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Tibs’s plan crystallized in his mind.
    â€œOne of us has to be. I’ll need to get a look at the real bird to make sure it all connects, but it should work well enough for a quick switch.”
    He gave Tibs time to work out the finer details, then watched in admiration as the crusty man ran his charcoal bit back over all the salient points, thickening the lines as he committed them to memory. When he was finished, Tibs tore the page out, crumpled it, and shoved it in his pocket.
    Detan threw an arm around his shoulder. “Come along, now. Let’s go spend some of Ripka’s grains.”

Chapter 4
    T he market bazaar of Aransa was precisely how Detan remembered it. Unfortunately.
    Shops were scattered all over the middle level of the city, as if some drunken god of mercers had waved a full bottle about while staggering his way home and wherever the droplets landed a filthy stall had sprung up. Some trades attempted a clumped confederation, but the edges of all of these were loose and fraying.
    Produce vendors clustered along the rail that marked the edge of the level, protruding slightly over the level below. When the day was done they hucked the worst of their wares over the edge. Rumor was, some pretty choice mushrooms could be plucked from the shadow of that overhang. Mushrooms which were then resold by the very same purveyors of the fertilizer. Detan shuddered at the thought, or the smell, or really just the whole cursed experience.
    Tibs glided through the press of cloth-hawkers and fruit gropers, somehow managing not to bump so much as an elbow with another soul. For his trouble, Detan was jostled and stymied, his feet trampled and his coat wrenched all askew. With a curse, he slapped away the third set of little fingers to go dipping about his pockets, and finally broke through the crowd to the more sedate stalls of the metalmen and woodworkers.
    Here, at least, order had been imposed. It seemed even choice real estate wasn’t worth the risk of getting an errant ember in your stall’s awning, and so the hodgepodge of transient sellers stayed far away. Tibs’s sizable head swiveled, seeking the right shop, and Detan left him to it.
    He liked to think he had a silver tongue, but these were folk close to the work, real crafters of wood and metal. They didn’t much care for Detan’s style of dealings. Tibs claimed they could smell the Honding blood in him.
    Detan doubted they could smell much of anything over Tibs’s own unwashed trousers.
    The shop Tibs picked was a good one by the standard of the others. Its paint was fresh and its sign had actual words on it in place of the myriad pictographs its neighbors used. The door hinges didn’t even squeak when Tibs swung them inward. Detan shuffled along behind, hanging back as he let his eyes adjust to the smoky lamplight.
    It was smaller than it’d looked from the outside, but then Detan realized that there was a big desk cutting the room in half with a curtain behind it. Workshop adjacent, then. Possibly even a sleeping space. The burly old man behind the counter certainly looked like he might sleep here, he practically had wood shavings for hair.
    â€œMorning, sirs.” The shopkeep adjusted a rather fine looking pair of spectacles and shut the cover on the sketches he’d been muddling through. Nice sketchbook, that. Smooth, pale paper with a creamy hide cover. Detan prepared himself to pay more than the supplies were worth.
    â€œGot a flier needs fixin’,” Tibs said, cutting straight to the quick of it so fast Detan thought the shopkeep would blanch with offense. But no, if anything he looked a mite relieved to get the pleasantries over with.
    â€œLet’s see it then.” He brushed his journal aside, making room for Tibs to place his own sketch on the desk. Tibs set it down and smoothed it out, not too careful, then let it sit there curling back in on itself like a smashed bug.
    â€œHrm,”