02/25/2025 Snippet, JUDITH STORMCROW AND THE FLIM-FLAM MAN.

Town!

They had a couple of days where Judith could tell herself that things had gotten settled with the Death-Seekers. Gods didn’t always pay attention to what their cultists did. When they did pay attention, a lot of times they didn’t even care. And even if they did care, Judith could hope that it’d be a god versus god thing. Spiders eat a few helpless cultists alive, cultists go burn out a few spider-lairs, everybody else could go on with their own business. That was religion at its best, in the Twenty Realms.

Speaking of their own business, it wasn’t like the Fancy Britches were just strolling along without a care, here. This part of the Realms wasn’t nearly as bad as some places. There were plenty of towns where a caravan could pull in and safely stay the night, with nothing worse than watery beer and overpriced suppers to worry about. But there were plenty of towns where you kept your crossbow cocked, or laid out the first black-toothed son-of-a-bitch who looked at you funny. You didn’t always know when one kind of town had switched to the other, either.

Willy’s Mess was supposed to be the first kind, but Judith wasn’t really sure how much longer that’d last. There were more layabouts on the street this visit; the kind that could work, but didn’t. Or, rather, the kind who had a different idea of what ‘work’ looked like. “Pass the word,” she told Barry as the crew set up a perimeter in the trade paddock. “Groups of three, and don’t flash coin around. We’re not buying anything we can’t check on the spot, either.”

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