“Honestly, I don’t know why you—”

  That was all Alric caught of the voice from behind the counter.

  Several things clicked in his mind at once: the sprawling pile of armor on the floor, the crying daughter, and most damning of all, the large quantity of leather straps involved.

  “It’s not what it looks like!” he blurted, turning just as Ruth fled the room.

  The look on the mother’s face did nothing to help. Her eyes widened further.

  “What,” she asked carefully, “does it look like?”

  Alric swallowed. His mouth opened, then closed again as he searched desperately for a way to salvage the situation. He was spared the attempt when Ruth ran straight into her mother’s arms.

  The woman wrapped her daughter up at once, one hand pressing Ruth’s head gently into her shoulder. She looked up at Alric then. Not screaming. Not accusing. Just a hard, appraising stare that made it very clear an explanation was required.

  “I… uh,” Alric said. “I have an item box. It… gave Ruth a fright.”

  It sounded worse out loud.

  Deciding that demonstration was, once again, the least disastrous option, he held out a hand toward the armor. The small black cube reappeared above his palm, rotating slowly. A familiar tug followed, unpleasant but manageable, and the armor vanished piece by piece, rejoining him with a peculiar sense of satisfaction. It felt like running a vacuum cleaner over stubborn gravel.

  “O… er… I see,” the woman said.

  She was still clearly alarmed, but she blinked once, filed that away, and made a decision. Her daughter was the priority.

  She crouched slightly until she was eye level with Ruth.

  “There now,” she said softly. “See? It’s gone. It’s not going to hurt you.”

  Ruth sniffed.

  “Remember Papa telling you mages can be a bit weird?” the woman continued, smoothing her daughter’s hair. “See? This one’s a bit weird. But we should be proud a mage chose our inn. All better now?”

  Ruth nodded hesitantly, still clutching her mother.

  Alric stood there, shrinking in place.

  Being called weird stung, mostly because from their perspective it was undeniable. That alone told him how narrow his margin was here.

  Ruth had stopped crying, but she had not really recovered. She stayed pressed against her mother, fingers twisted into the fabric of her apron, watching Alric as if he might unfold again at any moment.

  Her mother finished smoothing Ruth’s hair. Then she straightened.

  She did not say anything.

  She simply looked at Alric.

  The silence stretched, deliberate and heavy.

  “I need a smith,” Alric said at last, the words coming out awkwardly, as though he were answering a question that had not been asked. “To sell the armor.”

  The mother blinked. Once.

  Then something in her expression settled. The momentary alarm gave way to a familiar, professional focus.

  “Oh. A smith,” she said. “There are a few.” She hesitated, eyes drifting upward as she thought. “I’m not sure who I’d recommend offhand. Is it fancy? It looked it.”

  Her gaze flicked briefly to the empty patch of floor where the armor had been.

  “Still,” she continued, tapping a finger against her neck, “the best smith in the city is a very grumpy old dwarf.”

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  “A dwarf?” Alric repeated, brightening instantly. “Yes. The dwarf. How do I get there?”

  His enthusiasm made her blink again.

  “Well… it’s quite far,” she said slowly. Then she turned toward the open doorway. “Tyke!”

  Her voice carried easily down the corridor.

  “I’m getting our youngest to take you,” she called. “Tyke! Get in here!”

  She kept one arm around Ruth as she waited, steady and unhurried.

  Not long after, a child emerged from the doorway. He wore the unmistakable look of someone who had been interrupted mid something important, his expression already halfway to a complaint.

  “What d’you want?” he asked, scowling at his mother.

  Her mouth tightened. “Not what d’you want,” she said, the words sharpened by familiarity. “We have a guest who needs your help. Can you take him to the old smith by the warehouses?”

  Tyke blinked, then noticed Alric for the first time.

  He glanced back at Ruth, still pressed into their mother’s side, and shot her a look that suggested she had personally ruined his afternoon.

  “I can,” he said at last, turning back with a slow, knowing smirk. “But it’ll cost you.”

  “Tyke,” his mother warned.

  The smirk did not budge.

  Alric could not help but smile.

  “Fine,” he said easily. “One small. You guide me until sundown.”

  His mother opened her mouth to object.

  Tyke folded his arms, chin lifting as though weighing a matter of great import. “Two smalls,” he said. “Or no deal.”

  He delivered it with the solemn confidence of someone concluding a very serious negotiation.

  Alric grinned and nodded.

  The boy’s mother let out a slow sigh, shaking her head.

  “Deal,” Alric said. “But I pay you afterward. You’ll have to earn my trust.”

  He added a mock glare for emphasis.

  Tyke considered this for half a heartbeat, then grinned and nodded.

  “Let’s go, then.”

  He turned and made for the counter, clearly intending to vault it. His mother’s sharp intake of breath stopped him mid step.

  “Tyke.”

  With a theatrical groan, he abandoned the attempt and stalked toward the door instead, slipping outside and circling around to the tavern’s main exit.

  Alric followed.

  Tyke waited there, hands on his hips, looking up at him expectantly.

  “Be safe!” his mother called after them as they stepped out into the street.

  Tyke moved through the city with an unerring confidence that would have put a map obsessed courier to shame. He rarely slowed, and when he did it was only to wait for Alric, leaning on one leg impatiently while his charge caught up. Whatever system he was using, it existed entirely in his own head.

  Alric watched him work, perplexed. Tyke would glance down an alley and either turn into it without hesitation or skip past as if it had never existed at all. There was no visible logic. Just certainty.

  Then Alric heard it.

  Someone nearby cleared their throat, followed by a wet, practiced spitting noise. A shudder ran up his spine.

  To his horror, Tyke immediately copied it, adding an exaggerated nasal flourish, as if competing with an unseen adult.

  Alric winced.

  He made a quiet decision then and there not to touch anything in this city unless absolutely necessary. Assumptions about cleanliness were unreliable.

  Curiosity about how Tyke navigated won out.

  Moving a little closer, Alric asked, “How do you know which alleys to go down?”

  Tyke glanced at him and blinked. “It’s a rule my pa has,” he said with a shrug. “If you can’t see the end of an alley, you don’t go down it.”

  He said it as if it were self evident.

  Alric nodded again, offering no argument. In its own way, it made perfect sense.

  The certainty bothered him.

  “Otherwise it’s easy,” Tyke added. “River’s that way. Warehouses are that way.”

  He gestured broadly with both arms.

  Alric nodded again, offering no argument. In its own way, it made perfect sense.

  Except that it did not.

  The streets shifted almost without warning.

  The vendors thinned first, replaced by carts stacked with lumber, coils of rope, and crates stamped with marks Alric did not recognise. The air changed too. Less smoke. More oil, metal, and something sharp that caught at the back of his throat.

  “Craft side now,” Tyke said offhand, not breaking stride.

  Alric glanced around. “It has sides?”

  Tyke gave him a look. “’Course it does.”

  He pointed ahead. “Food an’ inns back that way. Crafts here. Warehouses by the river.” He added, with a vague sweep of his arm, “Poor sides up that way. Nobs live across the river.”

  He gestured broadly, as if this were the most obvious arrangement in the world.

  Alric nodded, filing that away as intentional layout. The logic was obvious in hindsight. Fewer people. Wider streets. More space for carts to turn.

  The sound changed again as they walked. Hammer on metal. Saws biting wood. A deeper, steadier rhythm beneath it all.

  They paused to let a cart loaded with lumber roll past. Alric noted that no one glanced either way. You simply looked everywhere, always.

  “This is it,” Tyke said at last, gesturing toward a squat wooden door set into a stone fronted building.

  The boy did not follow him any closer. Instead, he glanced around, clearly scouting for somewhere to sit. His attention lingered on a nearby street vendor.

  Alric felt an unexpected tug at his chest. With a small sigh, he reached into his pouch.

  “Alright,” he said. “I’ll give you one small now, and one when we’re back at the inn. Fair?”

  Tyke’s expression brightened instantly.

  Alric pressed the coin into the boy’s hand.

  And just like that, Tyke vanished into the crowd.

  Alric watched him go as the noise of the street swallowed the child whole. It was easy to lose track of people here.

  For a brief, uneasy moment, he found himself hoping, quite sincerely, that Tyke would still be there when he was done.

  Turning back to the doorway, he reached for the handle. Despite himself, his spirits lifted a little at the thought of what waited beyond it. Whatever else this day had been, he was about to meet a dwarf. A genuine staple of the sort of stories he had grown up with.

  He turned the handle and stepped inside.