Hugo's first vacation day came forty eight days after the start of the semester. He had been looking forward to it for a while now. He needed the break, and he had plans for the time. This go around, Hugo wanted to contact the hedge mages earlier. They had correctly predicted the shimmer veins exploding and they wanted to stop it. Plus, they knew about his death on New Years. He hoped that his knowledge of the future, combined with their ability to see glimpses of it, would help them all avoid the same fate as last time around.

He didn’t want to see Shimmer Mountain explode again.

The only flaw in his plan was that he didn’t know where to look. He had talked to Oskar earlier in the week. The awkward conversation revealed that his roommate hadn’t contacted the hedge mages yet.

So instead, he decided to hang about on the outskirts of the merchant quarter, around where he met the hedge mages in the first place. Maybe he would recognize the man that led them to the fortune teller and talk his way into a meeting.

The first hour passed without incident, the sparse foot traffic on this road didn’t bear any resemblance to the man that had led them to the hedge mage before. He took a short break to buy some honey crispels and some tea, and returned to his vigil.

Two hours later, the tea was gone and the crumbs of his honey crispel were a distant memory. He realized he wasn’t really cut out for patient spy work. It was almost more than he could bear to just lounge around, wandering a side street with nothing to do.

It was just then that the shock of recognition went through him. He knew that man. Unfortunately it wasn’t the one he was looking for, but someone unexpected. It was Marius, his dad’s old friend. Since this was the first student break of the year, he was probably going to meet Hugo’s mother. The five of them walking by him must just be coming back from their harvesting trip.

He frowned when he realized that Marius probably still had the grandcryst. It wouldn’t be stolen from him until tonight. Hugo had a choice. He could stay here and work towards saving the city, or he could go save one man’s life savings. Should be an easy choice. The city was definitely more important, and he didn’t really like Marius. But he didn’t really know how to save the city, and he knew exactly how to save Marius.

Cursing himself, Hugo pushed off the wall and followed after Marius. As he walked, he tried to think of a story. He needed some reason to talk to him, something that wouldn’t make him suspicious. He was coming up blank. He knew Marius fairly well and the man didn’t like talking to strangers. He was gregarious with his friends and dismissive of everyone else. If Hugo didn’t approach this right, Marius would just blow him off and not even give him a chance to warn him.

He berated himself for a block as he followed Marius and his friends. Hugo should know more about his dad’s old friend and his Mom’s maybe boyfriend. They had known each other for years, there has got to be a detail that would convince him. When his friends peeled off, leaving Marius alone, Hugo knew that it was time to approach him. He still didn’t know how to convince him.

Then it hit him. He knew just what to say.

“Marius! Hold up a second, I want to talk to you,” Hugo said.

Marius was instantly on alert, putting his hand on the pommel of the sword he was wearing. He clutched the small bag with his other hand. He was practically screaming to the world that he had the grandcryst in there.

“Your friends are planning on betraying you. They have already told the fox gang about the grandcryst in your bag there, and they plan on robbing you at Daniela’s house tonight,” Hugo said with a smile.

With a practiced motion, Marius drew his sword and a few blue barriers winked into existence around him. “What are you trying to pull here?” He whipped his head around, looking for other attackers and said, “I don’t know what kind of game you are playing, but it isn’t funny.”

The suspicion and fear radiated off of Marius, just as Hugo expected. He had realized that he didn’t actually want Marius to trust him. He could save him by just introducing a little reasonable wariness to the man.

Backing off, Hugo put up his hands and said, “Look, I am not lying, and I don’t want your grandcryst. Just hide it somewhere else tonight and you will know that I was right.”

“Who are you?” Marius demanded, swinging his sword menacingly. He stalked forward for a moment before stopping and hiding the bag behind himself.

“It doesn’t really matter who I am. Be smart, hide that thing somewhere else. After you realize I am right, you can buy me a beer or something,” Hugo said as he continued to back off.

Marius backed away too, looking down the streets and at the rooftops, expecting Hugo to be a distraction for an ambush. When he turned the corner, Hugo jogged away. That was a little more stressful than expected.

Hugo gave up on trying to find a hedge mage for the day. His stake out spot was too close to where he confronted Marius. He didn’t want to be around if the man came back, looking for him. So he left that part of town, and started walking.

Wandering the city aimlessly was actually kind of fun. Most of his days were regimented and he didn’t have a lot of free time to himself. He liked discovering all of the new parts of town he had never seen before.

Reval was his hometown, but he didn’t know it well. Up to this point, he had been a street rat, not welcome in most places. Now he was an academy student. This blue and white tunic literally opened doors for him.

He found that he loved browsing the shops in the nice part of town. It was so interesting to see what the rich spent their money on. Expandable canes, runic umbrellas, mana gauges, glowing hair gel, and shimmer handguns were just some of the products on display. Most of it seemed frivolous, but he did want to save up and get himself a pocket watch one of these days.

Eventually, he found himself wandering back towards the lower part of town. He had more money now than he had ever had with his previous life, but it wasn’t enough for the rich part of town. He could spend all of the money he owned on one small trinket, and then he wouldn’t have any way to make more. Not until after he graduated that is.

As he turned a corner, a sight made him do a double take. There was a woman wearing a fox mask leaning up against a wall in an alley nearby. He was used to seeing the masks, the fox gang was almost unopposed in town. But they still had to worry about the shimmer corps. This woman was wearing her mask in this part of town, in the middle of the day.

She pushed off the wall and walked towards him.

“You are a hard man to find, Hugo,” she said casually.

Hugo stopped cold. How did she know his name? She looked vaguely familiar. It was possible that she was the one with the shimmer gun that had taken down the saboteurs. It was tough to tell when she was wearing a mask.

Even if this was the same woman, how did she know his name? He hadn’t told anyone his name that night. For that matter, how did she find him wandering the city?

“Oh, don’t give me that look. You know exactly how the fox gang gathers information,” she said with a laugh.

Frowning, Hugo realized she was right. The fox gang had eyes all across the city. Sometimes human, sometimes rats. He just didn’t realize how extensive their information gathering was. He said, “You have me at a disadvantage, you know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

There was a smile in her voice as she replied, “You are right. I do have you at a disadvantage. But I suppose you can call me Vulpe.”

Hugo rolled his eyes. She was giving him the old earth word for fox. These people, always had to go with their theme. “What do you want from me?”

“I thought you were a smart one. You go to that fancy school, you know things before they happen. Of course we are interested in you,” she said.

“I am not interested in you though,” Hugo said and backed up. He looked around to see if he could just walk away. There was no one else around with a fox mask. But the people standing on either end of the street weren’t there before.

“Oh don’t be that way. I saved your life, didn’t I? That’s a debt you still have to repay. I am being nice, coming to you this way. The fox gang isn’t always so kind when it comes to repaying debts,” she said.

Hugo frowned, “I didn’t agree to any debt to the fox gang.”

“And yet, the debt remains. But you can start paying it off today, no worries. You knew the future the other day, all you have to do is repeat the action,” her voice turned stern, “And this time you tell it to me, instead of all of the cities. You will do it because you owe us, and I know your secret, hedge mage.”

Now Hugo understood. She thought he could predict the future, and she was upset that he had saved the other cities. Apparently the fox gang wanted to be the only city without a sabotaged wall. He smiled and said, “I am not a hedge mage. I can’t predict the future. I only knew about the walls because I overheard one of them talking about it while I was a runner the previous day.”

“Why didn’t you just go to the sentinels, or even the shimmer corps?” she asked.

“I am sure you can understand a certain reluctance to draw the attention of law enforcement? I wasn’t positive I had heard them right. I didn’t want to accuse someone innocent,” he replied. He held up his hands and created a small barrier in front of himself. He said, “Hedge mages can’t do that, can they?”

She tisked in annoyance.

Hugo continued, “If you want to get a glimpse into the future, we can talk to actual hedge mages. I was actually trying to get ahold of them today. You don’t happen to have a way to contact them, do you?”

She made a sign with her hand and the two men on either side of the street started walking towards them. She said, “If you are unable to repay your life debt with a valuable prediction, then I will have to insist on cold hard coins.”