Stepping away from the tavern, Alric realised he’d seen all he needed to see of the marketplace. Once again, he found himself standing in the city with no plan. At least this time, no guard was shouting at him.
He sighed and looked around. Down the main road, some distance away, the city wall was visible. That would do. Time to at least get a vague idea of this place. If he could find the wall, he could find a gate, and if he could find a gate, he could find his way back to the inn.
Setting off, he turned his thoughts back to the market and what it implied. It was clearly a retail space. If he wanted to do anything serious, he would need wholesale. The merchant had been explicit. Wholesalers dealt only with businesses and nobles, their guild licence enforcing it. Alric frowned, deciding he would need to speak to them again once the armour was sold.
He shifted his attention to the people around him as he walked. Some carried swords openly, worn on belts or simple harnesses. Anyone in a cloak was given a noticeably wider berth. Most people were dressed much like him, tunic, trousers, boots, but a few wore leather armour, often reinforced with small metal plates, usually at the shoulders.
He passed a group seated outside a tavern, unmistakably adventurers. They lounged easily, gear close at hand. The building behind them was larger and cleaner than the rest of the street, standing out without trying to. Alric did not slow.
When he reached the wall, he spotted the gate far off to his right. Rather than strike out into unfamiliar streets, he turned and headed toward it, keeping to ground that still felt readable.
He noticed then that more people were leaving the city than entering it. That seemed backwards. Morning traffic flowing out, evening traffic flowing in.
He frowned slightly as he walked.
Farmland outside the walls, maybe?
He passed the gate, realising he fit into the crowd far better than he had the day before. The trick, it seemed, was to keep moving and to look everywhere, all at once, all the time. To reinforce the point, he dodged a cart pulled by a horse, immediately followed by a handcart that nearly rode straight over him.
He withdrew his previous assessment of his performance with a quiet sigh.
He noticed that people walked a little strangely. Their stance was wider, legs set apart rather than close together, like something out of an old western. The thought made him frown. So many things here simply didn’t make sense.
Eventually the roads improved. They grew wider, the traffic thinned, and the clothing around him became noticeably more colourful. He paused at a fork in the road, careful to step aside this time.
To his left lay the warehouses and docks.
To his right, Merchants’ Row and the Nob Bridge, as the locals called it.
He shrugged and turned toward the docks.
He entered what could only be described as the warehouse district. Large buildings stood with enough space between them for carts to manoeuvre, many shaped like broad U’s around open yards. Several had their own wells. The smell was unmistakably horse.
It worsened the closer he got to the docks.
Near the water, he passed a soup seller calling out fish soup. Something about it struck him as odd when he glanced over. It seemed a strange hour for soup.
The docks themselves were less glorious than he had hoped. He had expected ships. What he found instead were barges, large ones, and closer in, little more than rafts. He watched one push off, guided by men with long poles and the slow pull of the current. Another was being hauled back toward shore, oxen walking the bank while men leaned on poles to keep it from scraping itself to pieces.
He stood for a moment, watching it all, recalibrating his expectations yet again. Then he moved through the dockyard, attempting to stay out of the way of the constant movement and failing at it with impressive consistency.
Deciding this was getting him nowhere, he turned back.
He passed the soup seller again. He was closer this time, and that was when it clicked. He slowed, half turning as the thought landed, and nearly walked straight into three people in quick succession.
Muttering an apology, he stepped aside and turned fully toward the stall.
“You want some soup, mister?” the seller called cheerfully. “Fresh. Fish caught this morning.”
“Could you tell me what that is?” Alric asked, pointing.
The pot floated in midair. Beneath it sat a flat, red crystal, suspended under the stand and radiating a visible heat haze.
“Buy a cup and I’ll tell you,” the seller said with a smirk.
Alric rolled his eyes and handed over a small copper.
The seller grinned. He took a small wooden tankard and, with a ladle, measured out exactly one scoop of soup.
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“One ladle for a small,” he said brightly, passing it over.
Alric barely acknowledged the soup. The pot hadn’t shifted at all when the ladle entered it.
“I get asked a lot,” the seller said, following Alric’s gaze. “It’s a magic stone. Keeps the soup hot.”
“I see,” Alric said. “I don’t, but how does it work?”
He lifted the tankard and sniffed cautiously, still undecided about drinking it.
“You touch it, it gets hot,” the seller explained. “If you touch it too much, it makes you really tired. If you touch it here, it won’t burn you.” He crouched slightly and pointed beneath the stand, to the underside of the stone.
“Then why does the pot float?” Alric asked.
“Oh, that?” The seller chuckled. “That’s not magic. That’s just this.”
He shifted aside, revealing a simple metal stand holding the pot aloft, previously hidden from Alric’s angle.
“Any idea why it makes people tired?”
The seller shrugged.
“Could it boil water?”
Another shrug.
“Where do you buy them?”
The seller hesitated.
Alric raised the tankard slightly, not threateningly, just enough to remind him the question had been paid for.
“I don’t really know,” the seller admitted. “This stand isn’t mine. I just work here. Even my boss wouldn’t know, I think.” He scratched his cheek. “I remember someone complaining when one broke. Said you had to go to the noble quarter to replace it.”
He shrugged again, smaller this time.
“Sorry, friend. That’s all I know.”
“Noble quarter, you say?” Alric nodded. “Thanks.”
He handed the cup back untouched. He did not trust his constitution with that soup, and the inn’s latrine had not inspired confidence.
With nothing else to be gained here, he turned toward Merchants’ Row and the Nobles’ Bridge. There would be rules, paperwork, or some other administrative irritation waiting for him, he was sure, but a stone you could touch to boil water was not something he could ignore.
As he walked, the buildings shifted subtly. The merchant houses grew cleaner, taller, more deliberate in their construction. By the time he reached the bridge, the guards stationed there were clearly a different class from the gate guards. Better armour. Better weapons. Even to his untrained eye, the difference was obvious.
He approached the one who looked the most bored.
“Your business in the noble quarter?” the guard asked, tone flat. His gaze swept over Alric’s clothes, pausing, as always, on his boots.
Alric was beginning to suspect the boots had their own reputation.
“I need to visit the magic shop,” he said, a little unsure how that would land.
“Proof?” the guard replied, stifling a yawn.
Alric hesitated for half a heartbeat, then shrugged.
He raised his hand. The familiar sensation followed as the item box formed. A moment later, the bag of grain he’d purchased earlier dropped heavily onto the stone at his feet.
It slumped sideways slightly, folding in on itself as though judging him.
Alric stared at it, then sighed and pulled it back into the item box.
When he looked up again, the guards had straightened. One of them had shifted a step back without quite realising he’d done it.
“Right,” the bored guard said, no longer bored. “Go across the bridge, through the gate. The shop’s on your left, not far in.”
He paused. “That’s as far as you go.”
Alric nodded. “Understood.”
As he began crossing the bridge, the guards watched him with open wariness. He couldn’t help feeling faintly smug. This was the first time since arriving that he hadn’t had to jump through hoops. No negotiations. Just allowed.
He found his step lightening as he walked.
The river slid lazily beneath the bridge, broad and brown, carrying the slow weight of the city with it. On the nobles’ side, high stone walls rose close to the water, offering nothing to look at and clearly intended that way. On the common side, the city sprawled far farther than he’d realised, stretching along the riverbank until distance swallowed detail. He had no sense of how many people lived there, only that it was far more than he’d first imagined.
Guards were stationed at regular intervals along the bridge, most of them staring out over the water as though expecting it to do something sudden and unpleasant. Each one glanced at him as he passed, their eyes moving quickly over his clothes and, inevitably, lingering on his boots.
Alric sighed inwardly.
The crossing ended quickly. A large gatehouse stood on the far side, but no one attempted to stop him. He simply walked through. Alric tried not to let his perplexity show.
The change beyond the bridge was immediate, but not in the way he’d expected.
There were no sprawling estates. No private gardens spilling over walls. No sense of excess space being flaunted for its own sake. Instead, everything felt compressed into intention.
The streets were wider and better laid, the stone fitted cleanly enough that carts rolled smoothly without rattling apart beneath them. Buildings rose taller rather than broader, their upper floors neatly aligned instead of leaning out at odd angles. Windows were glassed as a rule, not a luxury, and shutters actually matched one another. Paint appeared here and there, muted but deliberate, refreshed before it had fully surrendered to weather.
There were fewer people, but those who walked did so with purpose. Servants moved briskly in small groups, carrying parcels or ledgers rather than baskets. A carriage passed without forcing anyone to scramble aside, the street already built to accommodate it. Even the noise was different, present but controlled, as though raised voices were something that happened indoors.
What struck Alric most was the absence of improvisation. No stalls tucked into doorways. No blankets spread on the ground. No one squatting where a wall briefly allowed it. Space here was assigned, not negotiated.
It wasn’t wealth on display so much as order, the kind that came from people who could afford to decide how a place should function and then make it stay that way.
For the first time since arriving in the city, Alric felt like he was somewhere that had been planned.
Ahead, only one building truly claimed the street. It sat squarely against it, broader than its neighbours, its frontage unbroken by shops or displays. Above the door, a sign read Magery, the lettering rendered in the same disjointed fonts he’d seen elsewhere, each word tugging his gaze in a slightly different direction.
Alric frowned at it for a moment, then stepped closer. He knocked before opening the door.
Sometime later, two guards stood a short distance away, speaking in low voices.
“You’re saying he just produced a bag of grain out of thin air?” the senior guard asked, his tone flat but attentive.
“Yes, sir,” the younger guard replied. “There was a black thing in his hand as well.” He hesitated. “Didn’t look natural.”
The older man nodded once. “Item box, then. Mages have tricks like that.” He paused. “Did you get a name?”
The guard shook his head. “No, sir.”
“Well,” the superior said after a moment, “he didn’t cause trouble, and that counts for something.” He adjusted his stance. “If he comes back, at least get a name so we can figure out who he’s registered to.”
“Yes, sir.”
The subordinate turned and left, while the older guard remained where he was, gaze drifting back toward the bridge, thoughtful now before boredom reclaimed it.
