The next morning arrived without incident, thankfully, and Evan and the others set out for the city market not long after breakfast.
The city was already bustling around them, groups of people moving down the streets and into shops on their own purchasing journeys. For the most part, Tren managed to keep his face from showing the awe that Evan had seen in his eyes the first day. It was a lot more subdued now—mostly because Yona had yelled at him to wipe the stupid look off his face like four times before she and Maria had broken off to go to a meeting.
They’d invited Evan, but he’d decided to stick with Tren, just in case he ran into any trouble. Tren, for all his merits, assured Evan that he would be okay. That he was more than prepared to go shopping. But, it also just made sense, given the fact that they might have targets on their backs, for Evan to not go to anything overly important until they knew what they were up against.
Over breakfast—which had been a simple meal of warm eggs and bread—Evan and Maria had discussed getting their hands on more of the artifacts that Valis had left behind. She’d agreed to talk to her contacts about where they might be able to find one, and once they had a lead, they’d move further east. For now, though, they were going to call Bismuth home, at least for a few days.
The market wasn’t far from the safehouse. Maria had given them directions, and Evan followed them to the letter. The square, which was surrounded on all sides by shops and stalls, was a madhouse of activity as they stepped into it.
Tren stopped dead at the edge of it.
“…I take it back,” he said. “I was not prepared.”
Evan snorted softly. “It’s a lot.”
“A lot is not a good description of that.” Tren gestured broadly at the bustle of the market.
He wasn’t wrong. The place was chaos, but it was also the kind of chaos that had its own rhythm if you looked closely enough. The people moved in currents, weaving around one another without colliding—for the most part. Vendors leaned over their stalls, calling out deals in voices that somehow cut through the noise without getting lost in it. Bright cloth hung overhead between buildings, casting shifting patches of color across the street.
And then there were the smells. The glorious and yet somehow unlikely smells.
“Is that… sweet?” Tren asked, wrinkling his nose.
“And fried,” Evan added. “And something that probably shouldn’t be.”
Tren eyed a nearby stall where something on a skewer was being turned slowly over an open flame. “We’re not eating that.”
“We might be eating that,” Evan said. “We’ve been living on eggs and bread.”
“That’s a choice,” Tren insisted. “We can continue making that choice.”
Evan didn’t respond. His attention had already drifted, pulled toward a different stall. This one was stacked high with small metal trinkets and odd, half-familiar objects. They weren’t artifacts, at least not like the ones they were actually looking for, but something about the display was enough to prick at his curiosity.
“Stay close,” he said absently, stepping toward it.
“I am close—hey—Evan!”
But it was too late.
The crowd closed around them the moment Evan stepped forward, and when he glanced back a second later, Tren had vanished into the crowd.
Evan muttered a curse under his breath and then waited a beat for Tren to reappear. But the brawler didn’t.
Evan ran a hand through his hair and let out a breath. It was probably fine, right? Tren would find him. He’d likely seen where he was going already. “Stay close,” he repeated under his breath. “Great advice, Evan.”
He waited another few seconds and then gave up and turned back to the stall. He wouldn’t be hard to spot in this crowd, even with how chaotic it was, and getting out of the throng of people would probably help.
The merchant behind the stall was a thin older man with a neatly trimmed beard and sharp, hawk-like eyes that stared out from his face as if he were actually a hawk watching for his next meal to scamper across a clearing.
“Looking for something special?” The man asked as Evan approached.
The crowd was less dense around the stall, as if many were avoiding it. Maybe people don’t like trinkets in this world. Evan thought as he looked over the display.
“Not really, just looking.” He said in response to the merchant, who stared at him.
“Looking often leads to buying,” the man said smoothly.
Evan huffed out a quiet laugh. The display was mostly made up of small gears, rings, and bits of etched steel or some other kind of metal that looked like it could have been ripped off of something bigger. None of it hummed with the magical energy that the piece of Valis’s staff had, which was both disappointing and reassuring at the same time.
You probably aren’t going to find random artifacts of his laying around, Evan.
Something caught his eye, though, and he reached forward, snatching up a small coin-like piece that had several looping patterns etched into its surface. The coin was cool to the touch but it felt much heavier than it looked.
“How much?”
“For that?” The man made a show of thinking and then put his hands on the counter of the stall and leaned forward. “Thirty Signets.”
Evan made a throaty noise. “For something you probably dug out of a scrap pile?”
“You insult me,” The man said, once more putting on a performance as he placed a hand over his heart. After a moment of Evan staring at him, unblinking, the man dropped the facade and let out a sigh.
“Ah, fine. Fifteen Signets. Final offer.”
Evan turned the piece over in his fingers again, considering it. He didn’t need it. There was nothing important about the piece, but the patterns were interesting. They reminded him of the patterns he’d described in one of the tombs that Valis and his party had explored during their journey to fight the Demon Lord. He couldn’t be sure they were exactly the same—not without having his manuscript in front of him and rereading it—but he was fairly certain.
Whether they had any importance now was unclear, but he was still drawn to the coin. Maybe that was because he’d gone through a coin collecting phase when he was younger—he still had all the coins in a shoebox in his closet back home—and his mother had never let him live it down. The obsession hadn’t lasted long, but looking down at the trinket in his hand, he could feel the same draw that he’d felt back then.
Life was funny like that. Sometimes the strangest, most innocuous things could become obsessions, even for a short time. He was lucky he’d never found himself obsessed with anything dangerous.
There was also the possibility that, and this was the more terrifying of the options, he was being pulled to it the same way that Valis’s artifact had pulled at him.
“Evan, there you are.” Tren’s voice pulled him from his fascination with the piece.
“Hey,” Evan called back as Tren pushed through the crowd. He was carrying something wrapped in a piece of tan parchment. Evan eyed it warily.
“You just disappeared.”
“I moved like two steps.”
“You moved two steps into a sea of people,” Tren shot back. “That’s basically disappearing.”
Evan shook his head. “What’s that?”
Tren hesitated. “…food.”
“That sounds a bit…suspicious.”
Tren unwrapped the paper just enough to reveal a golden-brown pastry which was dusted with a glittery, sugar-like substance.
Evan recognized the pastry. It was called a Dueler’s Pie. He’d created it as a bit of a joke item for the party to find in one of their adventures out in the mountains to the north. It was meant to be a blend of a flaky bread with pie filling, and the backstory behind it was that it had been created during a duel between two bakers in a small village. The two had been fighting to see who would get to take over the best stall in the village’s small market.
It had been a silly, kind of offbeat part of the novel, but it was based on an old story his mother had made up when he was much younger. He’d always felt like the small moments like that helped bring the story to life in a much bigger way, and the sight of the food made his stomach grumble and his heart ache.
“It smelled good,” the brawler said defensively. “And it looked good.”
“I thought you said we weren’t eating market food?”
“No,” Tren corrected. “I said I wasn’t eating anything on a stick that looked like a rat. This isn’t on a stick.”
Evan blinked at him. “That’s your argument?”
Tren nodded. “It’s a good argument.”
Evan shook his head, letting out another quiet laugh, and turned his attention back to the merchant. “Fifteen Signets is a bit too much for this. I’ll give you ten.”
“You drive a hard bargain, young one.”
“Do I? You dropped your price by half in like twenty seconds.”
The merchant smirked. “Make it twelve Signets and I’ll give you the piece.”
Evan nodded. “Deal.” He drew out twelve of the coins the blacksmith had given him and handed them to the merchant.
“Come see me again sometime,” the merchant said, still smirking.
Evan didn’t respond. Despite getting the price down, he still felt like he’d probably overpaid for a piece of junk. But, at least it was nice to look at, and it reminded him of his book, which he hoped might jog some more memories about the story and the world. He could easily recall all the major beats, but there were small moments—like the visit to the village with the Dueler’s Pie, that he was only remembering when he saw certain things.
He took one last glance at the looping patterns on the coin and then tucked the trinket into the pocket of his robe.
He and Tren stepped away from the stall, letting the crowd push them further into the market. After several moments they found a calm spot and stepped out of the crowd.
“So, did you just buy something completely useless?”
“Probably,” Evan shrugged.
“Well, at least I won’t be the only one Maria and Yona yell at.” The brawler said as he unwrapped the pastry again and then broke off a piece.
It had a red jam-like substance inside, which smelled like sweet berries and warm spices. Tren took a bite of the food, his jaw freezing after a few chews.
“Oh my gods,” he muttered through a full mouth. “This is the best thing I have ever put in my mouth.”
Evan chuckled. “That good, huh?”
Tren didn’t answer. He took another bite of the piece he’d broken off and then held out the rest to Evan.
Sighing, Evan broke off a piece, some of the jam running down his hand. It was still warm to the touch. He took a bite and chewed it slowly, the flavors colliding over his tongue.
The taste reminded him of homemade strawberry jam with a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg. The powdered, glittery sugar on top was sweet, but not overbearing, and the pastry itself was flaky and soft. It wasn’t exactly how Evan had described it when Valis had eaten it, he was sure of that, but he also hadn’t expected to see it this far south. It had previously been a northern delicacy.
Oh how much has changed in just 40 years.
“Okay, that’s actually—” he stopped midsentence as someone in the crowd tripped and bumped into him from the side, hard enough to send him tumbling to the side. A muffled “sorry” rose from the person as they scampered away.
But the damage was already done. The rest of the pastry fell from his grip as he let it go, moving his hand to catch himself on the nearby support of a stall.
Tren watched in horror as the delicious snack smacked into the ground, jam spilling onto the stones. His eyes met Evan’s and the two of them simply stared at each other for a long moment.
“You’re going to be annoying about this, aren’t you?”
Tren nodded, his expression already breaking. “I am absolutely going to be annoying about this.”
Evan exhaled through his nose and ran a hand through his messy hair. “Of course you are.”
Tren grinned at him, a laugh already rising from his throat. “You dropped the only good decision I’ve made this morning.”
“Technically someone knocked it out of my hand,” Evan tried to argue.
The other man simply shook his head. “Sounds like an excuse to me.”
“Because it is one,” Evan retorted.
They both began to laugh. Around them, the market carried on, completely uninterested in their minor tragedy.