The spicuous crab walked out of his bazaar with a tiny pou one pincer and a ed napkin iher. He stopped in front of the horizon, where a rge streak e ainted over the te afternoon sky, and looked around suspiciously, as if looking for anyone following him.

  As Balthazar approached a dense area of vegetatioopped between some ferns, and while looking off into the distahe crab leaned closer to a bush and spoke.

  “You got the information?”

  “Yeah, I got it. Wasn’t easy, though. Had to jump through a lot of hoops to get it,” the bush responded.

  “Alright, give me the details,” Balthazar said, sitting dowo the bush and uning the piece of key lime pie he had brought along.

  “So, I thought your request was a bit weird,” the informant started, “what could Antoine, a prolific, rich mert, have to do with some random toad, but I’ll give you that, you were onto something.”

  “Of course I was, Rob. My gut is always right,” the crab said, proceeding to fill said gut with small ks of pie while still not looking directly at the pnt he was versing with, and instead staring off into the distance, as if only there to enjoy a su supper.

  “Right… anyway,” the thief said from within his hiding bush. “I poked around some of my sources and…” He paused, his eyes peeking from behind the leaves, staring at the crab’s pie. “Hey, you, uh, think I could have a piece of that while I tell you about it?”

  “My pie?” Balthazar said, chewing with his mouth open. “Don’t you think it would look very odd if anyone saw me tossing piey precious pie into a bush? They might suspeething. Better not risk it.”

  “I guess you’re right, and that’s the only reason you won’t share,” Rob said begrudgingly.

  “I’m already paying you, am I not?” the chewing crab said. “So start talking before I finish this.”

  “As I was saying,” the man tinued, “I asked a fellow… worker about it.”

  “Ahief, then?” Balthazar interrupted.

  Despite being hidden within the bush, the eye roll Rob made was strongly implied in his answer. “Yes, a thief. I keep going now? He had some informatiarding mister guildmaster and a toad that he had received from a tavern keeper. You know how it is. People have a little too much to drink and start bbbing on, so those guys always have some juifo in their pocket.”

  “Hmm, really?” said the crab. “Never would have expected Antoio be the type to get drunk in taverns.”

  “No, no, no,” said the thief. “It wasn’t Antoihe tavern keeper heard this from a carriage driver who stops by every night after wuy gets in his cups and ends up sharing some funny tale about this toad in the guildmaster’s manor.”

  “Oh, I see. So it was Antoine’s carriage driver. Makes sense. I definitely see him having one of those.”

  “No, no! Yetting it wrong again,” Rob hurriedly said.

  “So Antoine doesn’t have a carriage driver?” said Balthazar.

  “No. I mean, yes, he does!” the frustrated informant excimed. “It’s just not this driver in specific, this guy doesn’t work for Antoine.”

  “Then what the hell does he have to do with this?”

  “I was getting to that! This driver knows Antoine’s actual carriage driver. They’re buddies or something. Aold his friend something about the toad, which he theed one drunken night at the tavern. Are you following now?”

  “I am. I think?” Balthazar said, sounding slightly fused. “So Antoine’s carriage driver saw this toad and theio to his friend and—”

  “Wrong!” the bush interjected. “The driver didn’t see anything himself.”

  “Then who did?!” the increasingly annoyed crab asked.

  “I was trying to get to that, if you’d stop interruptihe angry shrub muttered. “The carriage driver and the maid at Antoine’s manor have a bit of a fling, and they like to sneak around back at the end of the day when no one’s around. In one of their little enters, she apparently mentioo him something about a toad.”

  “Alright, so it was the maid!” Balthazar cluded.

  “Yes!” said Rob. “The maid saw the toad, and theold about it to the carriage driver, who theio to the other carriage driver, who then spilled the story while drunk to the tavern keep, who then shared it with my informant in that part of town, who hooked me up with the details, which I am now reying to you! Is that clear now?”

  “Hardly! But what are the actual details, damn it?”

  “Oh yes, right, almost fot that,” the thief said, shifting around inside his bush. “The maid says the servants are never allowed in the manor’s basement, but one day she caught a glimpse inside when Antoine was stepping out, and she could swear she saw he kept a toad in a cage there, which seemed like a very stra for a man like him.”

  “I k!” the crab excimed, g his cws together. “There is no way that’s a ce. That had to be Hea!”

  “I agree, but where did he get a talking toad, anyway?” Rob wondered.

  “I don’t know, but you should keep digging to find out more,” Balthazar said, swallowing the st of his pie while standing up.

  “ do, but before you leave, aren’t you fetting something?” the informant asked, moving around in his shrub.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not. Here’s your pay for the info.” He retrieved a tiny emerald from his poud tossed it ihe bush. “Now scram, before someone sees me throwing gems at the shrubbery.”

  The crab walked away from the vegetation, back through the same path he came, the sun now almost gone over the horizon.

  Curious to see if the toad was still at her stand, Balthazar took a quick look across the road. His eye stalks shot up as he found the toad on the ground, bag around her body, looking ready to leave for the day, but still held ba versation with three rge figures around her.

  Khargol, the orc chieftain, and his two warrior-brothers stood by her stall, arms crossed, exging words with Hea that the crab couldn’t hear.

  “No!” Balthazar whispered to himself, as he hid behind a boulder. “Even the orcs?”

  The toad’s trickery clearly knew no bounds, and now even the mighty orcs were falling prey to her scheming.

  Feeling like the st bastion of sanity around those parts, Balthazar had half a mind to run out there and try to snap them away from her snare, but the crab had learned better by that point. Ag rash always seemed to end up going badly for him and fav his petitor. He o act smarter, be the clever crab he knew he was, to outmaneuver Antoine and his toady.

  Or maybe just throw caution out and torch her stand, if all else failed. That tion he had not discarded yet.

  Balthazar snapped out of his pyromaniatasies as he realized the toad was leaving and the orcs were ing his way.

  “Well, well, well, look who it is,” the shiny mert said, stepping out from behind the rock. “Had a nice versation with my petition, did you?”

  The orc chieftain looked down at the crab with a scowl slightly more disapproving than his usual one.

  “I sense you have words you wish to speak, crab,” Khargol bluntly decred.

  “Me? No? You think?” the snarky crab replied.

  “Perhaps not, then,” said the orc.

  “Do your people not have a sense of sarcasm?” Balthazar asked.

  “We do, but we find it displeasing.”

  Balthazar’s mouth twisted into a frown, but he decided it was best not to engage in a bickering battle. Old and frail tax iors were ohing, but tall and muscur orc chieftains were something else entirely.

  “e on, we shouldn’t stay on the road. It’s almost dark,” the crab said, waving for them to follow him inside.

  As the trio stepped ihe bazaar, they all looked around, examining the new strus.

  Burz and Yatur ied one of the pilrs, running their hands through the wood and giving it a few knocks with their knuckles.

  “Solid work,” Yatur grunted, with an approving nod.

  “I had heard you were improving your camp,” Khargol said, looking around at the roof over their heads. “You should be proud of the oute.”

  “Oh, did you?” Balthazar said, still feeling miffed. “From whom?”

  “Our mutual e, the traveling skeleton.”

  “Looks like everybody’s talking about me these days,” the crab said with a hint of sarcasm.

  “This displeases you?” the chieftain asked. “This should be good o a trader, to have their name be spread through the nds. Even the lizardfolk from the marshes have mentioned hearing tales of you to us retly.”

  “Lizardfolk?” Balthazar repeated, looking intrigued.

  “They are reclusive and mostly keep to themselves,” the orc expined, “but as ostracized races in nds rgely occupied by humans, we maintaiions a often, to exge goods and show goodwill to one another. Perhaps you would be ied in dealing with them too, one day. They are fine fishers and weavers.”

  “Sure, maybe,” the crab said. “For orcs, you sure get along with just about anybody. Skeletons, lizardfolk… even toads.”

  Khargol crossed his bulging arms and stared down at the mert.

  “Are you uhe impression that we owe you some kind of exclusivity? We came here to do business with you, but if on the way we met another mert with offers to make, it is only logical that we stop and verse with her. Would you not follow the same reasoning if it were you, crab?”

  Balthazar sched up the er of his mouth. Damnable ord his logical thinking. Who gave the pile of muscles a pile of brains too?

  “Yes, well, maybe you’d be more hesitant to deal with someone if you khey were bad news,” the mert said to the orc.

  “Is that so?” the skeptical orc asked. “She seemed quite respectable to me. We might have even ducted some business with her, had she not said she was te and couldn’t stay longer.”

  “Probably te to run back to her owner!” Balthazar excimed with disdain. “I looked into her, and you know what I found? She works for Antoine!”

  “And who is this Antoine you speak of?” Khargol asked, with one eyebrow rising.

  “He’s the pompous master of the merts guild up in town who’s been trying to put ao my business ever since I started cutting into his profits. He’s pyed all sorts of dirty tricks, even had a group of thugs try to frame me for stealing and nearly clobber me to death once, and looks like his test involves that Hea character. I had a sourine looking into it, and they found from a trustworthy source that Antoi a toad in a cage down in his basement. Now suddenly she shows up, right across from my pond? No such thing as a ce.”

  “Iing,” the orc said, uncrossing his arms. “It sounds like you have an enemy in this man. Perhaps you should sider a wiser approa your battles against him.”

  “What do you mean?” the crab asked.

  “You should try to make more allies, rather than increase your list of enemies.”

  “How so? Surely you’re not suggesting her, right?” the skeptical mert said.

  “And why not?” said the chieftain, with a hint of a smirk behind his rge tusks.

  “Because she’s an ally of Antoine, my direemy, in case you didn’t catch that part yet!” Balthazar blurted out, opening his arms in e at the mere suggestion being made. “Why would I ever want to befriend someone like that?”

  “Tell me, mert crab,” the orc said, “would you sider someone who keeps you in a cage in their basement your ally, a friend, or someohat deserves your loyalty?”

  The crab froze for a moment, staring off to the side, vaguely fog on one of the other orcs, who was looking around the bazaar, casually iing a crate full of cabbages. “Oh. Well…”

  “Do you see what I am getting at now?” Khargol asked.

  Balthazar pondered on the chieftain’s point. He had not really sidered things in that way, but his logic was, once again, solid.

  But reason and logic be damhe crab just wao keep hating on the frog. Was that too much to ask?

  As he would e to find, it was.

  H0st