As Jonathan approached, the ragged man looked his way with confusion on his face. Jonathan smiled and lifted one of the sandwiches. "Hello there. My friend bought these sandwiches to eat together but was called away urgently. Mind if I join you on the step there in exchange for a sandwich?"

The man's eyes locked on the sandwich in Jonathan's hand. "Sure, stranger, have a seat."

"Thank you kindly." Jonathan passed the sandwich across and sat down a couple feet away. "My name is Jonathan. Yours?"

The man had already ripped open the sandwich and had a bite in his mouth. He chewed quickly and swallowed. "Call me Fowler." And back in his mouth the sandwich went.

Jonathan nodded and turned to his own sandwich. He was clearly not going to get any answers until they'd both eaten.

In the interest of not arousing suspicion, Jonathan had simply duplicated the sandwich Fowler was desiring, and it was one of the mystery meat abominations that Abigail was so fond of. He eyed it for a moment, and then dug in.

It was surprisingly tasty, though he still thought a BLT was better. It was kind of hard to tell, but he thought it was some sort of ground meat patty. Maybe a cross between a meat loaf and a hamburger patty? Well, it wasn't bad, regardless.

Fowler finished off his sandwich in record time, all but licking the paper wrapper clean. No wonder Jonathan had sensed his desire for food from so far away. As Jonathan finished off his sandwich, Fowler sat back and regarded him. "You new to town, Jonathan? You've got a unique fashion sense."

Oh, right. He was wearing a pair of jeans straight out of his own world, and a robe that was who-knew-how-many years out of date. Whoops. "That's right. If you don't mind, I'd love to ask you a few questions. Get a better feel for the place."

"Ask away."

Hm, though, how to approach this? If he wanted to find people who might contract with him to gain access to his magic, he probably needed to know how accessible magic was already, so… "Where would I go if I needed some magic done?"

"Magic?" Fowler gave him a strange look. "I mean, the Quints there offer their normal services—" he nodded toward the building Jonathan had guessed was a church "—and for a bit of coin the Mage's College isn't that far down the road." He pointed to one of the paved roads that led away from the sides of the square. "Usually some foreign magic-types down by the pier, as well." This time he pointed to the road that led out of the square directly across from where Jonathan had entered it. "Beyond that, I wouldn't know. Never had much to do with magic, myself."

Looked like Jonathan would need to ask Mr. Geiller what constituted the "normal" services offered by the Quint Church, but he could infer quite a bit from that explanation. Fowler was clearly poorly off compared to the vast majority of the people in the square, and the fact that he had apparently never had contact with magic in his life meant that it wasn't so widely available as Jonathan had feared. That was good for him, although he would likely need to be careful if he targeted the poorer portion of the city. He had no idea what level of crime was normal for those who were worse off, whether he might get caught up in organized crime, or anything of the like. He was also interested to hear about a Mage College; perhaps that would be a safer outlet to look for help than the church seemed to be, although he was curious why Mr. Geiller hadn't mentioned it at all.

As Jonathan pondered his next question and watched the crowd, something caught his eye. A young child, looking almost as ragged as Fowler himself, darted out of the crowd and into a side alley. "There much trouble with pickpockets around here? Should I be watching out?"

"You?" Fowler snorted a laugh. "They're not going to steal from you." Rude. "But yeah, there's a decent amount of grift here in the square. Plenty of foreigners coming in through the port, lot of refugees stopped off here after the wars down south, local earl's a skinflint."

Jonathan made a non-committal hum.

"Your friend got some coin? Course he must; bought you those sandwiches. Look, if he doesn't put you up, though, you come on down Pale Street here, take the fifth left and look for the old logging house with the pentagram on it. Church still has some stay-houses in the area, and that's one of them. They'll put you up for the night."

"Thank you," said Jonathan. "I'll keep that in mind."

"You do that," said Fowler. "I don't know what kind of problems you think magic can solve, but I'll tell you straight, you don't look like someone who can afford it. Better to take a night's charity and find some honest work, then get yourself along upriver or wherever you're going."

Jonathan had a sneaking suspicion that Fowler hadn't chosen to keep going upriver at some point in his life and now regretted it.

Fowler cast a glance around the periphery of the square, then hoisted himself to his feet. "Look, it was good to meet you Jonathan, and thank you very much for the sandwich. I've been sitting here a mite too long, though, so I'll need to cut it short. You have any more questions, maybe I'll see you at the stay-house this evening, hey?"

"Maybe," said Jonathan. "And you're very welcome for the sandwich."

Fowler nodded to him, and moved off down the street—Pale Street, Jonathan supposed—without a backward glance.

A few moments later a pair of men in understated brown uniforms walked past and gave Jonathan a careful once-over. He guessed by the truncheons at their side that they were some sort of police force or security for the market, so evidently he shouldn't stay here ogling people for too long.

But for now, he had things to think about. The stay-house Fowler described sure sounded like a homeless shelter to him. Assuming it wasn't in use much until later in the evening, he wasn't going to get any good out of it today, but perhaps he could find potential people to contract with another day, if nothing better came up.

It was also pretty obvious that he needed to conjure up some better clothes to allow him to blend in. His current getup evidently said "down on his luck" a little too clearly, though he couldn't fault the result of getting Fowler to open up to him so easily.

The Mage College might be worth investigating, although again not something he could do today, and he'd want to ask Mr. Geiller about it before he stuck his nose somewhere like that, in any case.

What could he offer people who were down on their luck to the point they were forced to take advantage of these stay-houses? Money was out, since conjured money was a no-go according to Abigail. Food probably wasn't a great option; it would solve a short-term need, but what enticement could he offer that would make contracting with a demon in exchange for a meal worthwhile? Granted the downside was small, but he also didn't want to just whore himself out to an entire stay-house, particularly one administrated by the Quint Church. It didn't sound like they would be great fans of a demon running around performing random acts of magic in payment for contracts.

He was really hamstrung by his lack of knowledge about what magic could do. Could it heal people? That could definitely provide him something that would be worth a contract. Was there a limit to the size of the things he could conjure without causing harm to himself? Could he conjure living things? What about more abstract effects? Although his memory was still fuzzy, he remembered the demon that talked to him right after he was summoned had stopped time in a limited area. He still didn't really understand what that meant, but did it mean he could potentially mess with time? What about teleporting? If he could teleport someone, he'd bet that would definitely be a reason for a more well-to-do member of society to make a contract with him.

He probably should have gone over these ideas with Mr. Geiller, huh? Ugh, he hated talking to that old coot, though. Although come to think, the few times he'd actually gotten the old man talking, it was about magic. Maybe if he played his cards right he could give the jackass a good reason to insult him, and segue into a more general explanation about how the hell magic actually worked, because Jonathan didn't have nearly enough exposure to it to figure out what the logic behind it might be. Heck, he didn't really understand how he could create sandwiches out of nothing. Wasn't that outright breaking the laws of conservation of matter? Were Newton's laws not a thing in this reality, and if so how did that work?

Ugh, so many questions, and so few places to get the answers. He supposed he could try talking to random people here in the square, but they all seemed pretty busy and since he evidently looked like some sort of vagrant, he wasn't sure he'd get a very good response from folks who were better off than Fowler.

He supposed he should head back to the orphanage for now, see if he could pick Mr. Geiller's brain about magic and hopefully come up with a plan. It wasn't like a solution was going to fall into his lap if he stuck around here.

Jonathan started to stand up, when movement in the alley where he'd originally seen the pickpocket duck out of sight caught his eye. He squinted. It looked like there was a whole little group of kids back in there, talking amongst themselves as they surveyed the crowds.

Jonathan frowned. He wasn't sure how much he liked this society if there were this many kids reduced to pick-pocketing…wait. He lived in an orphanage. An orphanage with a single orphan. Assuming those kids were living on the streets, what were their greatest needs likely to be? Food, shelter, clothing, things like that. Things that Jonathan knew he could provide through magic.

There was still the danger they might be connected to organized crime, of course. And Jonathan wasn't a huge fan of inviting a bunch of feral little thieves under the same roof, but…it was just so perfect. He needed them. They probably needed him, even if they didn't know it yet.

Jonathan carefully surveyed the area around the alley. He was going to need to be able to recognize it tomorrow when he came back.

Because unless Abigail was drastically better or Mr. Geiller had a better plan…looked like it was time to try and populate the orphanage.