“My mother sold it a very long time ago.”

  “You know where?”

  “A company creditor, I imagine. She made a living in the ironworks. I was twelve or thirteen, then. Fifty-three years on, now. In the summer. I remember the sound of the cicadas.”

  “Could I speak—” Nev stopped himself. He knew better than to ask, but it slipped out sometimes, his assumption that everyone lived forever.

  “She passed some years ago.” The woman’s attention shifted. She seemed to re-evaluate him.

  I’ve shown my hand, he thought. She knows.

  “You should speak with my granddaughter,” she said, flicking her gaze up to the squawking bird in the drain. “She is very good at finding things.”

  “It’s all right, I—”

  “Nice young man like you. This is a very dangerous place, you understand? She could help you. You may not look foreign, but your accent is archaic, and you are … odd.”

  “Perhaps I’m not as nice as I look.”

  “I very much doubt that.”

  Nev stood. He unloaded a few more stones from the alpaca’s saddlebag. “Thank you for your help.”

  “Give me your map,” she said. “I can show you where my granddaughter is.” She peered at the angle of the sun. “Yes, this time of day I know where she’ll be.”

  “That’s kind,” he said, “but I really do prefer to work alone.”

  The old woman tugged at the map, though, pulling it from the table before he could snatch it up. She traced a section of the city about a half a mile back down the other side of the city right up along the riverfront. “The Wandering Eye,” she said and chuckled. “That’s where she’ll be. Ask for Mezelda.”

  “Thank you.” Nev tucked the map back into his pocket. He hurried away, dropping his gaze, not wanting to look back.

  But she spoke again, a line from a very old tune, one he had had long ago tried to banish from his memory:

  Come little Jini in your flying machine

  Come across the waves with me

  Those golden waves, Jini

  Those golden waves.

  Nev glanced back, just the once. Met her look. Tipped his hat and then he and the alpaca were back in the square, drifting among the other residents, trudging deeper and deeper through the maze, the map forgotten, wanting only to disappear into the twisting labyrinth of Avarise forever.

  Nev went down to the ironworks first. The pawnbroker there was young; he asked after the former proprietor and celebrated his luck when the girl trotted into the back and came out with her mother. When he presented the stone, the old woman did not recall it, but her records went back a hundred years, she said, and for a few bronze rings she put her daughter to work combing through the records from fifty-three years prior, in the summer months.

  The girl brought out the big book and after reading a dozen pages, found the entry he sought.

  “Oh yes, this family,” the old woman said. “The wizards. I didn’t realize that stone sat here so long. Bad buy, bad buy. Fifty years to turn around a trinket! Terrible.”

  “Wizards?”

  “Yes. I remember her, Bafasa Mundi. She came looking for a good luck stone. The green crystal soothed her. It was for her son. I recall her because they left the city a few months ago after their youngest passed the wizard trials and well … he was chosen for temple work. And you know what happens to children, especially boy children, chosen for such a fate.”

  Nev did not. “Do you know where they went?”

  “No, no. I’m sure no one does. They left in the middle of the night. The fewer they told, the better their chances of escape. A shame, really.”

  Nev thanked them for the help and wrote Bafasa Mundi on the back of his map. As he did, his gaze went to the tavern along the waterfront. The Wandering Eye. It was true that he did not know these people, and they had no reason to trust him. He was also almost out of volcanic glass and bronze rings. Too much more of this and he would be broke and no closer to the stone than when he started.

  He reasoned that if it was difficult for him to find the stone, it would be equally difficult for the Body Mercenary Guild. Perhaps he was being overly anxious. Overly cautious. But it was this extra care that had ensured his freedom and survival over these many long decades. To turn away now …

  Nev sighed and patted his alpaca. “Long way to come for nothing, right?”

  The alpaca hummed.

  They began the long way down to the water.

  The wharf smelled of copper and death, a combination that Nev had not yet encountered. The churning gray waters carried detritus from upstream; broken trees, dead animals, silt runoff, but from the smell, less sewage than he would have suspected. Avarise lay close enough to the headwaters that it was the first major city on the river’s wending path.

  The Wandering Eye lay furthest upstream, closest to the boat docks.

  Nev’s body was not terribly tall, but he had to stoop to enter the low doorway. He removed his hat. Inside, darkness, and the cloying stink of old sweat and cheap spilled beer. Beneath that, the whiff of aged cedar and hardened leather. Outside was hot; inside was much hotter, almost unbearable.

  Three women collected at a table in the back. A barkeep spoke in low tones to a patron at the smooth cedar plank of the bar. Sounds of raucous laughing in the back could have been the cook staff or a gambling den.

  Nev kept his head down and went to the bar, asked the beefy barkeep, “Excuse me? I’m looking for Mezelda?”

  The barkeep rolled her eyes. Jerked her thumb at the hefty, heavy-lidded woman she spoke to. The woman bent over a gravy-soaked potato dish and what remained of a thick, frothy black beer.

  “Good to know you have my back if the dock patrol comes calling,” the woman said, wiping her face on her sleeve. Her voice was rich and smoky; it put Nev in mind of another mercenary he once knew, long dead on the same field that had nearly claimed him.

  “He’s definitely not dock patrol,” the barkeep said and laughed. The table in the back called for another round. She went to the tap to satisfy them.

  “Mezelda, I’m Nev. Your grandmother said you find people. Things.” Nev guessed Mezelda was in her late thirties, maybe early forties. He had found it difficult to judge the ages of those from cultures he was not yet accustomed to. It wasn’t so much that the age markers differed, it was that the way bodies aged was so intrinsically tied to their lineage, their daily work, their habits, and above all, their environments.

  “Mez,” she said. “Nobody calls me Mezelda but Grandma. You have money?”

  “I have some volcanic glass, a few bronze—”

  Mez held up her hand. “Forget it.”

  “Surely there’s some other—”

  Mez nodded at the noise from the back. “Tell you what. Beat me at a game of cards, I’ll hear your sob story. I win, I clean you out.”

  “This … does not seem like a deal a sane man would take. Thank you for your time.”

  Nev put his hat back on and trudged to the door.

  “Who you looking for?” Mez called.

  “A boy. A wizard. His family left here some time ago. He has something I’m looking for. Your grandmother had it at one time, but her mother pawned it away. She said you could help.”

  “Why ask for my help? Do you not like wizards?

  “They’re fine.”

  “So you don’t like children?”

  When pressed, he always preferred honesty. Fewer things to remember. “I’m never certain how to treat them. Many parents take offense if I speak to a child as I would an adult. Should I treat a child as half-human? Part animal? Does the percentage of their humanity change based on age? Is there a sliding scale?”

  “I find children amusing.” Mez gulped her beer. “I once told my nephew that griffins weren’t extinct, just nocturnal. He loudly proclaimed this fact to his professor. It delighted me to no end.”

  “You must have lost his trust.”

  “I taught him critical thinking. He was, like, four.”

  “You taught him adults are liars.”

  “Is that untrue? Now he asks for a second opinion when I tell him anything. How many kids just believe whatever nonsense their Aunt Edna spouted off after she heard it from a grocer? The world would be a better place if we all questioned our elders more.”

  “You advocate for disrespect?”

  “Who do you think I am? A priest?”

  “I … need to find someone else. You aren’t the right person for this.”

  She chomped a hunk of potato; a bit of gravy leaked out the side of her mouth. “Figured,” she mumbled around the potato. “Grandma sends me particular kinds of people.” Her gaze narrowed; black eyes, long lashes. Like her grandmother, she seemed to see through him. I’m being paranoid, Nev thought.

  “I’m not keen on games,” Nev said.

  “And I’m not keen on working with someone I don’t know.”

  “I prefer my independence as well.”

  “Independence rarely gets me paid. Come out back.”

  He followed her to a scuffed table out on the patio. Here, it was cooler; a blessed breeze came in off the boiling river below. Mez set out a deck of cards—already a bad sign. Playing with her deck meant it was likely marked. Did he look so young that she thought he would fall for that? Young, a foreigner … maybe so.

  But he sat across from her anyhow. Placed his hat on his knee.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she said, dealing out the cards. The deck was familiar. The game, he suspected, was Five-Card Shot. When she placed a single card face up between them, it confirmed his guess, but he demurred.

  “What are we playing?” he said. “I admit I don’t have a head for cards. I’ll need the rules.”

  She told him the basic rules in a breezy tone, deftly dealing the cards. He knew to lose his first hand. He won the second two.

  “You’re not from here,” she said, leaning back in her seat, hands behind her head as he lay his winning hand face up.

  “Just luck.”

  “You are a poor liar.”

  “Am I?”

  “Kid’s name?”

  “The mother is Bafasa Mundi. But it’s less a person I’m looking for and more of a thing. Is that all right?

  “Same.”

  “But—”

  “Things are generally either carried, lost, or hidden by people. It’s one and the same. Lots of trophies taken during the war. I’m wondering—we looking for something that got stolen from you, or for a trophy you stole from someone else?”

  “… yes?”

  “You from Moronov?”

  “Yes.”

  “And all you got outside is that alpaca with the rocks?”

  That impressed him. He assumed she had not seen the alpaca let alone had the time to see what he carried. But if she knew he carried the glass, she would know he was from Moronov. And, of course, her grandmother had wanted the glass. Mez would have known that.

  “Are you a wizard?” he said.

  She collected her cards.

  “I just wonder what kind of person walks five hundred miles from Moronov carrying just a few bronze rings, some rocks, and maybe a local script for a bank? You better have a script for a bank.”

  “What kind of person gets into retrieving people?”

  “Are we going to go visit this kid wizard or what?”

  “Don’t you have to find him first?”

  “I know where the Mundis are.”

  Nev crossed his arms. Of course. “So you just thought I’d be an easy mark for cards? An easy day’s pay for you.”

  “Not really,” she said. “They’re dead.”

  That eerie yellow field of his youth, smeared in red. Blood always looked more watery than Nev expected. And there, again—the girl’s voice. High and melodic, surreal in its perfection because she was clearly so young.

  He raised his head from the prickly pillow of grass, knowing this was among his last breaths, terrified to consider how many more he would see. Saw two small brown feet, toes curled in the bloody field. She was only four or five years old.

  She wore a tattered blue shift. Her hair was coiled back from her head in braids coming loose at the ends. She was unharmed. Unblemished. Smooth, perfect skin. All her fingers and toes. Bright, glassy eyes.

  Five years old. The age he had been when he found out what he was. He had worn a tattered shift just like this, already begging his mother for men’s pants and wearing his brother’s hats into town. They told him he was a fool, back then, told him he was a she, that being born into that body came with its privileges and he should be happy with his place in the world. He knew. But it never sat well with him.

  And here, again—a young girl. A new, fresh body. A new start. As if the universe were offering her to him, as if he could start again.

  He lay gasping like a fish as he bled out, reaching for the girl. He rasped, “Help me. Please. Please help me.”

  All he needed to do was get his hands around her throat. End her life cleanly, swiftly, before his expired, and then move his soul from his body to hers. And then he would be free. He could get far in her form. No one would notice another dirty, tattered child in the streets of the big cities, some refugee from the country fleeing the war. He would be vulnerable for a time, perhaps, until he found another form, but he would take any body now for one more breath. No matter the price.

  The logical thing to do was to kill the child and inhabit her body. It’s what the guild had taught him to do. We all die. Few were so privileged to see their bodies inhabited again once their spirits had passed over. He was going to do her a favor, truly.

  “Are you dying?” the little girl said.

  “Yes.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Yes. What are you called?”

  She leaned closer.

  He snatched her wrist. Dragged her to the bloody field beside him. Her face was so close he felt the heat of it; her dark eyes went so wide he felt he would fall into them.

  Take her. Wring her neck. Steal her body. Do it, Nev. You have done it a thousand times before. You will do it a thousand times again.

  Nev walked a step behind Mez, leading his alpaca. The way to the graves of the Mundi family was a day’s walk and Mez had insisted on loading the alpaca with beer, musty blocks of cheese, and a fried meat product of some kind that she called jerky.

  The family had been killed just outside the next town, a little hamlet called Fortezia. Nev knew the name from his map but had never been there. The road turned quickly from paving stones to dirt, but at least the rutted way was dry. Mez insisted on taking side paths several times, muttering darkly about bandits. He had encountered none since crossing the border into this country, but he did not argue.

  “You have a name for it?” she asked as they came over a wooded ridge and back onto the proper road.

  “Hm? The alpaca? I call her … Alpaca.”

  “How can you call her the same name as any other alpaca?”

  “She answers to it.”

  “Hardly creative.”

  “Creativity doesn’t improve the experience in any way. A woman called Mag is no different if she is called Magoransa. Same woman.”

  “I’d disagree, obviously. Good dig, though. You wouldn’t just call her, hey … Human!”

  “Not if she preferred another name, no. That would be rude. Would it not, Mez?”

  “But alpaca—”

  “She hasn’t told me her name. I would be happy to use it if she had. Do you know it?”

  “Now you are being didactic.”

  “Only honest.”

  They huffed along for a while longer. Mez clearly struggled more than he did. He suspected she was spending most of her time sitting around playing cards in taverns and a lot less doing the leg work required to find people. Perhaps she had people for that. Despite her imposing form, he suspected he could outrun her easily. Wit and speed and his peculiar talent had always been his most effective weapons.

  “You said your nephew.”

  “What?” She narrowed her eyes.

  “The child,” Nev said. “The one you lied to. Do you not have any children?”

  “No. And you must not either. Well, not any you actually hang out with.”

  “I don’t think I do,” he said. “It’s been—” and he had to close his mouth because though his face was that of a man who might have been in his mid-twenties, he could not clearly remember the last time he’d had sex. Four decades ago? Six? Before the war, certainly. He had spent long stretches of peaceful time in cities before, a year here, a year there. They were pleasant enough times while they lasted. But as time went on he found he was more comfortable traveling alone. Fewer questions. Fewer emotions.

  Mez crooked her mouth. “Don’t tell me you can’t remember?”

  “Perhaps I can’t.”

  “Remind me to give you a drink. See if that kicks anything loose.”

  They spent the night at a way house. He insisted on sleeping outside, but she offered to share a room. “For the trickery on my part,” she said. “This is a favor more than a job. Though you’re still paying me what’s left of that volcanic glass.”

  Nev liked to think he was good at reading people after all this time. It’s why when she offered him a beer he pretended to drink it, and when she began pulling at him to dance with her and sing bawdy songs, he said he needed to find an outhouse and instead went to the barn, untethered his alpaca, and drifted back onto the road. He didn’t mind her company, but he had yet to relish it, and it was always a good idea to move quickly before one transformed into the other.

  The stars were out; the night was blessedly clear. The great gory constellations and massive swirling nebulas gave him enough light to get by. He abruptly turned off the road at the first path he found and continued despite his alpaca’s annoyed humming.

  “She’s drunk,” he said, thumping the alpaca’s cream-colored neck. “One turn enough will deceive her.” He was uncertain if that was true, but it sounded well enough there in the dark. It sounded so good that when the alpaca stopped, twitching her ears, he thought there must be some predator in the dark; it certainly couldn’t be Mez.