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  Renny spoke up. “Even if she’s not, I can’t imagine the Baroness wanting you running around free. Or any other player.”

  “Given how she treated us, I’m inclined to agree. Though her reasons are still a mystery. For now.” Thomasi tossed a stick into the fire.

  “You’re burning lecture time,” Chase scolded him. “My buff only lasts so long!” In actuality it had about twenty-eight minutes to go and she doubted that she’d need that much, but Chase knew that once Thomasi got going he had a habit of being a chatterbox. She didn’t want to waste too much moxie on this task.

  “Apologies, oh erudite educator,” Thomasi stood and bowed, sweeping his hat off. “I’ll owe you a proper gift once we’re finished, as an apology.”

  “Uh, okay,” Chase eyed him. “Anyway, about Lafiore. We’re a small land, amidst giants. Our two biggest neighbors are Salami and Ferrari. They hate each other, which my Father says has kept us safe. They won’t trade with each other and are constantly squabbling up north of here, but they keep it out of Lafiore. There are all sorts of agreements that make sure we can’t go to war with either of them.”

  “I’m wondering if that’s why you have the Law of Decades?” Renny asked.

  “Ah,” Chase said, cautiously. The law in question mandated that each person could legally only have one job per ten years of their life or fraction thereof and carried steep fines if broken. She had broken that law four times over, which would usually be enough to land her family into some serious debt and penalties under normal circumstances. But they had been far from normal circumstances.

  As to why the law existed, Renny had raised an interesting point. Was it due to treaties with their more warlike neighbors? “That’s… possible. I know that most travelers from other lands look at us weirdly when the subject of the Law comes up.” She blinked. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “It makes sense,” Thomasi said, shrugging. “Combining multiple jobs is a way to fast power. If your neighbors know that you’re gimping your people, they won’t see you as a threat. Although…” he frowned, pulling a stick from the fire, and doodling in the dirt. “Although, if that were true, I’m uncertain why it would apply to crafting jobs as well. There are probably some economic reasons. Somebody doesn’t want too much competition, I’m betting.” He cocked an eye at her. “Do you have trade guilds?”

  “Yes, actually. All through the big towns,” Chase shivered. Guilds made her nervous. Like most of her village she’d been taught that guilds were evil. Even if they weren’t the old horrors from the guild wars decades ago the modern ones had issues. “When you get to level twenty-five in a profession, you can go and try to petition a guild to join. But it takes a lot of money, usually. Or politics. That’s what the adults said, anyway.”

  “There it is,” Thomasi said. “Trade guilds have been historically used to hold down the competition and ensure a hierarchy that benefits those above them. I’ll bet someone burned a lot of influence and money lobbying to make sure it wasn’t just adventuring jobs that got suppressed.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Chase said, feeling absurdly defensive about her home barony. “The Baroness is by all accounts a fair and kind woman. Surely she wouldn’t let someone get an advantage like that just because of, well, money. Or whatever.”

  “Why is she a Baroness?” Renny asked.

  “What? Well, she was the last Baron’s heir. You know how that works, right?” Gods, she hoped so. She didn’t want to try explaining the birds and bees to a magically animated plush toy. Even with Chase’s considerable charisma, she expected it would be awkward.

  “No,” Renny said, tugging on his tail with one paw. “I mean back where I come from baronesses and barons don’t rule over multiple settlements. Or if they do it’s a couple of small villages, and stuff like that. But your baroness has two cities.”

  “I don’t know exactly why that is,” Chase confessed. “Most of the lands around here have a baron or baroness, and some lords and ladies. Some of the lands are very small and some are pretty large… Salami’s huge, for instance… but the highest noble I’ve ever heard of is a Count. He’s down in Pansyli.”

  “I expect it’s to do with the Wholly Gnoman Empire’s dissolution,” Thomasi said. “Nobody wants to go too high in noble ranks, because then they’ll be seen as having ambitions to try and unify or resurrect the old empire. And that brings far more trouble than it’s worth… unless you can back up your words, of course.”

  “Okay!” Chase said, trying to reign in her frustration. “My lecture buff’s timer is still going, so if I might continue, please?”

  Thomasi lifted his hands in apology, pausing to chuck the stick back in the fire.

  Renny nodded and waved a paw.

  “So the city we’re going to is the second-biggest one in Lafiore. It’s on the border of Salami, right on the Aryes river. It’s the great city of Arettzi, famous for its craftsmen.”

  “Well of course there are bunches of handmade things in our etsy,” Thomasi said, mustaches quivering with contained mirth.

  “No, Aretsy. AH-retsy,” Chase said, making sure he heard her right. But Thomasi still looked like he was trying not to laugh. Well, whatever. He was weird. “ANYWAY. The city has a lot of guilds, like you mentioned. And it’s got plenty of supplies, so we can stock up. Then you can do your thing and get us papers to cross the border into Salami.”

  “My thing?” Thomasi looked at her, puzzled. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Your thing! Lying! You know what I’m talking about, you’re a bigger Grifter than I am!” How could he not get what she’d been driving at?

  “I do.” He sighed. “But you believed me when I said I didn’t. And that’s the problem. Your willpower is mush.”

  “I… oh.” His look of confusion had been flawless. “Maybe… you’re too good?”

  “I am good. I’ve had lots of practice. And don’t get me wrong, from what Renny told me about that part inside the prison, you’re pretty good too. You just haven’t had the practice.”

  “I managed to do fine in Bothernot, for like, years,” Chase said, sulkily.

  “Yes, but in both cases you were up against amateurs. Willpower is what aids you in noticing lies, strange as it sounds.” He sighed again. “You’re good with falsehoods. You’re bad at defending against them. That is a problem. Normally I’d prescribe taking a willpower-boosting job, but I don’t have any I could montage to you.”

  “I do,” said Renny. “Elementalists get good willpower.”

  “Mm. Could go that route,” Thomasi said. “But… what’s your willpower right now, anyway?”

  “Status,” Chase said, and eyed the numbers that defined most of her existence. “Forty-four. Close Status.”

  “Too low.” Thomasi shook his head. “Taking on a new job to shore up a weakness just means it’ll retard your growth with that attribute. No, painful as it is, you’re better off training it up.”

  “I do have Teacher,” Chase protested. “That job boosts willpower.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry, are you done with your lecture? I quite forgot.”

  “I am. I was hoping for a level, but I need to do more lecturing. But you got the gist of it, where we’re going, I mean. And, uh, that’s most of what I know about Arettzi.”

  “Mm. See, it’s not good to depend on crafting jobs for attribute growth. They’re nice when they happen, but there’s no need to rush them. Although… I was going to offer you one more tonight.”

  “Oh?” Chase squinted at him. “You think we have time for a montage? We’ll be exhausted come the morning!”

  A montage was an ancient ritual that locked master and student into a flurry of activity, training exercises sped up to an absurd point. If done successfully, it ended up with the student learning one of the master’s jobs. It also took about half a day, with no breaks allowed. Most halvens avoided this method, since it left them exhausted.

  “Pfft, no,” Thomasi waved a glo
ved hand. “I don’t know the job.”

  Chase frowned. “Then why would I want it? I only have a single crafting job slot left. And how am I supposed to unlock it, if you can’t montage it?”

  “Because it’s a simple one to unlock, if you have the right tools,” Thomasi said, and moved to the back of the wagon. “Remember how I said I had a gift for you?” He rummaged around and came out with a small metal case.

  “A gift?” Chase crept clearer, not knowing what to expect. Thomasi once had six full wagons full of junk. After a building fell on them, he’d been reduced to one full wagon and whatever junk he could salvage. Also a pack of monkeys and Dobbin, but that was beside the point. The point was that he could have anything stuck back in the wagon. And apparently he’d found something just for her.

  “Yes,” Thomasi said, flipping the metal case open. Then he rummaged back in the cart again.

  “Paints?” Chase said, confused, as she looked at tiny colored glass jars, brushes, and mixing wells. “Why on Generica would I want to be a painter— oh…” She said, as Thomasi pulled out a small bundle, and realization clicked into place.

  They were cards. Small cards, each one with a drawing of Thomasi’s top hat on the back, and a red, blue, and gold background. But the other side was blank, just simple white pasteboard.

  “I had them printed up long ago. The paint set I got somewhere along the way… I think it was a prize from one of Chilli’s games. But combined, I think you can put them to better use than I, yes?”

  “Yes,” Chase breathed. “My fortuna deck... this is what I need. Thank you.”

  “I told him that you’d been missing your cards,” Renny tugged on her skirt, and she glanced down to him with gratitude. “We can’t fix them, because they’re messed up and missing some, but you can paint new ones, right?”

  “I think so,” Chase said, marching over to the fire and pulling up a stone. “I’ll have to go from memory… but I’ve got a skill for that, thanks to Teacher. And I can check them with my book.” She patted the pack on her back. It had an explanation of each card, and some rough art that she could use as a guide.

  Although, come to think of it, she didn’t have to. She could change the art a bit, couldn’t she? Personalize it, make it her deck. Yes! Yes, that made sense. “Thank you,” she said again.

  Thomasi beamed. “Don’t mention it. Besides, it’ll benefit me in the long run. Fortune tellers and circuses go together like pasta and tomato sauce, you know,” he took a seat next to her, and placed a set of old posters nearby. “Here. For practice. I don’t know how many you’ll have to go through to unlock Painter.”

  The answer, arrived at two hours later, was about five paintings worth.

  Congratulations! By painting a basic painting, you have unlocked the Painter job!

  Would you like to become a Painter at this time? Y/N?

  For a second, she hesitated. It was her last crafting job slot. She’d have to mess with guilds if she wanted to change it around, once set.

  But…

  It DID feel right. “Yes,” Chase breathed.

  You are now a level 1 Painter!

  DEX+1

  PER+1

  You have learned the Fast Dry skill!

  You have learned the Painting skill!

  Your Painting skill is now level 1!

  Sighing, and blinking the bleariness from her eyes, Chase leaned back and considered her “masterpiece.” It looked a little like Greta, her sister, smiling and waving goodbye. Or maybe hello? It was hard to say. “Thank you again, Thomasi,” she said… and found nobody by the fire, when she turned. “Uh,” she said, looking around… and saw a snoring bedroll not far away.

  “It’s very late,” Renny told her from across the fire. “I’ve been feeding the fire for a few hours now so you had light to work by.”

  “Oh,” Chase said, glancing up at the sky. The waxing moon was farther along on its track, near the top of the trees, by now. Chase blinked, then frowned in irritation. “Agh! And now I’m weirdly refreshed, thanks to the new job. It’ll be harder to get to sleep.”

  “Will it? Is that how it works for flesh people?” Renny asked.

  “Flesh people sounds creepy, and yes. Kind of. I mean, I COULD go to sleep if I tried. But…” she cast a glance down at her new paint set, and then over to the cards. The blank cards, just waiting to be turned into a proper deck. “I could fast dry them as I went,” she muttered. “Then it’s just half a minute a card. Thirty seconds a card is nothing, really. And I can knock them out fast, so I can practice with them tomorrow…”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea? You’ll be grumpy if you don’t sleep. Most fl— most living folks are.”

  “Ah, it’ll be fine,” Chase said, opening her pack and cracking open her fortuna book. “It’ll only be an hour, at most. Then I’ll get a proper night’s rest. Besides, we’ll be coming to the city tomorrow. I won’t have time for painting then.”

  “If you’re sure,” Renny said, backing off and letting her do her thing.

  Washing her brush of paint and drying it on a rag, Chase bent to the task.

  The halven girl got no sleep, but she was right about one thing.

  She didn’t have time for painting cards, in the days to come.

  CHAPTER 2: WOLVES? WHERE?

  “I told you so,” Renny scolded Chase as she stumbled down the hillside.

  “Grnfrfl,” she muttered back.

  “What was that? That didn’t sound like you saying thank you.” Renny smiled as he strolled by her side, bushy tail wagging.

  “Be nice,” Thomasi scolded. “You’re going to be in her pack for most of today once we get nearer to the city. She’s going to have plenty of opportunities to smack it into things ‘accidentally.’ You might want to keep that in mind.”

  Chase tried a sinister grin. It probably came out more like a hungover grimace. She was running on pretty much no sleep.

  Oh, the first attempts at painting eighty cards had taken about half a minute per card. Forty minutes, all told, and a considerable number of skill ups.

  But then she realized that about half of her attempts had failed, once she reviewed the finished work. So she’d had to paint over previous attempts, and that was more painting skill gained, and then she’d had to go and touch up the good ones of the lot she’d completed before, and then the second good batch didn’t quite match again…

  By the time she was finally satisfied and the sun was sneaking up behind the trees, she’d learned two things.

  Firstly, that when it came to her own artwork she had an annoying streak of perfectionism.

  Secondly, was that despite her best efforts, fifteen years of growing up in Bothernot had instilled her with a halven work ethic that wouldn’t let her leave a job half-finished.

  Who knew? Chase asked herself in the privacy of her head. Mainly because talking out loud hurt too much, and she didn’t want to mutter to herself any more than necessary.

  Renny, normally the silent one, seemed to be relishing the chance to turn the tables. “What a beautiful day it is!” he announced, practically skipping along. “The falling leaves are pretty, the birds are singing, and the air is crisp, fresh, and…” he stopped. “The air smells bloody. Why does the air smell bloody?”

  Thomasi stopped. “We’re close to the road. Bandits, perhaps?” His eyes flicked back and forth beneath his cowl, and he lifted his walking stick warily. In preparation for moving through the farming villages around Arretzi he’d shrunk the wagon down and they’d both donned disguises. But disguises wouldn’t matter against sufficiently bloodthirsty bandits.

  “I’m not sure,” Renny said, breaking off from the path and moving through the woods.

  “Hey—” Chase bit back a shout and followed him. Not only would shouting have made her head hurt, but if there were bandits around, it probably wasn’t a good idea.

  Her ears twitched under her headscarf as she heard Thomasi mutter “The whole point of these disguises
was to present less of a target to bandits, why are we going toward bandits? Need to teach these kids about self-preservation…”

  She tuned him out and focused on following Renny. He tended to forget that other people didn’t have the perception scores that he did.

  If it were summer she probably would’ve lost him, but fortunately for everyone fall was well into season and the foliage was a third of what it normally was in the warmer months.

  And as they got closer, Chase could smell it too. She wouldn’t have known it was blood if Renny hadn’t told her, but it smelled foul. She was glad that the monkeys and Dobbin had been shrunk down and stored away with the wagon; she’d been around enough farm animals to know that they wouldn’t have liked this sort of smell at all.

  The last leg was down a hillside, and Chase half-slid, half-climbed down, emerging onto a large ledge that held stone fire rings, cut and carved logs, and a foreboding-looking hole into the side of the hill.

  The ledge was strewn with bodies. Quite a few bodies, though it was hard to tell how many. They were small and black and in so very many pieces, and Chase fought to keep her dinner down. It wasn’t the first time she had seen corpses, but these… these were gory. She turned away and breathed until she was in control of herself again.

  WILL+1

  She laughed then and felt horrible for laughing. But it did help.

  And the pressure eased even more, as Renny said, “They’re all goblins.”

  “Goblins. Not children,” Chase told herself, and that made her feel good enough to risk another look around.

  Behind her, she heard Thomasi step down the hillside. His footsteps paused, and he swore. “This wasn’t bandits,” he finished, after he was done cursing.

  “No. It smells like wolves.” Renny said, staring nervously at the cave. He hugged his tail to him, keeping it high and out of the bloody splotches.

  Chase looked from the bodies over to the carved logs. They had the starts of some ugly looking faces on them, and pointy ends. “What are those?” she wondered aloud.