The sounds of a city as large as Fukan rang with a tone and beat all its own. Places as small as Tamanoe and my usual village haunts lacked the bustling activity of a larger city. Even from outside the walls I could hear blacksmiths at labor, the waves of sound coming from a market near the gates, and the ocean-wave hiss of people simply going about their lives and trying to be heard by those closet to them.

  Unfortunately, such cities always included a downside for me. Hanari suffered alongside me as she held her hand to her nose and and spoke with a hollow ring. “This places smells like… sewage.”

  I nodded, breathing through my mouth and straining my arm against reaching up and pinching my nose. Humans could not have known how effective the side effects of civilization were at holding many monsters at bay: most of us could not stand the stench.

  We waited in queue for our turn to let the guards check us. There was not precedence given to merchant caravans here, so we waited in the same line as the wagons. Guards walked along the line o the train and poked their heads under the canvas covers, but didn’t open any of the barrels or boxes to examine their contents. The city guards and those in the employ of the caravan exchanged familiar pleasantries. Both groups knew each other, so tensions ran low.

  When the city guards came to Hanari and me, we raised suspicions despite the fact, or perhaps because of the fact we were two women traveling together along the roads. The guards asked after our names, and a leering man with a pinched face came to visually inspect us while we answered his fellows’ questions.

  Braced for a fight, or the need to flee, I tolerated the inspection with as much poise as I could muster. A city this big could spare enough guards to muster out and come track down Hanari and me if they needed.

  The Kistune stepped up and joked with the guards. To my surprise, they joked back with her and her gentle teasing convinced the guards to let us pass unmolested into Fukan.

  Stones and mortar formed the roads of Fukan. It was the first thing I noticed, like a good swordsman developed their stance first, I felt the streets of a city said the most about it in the shortest amount of time. Not one dirt path led off of the board thoroughfares here.

  The next factor which caught my eye were the buildings. Many of them resembled Akshay’s hut: whitewash and wooden frames. But almost all of the buildings in sight of the gates supported those frames and walls with stone bases. Some of the larger buildings forsook the wood entirely and had been made from stone and mortar alone. In those cases, only the doors were wood.

  Vendors hawked food and drink near the gates and young children scurried through the crowds holding up painted signs with simply glyphs on them. They cried out offering visitors nights in pleasure houses, gambling rooms, restaurants, and most important to me, inns. I tapped a girl who passed me on the shoulder and she spun as if frighted by the gesture. “Ma’am?” Her eyes widened when she beheld me.

  “You work for a woman’s inn?” The girl swallowed, my height sometimes had that effect on people. Or maybe it was the pinkish cast to my skin. After a second’s pause, I handed her a half-gold coin and said, “Can you direct me to a woman’s inn?”

  This time she nodded back to me after she snatched the coin from my hand. It took her a further second to recover before she said, “yes! I represent the Sable Meadows!” she tapped her sign which bore a ferret-like drawing over a field of flowers on it. “We have food and lodgings and we only serve ladies!” I chuckled with my hand over my face. The girl sounded as if she’d memorized her pitch and in her shock had blurted out the words syllable for syllable without thinking. “Would you like to stay with us?”

  I was glad I’d covered my mouth because I couldn’t restrain my laughter. Her eyes were bright and her clothing well-mended. The good condition of both contrasted with most of the boys plying the crowd who were dirty or wore ill-fitting clothing. She had a modern-style dress which reached down to the stones in the street and covered the lower part of her small neck. Large eyes continued to stare at me through the brown curtains of her hair, only occasionally blinking as she did.

  Nodding to her, I said, “yes, please. Will you give me directions to your inn?”

  She shook herself again, rubbed her eyes with one hand and said, “It’s ten blocks down, take a left at Meadow lane past the tailors and the bakers.”

  Out of pity, I handed her a second half-gold and bowed to her. The money finally interrupted her fixation on me and my height. She was biting the coins when I turned back to the lane and started toward the Sable Meadow.

  People clogged the streets of the city and I tuned my ears for criers or barkers. Near the gates made a good place for the dissemination of news and I wanted to see if I could continue my mission to reclaim my mountain home and displace the evil spirit who’d taken control of it.

  The size of Fukan set my troubled mind at ease. No goblins would have been able to assault the city, the seals on the gates ensured that. Assassins who came for me would have to be more subtle than magic wielding monsters or demons. I was less likely to leave collateral damage in my wake here.

  I had to all but drag Hanari through the streets. Jugglers, acrobats, and musicians lined the streets almost as common as children serving businesses near the gates. Hanari stopped before each entertainer or group of entertainers to watch in awe as they played their instruments or otherwise performed for passersby. If she’d had her own money, Hanari would have distributed the lot to the men and women along our route. And if I hadn’t been there, Hanari would have lingered until the performers packed up their gear and found a place to sleep for the night.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Five blocks in we passed a public water fountain and a square where an even larger assortment of vendors and merchants had setup stands. Fewer entertainers worked the crowd here, but Hanari now tried to stop at each stall to stare longingly at toys, food, or caged animals.

  I pulled her along faster here than I had from the performers. Days without getting paid drained my accounts and delayed my mission. Browsing would inevitably lead to spending more of my gold and only further put off my goals.

  The crowds thinned out considerably as we reached Meadow lane. My intention here was to secure a room for Hanari and me and then head out to find a job to perform. So far, listening to the cries of barkers hadn’t revealed anything of value. Perhaps I could ask the keeper at the Sable Meadow when we arrived.

  I’d picked the inn for the name and the fact the sign the little girl carried had been one of the better-made signs. Her well-tended clothing helped too. I was not disappointed by the inn when I found it.

  Stout stone walls rose up three stories, a full floor over its immediate neighbors, a weaver and a scribe’s shop. A bored-looking young woman sat next to the wooden door of the Sable Meadow as I approached. “Are you fine ladies looking for lodging in Fukan?”

  I waved to her and bowed. “We are, your sign-carrier at the gate did her job well.”

  The young woman’s face shifted from expectation to a grin. “Oh good. I’ll let mama… er, the innkeeper know.” She held a hand out to the two of us and swept it toward the door, “please make yourself comfortable in our home.”

  Back when I first started traveling among the humans such an… intimate invitation would have been out of place for an inn, one which served men or women. But in recent times, inns — especially those catering to women — tended toward the more familiar. I wasn’t sure which I preferred. In the moment I just wanted to clear away the details in case a guard stopped us later to ask Hanari or me where we were staying.

  A stout woman waited in behind a bar at the side of the room with a bored, but pleasant expression which animated slowly as Hanari and I walked into the room. The Sable Meadow retained their stone floors and walls, but had hung stylish paintings around the room to break up the monotony of stone.

  Unlike Akshay’s home or even Wei’s dojo, this place did not use lanterns to illuminate its interior. Instead small globes hung suspected right at forehead height from the walls. Nothing connected these globes to the ceiling or wall, which suggested the soft glow was the result of magic. I found myself jealous of the mortals who could so easily waste their magical potential on lights rather than something more useful. But I was not hear to criticize the inn’s spending.

  The proprietor brushed her green robes off and bowed to me. “Welcome to the Sable Meadow, travelers.” She glanced between Hanari and me. “Would you care for one or two rooms?”

  “One room please.” I returned her bow. “How much for that and food?”

  She rattled off her prices with a soft, rolling regional accent. It was as expensive as the magical lights near the walls suggested. I paid the woman with a hint of reluctance and said, “I’m new in town, are there any districts I should avoid moving through and are there rules about curfew?” It was an indirect way of asking the innkeeper for news.

  And she did not disappoint. “Oh well, the whole town is awfully safe, so I don’t think you have anything special to worry about. Unless you’re the lord’s newlywed daughter-in-law. Or her husband I suppose.”

  “What do you mean?” I leaned over the bar and prompted the innkeeper to keep speaking. Unlike Maelae, this woman needed to be reassured her information was desired. She might have stopped talking without my prompt.

  “Oh, the poor lord and his poor son!” The innkeeper grabbed the bottom of her robes and tugged at them. “Two days ago now the boy’s lovely new bride was carried off in the night by kidnappers!”

  I could smell gold in the air. As much as I didn’t mind acting as a private executioner for the mortals, I preferred jobs where I could help one of them. Such jobs were few and far between, but they paid as well as assassinations and left me with the feeling I’d honored Odgen’s oath in spirit as well as in letter.

  The innkeeper continued to speculate about the abduction and how Fukan was clearly not as safe as everyone believed. Decades of life had demonstrated time and time again “safety” was an illusion not unique to the strong or the weak. But I didn’t wax philosophical with the innkeeper, I just made the right noises to encourage her to keep speaking as I followed her up to to the second floor of her inn.

  Our room was larger than the room Wei had used in her own dojo. But I imagined it was smaller than the normal rooms in the men’s inns. The innkeeper, who’s name I still didn’t know, handed me our key and bustled off, still lamenting the fate of the lord’s son’s bride.

  After two days, the young woman was most likely dead. The fact the lord hadn’t already arranged a posse to find her by then suggested he either didn’t really mind she’d gone missing or there was some exigent circumstance to her capture. In the smaller towns, I could easily imagine the elders deciding they lacked the manpower to search for a missing citizen. But here in the capital, whole companies had to be straining at their leash to be cut loose and sent after whoever had taken the young woman.

  The competition would be good for me. And it might explain why no one had been sent out yet. Of course, the innkeeper’s gossip might be wrong too. I couldn’t evaluate the chances without learning more.

  Neither Hanari nor I had luggage to leave in our rooms, so we departed with the room in the same condition as we’d found it. I headed back toward the gate looking for a crier to interrogate. The first one I came upon was a young man holding a slate and chalk in hand and shouting about local news over the din of the city streets.

  I leaned into his space and tried not to shout at him myself. “What can you tell me about a the lord’s missing in-law?” He ignored me until I passed a gold coin over to him and his eyes widened at the appearance of the yellow shine.

  Dropping the coin into a pocket, he smiled at me and said, “The young Lord Narashiba’s new bride was taken from their personal apartments not two nights after their wedding.”

  “Has anyone set out to get her back yet?”

  The boy shook his head. “The Lord put a bounty up for her retrieval and there is a contest planned for this evening to see who may be allowed to seek her and try for the bounty.”

  “Where’s the lord’s manor?”