They slept on the rooftop that night, looking at the stars. Roux, being a lemon, didn't find sleep necessary. Whatever power keeping him conscious didn't wax and wane with the sun. He pretended for a while, and it was quite pleasant. Ferdie snored in a surprisingly high-pitched voice, while Orphan's snores were a lower growling sound. Roux closed his eyes and added his own baritone voice to the mix, enjoying the harmonies as they sang to the night.

  In the morning, Orphan gave Ferdie two of her copper coins as a thank you, and she and Roux headed to the local marketplace. It was quite similar to the first one, with a big open square and merchants lining the edges with stalls. Beyond the stalls were buildings, mostly shops and inns. Orphan and Roux scurried across the rooftops, dropped down into an alley, and crept towards the opening where the people were. Orphan paused at the entrance, clearly reluctant to go out into the crowd. Seeing the expression on peoples faces when they saw her, Roux understood why. After a moment, Orphan took out a copper coin, and held it in front of her like it was a lucky charm to ward off evil. Then, with a deep breath, she marched out of the alley and up to the door of an inn. She was about to knock on the door when it opened abruptly, and a large woman filled its frame. The woman had a stern frown on her face. She opened her mouth, probably to say something nasty, then she saw the coin in Orphan's hand. Her eyes darted back to Orphan's face, then flicked down to her dirty feet, then up to her face again, and then back to the coin. Orphan didn't notice any of this, her eyes were glued to the ground. She shuffled her feet.

  "What do you want?" The woman asked the coin.

  "Bath and clothes would be nice." Orphan told the ground.

  The woman snorted. "Two coppers for the bath. Another two and I'll give you some old clothes. That single copper can get you a meal. Well?" The woman raised an eyebrow.

  Orphan nodded, and brought out another four coins. The woman's other eyebrow raised.

  "Well well, ain't someone a rich lady today. What's with the lemon?"

  "Just an observer." Roux said cheerfully.

  "No funny business." The woman responded with a frown. Roux nodded solemnly in response.

  The two walked into the inn, where they saw a large room filled with tables and chairs. A cozy nook had a fireplace, and a fireling was dancing in the hearth. The little creature jumped around the ashes of last night's fire, stomping and kicking up little clouds of ash, keeping the embers dry and ready to light again that evening. The matron told Roux to wait in the main room, while she took Orphan to get cleaned up.

  Roux wandered around the room a bit, before jumping up on a table near the fire.

  "My grandfather's beard, get a load of this!" A man exclaimed, nudging his companion and nodding towards Roux. "I only had a couple drinks, but I swear this lemon just walked right over to that table, jumped and sat down." The other man looked over at Roux, who from a distance and with the help of a strong cider looked just like an ordinary lemon.

  "Now that would be a funny thing." The companion laughed. The first man to speak started to chuckle as well, blinking as if to clear his eyes.

  "I was told no funny business." Roux replied earnestly. One of the men looked shocked, while the other started so strongly that he fell off his chair. They both started laughing again, shaking their heads and muttering "stranger things" to themselves. They beckoned Roux to come join them, so he hopped over to their table.

  "So what's a lemon like you doing in a place like this?" One of the men said behind a giggle. He had a large bushy beard, a hard look to him, and a surprising amount of scars. He mustn't be a very careful person, thought Roux. He decided to call him Bushy. The other man was very skinny, had a few less teeth than ideal, and constantly looked around the room as if someone was about to jump at him from the shadows. He wore a necklace that was a bunch of small bones strung around a cord. Roux decided to call him Bones.

  "I've only been alive for a little while," Roux confided, "and I'm hoping to find some magical power source. When I woke, there was nobody around. I floated along a river until I found this city. It's, uh... what is this city called?" Bushy and Bones looked at each other, then back at Roux.

  "Grand Burrow," said Bones, "and welcome, I guess." He scratched his nose. "You seem pretty conscious for a lemon, must have been some power source that awakened you...?" He tried to keep his voice conversational, but the man was quivering inside. Could an answer to his problems really just walk right up to him? A source of power better than all the mess he was getting himself into? Could it be that—

  "It sure was," Roux agreed with a sigh, "but it's all gone now." He didn't notice Bones deflating like a balloon. "That's why I'm looking for something else. Do you two gentlemen know where I could find something?" The lemon asked hopefully. The men laughed nervously.

  "If power was easy to come by," Bushy said, "then I wouldn't have all these scars, would I?" He bared his arm and flexed, making all the scars wiggle and dance on his skin. "That's why they call me Scar."

  "Oh. I was going to call you Bushy." Roux replied. Bones almost fell off his chair again, laughing at his companion and calling him "Bushy" repeatedly. Roux chatted with them a little while longer. Bones was a bit startled when Roux called him "Bones", but seemed to nod and laugh along hesitantly when Bushy found something quite funny about it.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  After some time Orphan came back into the main room. Only, it wasn't Orphan. Or maybe it was, but just barely. Roux blinked at the sight of a clean young girl, properly dressed, not a speck of dirt on her face. She even had blonde hair. Roux would never have guessed. It was tied up with a strip of cloth. The matron who had brought them in was standing nearby, with a slight smile as she looked at the clean and dressed young lady. She sighed, shook her head, and went to the kitchens to fetch the meal.

  Orphan, after a lot of coaxing from Roux, sat at the same table as the two men. The matron came over with a big plate of food and told the men that this girl was under house protection. The men nodded their agreement, promising they were just having conversation and of course no funny business would occur.

  Orphan didn't mind the men much, once she confirmed they weren't going to hurt her. Instead, her total attention was completely fixed upon the plate of food in front of her. She started with the chicken, taking small bites. Then she dipped her finger in some gravy and brought it to her mouth. Then a spoonful of potatoes. Her eyes were closed and tears started flowing as she brought the chicken back to her mouth, followed by a slice of bread. Roux and the men didn't quite know what to do, so they sat in silence while the girl cry-ate her way through the meal. At some point, Bushy bought her a mug of cider. Roux pondered the whole thing, and with Orphan's permission, popped a small slice of carrot into his mouth. He couldn't eat food. He knew that. His mouth was for talking and making expressions, but he didn't have a digestive system. He was a lemon. But he saw something in this meal. He saw a kind of power. Orphan seemed energized, more alive than before. The food was doing something to her, giving her strength and vitality.

  After saying goodbye to the nice men, Orphan and Roux headed out to another store. This was a clothing store, and the tailor welcomed them in with a smile. It was hard to believe the difference in people's reaction to Orphan now. Before it was all bitter cold looks, unfriendly and unwelcoming. Now people's faces lit up to see a young girl grace the entrance of their shop. This is just like my talking, Roux thought. When I was using my hidden voice, I was scary, but now that I can talk out loud, everyone is friendly.

  The man asked Orphan what she was looking for, and then went out back. He returned shortly with a scarf made of blue silk. Orphan looked like she was going to cry again. She handed five silver pieces to the man, and wrapped the scarf around her head. Roux liked the color, it matched the sky.

  The next visit was a cobbler. Orphan pretended she was a traveler, a merchant's daughter, who had lost her shoes. She managed to present her nervousness as embarrassment, and the cobbler was very kind to measure her and find something simple that he already had in the shop. The shoes were another five silver, but the man offered them to her for four. This time she paid with the gold coin, and got eight silvers in change.

  "The shoes are important, Roux," Orphan said as they were back in the market square. "Not having shoes is the first reason someone won't trust ya." They made their way into the center, where a fountain was bubbling. A school of tiny waterlings were jumping out of the water, following the arc of the fountain. They made small "yippeee" sounds as they reached the height of their jump, and fell back with a splash into the water.

  "The silk's important too," Orphan continued, "partly because—" her voice caught a little. "Partly because it's pretty and makes me feel nice and special. But mainly because a girl who can afford silk is definitely not a girl from the streets." Roux nodded in agreement. This girl had thought a lot about it. In one morning, they had blown through almost half of their hard-won money. It was not something they could repeat, either. In one corner of the market square was a town crier, a little boy about Orphan's age, who shouted the news at anyone walking by. He had a had laid out in front of him, for people to toss coins in if they appreciated his service. Roux eyed the coins, but Orphan shook her head. A kid deserved to keep what he earned. That hat was the only thing separating this boy from trading places with Orphan, and she didn't want that on anyone.

  They didn't spend long listening to the crier, but they did hear a bit about the previous marketplace they had visited. It was chaos. The king's guards were thoroughly, and quite roughly, investigating all the surrounding stalls and shops. Rumors of a rogue mind mage or soul mage were going wild, and the government's response was proportionate. Why a bakery was targeted was unclear. But one thing was quite clear to Orphan—they could never go back to that part of town again. They also couldn't try the same trick again. They had barely escaped last time.

  The new part of Grand Burrow that they were in, however, had a lot of the same things that her old part of town had. In particular, Ophan noticed with a glint in her eye, there was a street connecting to the market that had some tables set up outside. On those tables were some very familiar card games. Orphan approached, her new clothes and shoes giving her some confidence. Unlike the last time, the ones at the table seemed mildly surprised that a young girl would join them, but they brought a chair over and gestured for her to sit with them. Trying not to look at the small lemon climbing up the wall opposite her, Orphan grinned and took her cards, placing a copper coin on the pile in the middle.

  ***

  Demetry, now officially known as "Bones"—curse that stupid lemon—scurried through an underground passage. He hated it here. He hated what he had become. He hated what he had to do. Most of all, he hated that it wasn't working. The authorities were becoming suspicious. A couple of beggars missing? No problem. If anything, he was helping the city. But how many until someone took notice? How many until they accidentally took someone worth looking for? Bones sighed, reaching a door that was hidden by magic. It looked like another patch of wall, but he grabbed the door handle he knew was there. Inside was the distant sound of children crying. Why did the offices have to be so close to the cages? It was another thing he'd change, when he finally came into power. It was the only thing that kept him going, knowing that at some point he'd be able to change everything. Make it all better. Make it all worthwhile.

  He stepped into a meeting of other members of "the family". They were discussing the monster sightings, and whether they needed to move the schedule forward, or simply pack up and head to another town. Those monsters were no joke. Local mages could feel their aura burning them like the sun on a hot day, and that was when the things were still up in the clouds. Bones shook his head. They were too far through, now. They couldn't stop here.

  "Give me two weeks," he said to the others. "Then we'll use what we have, and see what power we can get. We can be more aggressive, if our timeframe is shorter. We don't need to worry about longterm anonymity. Let's get as many as we can." Bones went through the checklist again, just to make sure everyone was clear. "Children. Living on the streets. Ones who won't be missed." With that, he dismissed them, and went to discuss with "Bushy" what in the world could animate a lemon so flawlessly. He asked the man to keep an eye on this lemon, and his companion too. She seemed too clean to be from the streets, but who knows? Maybe they could act before her parents know what's happening.