Crossing Aressea’s market felt like returning home, if the people at home had known how to jump down from the roofs without breaking a bone or weigh a piece of meat with a box of wood.

Saia observed the surroundings while Serit haggled with a merchant. She was carrying an empty sack on her shoulders to hold their purchases, in case there were animals outside of her range spying on them. Periodically, a lamp of golden light passed through the eyes of the creatures she could observe: a quick sparkle that immediately moved on, from a bird high on a tree to a donkey munching on forage. Mayvaru was always observing, even if her attention didn't seem to focus on one spot in particular.

On impulse, Saia expanded her domain, careful not to touch any rats or tanhata. She chose an empty cart and pushed it with her winds until it fell to the side, causing a commotion. Animals descended onto the scene from every direction, invisible to the distracted crowd. Birds, a small creature that was apparently a cat, dogs that were so different from the Arissian sheepdog she couldn't understand how they belonged to the same species. All of them had a glow in their eyes that lingered until the reason for the accident was attributed to an unstable wheel. The animals took that as a sign they could disperse again.

Saia resumed surveying the crowd. She saw another cart that was being pulled by two moving plants. She examined them, looking for a pattern in the mass of foliage. She found a muzzle made of yellow-green leaves wrapped in an irregular cylinder. The creatures looked vaguely like a mixture of a cow and a horse, even if they had six legs and an impressive pair of branching horns made of wood. She expanded her domain a bit, looking once again for a pattern, or, more likely, several patterns, considering how realistically they moved. But the inside of the creatures was made of branches and spines, rotating with thousands of creaking sounds every time they made a step forward. She was reminded of the monster she’d met in the external forest with Dan and Morìc, even if their outward appearance looked nothing alike.

She moved the bag from one arm to the other. It wasn’t weak anymore after she'd patched it up with the viserite that Ravisu had given her, as if Beramas had never made it explode.

Serit had finished haggling and was now staggering toward her under the weight of a pile of furs.

“I think this is enough to attempt three plans like ours,” they commented.

Saia helped them push the ball of furs into the sack. The whole operation was conspicuous enough to attract looks from the people, but not the attention of the animals, at least for the moment.

“I wish you were wearing the disguise,” Serit said.

“It's not ready yet, I still need to study her a bit. And trust me, it's not the kind of thing I can be careless about. The result would be... Weird.”

They sighed, wrapping one of their new cloths tighter around their head.

“Next step?”

Saia nodded. They walked down the market, examining every stall. There was a herbalist, but she didn't seem to sell what they needed.

“Smells are for the rich at Iriméze,” Serit commented. “Maybe we should check the shops.”

They left the main road for a side alley. Saia checked there weren’t animals around before approaching a passerby to ask where the shop was. It took two more attempts before finding someone that knew the answer.

“Rich people, told you,” Serit commented once they were in front of the building, far from both the market and the other shops. The perfumery looked like it wanted to categorically set itself apart from anything with a smell.

They looked through the glass windows of the shop: Saia saw rows of bottles on shelves, just like at the herbalist shop back at Lausune, and bundles of dried flowers hanging from the ceiling and walls. She caught a movement inside, a person looking back through the windows. She forced herself to smile and opened the door.

“Good morning, is this the perfumery?”

The woman behind the desk was thin and pale like a birch twig. She looked at her with mild suspicion that intensified when she saw Serit entering behind her. They were both wearing visibly cheap clothes, because Saia refused to steal anything more.

“Yes,” the woman answered. “Although I have to warn you that my prices are adequate to the quality of my essences. And in case you’re here for something other than perfumes, I need to inform you that my shop and wares are under Beramas’s protection.”

The overt threat was unnerving, but at the same time the woman had given them useful information: anything they said inside the shop could reach Beramas, and Mayvaru as a consequence.

Serit’s hand was already rising for a shilvé greeting, as if by reflex. They stopped in time.

“I ensure you we can pay the, uh, adequate price you speak of.”

Saia took out two vissins from her bag and showed them to the perfumer. She passed a finger over their center and sucked in her breath.

“Very well, then,” she said in a gentler tone.

Saia smiled wider to seem unbothered by the woman's initial hostility. She had expected every single one of her reactions, but it was still nice to know that her and Serit's theories were right.

She remembered when they'd been at the market the previous day, trying to figure out how to pay for the things they needed. Serit had been pretending to browse the stalls while Saia examined the transactions happening all around them. She couldn't make sense of the reasoning behind the exchanges, where a cheap pair of trousers cost sixteen vissins, but the customer paid ten of them and received two as change.

She tried to look for the value of the coins on their surface, but in vain: they didn't depict images, nor a number representing their value, just tiny lines that intersected on the surface, forming webs of various sizes and densities. At least she found confirmation that the material at the center, encased in a circle of silver, was viserite. It responded to her domain as if it was a detached part of her body, like the fragments of viserite of her arm she'd found scattered across the square. It held viss as well, bearing thousands of different imprints from all the hands that had touched it.

After minutes of confused observation, she gave in and nudged a coin away from a merchant's purse. She made it roll on the ground until it was out of sight, observed the crowd to make sure she wasn't being watched by people or animals, then picked it up.

She sat with Serit on the border of one of the many fountains of the area to examine her find. Serit traced the lines with their fingers, looking absorbed. They were so tiny and close to each other that they could never touch just one of them at the same time.

“What pattern is it?” Saia asked in the end.

“It's not... I mean, it is a pattern, but it wasn't carved by a person. These are usage lines. They emerge naturally when an object is used for a long time.”

“I’ve never seen them.”

They raised their eyes from the coin to look at her.

“By 'a long time' I don't mean some years. Entire generations.”

Saia thought of the monks, of how they had managed to hide both the existence of magic and the cyclical death of gods. Tools broke easily, after all.

Serit seemed to hear her thoughts, because they turned the coin in their hand to show the lines on the other side.

“It's rare for a regular tool to be used enough to develop lines without breaking. When they’re dense enough, they help in making it more resistant, among other things.”

“Like?” Saia pressed on.

“Making them easier to use. A hammer that has planted nails for three generations will bury them in one strike while requiring no strength at all. If you start using it to break rocks, though, you’ll need some more years for it to work more efficiently.”

“So coins are easier to… spend?”

Serit laughed.

“No. They’re worth more, though. The lines are only formed after thousands of passages of hand. They’re unique but not random, to the point an expert could tell if they’re fake.”

“If they’re unique, how would someone know how much they’re worth?”

“I guess you can partially tell by the number of lines, but mostly it’s the viss they contain. There’s a maximum amount of viss that an object can hold, depending on the material. Every usage line increases this amount. Money tends to change hands a lot and viserite is optimal to store viss, so the coins are always full. I imagine small variations wouldn’t make a huge difference. So you can gauge the final value from the amount of viss they contain.”

Saia took the vissin from their hand and examined it with her domain. She sent viss into it, to mingle with the one already on its surface, but she had to stop after a few instants: past a certain quantity, it started to flake off, as if it couldn’t find a hold.

“This still doesn’t explain why these lines formed,” she commented.

Serit touched the top of the pool of water behind them.

“There are theories. Not to get bogged down in the details, but the main idea is that human-like creatures can control their viss at least subconsciously. It behaves differently based on our general status, including what we're doing or where our focus lies. Combine that with the viss we leave on pretty much everything we touch for a protracted time, and it'll have an influence over generations."

They saw a child looking with an open mouth at their gray fingers immersed in the water and quickly retracted their hand.

“And there's a direct correlation between the skill and focus of the wielder and the formation of usage lines on their tools,” they added. “It's as if the object became an extension of the wielder. The lines continue the patterns that already run inside their body. That's how humans discovered patterns, by the way. They tried to reproduce the usage lines of old tools on new ones. Over time, they discovered the basics of how viss moves and the correlation with the effects it produces. It’s still extremely difficult to sculpt usage lines on a surface, though. They’re too tiny and precise.”

The child ran back to his friends and told them something, so Serit moved away from the fountain. Saia followed them down a road that ran parallel to the market.

“It's all good to know, but this means we can't copy money, right? We have to steal it.”

“It would be difficult to forge it regardless, since we don't have silver and neither of us knows how to mold it.”

Saia expanded her domain a bit, checking the purses of everyone around her. Each of them contained some vissins that were completely devoid of usage lines, even if most of them still contained a big quantity of viss. Still, if Serit was right they held the lowest value among all the coins. She made them slip out of purses and pockets and fall to the ground, then collected them with the help of her winds. She waited until they had entered a less crowded area before showing them to Serit.

“You said an expert could recognize them as fake, but what if I copy some patterns? As long as they’re all different, nobody would know that they’re not the originals.

Serit looked at the vissins in her palm with wide eyes, as if taken by surprise. Then they smirked.

“So we could become the richest people of the market.”

Saia rattled the coins in her hand.

“Just answer my question.”

“Yes, it can work. Just remember to fill the vissins before you use them, otherwise they'll seem fake.” They looked ahead in silence for a bit, then sighed. “Which means we can't be the richest people around, I suppose.”

“I can't afford to waste viss, so no.”

Reproducing the usage lines on bare coins was easier than Saia had anticipated. She just needed to push a bit of viss into someone else’s vissins to get a feeling of the patterns, then trace them on the coins by excavating the surface. Creating abstract patterns was easier than reproducing a detailed living creature, especially after all the practice she’d had.

Saia was observing the merchant’s hands playing with her forged vissins, now. Weighing them as if they were genuine.

She took them back.

“What are you looking for?” the perfumer said, pacing around the shop. “We have all the most popular fragrances. This is called ‘Sunset over the Waves’.”

She took a small bottle out of a shelf that contained a liquid with an orange tinge. Saia pretended to be interested when she opened it, to get in her good graces in anticipation of her request. She waited for an instant with a focused expression, breathing in. She couldn’t feel the air entering her nose nor the smell it brought with it, but she still smiled and nodded with a satisfied expression.

“It’s good, but we had something else in mind,” she said. “Do you create custom smells?”

The perfumer’s face tightened in distaste in hearing that word used to describe her ‘essences’. She put the screw back and gently placed the bottle with the others.

“Of course. What did you have in mind?”

Ten seconds later, Saia was leaving the shop, entangled in a screaming match with the owner, while Serit tried to calm both of them down.

“I’ve never felt so insulted,” the shopkeeper was screaming, “since that tattooer started stealing my job.”

“Just say that you’re not good enough,” Saia replied.

Serit’s light tugs at her arm did nothing to make her move faster, but she still exited the shop before one of Mayvaru’s animals could take notice. After all, if the perfumer was reacting that way, it meant that she wasn’t able to do what they requested.

“Tattooer,” Serit whispered. “Interesting.”

Saia diverted her attention from the perfumery.

“Yes, we should look for them.”

They walked down the street, observing the shops without much luck. Saia observed the crowd, looking for people with tattoos. She saw a man with a stylized flower on his shoulder and approached him to ask where he had commissioned it. He gladly answered her questions with indications for a tattoo shop on the other side of the city, but when Saia mentioned patterns that could produce smells, he became quiet and walked away from the conversation, repeating over and over that he didn’t know anything.

The same scene happened twice more, with people running away as soon as the word ‘pattern’ was mentioned or implied.

Saia headed back to the main road of the market and stopped next to a wall to observe the crowd. There was something wrong with tattooing patterns, apparently. Even if the words of the perfumer had implied that they were wildly requested.

“Maybe they’re hiding them,” she said, thinking out loud.

The clothes of the locals made it easy to spot who seemed to be unnecessary covered: long gloves, long upper garments, scarves and hats, boots instead of the traditional sandals and shoes open on top. She examined all of them, uncomfortable about intruding on the personal space between their clothes and skin. For most, it seemed to be a matter of style. She left alone who was walking with confidence and looked for signs of discomfort instead.

“The tooth,” Serit whispered, as they had taken the habit to do every handful of minutes.

Saia expended some viss to keep Morìc asleep. At the same time, she noticed a woman wearing gloves so long they covered her arms up to the shoulders. She squeezed them around her torso while walking past two guards talking to each other inside a void in the crowd. She was almost tiptoeing, maybe holding her breath.

Saia detached from the wall. She walked fast until she was close enough to expand her domain and include the woman. She checked under the gloves: a swirling pattern covered her left forearm.

“Excuse me,” she said out loud.

The woman didn’t react, if not for an instant of hesitation. But the way her steps accelerated told Saia she knew, deep down, that she was the one being addressed in the midst of the crowd.

“I know about your tattoo,” Saia said, and that made the woman freeze.

She turned, her eyes going to the guards distracting each other.

“What?” she could only utter.

“Just a question,” Saia said, finally obtaining her full attention. “Where did you get your tattoo?”

“How do you know…”

Serit finally caught up with Saia. Seeing more people paying attention to her made the woman retract.

“Tailor on the fifth road,” she said, then hurried away.

Saia and Serit had to ask someone else where the fifth road was, then cross it from beginning to end in search of a tailor’s shop. They found three, but only one of them was so small it seemed to be squashed by the nearby buildings, a bakery and an inn. The windows were small and didn't betray any movement inside. The impression was confirmed when they were surrounded by a labyrinth of hanging drapes of cloth upon entering. Despite the trill of the bell, nobody emerged from the stuffed shop for a long time.

“How can I help you?” someone finally asked.

A teen emerged from the back of the shop, a boy about Dan's age. He was covered in a heavier cloth hanging from one shoulder and wrapping around his torso and legs. Saia would have thought he was the apprentice of a tailor, if she didn't know any better.

“Can we talk to the owner?”

“She's busy now. Return later.”

He'd said the words with the unexpressive face and voice of someone used to repeating that same sentence multiple times a day.

“We're not here to buy clothes,” Saia said.

The boy turned and eyed them with an expert air.

“I’ll let her know,” he just said, then disappeared between the drapes of cloth hanging from the ceiling.

A door opened and closed somewhere, but Saia didn't bother expanding her domain to see it. Besides, she suspected that rats could easily enter such a crowded shop, and she really didn't want to catch Mayvaru’s attention while carrying on her plans to fight her.

Serit touched the hanging cloths while they waited, examining the patterns and texture with great attention.

“I didn't take you for the fashionable type,” Saia commented.

They shrugged.

“I didn't bother back at Iriméze. Our cloths are rough and frankly dull compared to some things you can find on earth. But they're expensive, if you're buying them from our merchants.”

Saia thought back at the tunics decorated with feathers and leather belts. She didn't think they were dull at all, not the majority of them at least, but she didn't get a chance to reply before she heard the door open again. An adult stepped through this time, peering from behind a blue drape as if it was a door kept slightly ajar.

“Who sent you?”

Saia regretted not asking the woman whether there were requirements to get a tattoo. She could just use her strength and enter, but she preferred gaining the tattooer's trust. It would have been easier to believe their pattern worked as expected, without hidden side effects that could betray her during a fight.

“The perfumer couldn't fulfill our request, so she suggested we seek you out,” she said.

The tattooer snorted.

“She'd sooner send us the guards. She can't because nobody knows we're here at the time, apart from a selected few. So I must ask again: who sent you?”

“I don't know her name, but she showed me her tattoo. It looked like this.”

She detached a piece of viserite from the palm of her hand as she spoke, turning it into a black flat tablet that looked as brittle as slate. She made her viss flow into it, tracing the tattoo's pattern, and sure enough the carved lines appeared on the surface. The whole operation took so little time she didn't even have to pause between extracting the viserite and handing it over.

The hand that took it was covered in tattoos, none of them depicting a pattern. The tattooer looked at the tablet for a long instant, then promptly handed it back.

“I remember her. New customer, she seemed fairly sheepish. I didn't know she'd have it in her to divulge a copy of her tattoo. But then again, she didn't look like someone who would risk getting a pattern tattooed in the first place, yet here we are.”

Saia took the tablet back and held it between her hip and forearm, ready to assimilate it back into her body at the first distraction.

“So? Are you going to let us in?”

“What kind of tattoo do you need?”

“A pattern, obviously.” Saia remembered the perfumer's reaction and decided to withhold details until it was necessary. “A custom one.”

“That's not obvious, most of our customers want drawings.”

“Are they illegal?” Serit inquired.

“No, but patterns are. But the families keep tattooers under strict control regardless, so it's better for us to hide everything.”

The person had stepped out from behind the curtain as they spoke. Long black hair was interrupted by strands of pink or purple. Saia had never seen hair of such a bright color.

“Let's not talk here, though. It's safer in the back.”

They led them to the door in the back. The room on the other side was similar to the tailor shop, except for the heavy curtains in place of the hanging cloths. They divided the room into orderly sections rather than creating a maze. Saia could hear whispering voices and moans of pain. She expanded her domain a finger beyond the curtains, expecting a horrid scene of torture. Instead, she saw a man laying on his belly, another tattooer bent over him while holding the smallest knife she'd ever seen, even if by the swirling patterns covering the blade it was clear it wasn't a simple knife. It wasn’t being used like a knife either: the tattooer seemed to be making quick up and down movements. A dark liquid ran down the patterns of the knife, together with the viss of the artist, injecting itself into the skin. It was tracing the shape of a tree, even if the drawing was still in such an early stage it was difficult to tell for sure.

There were two more customers behind different curtains. Only one of them was having a pattern tattooed on her upper leg, in a spot usually covered by the trousers.

They passed in front of many empty cubicles on their way to the other side of the shop. Saia expected the tattooer to enter one of them, but they proceeded toward a golden curtain hanging from the wall and hiding a metal door.

“She’s the best tattooer in the city,” they whispered. “Behave.”

They knocked. The response was the most melodious grunt Saia had ever heard.

“Customers,” the tattooer replied.

The door opened after a few instants.

“Come inside,” the woman on the other side said, her shadow retracting back into the suffused light of the room.

Saia followed her, impatient to get the whole thing over with. The more she walked around the city wearing her actual face and with Serit in tow, even if they were careful to wear different combinations of cloths every time, made it more likely Mayvaru would have discovered they were up to something.

The walls of the room were covered in more drapes, purple, pink and turquoise mixing together. The light came from the flame of a candle encased in a round glass that was open at the top. After the intense light of the shilvé’s spheres, Saia found the illumination atmospheric, if inefficient. Serit’s rapid blinks seemed to agree with her second assessment.

One area of that small studio was entirely occupated by a flat table, a pile of clean towels, a knife and inks. The rest was crowded with tall cushions and upholstered chairs with a high back. The tattooer sat down on one of them, gesturing at the rest of the room.

“Please, settle where you prefer.”

Serit plopped down onto a cushion. Saia contemplated for a moment the uselessness of it all, then sat down next to them.

“If you’re here, it means you need a custom pattern,” the woman said, hunching forward until her elbows were resting on her legs. “Being admitted in here is difficult, but it doesn’t mean I’ll create whatever you request. So make it interesting.”

Saia observed her as she spoke: she was covered in tattoos, even more so than the other artists. It was a mix of drawings and patterns, wrapping around each other without ever touching, the light brown skin in between tracing a pattern of its own. Her hair grew in strands of different colors, covering her natural black almost completely: two green portions framed her face, then faded into azure, while the back of her head was crowned by four locks in red, yellow, purple and pink. Saia could see a pattern peaking out in places from her scalp, tendrils curving like baby hair. Her voice was particularly melodious, as if she was two people talking at once, one with a lower, mellow tone and another with a higher and raspy one. They mixed perfectly, to the point every word she uttered sounded like a duet. The pattern on her throat moved up and down with her words.

“We need something that can produce a smell,” Saia pushed herself to say, abandoning her contemplation. “I’ve heard you can do that.”

The woman smiled with her lips and leaned back on the chair, arms crossed in front of her.

“The way you talk about my craft, it seems like you don’t even know what you’re signing up for. Are you aware that tattoos are permanent? They’re not fragile and unstable like other ink patterns, and they certainly don’t disappear after one use.”

“I know,” Saia said.

“A smell, then. We’ve had a few requests for those, usually from folks that can afford to get discovered by the guards with a pattern on their body. Can you pay?”

Saia took out the vissins. They didn’t induce the same admiration the perfumer had expressed, but the woman seemed satisfied enough when she handed them back.

“I’m called Teormu, by the way,” she said. “Art name, of course.”

She took out a stack of papers tied together and a sharpened piece of graphite wrapped in wood from under a cushion.

“Tell me what you want, exactly.”

Saia exchanged a glance with Serit. They hadn’t discussed what to do if the tattooer refused as well. There wasn’t a nice way to phrase her request, so she repeated the words she’d said to the perfumer.

“I need the stink of a wild animal. We don’t actually need the tattoo,” Saia specified. “Just the pattern.”

The graphite was very gently put down onto the paper. Teormu stared at her for a long time.

“Where the fuck do you think you are?”

Her voice sounded like being yelled at by two people at once.

“We’re risking our lives here, to keep alive our craft. And you come in to request… What is it, a joke? Too much money and time on your hands?”

“It’s not like that, please,” Serit interjected. “We truly need it. It’s of vital importance, even if the request might seem disrespectful.”

Teormu crossed her arms again.

“Then I want to hear how you plan to use it. Either you give me an explanation as to why I should humiliate myself this way, or you can leave my shop forever.”

Saia couldn’t think of any other explanation that would have resulted convincing, apart from revealing the plan itself. But talking about it out loud meant putting it in danger, especially without knowing Teormu’s affiliations.

She expanded her domain to include the entire room. She could see the woman’s viss flow through the ink on her skin, complementing or deviating the natural patterns of her body. She didn’t have a reaction to her domain, which meant that none of her body modifications had something to do with detecting viss.

“First tell me something,” Saia said, watching her reactions closely. “What do you think of Mayvaru?”