Miss Thicket Wimple had outdone herself as per usual. Today’s offering: pot stickers, by the dozen, with soup inside.

  How one made that in the back of a wagon, Dalliance had no idea.

  The bowl of pot-stickers lay forgotten beside the third sheet of expensive paper he was ruining trying to sketch out a plausible tool-to-weapon upgrade for himself. He was failing to think of anything useful.

  The problems were the same for Earnest: they had access to the basics, because those were on a farm. Pick. Hoe. Rake. Shovel. Dalliance even had a bow, thanks to the Games. But—these were expensive weapons, regularly used, and not freely available to take to the forge and sharpen, much less reshape into a useful killing implement.

  A spear, for example, could probably be made from a trowel blade reshaped and remounted. But what smith would risk his father’s anger by doing that, and how would he pay for it?

  Making something out of wood would be completely within his power—hell, Da would help him acquire the perfect ‘Ettinbough’ of his own, provided he invested the points in Might to move it. But that just wouldn’t be happening unless he somehow managed to level twice as fast as everybody else to maintain his unstable dual-attribute build.

  And if he did it would become impossible to hide it, eventually.

  No, he needed something smart, not . . . this.

  “The secret ingredient is crime,” whispered Earnest.

  “What?!”

  Earnest had been sketching something rather different. It looked like a map. A cart-trail map.

  “Tinkers sharpen weapons. Tinkers camp alone.”

  “Tinkers mark their weapons, Earnest.”

  “Chip it off, then. Get it rusty. We’ll think of something.”

  “Who would we even . . . ” as he said it, he realized he’d already been sucked into another one of Earnest’s ridiculous schemes. He’d get an earful for this one later.

  “Easy. Your uncle’s a tinker. Break something your Da won’t be able to go without fixing. Just don’t get caught.”

  Dalliance drummed his fingers on the table nervously, rattling the pieces of chalk and charcoal. “Fine, say we do that. The worst possible place for one of my uncle’s tools is in my hands, Earnest.”

  “Thought of that too. I’m gonna do a trade.”

  “What?”

  “Trade. See, we take a knife from bloke a, that’s your uncle—”

  “—Impetuous.”

  “—yeah, right, and we get say a spear, or something, and we go to the city—”

  “—how.”

  “—details. We go to the city, and we swipe a guard’s spear, and we leave the one we took from your uncle. And now it’s got no mark, and nothing says how we got it, neither.”

  “So now we’ve got to steal from two people who can beat us up, per weapon.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Look me in the eye and tell me you can’t tell if someone’s about to have spotted you.”

  Damn. There it was.

  “You’re too smart for my own good,” Dalliance grumbled.

  “We’re gonna ace this one,” his friend retorted. “Worth it.”

  It was a simple plan.

  Earnest would stay the night. He didn’t often, didn’t really like doing it, said it was ‘creepy’ how Cadence put all his kids in shacks instead of letting them sleep in the house.

  Then, one day, after an epiphany, had started saying the old man was ‘lecherous’ and had probably ‘still got the fire’, and that made everything worse.

  But he stayed the night, because Dalliance didn’t know what to break or how to break it, and they worked best as a team.

  Topaz had had thoughts on the plan herself.

  Like: “Have you ever listened to a single word I’ve said?” and “Why won’t you Bargain with me? I could set up a spell skill for you!’

  It was her own long-standing rule, after all: never bargain from a position of need, lest you pay dearly for too little. And of course, there was the question of what to bargain with. Firstborn? Two fists’ full of flayed flesh? His left eye?

  No.

  She’d never be willing to ask some things, and the System gated the best goods behind the awful prizes. It wouldn’t be worth it.

  She’d flown up to the rafters in a huff instants before the door opened to admit his friend.

  “Smells like trouble in here,” he said with a smirk.

  In his pack, he’d brought a hacksaw.

  “No.” The veto wasn’t popular, but there was also no making this look like an accident.

  Picking the target was the hardest part. It took so long that they had to go to Dinner.

  Which was a Problem.

  Earnest and Whimsy didn’t get along very well, which was why Earnest seated himself at the far corner from her, to have the whole rectangular slab of hardwood between them. In honor of their guest, whatever Chastity thought of him, the matriarch had set out a heaping wooden bowl full of corn biscuits, one full of leafy greens with vinegar dressing, and one with fresh fruits, on Whimsy’s side.

  Whimsy pretended she couldn’t hear Earnest ask her to pass the bowl.

  Cadence probably literally couldn’t hear Earnest’s plea, sitting next to Whimsy at the head of the table and being partially deaf besides.

  Earnest gave in and ate his salad without any fruit on it.

  Dalliance stood up, walked around the table, and served himself from over her plate.

  Earnest had tried similar once, and she’d bitten him. It’d been years and years, but still.

  Girls hate being mocked for biting other people.

  “Dalliance,” said the patriarch.

  He didn’t have to get loud, despite not hearing well. People would get quiet.

  “Why are you out of your seat?”

  “Whimsy’s arms aren’t long enough to reach the fruit salad and Earnest wasn’t going to get any. I know what you always tell us about hospitality.”

  Dalliance was enjoying the fitful favor of a man whose ultimatum had been met, for now. He’d received a backhanded blow to the face upon coming home, but had born up under it—proof of two Grit, by the word of his Da.

  His Da, who used to go into a room with a high value prisoner and leave with actionable intel, who knew exactly how hard a slap a pre-teen’s bones should be able to handle un-augmented.

  Earnest had seen the bruise and pursed his lips, but said nothing. They both knew why the King’s Collegiate scholarship was the path out, for Dalliance.

  The patriarch inclined his head slightly, and Dalliance withdrew, dumping half his strawberries on his friend’s plate.

  Point made.