We came to the city of Nikol. A little market town set up at a river break, a bridge over arching the separation. There the little boats huddled, spaced along little boardwalks, where pitched markets were stood on the sides of boats. Men gathered and money exchanged hands, and people climbed down small bridges holding their merchendise over their heads, balancing across the board walk and boat bridges. Along the bridge were stacks of stores, some on top of each other, held up by adobe stone. Little houses like clay huts, where curtain flaps were raised to hood the entrances. We traveled through the market, us three, on horse back and stopped by the edge of the bridge.

I could not see the other end. If there was even.

A horse stall waited, some guards besides it. I flicked a small silver coin to one of them and wrapped a rope around my steeds neck. I set him against a post and lowered his head into a bale of hay. He ate. I cut Sven’s bonding and laid him to the side, fixing the rope strands around his arm.

“What about me?” Klep asked.

I turned to him. Grabbed his wrist. Cut the rope.

“You’re carrying him.” I said.

“Really?” He moaned.

I put some rope around his neck.

“Really.” I said. And grabbed my bundle of pelts and fixed them with a knot around my navel. They hung, strapped tight to my back.

We walked through the bustling streets, me holding onto the leash and leading the two across the marketplace. A man stirred a clay pot and ladled boiling soup into small wooden bowls. Another slipped shoes onto a curious woman, her dress raised towards her knees. A man with a septum piercing and two rubies for earrings looked to me, black hair coiling and running down from a jeweled band on the top of his skull.

“You. Young man.” He said. “With the wolf on your neck.”

I turned to him and yanked the rope. Klep stopped. He slumped over, holding Sven around his back and breathing hard.

“What is it?” I asked.

“How much for the slaves?” He asked.

I turned to the two.

“They’re prisoners.”

“Well, how much for the prisoners.” He smiled, raising a little gold coin.

He set it down in front of him, this piercing wearing man with the money, sat with crossed legs. He worked a snake inside of a glass jar, letting it wrap around his arms and slide into the side of the bowl. He put a lid. The snake hissed and he set it aside. A few guards stood beside him, some of them stacking boxes on the base of a cart. Inside that cart, in the shadow of the cotton covers, I could see the pale skin of someone. Someone with fair feet, reeling them into the discreet of the corner of the box.

“I am not selling these two. They’re to be judged and sentenced.” I said.

“Perfect. I know a few people who could punish them, especially the skinny one.” He said. “I know someone with a taste for skinny ones.”

Klep gulped.

I stared for a while. Klep tried hard not to look, sweating from the side of his head. Sven closed his eyes and breathed heavy.

I reached behind my back. One of the guards put his hand on the grip of his blade. I flashed a Liathel fur. The man rubbed his chin.

“Do you know what this in?” I asked.

“I know good skin, yes.” He said. “Liathel. How much?”

“Am I the first man to come around with this?”

“No. There was another.” He said.

I put back the pelt and tightened the knot again. I pulled at the rope, Klep came closer to me.

“Where is he?” I asked. “I am with the Flock of Crows, looking for a thief. We would appreciate the help.”

“Are you now?” He asked.

I threw a fur his way.

“A gift.” I said. “Courtesy of Vicentius Volarus.”

He scratched his nose, the guard walked over and picked up the pelt from the bridge and carried it to the Slave Trader, holding it out.

“Good skin shouldn’t be thrown like that.” He said. “You have no respect for the product, do you? Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.”

“Do you know where he went or not?”

The man pointed his long nail towards the river, down the wooden pier and where the fleet of boats had stationed themselves as stores.

“It must have been only half an hour. I’m sure he’s still around.” He said. “Say if you change your mind-”

I turned and started my descent down the stairs.

“No patience from you.” The Slave Trader said. “None at all.”

“You’re gonna spot his face when you see him.” I said.

“Why would we do that?” Klep asked.

We walked through a stream of people, some arguing with fistfuls of bills. Others holding rugs or jewels and pointing at them with bitter expressions. Men tasting fruit off of vines growing out the lattices by the sides of ships. Long boats. Small boats. Large ones docked with large bridges to cross unto. Fishermen with small shrimp, spinning a giant vessel over a coal fire. The popping sounds of blistered shell fish. The spice, the herb, the drizzle of lemon.

Children ran across with skewers of river fish and shelled water bugs. They bumped into me and I grabbed my waist by instinct.

Not again.

“You’re going to help me.” I watched past me, around me. “Because if you don’t, I’m dropping both of you into the river.”

“Shit.” Klep said. “Shit man, shit.”

A flash of light. The smell of gun powder. Three cloaked men holding a bag of powder and raising it to a group of mercenaries, taking small pinches from within the bag and dropping them onto the floor to a quick burst of noise and light.

I stopped and gawked, eyeing the bag.

“That’s his horse.” Sven said.

Snapping back. Sven nodded towards another stall, down the pier and leading towards the wet land.

“Then all we’ll do is wait.” I said.

In my pocket I had about ten silver left. Spare change. With one, I bought a bag of the gun powder. With another I bought a bow and exactly one arrow, which to the merchant, seemed strange. Next to the horse stall were stalls of baked goods, clay ovens having been built near them. I paid one of the bakers, an elderly woman, two silver for a bed room at the top and propped myself up the window over looking the guarded horse stall. One leg hung by the window sill. The two sat in the corner of the room. Which had little for furniture, and was more a storage of brooms and pots.

I watched.

“I could just talk to him.” Klep said. “You don’t have to go this far.”

“You don’t understand.” I said. “I do.”

The bow and arrow rested on my waist.

The sun rose to bright morning.

“Sven.” I said. “You seem on the level. Why’d you do this?”

“Hmm?”

“Why try and make a quick coin?”

“Isn’t it a bit too late to ask for an answer.”

“Seems the perfect time.” I said.

He looked away and turned to the wall.

“Guess I was bored.”

“That’s a good answer to anything.” I said. “It’s never the honest one, though.”

“What does it mean to be a Crow?” Sven asked. He turned his body, both arms having been tied behind his back. Klep was wrapped around a wooden post.

“It means to follow Vincent.” I said.

“I thought it was more.” He said. “I thought it was about fighting for something.”

“A bleeding heart for the old days? Why didn’t you leave with the fifth then. They were all up in arms about killing monsters, you could have joined them.”

“No. We were more, Virgil. We had a mission. Do you know what it was?”

“I think you and I have a different memory of the Flock.” I said.

“You believed it to. You just didn’t know it.”

“What? What did we believe in?”

“Helping the weak.” He said. He pulled his lips in. “It was about helping those who could not help themselves.”

Sven curled, brought his knees close to his belly. Klep sighed and slid down the post, settling on his ass.

“Men without any nations banner.” He said. “Men beholden to an idea. Not a bloodline. Fighting wars against evil.”

“So you stole some pelts from Vincent? To what? Piss him off?”

“To remind him and you that appeasing kings is the way of cowards.” He said.

I set my feet down and straighted my back out.

“We are becoming something bigger. We are becoming more than the individual and our scope will expand further than the shitty line of carts we drive up beaten paths.”

“Our scope? Or Vicentius’?”

“He-” A figure in my peripheral, a man dragging closer and closer to the horses. Underneath his arm pits, a little thick furred package.

I stood. And turned. Out in the distance I could see the figure of a man, approaching closer and closer to the white spotted horse. I dipped my arrow into the powder and set it on my pulled bow. The arrow pointed out the window, and I raised it a little higher ahead of my target. The bow string whined. I steadied.

Fire.