The guild master's payment came through without further negotiation. I stored everything in my item box and we left the guild building without ceremony.
Medalline's market district was louder than Amlada's. More people, more stalls, more of everything competing for attention at once. Frostina stepped out onto the main street and stopped for a moment, taking it in.
Then she and Torra were gone.
Not far. I could see both of them clearly, moving between stalls with the same energy, pointing at things, picking things up, holding items toward each other for opinions. Frostina had apparently decided that blending in meant behaving exactly like a six year old, which was either very good cover or a complete disaster depending on how the next hour went.
I followed at a distance and kept watch.
The stall owners tried. That much I'd give them. A woman and a small child, well dressed, clearly interested, clearly not from Medalline. The opportunities looked obvious from their side of the counter.
Then they noticed me standing behind the bench. Arms crossed. Looking at them.
Prices adjusted. Smiles became genuine. Nobody pushed anything that wasn't worth what they were asking.
Torra accumulated things quickly. Candied fruit, a small carved figure he held up to show me from across the market, something wrapped in paper that smelled like cinnamon. Frostina matched him item for item, holding her selections with both arms, apparently having decided that shopping was one of the better things humans had invented.
They found a bench and sat down with everything they had collected, completely absorbed in the business of eating.
I stood behind them.
That was when the royal guards appeared.
They came in from three directions, the particular formation of people who have been told someone is dangerous and want to have the geometry right before the conversation starts. Six of them, hands near weapons, eyes on me.
Behind them, moving with the careful urgency of someone who had fetched them, was an old man. Thin. Watchful eyes. The kind of watchful that wasn't curiosity.
"That one." He pointed at me. "He took my coin pouch. I saw him do it when he was standing near the food stalls. He reached right in."
I looked at the old man.
Then I looked at the guards.
Then I went back to watching the market.
"Sir." One of the guards stepped forward. "This man is accusing you of theft. Return the coin pouch and we can resolve this quickly."
I said nothing.
Frostina was working through something with red fruit on top. Torra was telling her something with his mouth full, gesturing at a stall across the way.
"Sir." The guard tried again, louder. "I'm asking you to return what you took. This is your opportunity to resolve the matter peacefully."
The old man behind him was warming up, adding details to his story, gestures expanding, the account becoming more specific and more confident the longer nobody challenged it.
I crossed my arms.
The guard's patience ran its course.
He stepped around the bench and slapped Frostina's hands.
The food went down. The ice cream she had spent twenty minutes in line for hit the ground and stayed there.
Frostina looked at it.
The temperature dropped.
Not gradually. It arrived all at once, the kind of cold that skips discomfort and goes directly to wrong. Every guard in the formation exhaled and saw their breath fog white in the air in front of them. The old man made a small sound.
Frostina was still looking at the ice cream on the ground.
"What did you just do." Her voice had no inflection in it at all. It was the flatness that comes after the decision has already been made.
"You! Whatever you're doing, stop it immediately!" The guard who had struck her stepped back despite himself.
Frostina stood up.
The cold came with her. It pushed outward from where she stood in a steady wave, washing over the guards, over the old man, over every person in the surrounding market who hadn't yet understood that they should be moving away.
Snow started falling. Not the light dusting of early weather. Proper snow, fat and heavy, dropping onto Medalline's streets in a season that didn't have any business producing it.
The old man folded at the knees and sat down hard on the cobblestones, hypothermia working faster on a thin frame.
Torra was already in my arms. I hadn't decided to pick him up. My arms had just done it.
I watched Frostina and didn't move to stop her.
They had started it.
"You lowly humans." She was looking at the guards now, or through them, the ancient part of her that had spent a thousand years being significantly larger and significantly more dangerous than anything around it fully present in her voice. "You slapped my hand." She pointed at the ice cream. "You spilled my ice cream."
The shockwave that followed the last word hit the surrounding windows. Glass came down in sheets, every pane in the immediate area finding the ground at the same moment.
Guards were on their knees. Two of them were trying to draw weapons and couldn't coordinate their hands properly against the cold pressing into their joints.
"Frostina."
She turned.
I was already walking, Torra on my hip, moving in the direction of the ice cream shop with the same pace I used for everything.
"Torra and I will line up again." I said. "He doesn't want you angry."
Frostina looked at Torra.
Torra looked back at her with his honest, uncomplicated face, still holding the carved figure he had bought from the market stall, waiting to see what she decided.
Her expression came apart completely.
She pressed both hands to her face for a moment. When she lowered them her eyes were bright and her composure was entirely rebuilt on a different foundation.
"Okay." She said. Her voice was completely normal. "Okay. Yes. Let's go."
She fell into step beside me, slightly ahead, moving toward the ice cream shop with renewed purpose.
The cold let go of the market immediately. The snow stopped. The temperature climbed back to where it was supposed to be for the season. The guards on the ground stayed there for a moment longer, breathing, getting their hands to work again, trying to reconstruct what had just happened to them.
"There's an archmage." One of them said finally. Teeth still chattering slightly.
"We offended an archmage and her companion." Another one said, the weight of that settling over him visibly. "Over a coin pouch. We didn't even verify the claim."
They turned to look at the old man sitting on the cobblestones.
He looked back at them.
"An archmage." The first guard said again, slowly. "How would an archmage's companion steal from-" He stopped. Looked at the old man's clothing. Looked at ours. Looked at the ice cream on the ground that had started a diplomatic incident. "How would they steal anything."
The old man opened his mouth.
"Take him." The guard said.
They pulled the old man up and marched him away with the focused energy of people redirecting their own mistakes into someone else's problem.
Ahead of me, Frostina had reached the ice cream shop and was already assessing the queue with competitive focus.
"It's long." She reported.
"I can see that." I said.
"We should have come here first before the guild."
"We needed money before we could buy anything."
She considered this. "Fair point." She conceded, and took her place in line.
Torra wriggled down from my arms and stood beside her, both of them looking at the display of flavors through the shop window with the shared concentration of people facing an important decision.
I stood behind them.
The line moved at its own pace and neither Frostina nor Torra showed any sign of minding.
Behind us, the market was quietly reassembling itself. Stall owners checking their windows, sweeping glass, propping up displays that had shifted in the shockwave. Conversations had resumed. Medalline's market district was experienced enough with unusual events to get back to business without requiring a full explanation of what had just occurred.
Two of the six guards appeared at the edge of my peripheral vision.
They weren't approaching with their hands near their weapons this time. They were approaching with the carefully neutral posture of people who had made a significant error in judgment and were now trying to reframe it into something that worked in their favor.
"Sir." The taller one stopped a respectful distance away. "We'd like to formally invite you and your companions to serve as witnesses against the man who made the false accusation. For the record. Official testimony."
I looked at them.
They held the look with professional composure, but underneath it the calculation was obvious. Archmage-level magic in the middle of Medalline's market district. A woman who dropped the temperature of an entire city block over spilled ice cream. They wanted a name. An affiliation. Something to bring back.
"We're busy." I said, and turned back to the line.