The caravan reached Oldtown after seven days on the road.
The city hit Remus first as noise and then as color: a walled trade town crawling with more kinds of people than he'd known this world contained, Lizardmen haggling over spice barrels, Orcs hauling carts twice their own height, Beast-folk with tails flicking irritably at market flies, Centaurs picking their way carefully between narrow stalls built for smaller feet, Elves and Dwarves moving through the crowd with the unhurried confidence of people who'd been doing business in this exact square for centuries.
Julius sold the grain to a half-Elf merchant named Nimir, negotiating him up to four silver a unit once it became clear the season's shortage was even worse than either of them had first assumed. The total came to thirty-two thousand silver, converted at the counting house into thirty-two hundred gold for easier transport. They asked around at the Merchant's Guild for Annabelle, without luck.
"I ought to hire an adventurer or two, to see this gold safely back to Quinoa," Julius said, eyeing the heavy sacks with obvious unease. "Not safe, carrying this much coin unescorted."
At the Adventurer's Guild hall, the crowd ran mostly human with a scattering of other races mixed through, and the walls were papered thick with job postings in a looping, unfamiliar script Remus couldn't read yet. He was still squinting at one particularly dense notice, trying to puzzle out the letters, when he tripped over a woman on her knees scrubbing at the floorboards and nearly went sprawling.
"I'm so sorry, I-"
He stopped mid-apology, recognizing her at the same moment she looked up.
"Remus, what are you doing here?" Annabelle asked, scrambling upright, mortified.
"I should be asking you that," he said. "Weren't you at the Merchant's Guild?"
"It's a long story." She looked away, cheeks coloring.
She led him outside before telling it properly.
"My boyfriend dumped me," she said, arms crossed tight against herself, "and not one trading company in this city will hire a woman. Doesn't matter how good my numbers are."
"I'm sorry," Remus said, and meant it, feeling the flat unfairness of it land somewhere he hadn't expected. "What about Gregory?"
That night they waited at a cramped, rundown apartment in a poorer district until Gregory finally came home, wearing an oil-stained work coat that he peeled off and tried, unsuccessfully, to hang on a bent nail by the door.
"Gregory?" Remus said.
He spun around, startled, and it took him a visible moment to gather himself before he explained.
"I tried taking jobs solo, at first," Gregory said. "Lost more coin on bad contracts than the contracts ever paid me. The guild only hands the good work to companies, not lone adventurers."
"Why not just join a company, then?"
"I did." His jaw tightened. "They took every coin I had, then kicked me out once they found out I was a Southlander. Ended up apprenticing at a struggling bladesmith's shop just to keep eating."
Remus felt something sharpen in his chest, a familiar, useful kind of anger.
"If there's one thing I can't stand," Gregory went on, "it's being told I can't do something because of where I was born. I mean to fix that."
The next morning Remus went with Gregory to the bladesmith's shop.
"Mr. Dinolfo, this is my brother, Remus," Gregory said.
"Nice to meet you, kid," the balding proprietor said, wiping soot from his hands onto his apron. "Your brother's a hard worker, whatever else is true."
"I hope I'm not interrupting your business hours," Remus said, glancing around the mostly empty shop.
"Kid, business hasn't exactly been booming lately." Dinolfo gestured out the window, toward a shop across the street with a considerably longer line outside it. "Ever since that place opened up, I've bled customers steady."
"Can't you undercut his prices?"
"Problem is, I can't make magic swords," Dinolfo said. "Even plain steel's suffered for it. There's a competition every year, best bladesmith in the city, but these days they only want magic blades. I've half a mind not to enter this year at all."
"When's it held?"
"Two weeks out."
"What if I went in your place?"
"Knock yourself out, kid."
"Since when can you make magic swords?" Gregory cut in, incredulous.
"I can make anything, given the right design and the right materials," Remus said.
"I could never afford one of those," Gregory said, something wistful creeping into his voice. "Maybe you could make me one. An adventuring company might actually take me on, if I showed up carrying something like that."
"You won't need a company to take you on," Remus said. "We'll build our own. One that accepts Southlanders."
"How?"
"Leave that part to me. The Archive can wait a while longer." Remus was already thinking three steps ahead, the way he always did. "Where would I even find the proper process for a magic sword?"
"A Lorekeeper would know, at the Archive," Gregory said. "If anyone does."
"Then first I need a contract with Mr. Dinolfo," Remus said, turning back to the bladesmith. "Eighty percent of proceeds on any blade I make, split to me."
"Deal."
Contract formed!
Remus rose before dawn the next morning and made his way to the Archive.
"I'm here to see Lorekeeper Leo," he told the guard at the gate.
"No Lorekeeper by that name here," the first guard said, barely glancing up.
"Wait, you mean Leo the drunk?" the second guard put in. "He's no Lorekeeper, friend. Just an old apprentice who never managed to graduate."
"That doesn't match what I know, but where can I find him?"
"Thought they'd shipped him off to the armpit of the Kingdom, the Southlands," the guard said, shrugging. "If he's back in the city, he's most likely passed out in the alley behind McBeans. Down the street, left past the clothier, and follow the smell of piss to find him."
Remus followed the directions and found Leo exactly where promised, slumped against the alley wall behind the tavern, dead to the world. He was crouched over, trying to shake the man awake, when two rough figures appeared at the mouth of the alley, knives already drawn, one short and wiry, the other built like a brick wall with legs.
"Hand over your valuables," the short one said.
Remus threw his purse without hesitation, and the tall one caught it, weighing it in one palm with obvious surprise.
"You're servant to somebody rich," he said, eyeing Remus's plain travel clothes with fresh suspicion. "Why's a rich man's servant carrying this much coin?"
Remus felt suddenly, sharply aware of exactly how out of place his careful, practical clothing must look here, and how little that awareness was going to help him in the next ten seconds.
"Let's skin him," the short one said, almost bored, like he was suggesting where to eat.
"Dunno, boss," the big one said, hesitating. "We've already got what we came for."
"Don't argue with me," the short one snapped.
"Sorry, boss."
They advanced slowly, weapons low, the particular unhurried menace of men who'd done this exact thing many times before and never once needed to rush it, when a thin line of blood opened across both their cheeks in the same instant, a single motion, too fast for Remus to track.
Lilith stood behind them, having appeared from nowhere at all, a short black blade in one hand, its edge already wet.
"Who the hell are you?" the tall one said, backing up a step.
"Drop the purse and run," she said, calm as if she were commenting on the weather.
"Like hell," the short one snapped, and lunged at her with the knife.
The blade found her stomach. She didn't so much as flinch. A heartbeat later blood ran freely from the corner of the tall man's mouth, and he folded to the ground, both hands clutching at his own midsection where nothing at all had touched him a moment before.
The short one stared at his fallen friend, at Lilith's untouched, unbothered expression, and threw the purse back at Remus's feet before backing away around her and bolting into the dark.
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