nowhere. In a town that small you know most of the other kids, but we really got close when we were teenagers in the theatre guild. He was talented, I was hot, so we starred in pretty much everything. The poor old director nearly cried when we told him that we didn’t intend to stick around and grow up into good little pig-fucking farmers.” A nostalgic smile crossed Anjanette’s face.

On the street, the second scroll was sold to an enthusiastic teenage girl as the offers went higher.

“Do you think this is, y’know, right?” Milly asked.

Anjanette shrugged. “Leo says that parting a fool from their money is our solemn duty. I just think it’s fun.”

“Well yeah, but we’re lying to them,” Milly said, aghast. “That’s not right.”

“Whatever. It makes us money, we never get caught, what’s the problem?” Anjanette asked, with a distinct lack of conviction.

Leonas held up the last scroll. “Well, this has been a great success, but I’ll be off.”

“Wait!” cried out a volumous woman. “How much for that one?”

“Oh, this one? This is my own copy. I’ve gotta find out what happens next, you know.”

She slammed down a fistful of gold crowns on the table. “I’ll give you ten gold for it!”

Leonas made a show of reluctance. “Well, I don’t know...”

“Twelve!” She tossed another two crowns at the table.

“I guess,” he said with a sigh. He handed over the scroll to the now giddy woman.

Leonas arrived inside a few minutes later. “Girls, we’re eating steak tonight!”

Chapter 4-4

It was common to say that the Dutchies, despite technically being dozens of different nations, were all the same. It was certainly something that Leonas and Anjanette complained about frequently enough. But if you looked hard enough there were differences. Fashions were different, some states were more conservative than others. And every once in a while, you would run into a bizarre dutchy that worshipped ducks or had a statue of a giant shoe in the middle of it or something like that.

“Sure, whoever built this was probably insane,” said Leonas at one such landmark, a gigantic ant farm. “But living your life doing nothing but raising cattle for sixty years is pretty insane in itself. It’s not a surprise that they do other crazy shit.”

A less insane but just as remarkable phenomenon was Durobimania. Durobia, as a mysterious island in the middle of nowhere, was naturally the sort of things that drew a lot of people’s interests. Their customs and art were so foreign that they enticed a lot of people, who found that they liked them a lot more than their own culture. It was trendy to wear one of the ornate Durobian dresses, or to have an exotic Durobian girl on your arm.

But some people went beyond that. Spending all their wages on expensive imported Durobian ilscs, taking up the meditative Durobian religions, and making their own shoddy imitations of the foreign art to trade amongst themselves.

The dutchy of Allens, it seemed, was entirely consumed by Durobimania.

Adolescents walked the streets nose-deep in Durobian pulp novels. Almost half of the signs they saw were not the common Imperial, but elaborate and unknown characters. Advertised prominently was a masquerade to be held in a month, held by a minor Durobian noble.

“This is sort of sickening,” said Anjanette.

Milly shrugged. “I don’t know... it’s good those kids are reading.”

“You don’t actually like this stuff, do you Milly?” asked Anjanette.

“No, no,” Milly said in a rush. “Well... I am a bit of a Mahore Ii Dena fan.”

“Which translates to?”

Milly’s face fell and she blushed. “Um... Magic Girl Swordfight.” Anjanette nearly fell off her horse with laughter.

“I wouldn’t be criticizing her tastes, soap-girl,” said Leonas.

“Hey, at least I don’t have to import my guilty pleasure,” argued Anjanette, before collapsing into sobbing laughter. Milly glared at her. If looks could kill, Milly’s glare would be a light tickle.

They pulled up their horses to the nearest inn, the Verbing Noun. Belief the faded sign was the name of the bar painted in fresh Durobian script. A rough-looking stableboy put away their horses while the innkeeper, a huge man wearing a pair of paper-mache tiger ears, approached them.

“Gorin!” he said.

“Speak Imperial, asshole,” said Anjanette.

“Greetings, teme,” said the innkeeper with a snarl. “We don’t have very many rooms, but we can make room for your group. It’ll be five silver per bed.”

Leonas dug through his moneypouch, already adopting a pitiable look. “That’s awfully high, don’t you think?”

“We’re getting a lot of tourism, so I can raise prices,” gloated the innkeeper.

Leonas emptied the contents of the moneypouch into his hand. Inside were ten silver pieces, roughly two dozen coppers, and a shiny marble. “Um... will you take this? We have nowhere else to stay, and it’s so cold outside on these winter nights. You wouldn’t want the deaths of these girls on your head, would you?” His voice was weak and shaking. It was hard not to pick him up into his arms and embrace him like a starving puppy.

The innkeeper seemed to weaken, but turned to look at Anjanette and his face stiffened. “You get two rooms. Prices are prices.”

They received their keys and made it up to their rooms, if they could properly be called rooms. Claustrophobic and damp, they were more clsoets than proper rooms. The beds were small and hard, the sound of the congested street invaded through the walls, and there was little in the way of furniture. “Five silver a room, and we get a closet,” said Leonas.

“Eh, quit your whining,” said Anjanette, collapsing onto the bed. “You and I can share, Leo. Just like in the bad old days.”

“More importantly, we need money,” said Leonas. “Any ideas?”

“Um... we could take on mercenary work,” said Milly.

It took all of Leonas’s will not to roll his eyes. “No sidequests. Anjanette?”

“We go back to what we know. I haven’t run a good con in a while.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” said Leonas. “And I know an easy one to do here. Milly, do you have any blank scrolls?”

“Of course,” she said, as if he had asked “Do you have any blood in your veins?” She produced a long virgin scroll from her sleeves.

Leonas spread the scroll out on what little floor was available. “Ink?” Milly handed him a vial, which he promptly opened up and splashed wantonly over the middle of the scroll. Then the ink began moving with a slight hum, seperating and repelling itself into small blots, which formed twisty and unreadable characters on the scroll. The movement was magical, but not the magic of great curses and demonic deals, but the simple domestic magic that any mage could do with little effort.

“Ta da,” he said. “What we have hear is the hottest new piece of Durobian fiction. Untranslated, of course, but a valuable item nonetheless.”

“Brilliant,” said Anjanette with a cackle. “But we’ll need more scrolls.”

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Chapter 4-3

Anjanette and Milly, the latter still wiping vomit from the edges of her mouth, leaned over his shoulders to read the result of the augury.

Two lie in the hands of hunters

One sits in the beating heart of sin

One rests with the men of the earth

One is inside the silver city.

One lies within Vampire’s Tooth

One can be found in the tiger’s tomb

“So... what the hell does any of that mean?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Milly. “For starters, Vampire’s Tooth is the tallest mountain in the Soleias range. They must have given that one easy because it’ll be so damn hard to get to. A lot of these are old references as well. ‘The Silver City’ is an old name for Nareiv, back when it was the second biggest city in the Allerian Empire instead of the capital of the world like it is today. ‘The Tiger’ was a hero from several centuries ago, taking his name from a rare Durobian beast. When he died, the Kendranians built him an ornate tomb. As for the men of the earth, I can only assume it refers to dwarves.”

“Wait, dwarves?” interrupted Leonas. “We don’t even know if dwarves still exist. They sealed themselves off so long ago...”

“Well apparently they have a book,” said Milly. “As for the others, I’d guess that ‘the heart of sin’ refers to Heka, unless it’s actually in Hell... and I dearly hope it’s not. The two in the hands of hunters have me worrying though.”

“Why?” asked Anjanette.

“Well, if you add this all up it refers to seven books... so ours is included. Now since we’re not in any of the places mentioned, unless I have something wrong, that means that ours is ‘in the hands of hunters’ – people looking for the books. The only problem is, it says there are two of them in those hands.”

Leonas nodded. “So we’re not the only ones looking for these.”

Milly bit her lip. “No, and the other guys are just the only ones who’ve found ones. You can bet that there’s more than two groups hunting for the books. It’s right up there with the Sword of Henry and the Cyril Horde for treasure hunts.”

“Well, let’s just hope we’re better than them,” said Anjanette. “So we know, roughly, where all these things are. Where to first?”

Milly got out a map and marked down the locations of the five books they had found out about. “Looking at this, the quickest route would be to start out in Nareiv and head west. That way we can get them all in a straight line without backtracking.”

“Except for the one our friends have already gotten,” said Leonas. “We saving that for last?”

“May as well,” said Milly. Her usual hesitant tone had vanished. “We don’t know where they are, and they might grab one or two before we can. No avoiding that.”

Anjanette nodded. “Well, this sounds like fun. Looks like we’re gonna see the world after all, Leo.”

“It will be good to get out of the fucking Dutchies for once,” says Leonas. “Now if you excuse me, I have to go wash all this blood off my hands. Really, whoever came up with these demonic rituals obviously didn’t consider the mess they make.”

“Maybe they did,” said Anjanette. “They are demons, after all.”

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