A soft breeze ruffled Elliott’s hair as he put his boot against the ledge and leaned forward, resting his elbow on his raised knee. The market square beneath was a colourful patchwork of pinks and blues, browns and oranges, greens and yellows. The colour of the awnings had meaning – the type of stall it was. Food, clothing, pottery, medicine and others.

  His eyes were on Godfrey, escorting Korin through the crowds. It was just past noon, the sun overhead though the weather was chill rather than warm. The beginnings of spring. He followed the two men as they made their way towards the gryphon paddocks, but two thirds of the way through the market, Godfrey stopped to talk to a stall owner.

  That was the cue.

  After leaving Darius with the two kings at the palace, he’d located Korin and Godfrey. He needed Korin to go to the dwarven lands and find him his builders and gather information on the location of the dwarven god. It was always best to try to find information from different sources.

  Godfrey had been tasked with showing where Rose had been robbed.

  [Magnify Vision]

  The dollmaker’s stall zoomed toward his eyes – tables filled with stitched dolls alongside hand-crafted wooden ones. Little outfits hung from the red awning and he could see baskets of colourful yarn and some knitting needles. The dollmaker was an elf, long silver braids tucked behind her pointed ears.

  “It was a few hundred gold,” Lyla said, standing beside him on his right. Isabel was on his left – all three of them under his [Conceal]. No need for anyone to see them up here. “Why is it so important to you to get it back? You could make that in minutes.”

  Isabel cut in, eyes scanning the market below. “There’s eleven groups of kids. Three to four in each. Only three of them moving with purpose,” Isabel said.

  Elliott could see them too. One group – what looked to be two young girls and a boy – split up around a young woman, one of the girls distracting her. The boy moved into position, standing in front of the woman to shield what was going to happen next from prying eyes in the market. As the woman gave the first girl directions, she wasn’t paying attention to the bag she held by her side. The other girl walked past, deftly undoing the clasp of the woman’s bag, dipping her hand in and quickly pocketing the small money purse. She walked away, the boy following soon after. The first girl gave a heartfelt thanks and ran off in a different direction to the other two. The woman beamed a smile at her good deed for the day. She wouldn’t be smiling when she checked her bag.

  They had taken no longer than ten seconds.

  Elliott grinned, recalling his childhood. These kids were better than he’d been, but they hadn’t used magic. Even if he couldn’t feel it from here, he had seen the girl’s quick hands. Saw her physically unclasp the bag.

  “It’s not the money,” Elliott said, eyes sweeping back to Korin and Godfrey as they spoke with one of the beastkin handlers. Korin pressed some coin into the handler’s palm and was directed to a gryphon being tended to by its flightmaster – a beastkin with pinned-back feathers on its head and a larger than usual curved nose. Water dripped from the gryphon’s wings as the flightmaster scrubbed a cloth through its feathers.

  “It was the use of magic.”

  Godfrey shook Korin’s hand, turning back to the market as Korin approached the flightmaster and exchanged a few words, the avian man nodding as he listened. He set his bucket and cloth aside, and grabbed a large leather saddle from a nearby peg and some reins.

  Once he’d saddled the gryphon, he helped Korin to mount the gryphon’s back and strapped him in, before the creature lowered its neck for the flightmaster to secure the reins. The avian man vaulted onto the gryphon’s neck and with a gentle tug of the reins, the gryphon walked to a narrow runway. Its taloned feet gathered speed, wings spread wide until they caught the air and the gryphon lifted into the sky, wings beating steadily to gain altitude as it steered towards the border with Rhian. The dwarven lands were on the other side of the eastern mountains near the Forest of Shadows.

  Elliott pushed back from the ledge, dismissed [Magnify Vision] and turned to Lyla.

  “It was kids using magic that intrigued me. For obvious reasons.”

  Lyla met his eyes, realisation dawning in hers.

  “How hard could it be to pickpocket with magic?”

  “Hard for children. How old were you when you passed for Mithril or Orichalcum?”

  “Nine for Mithril. Thirteen for Orichalcum.”

  “Which is too young already. How old do the kids look out there?”

  Lyla peered beyond him. “Nine? Ten?”

  “Do you see any Focuses? A staff or a wand or a gemmed circlet?

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Lyla shook her head.

  “Children shouldn’t be powerful enough to work magic without a focus. Not unless they were pushed in a manner that children shouldn’t be pushed. In a manner that even you weren’t pushed.”

  “It might not have been the kids,” Lyla replied, though her eyes darted to the pockets of children around the market.

  “That’s a possibility,” Elliott replied, “in which case I’m just finding a thief and I’m going to beat my money out of them with interest.” He winked at her. “But if it was the children?”

  “Then they’re from Bizayn. They’re the only ones with the programs.”

  “And that begs the question. Why are these kids here?” He turned to Isabel. “Lend me your money pouch please.”

  Isabel undid the money pouch at her belt, the light-green silk of her dress – worthy of any lady – rustling as her hands moved. Lyla wore something similar, though hers was in red. Lyla’s dress seemed a little bulkier but he knew that’s because she had her leather armour underneath. She wasn’t ready yet to access mana alongside her physical abilities in the way he and Isabel could. They had spells to shroud themselves in their gear when it was needed. Lyla needed to get stronger for that.

  He could feel the weight of the pouch when Isabel placed it in the palm of his outstretched hand. He handed it over to Lyla.

  “Clip it to your belt so they can see it. Isabel – you stay up here and follow the kids if they leave the area.” He didn’t have to tell her which group – she was better at identifying the right ones to follow than he was.

  “Lyla – how would you like to be my wife?”

  Isabel laughed as Lyla stepped back and held herself, her eyebrow raised.

  Elliott strolled among the market crowds in his black linen trousers and shirt, a loose black jacket on his shoulders. His left arm was by his side, though he held his right arm across his body, bent at the elbow. Lyla had her left arm through the gap, her hands placed over each other on his arm, like they were a couple who had come to browse the market.

  “The dollmaker’s up ahead,” Elliott whispered, as they passed stalls of food, steam from hot meals rising into the air carrying the smells of meat and vegetables. There were a couple of the groups of children nearby, hope in their dirt-streaked faces that the stall owners would take pity on them. Their eyes had a hollowness – a slight look of despair. He’d seen that look before on the other orphan kids he’d grown up with. Kids with nothing to live for but surviving day by day anyway. Those weren’t the ones he was looking for.

  “You really think they’ll try the same thing twice?” Lyla whispered back, eyes scanning the market.

  “Pickpockets almost always work the same areas, looking for the same type of victims. In this case, young women with more money than sense.”

  He felt Lyla’s nails dig into his arm.

  “I was talking about Rose.”

  “If you think that about her, why would you send her into the dungeon? Better off sending Aldric.”

  “You of all people should know why. Throwing yourself into danger is the quickest way to learn. To grow stronger.”

  She glanced up at him. “I didn’t exactly choose that.”

  “But that’s why you survived. You were thrown into it and you chose not to give up.”

  “Like you?”

  Elliott smiled.

  “I’ll be over there at the tailor’s.” Lyla followed his gaze to a stall two over from the dollmaker’s. “Get what I asked you to from there and if you do get robbed, don’t react. I’ll keep an eye on it, then I’ll come over. Go.”

  He kept an eye on her as she wove through the crowds towards the dollmaker’s stall. He made his way to the tailor’s stand two stalls over. The middle-aged man with wrinkles on his face, a pipe between his teeth and a paunchy stomach sat on a stool, flanked by two wooden frames draped in his handiwork – cotton shirts tucked into linen trousers with fine cotton doublets. Tables surrounded him with folded shirts and more trousers. Good work certainly – in the styles of the lords and ladies but meant for those of humbler means. And those that didn’t mind their clothes smelling like tobacco.

  “How you doing?” Elliott said with a smile.

  The man grunted, his eyes on the crowds beyond, a puff of smoke floating past his head. “Be better if I didn’t have to keep an eye on the riffraff.”

  “Riffraff?”

  “The kids.”

  Elliott looked out across the market. Lyla was at the dollmaker’s, pointing out the colours of yarn that she wanted – well, that he wanted but nobody else needed to know that. Across the market, children were everywhere. Some with the hollow eyes that he had seen earlier, clothes tattered and stained, staring at the bread and fruit that sellers hid behind their stalls. Other kids played on the adjacent streets kicking around inflated animal bladders or throwing chipped marbles.

  “There are a lot around the market,” Elliott said. “Where are the parents?”

  There were a couple of groups that had a different look about them. Their clothes looked tattered but the tears were too clean and the stains and smudges didn’t have the randomness of the others.

  The man grunted again. “They don’t have no parents. Refugees from the war.”

  “Why aren’t they in the orphanages? Or the refugee camps?”

  The man pulled the pipe from his mouth. “Not enough space for them.”

  Elliott raised an eyebrow but had an eye on the two groups of kids that were scanning the crowds. Neither looked in Lyla’s direction but he spotted another trio of kids - two boys and a girl approaching the dollmaker’s stall, eyes fixed on Lyla. He saw the slight flick of her eyes in the kid’s direction. She knew.

  “They can’t be that bad? Just kids looking for a meal,” Elliott said, pretending to look at one of the shirts on offer, though he kept his eyes on Lyla.

  “There’s more mouths to feed than food to give and some of them have taken to pilfering where they can. Had a group take a few of my shirts once. Be careful with your coin.”

  “Why don’t the guards do anything if they’re thieving?” The boy and girl had reached Lyla, and were tugging at her dress but they were careful to be on the other side from the purse. Lyla turned to face them, a smile on her face.

  “Too many soldiers pulled to the borders. Not enough...”

  Elliott stopped paying attention. As Lyla spoke to the boy and girl, the second boy stood by the stall, a metre or so away from Lyla. Then Elliott felt the magic. It wasn’t strong – it didn’t need to be. Lyla’s purse slowly disappeared out of view.

  [Exalted Perception]

  The stalls, the people, the colours all disappeared into darkness, but the outline of Lyla’s money purse came into view instead, hovering in the black void around him. It moved slowly, away from where Lyla was standing and hovered over to where the boy had been standing before a moment later, it started moving away from Lyla and the stall.

  Elliott dismissed [Exalted Perception], his vision returning to normal, but his eyes fixed on the direction the purse was moving. It was the boy, walking away from the scene of the crime.

  “Thanks for the chat,” Elliott said, as he began walking towards Lyla, but his eyes flickered to the dollmaker.

  The kids weren’t the ones using the magic.

  The elf was.

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