The chicken left first.
It gave me one last look, the look of a creditor who has decided to come back later, and wandered off toward the cabbage stall.
I stayed where I was, sitting on the edge of the fountain with my hands folded in my lap, because I had no idea what else to do. My brain, which had been trained for four years to handle problems in a fixed order, quietly opened a checklist.
Situation assessment.
Location: unknown.
Cash on hand: zero.
Phone: in another world.
Assets: one ballpoint pen, one pocket notebook, one rubber stamp, one lanyard.
Liabilities: everything else.
"You there."
A tall man was walking toward me through the crowd. He wore a dented iron cap, a padded coat with a faded red sash, and a spear he held like a walking stick. Two younger men in the same red sashes followed a step behind. The crowd moved out of their way the way traffic moves for an ambulance: reluctantly, and with a great deal of staring.
Police, I thought. Or the local equivalent. Okay. Stay calm. Be polite. You haven't done anything wrong.
Unless sitting on a fountain is illegal here.
Unless EXISTING is illegal here.
I stood up. My hands folded in front of my blazer. My Service Smile arrived exactly on time.
"Good morning, sir," I said. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
The tall man stopped.
He looked, for a moment, as though no one had ever offered to help him before, and he wasn't sure whether it was a trick.
"I'm Sergeant Dorran, of the Corrinford Watch," he said at last. "We had reports of a strange woman in the square."
"I see," I said. "I'm very sorry for the trouble."
He studied me. His eyes went to my blazer first, and then they stayed there. He reached out, almost touched the sleeve, and stopped himself.
"This cloth," he said slowly. "The stitching is perfectly even. No tailor in Corrinford sews like that."
It's polyester, I thought. It was issued by Human Resources. It came in a plastic bag with a size sticker on it.
Then his eyes dropped to my chest, and I nearly panicked before I realized he was looking at my lanyard.
My ID card hung there, catching the sunlight. My own face looked out of it, smiling politely, in perfect color, above my name and staff number.
And above my face, where my bank's logo should have been, there was nothing. Just clean, empty white.
Wait.
Where's the logo?
Where is my EMPLOYER?
Did Lumeth just rebrand me? Did I get sent to another world and lose my company on the way? Is this a resignation? I never submitted a resignation letter. You need thirty days' notice!
Sergeant Dorran went very still.
"Is this..." He swallowed. "Is this your seal, my lady?"
My lady?
"It's my ID card," I said.
"Eye... dee." He repeated it carefully, like a foreign word he didn't want to get wrong. Then he took one step back.
Behind him, the two younger watchmen leaned together and whispered. They were not as quiet as they thought.
"Look at that portrait. You can see every eyelash."
"Court-mage work. Has to be."
"And that script. I've never seen letters like that."
"She's from one of the great houses. Or the capital."
"An envoy, maybe?"
Why are they whispering? I thought. Why are they looking at me like that? Did I do something wrong? Is a laminated ID card illegal here? Am I about to be arrested for lamination?
My face, as always, showed none of this.
Sergeant Dorran cleared his throat and stood a little straighter. "May I ask your name, my lady?"
"Sekar," I said. "Sekar Halim."
"Sek... Sekka. Lady Sekka Hallim."
"Sekar."
"Sekka," he agreed, with great confidence.
"...Se-kar."
"Sek-ka." He nodded firmly, pleased with himself.
Fine, I thought. Fine. Sekka. I'll fix it later.
I did not fix it later.
"Lady Sekka," said Sergeant Dorran, "forgive us for disturbing you. Travelers of... standing... are registered at the Guild Hall. Allow us to escort you."
"Thank you," I said. "That's very kind."
He bowed. Actually bowed. Then he turned and led the way, and his two watchmen fell in on either side of me like an honor guard.
We crossed the market square. The crowd parted for us. Merchants stopped mid-haggle to watch. A woman with a basket of eggs pulled her child out of my path and whispered something to her neighbor, and her neighbor whispered something to the man selling onions, and I watched one word travel across the square faster than we were walking.
Envoy.
I have been in this world for less than an hour, I thought, and I already have a rumor.
The Guild Hall was the largest building on the square: three stories of dark timber, with a painted sign above the door showing a sword crossed with a key.
A sword for fighting, I thought. And a key for... a vault?
Inside, it was loud. Men and women in leather and chain mail crowded around long tables, drinking, arguing and comparing scars. One wall was covered in pinned notices: Wolves, Greywood east trail, 4 marks a pelt. Escort needed to Aubrelle. Missing goat, reward negotiable. It smelled of ale, wet leather and something that had probably been a monster recently.
At the far end stood a long wooden counter with three windows.
Behind the middle window sat a young woman of about twenty, in a fitted green coat with the Guild's sword-and-key stitched on the collar. Her light brown hair was pulled into a single neat braid. She was writing in a ledger, and as we approached, she looked up and smiled.
I recognized that smile instantly.
Posture: upright. Hands: visible and relaxed. Smile: symmetrical, exactly four teeth showing. Eye contact: steady, warm, but not too long.
She's a professional.
She looked at me. Her eyes went from my face, to my folded hands, to my blazer, and back to my face. And I saw her come to the same conclusion I had.
We smiled at each other.
Neither of us stopped.
It went on for a second too long. Then two. It was like two cats meeting on a fence, if both cats had been trained in customer service.
Sergeant Dorran cleared his throat.
"Miss Liesl. This is Lady Sekka Hallim, an envoy of a noble house. She needs to be registered."
"Of course," said the young woman. Liesl. "Welcome to the Corrinford branch of the Adventurers' Guild, my lady. May I ask which house you represent?"
And there it was.
The easy road. All I had to do was say nothing. Nod mysteriously. An envoy would get a room, a meal, an escort. An envoy would not have to sleep outside next to a chicken.
Rule, said the part of me that had sat through every compliance training my bank had ever held. Never let a customer believe something false. Not about a product. Not about a fee. Not about yourself. That's mis-selling, and mis-selling is how you end up in a disciplinary meeting with someone from Head Office.
"I don't represent any house," I said. "I'm not an envoy. I work in customer service."
Silence.
"Customer..." said Sergeant Dorran. "What?"
"Service. I help people at a counter." I pointed politely at Liesl. "Like her."
Sergeant Dorran looked at my lanyard. "Then what is that?"
"My staff card. Everyone at my workplace has one."
I watched the color climb up his neck, past his collar and into his ears.
"I... see," he said. "Apologies for the trouble, Miss."
He was no longer saying my lady. He turned and left so quickly that his two watchmen had to jog to keep up.
Behind me, at the long tables, the whispers had already started again.
"Did you hear? She said she's not an envoy."
"Of course she did. That's exactly what an envoy would say."
I told the truth, I thought, and somehow it made it worse.
Liesl's smile had not moved by a single tooth. But something behind her eyes had sharpened.
"Customer service," she said.
"Yes."
"At a counter."
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"Four years."
She nodded slowly, and her smile became, very slightly, more real. "Then you'll forgive me for asking the usual questions."
"Of course," I said. "Actually, may I ask one first?"
"Please."
"If I had money," I said carefully, "and I wanted to keep it somewhere safe, where would I go?"
Liesl reached into her coat and laid a thin card on the counter. It was the size of my ID card, made of pale metal, with fine blue veins running through it like frost on a window.
"A Guild Card," she said. "Members deposit their coin at any Guild branch. The amount is written into that branch's crystal ledger, and every branch's ledger knows it at once. A member can deposit here in Corrinford and withdraw in Aubrelle, three weeks away, without carrying a single coin on the road."
"Is there a fee?"
"Withdrawing at the branch where you deposited is free. Withdrawing at a different branch costs three parts in a hundred."
Three parts in a hundred of what? I thought. I nearly nodded as if I understood. Then I decided honesty was cheaper.
"Forgive me," I said. "I'm not from here. Could you tell me how your coins work?"
Liesl's eyebrows rose by the smallest possible amount. She didn't ask where I was from. She simply opened a drawer, took out three coins and laid them in a row on the counter.
"Copper bit," she said, touching the smallest, a thin brown disc stamped with a sheaf of wheat. "Silver mark. Fifty bits to a mark." The second coin was heavier, with a crowned head on one side. "And a gold crown. Twenty marks to a crown, so a thousand bits."
"What can a bit buy?"
"A loaf of bread is two bits. A night at a cheap inn, fifteen. A laborer earns about a mark a day." She tilted her head toward the notice board. "A goblin bounty is three marks, if you bring back the ear."
My brain did what it had been trained to do. It converted.
A loaf of bread is two bits. Call it ten thousand rupiah. So one bit is about five thousand. One mark is two hundred and fifty thousand, about a day's minimum wage in Jakarta. Which makes sense. And one crown is...
Five million rupiah. In one coin.
And a goblin is worth three days' wages. I decided not to think about whether that was a good deal for the goblin.
"One more thing," Liesl said, lowering her voice. "If anyone pays you in new-issue marks, check the edges. The royal mint has been... generous with the copper lately."
Debased coins, I thought. So this world has inflation too. Wonderful.
"Thank you," I said. "That's very helpful."
"You really aren't from here," said Liesl. It wasn't a question.
"No," I said. "I really am not."
I looked back at the Guild Card.
Deposits. A branch network. A ledger that updates instantly. An inter-branch fee.
That's a bank.
That is a real, working bank.
"And if someone isn't a member?" I asked. "Could they open one?"
"No." Liesl shook her head. "The Guild Card is for members only. Non-members can't deposit or withdraw with us at all."
"What about merchants? Farmers? Bakers?"
"They keep their own coin," said Liesl, "the way everyone does."
The way everyone does.
I thought of the woman on Lumeth's screen, counting her coins three times by candlelight.
So everyone outside this building is unbanked, I thought. The entire town. The entire kingdom. Every merchant, every farmer, every—
Stop it. You have zero bits. You are ALSO unbanked.
"How does someone become a member?" I asked.
"A Skill appraisal," said Liesl. "If your Skill is useful in the field, you're registered, and the fee comes out of your first reward."
A job, I thought. A card. A way to earn money. Okay. Okay, this is a plan.
"I'd like to register, please," I said.
Before Liesl could answer, a hand the size of a dinner plate slammed onto the counter beside me.
"Thief!"
The man attached to the hand was enormous. He had a beard like a bird's nest, a broken nose, and a leather coat with claw marks across the back. On the counter in front of him lay a small pile of silver and copper coins and a Guild Card.
"Mister Borrik," said Liesl, without losing her smile. "How can I help?"
"Forty marks!" He jabbed a finger at the coins. "I put forty marks in at Aubrelle! Forty! And your clerk hands me this!"
Liesl glanced at the pile. "Thirty-eight marks and forty bits. That's correct, Mister Borrik. When you withdraw at a different branch from where you deposited, the Guild takes three parts in a hundred. It's written in the member's charter, section four—"
Ah, I thought. She led with the policy.
Never lead with the policy.
"Section four!" Borrik's face went from red to purple. "I nearly lost an arm in the Greywood for that coin, and you're quoting me sections?"
His fist came down on the counter again. The coins jumped. The whole hall went quiet.
Liesl's smile held. But I was standing close enough to see her left hand, resting on the ledger, and it was shaking.
I didn't decide to step in. My body simply did it, the way you turn your head when someone calls your name. One moment I was a stranger waiting to be registered. The next I was standing in front of Liesl's window, between her and the fist, with my hands folded and my face perfectly calm.
What am I doing. What am I DOING. He has an axe. He has an axe on his BACK.
"Mister Borrik," I said.
He blinked down at me. I had read his name off the Guild Card on the counter. People calm down slightly when you use their name. They feel seen, not processed.
"Who're you?"
"Someone who would also be very angry," I said, "if I had travelled for three weeks, earned forty marks fighting monsters, and received thirty-eight marks and forty bits."
He opened his mouth. Then he closed it again.
Step one: repeat their complaint back to them, so they know you heard it.
"That's..." he said. "That's right. Yes."
"What did you need the forty marks for?"
Step two: let them talk. Most of the anger leaves through the mouth.
It came out in a flood. A new axe. Old Harrow the smith had one on his wall, dwarf steel, balanced like a feather, exactly forty marks. He'd been saving all season. He'd counted the days. And now he was short one mark and ten bits, and Harrow didn't haggle, everyone knew Harrow didn't haggle—
I listened. I nodded at the right moments. I didn't interrupt once.
When he finally ran out of breath, his fist was no longer on the counter.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry nobody explained the fee to you when you made the deposit. That must have been a terrible surprise."
Step three: apologize for the experience. Never for the policy.
Borrik grunted. It was a much smaller grunt than before.
"Can I ask one question?" I said. "Where do you spend most of your coin?"
"Here. Corrinford. The Greywood's here. Harrow's here. The good tavern's here."
"Then next time, deposit here," I said. "Withdrawing at the branch where you deposited is free. You would only pay the fee on coin you take out while you're travelling."
Borrik stared at me.
Then he stared at Liesl.
"...Is that true?"
"It's true," said Liesl.
"Nobody told me that."
"I'm telling you now," I said.
Step four: give them something they can actually use.
There was a pause. Then Liesl leaned forward, just slightly.
"And Mister Borrik," she said, "Old Harrow doesn't haggle. But at the end of every season, he marks down whatever's still on his wall by two marks. The season ends in nine days."
Borrik looked from her to me and back again. Then, slowly, he scooped up his coins.
"Nine days," he muttered. "Right. Right." He turned to go, stopped, and turned back. "...Thanks."
The hall went back to its noise as if nothing had happened.
Liesl let out a long, quiet breath through her nose. Her smile was still perfect. Her hand had stopped shaking.
"Where," she said softly, "did you learn that?"
"Four years at a counter," I said.
And a great deal of being shouted at.
Liesl laughed. It was short and surprised and completely real, and she covered it with her hand at once, as if it were against the rules. It probably was.
The Skill appraisal took place in a small side room, at a table with a crystal orb on it the size of a melon.
The appraiser was an old man with a magnifying lens screwed into one eye and the bored expression of someone who had seen every Skill in the kingdom at least twice. A handful of adventurers drifted in after us to watch. Apparently, the envoy who wasn't an envoy was the morning's entertainment.
"Hand on the orb," said the old man. "Don't squeeze it."
I put my hand on the orb.
It was cold, then warm. Light gathered inside it, gold and slow, like honey. Then letters rose to the surface of the glass, and I could read them as easily as if they had been printed on a form.
[Validation]
The old man squinted through his lens.
"Validation," he read. "Validation. Hm." He tapped the orb. "And what does it do?"
I thought of the gold ink. The signature that had turned to light.
"I believe," I said, "it stamps things."
There was a moment of silence. Then one of the watching adventurers snorted, and the snort set off the others, and the little room filled with laughter.
"Stamps things!"
"Watch out, wolves, she's got paperwork!"
The old man wasn't laughing, but only because he looked too tired to. "It's a clerk's Skill, miss. Useful in a counting house, I'm sure. But the Greywood doesn't need stamping." He made a note in his book. "Guild members need a Skill that's useful in the field. Fighting, healing, tracking, carrying. I'm sorry. You can't register."
Can't register.
No card. No job. No money.
Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Don't panic. Customer-service rule number one. Never panic in front of the—
THEY'RE ALL LAUGHING AT ME. I AM THE CUSTOMER AND I AM PANICKING.
"I understand," I said. "Thank you for your time."
I walked out of the side room with my back straight and my face perfectly still, and the laughter behind me faltered a little, as if the adventurers weren't sure anymore whether they'd won.
Liesl caught up with me at the door of the Guild Hall.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "It's the charter. There's nothing I can do."
"It's all right."
"Do you have somewhere to stay? The Lantern on Tanner's Row is clean. Fifteen bits a night."
"I have zero bits," I said.
Liesl hesitated. Then she reached into her coat, took out a small handful of copper and held it out to me.
My hand rose on its own. Palm out. Polite. Firm.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I can't accept gifts from customers."
Liesl looked at me. "I'm not your customer."
"...Habit."
She held out the coins a moment longer. I didn't take them.
Why did I say that, I thought, as I walked out into the afternoon. WHY did I say that. That was twenty bits. That was a bed. That was DINNER.
"If you change your mind," Liesl called after me, "I'm here every day but Restday!"
I raised one hand without turning around, and did not let my face do anything at all.
By evening, I had walked every street in Corrinford at least twice.
I had learned some things. The river was called the Corrin, and the town had grown up around the only bridge for twenty miles. Bread cost two bits a loaf. The good tavern was the Copper Kettle, and the bad one was also the Copper Kettle, depending on who you asked. And people kept whispering envoy when I passed, no matter how ordinary I tried to look.
I had also learned that a person with zero bits cannot buy anything, rent anything, or sit anywhere for very long before someone asks them to move along.
The sun went down behind the crooked rooftops. The market stalls closed one by one. Lamps came on in windows, small and yellow, and I stood on a corner with my hands folded in front of my blazer and opened my checklist again.
Situation assessment, revised.
Cash on hand: still zero.
Bed: none.
Dinner: none.
Lunch, for the record: also none.
Liabilities: twenty bits I was too polite to accept.
I thought, for no reason at all, of my mother's biscuit tin. Of her counting the shop's cash into it every night, behind the rice sack, while the television played in the next room. I wondered whether she had noticed yet that I hadn't come home. I wondered whether I would ever be able to tell her where I'd gone.
My face didn't move. But I stood on that corner a little longer than I needed to.
Then the wind changed, and I smelled bread.
Not old bread. Not the dry, end-of-day bread from the market. This was warm and close and sweet, and it pulled me down a narrow street toward the river like a hand on my sleeve.
At the bend where the street met the water stood a small bakery. A wooden sign hung over the door, painted with a sheaf of wheat. The shutters were half closed, and through the gap I could see a single lamp, a long table dusted with flour, and a woman sweeping the floor with slow, heavy strokes.
She looked up as my shadow crossed the doorway.
"We're closed, love."
"I'm sorry to disturb you," I said. "I was wondering if you needed any help."
She stopped sweeping. "Help?"
"I can sweep. Stack trays. Wash things. Count." I paused. "In exchange for anything that might be left over."
The woman leaned on her broom and looked me over, from my dusty blazer to my work shoes, now grey with the dust of every street in Corrinford. She had the face of someone who had been tired for a long time and had stopped expecting it to end.
Then she held out the broom.
I swept. I stacked the trays, sorting them by size without thinking, the way I sorted forms into their trays at the branch. I scrubbed the long table until the wood showed pale under the flour. When I finished, I found I had arranged the leftover loaves on a shelf in neat rows, labels facing out, like a product display.
The woman looked at the shelf for a long moment.
"Huh," she said.
She tore a round loaf in half, handed me the bigger piece, and sat down heavily on a stool by the oven. I sat on the floor beside it, because the stones there were warm, and ate the bread in small, careful bites so that it would last longer.
It was the best thing I had ever eaten in my life.
"You're the one they're all talking about," she said, watching me. "The envoy girl. Sekka, is it?"
"I'm not an envoy."
"That's what an envoy would say."
It's following me, I thought. The rumor is following me. It got here before I did.
The woman chuckled. "Most folk who turn up at my door at closing with nothing look scared out of their wits. You don't look scared at all."
"I am," I said. "A little."
"Could've fooled me."
She laughed, a short, rough laugh, and wiped her hands on her apron. In the lamplight, I could see the flour on her sleeves, and the lines at the corners of her eyes, and the shape of her square, tired face.
Something cold settled in my stomach.
"Brenna," she said. "Brenna Holt. There's a spot by the oven, if you want it. Stays warm till morning."
I knew that face.
I had seen it the night before, on a monitor in a branch with no walls. Kneeling over a floorboard. Counting coins by candlelight.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Lumeth, I thought, looking at the floorboards beneath my feet. You didn't show me a stranger, did you?
"Thank you," I said. "I'd like that very much."
My face, as always, showed nothing at all.
But I didn't sleep for a long time that night. I lay by the warm oven and listened to the house settle around me, and somewhere beneath me, in the dark, I knew there was a cloth pouch full of coins, waiting.