The frontier town wasn't much — a few hundred buildings huddled against the last stretch of the kingdom's road, the kind of place that existed because borders need somewhere to put the people who cross them. After hours of moving by back roads and hiding the wagon behind treelines whenever hooves sounded in the distance, it looked, to all five of them, like the most beautiful city ever built.
They went in on foot, hoods up, the merchant's wagon stashed at a stable on the edge of town. Five travelers in cloaks drew exactly as much attention as they wanted to draw, which was none, in a place that saw a hundred cloaked travelers a day.
"You're holding it wrong." Kanary said it without looking, watching Ebony test the balance of a dagger at a weapons stall.
"I'm holding it the way a person holds it before they decide whether it's worth buying."
