As Niala lay in the Wayman's guest bed after a full day of shopping, trying to think back on the last 48 bells, she realized that she didn't really understand what had happened.

  Oh, sure, in a conceptual sense, she could parse the events on a timeline and describe each one as they lead into another.

  But on a grander, cosmic scale? It was all nonsense, like a fantasy story.

  How did she, probably the one person in the entire top half of the kingdom who could brew Kwiller anti-venom, end up meeting the one person who needed it?

  And not only that, but meet them at the single possible lowest point in her life, as she was being thrown out with not a bit to her name and no place to stay?

  And them being an absolute pitting hunk and exactly her type? The tall, confident, mysterious and slightly scary-but-only-to-other-people type?

  And then meet them again while having the absolute most cliche moment, both of them saying the exact same thing at the exact same time in the exact same place?

  And them being a pitting magical glowing hunk who could outrun a horse?

  A magical, glowing hunk exactly her type?

  Who was going to help her set up the shop of her dream?

  Yeah, some higher being was playing a joke at her expense.

  She pulled the sheets up to her nose, hiding her blush from... ghosts and spirits and stray eyeballs.

  She hoped the joke wouldn't end. Or that, at the very least, it had a happy punchline...

  The last thing she remembered before falling asleep was riding a blue glowing horse that was farting princes while whispering into her ears as it galloped towards the horizon.

  Their purchases complete, the finalized contracts with Luke signed in triplicate and the Riverwall auto-carriage leaving for Riverwall in the early morning, David and Niala had decided to leave right away and get started with the next steps of their plan.

  The Waymans gave them a hearty pre-dawn breakfast and accompanied them to the auto-carriage station under the retreating cover of the night, including Samuel in a wheelchair being pushed by his big sister. The whole family again piled gratitude on Niala, inviting her to come visit whenever she wanted. Niala once more tried her very best to gracefully accept their heartfelt sentiments, with mixed results, much to David's amusement.

  By the 6th bell, with a packed lunch for the 10 bells trip that Martha dropped on them just before leaving, David and Niala were on the trundling auto-carriage, itself half-full mainly with the adventurous type seeking their fortune up north.

  Niala watched the scenery go by, eventually turning her head towards him. “David, your family, the Wayman, they're not nobles, are they?” She asked.

  He looked at her. “You're asking because we have a family name?”

  She slowly nodded. “At first, I thought you were just a recognized family, like my own, but then I remembered that I'd met and heard of other Waymans before, all the way in Majestic. I was wondering which of the two it was.”

  “Hmm, not really either. You know that Free Courier is a royally-recognized profession, right?”

  “It is? I knew they were pretty important. but...”

  David sighed. “More than important. Stop lumping us with the mailmen.”

  “Ok...”

  “I explained before that Free Couriers are finders. As an organization, they have their roots as a royal retinue from a very long time ago, predating the Amberfall royal family. They had a different name back then, I think it was something like Scourers, and their duties were centred around finding things, a lot like the Free Couriers of today, but reserved for the royal family.”

  Niala was focused on him with ears pointed forward, which he had begun to associate with her being curious or excited about something.

  “To make a very long story rather short, the Scourers were too successful in uncovering things, and it made the noble families nervous that their secrets wouldn't remain secret, so they petitioned, rather forcefully, to have the Scourers released from royal duty and have them recognized as a public service.”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  He scoffed.

  “The motion was passed, and surviving records show that the noble families had grossly underestimated the Scourer's effectiveness.” He smiled. “If you want a good laugh, get a few history books on the downfall of the Herniate dynasty. That was the previous royal family.”

  She frowned. “Why? What happened?”

  “Hmm, it's like this: You have a band of very skilled and dedicated people who have accumulated generations of tools and techniques to find things suddenly released for everyone to use. The secrets that the noble families were afraid would be uncovered?”

  She nodded. “They were uncovered?”

  “Oh yes. All of them. Within months. Historians hesitate to call it a civil war; it was more of a civil circus. The troops were switching sides by the bell as new scandals kept being uncovered, spies and double agents were being revealed daily, and nobody knew who was siding with whom anymore.”

  He snorted. “I remember this one particular event. A noble's son had gathered his most loyal hand-picked troops and marched on his father because it had come out that he had been planning to have his mother killed because she had an affair with a rival noble who was, in actuality, the father's long-lost cousin. As the son burst into his father's study and declared his intention, the father fell backward laughing maniacally so hard he cracked his head on a table's corner and died.”

  He shook his head fondly as he continued retelling the story.

  “The son investigated and found his father had a Scourer report in his hands, which stated that his son had actually been replaced shortly after birth by a no-name peasant by the rival noble family. His true son had been raised as part of their own family, becoming a spy for them, which the false son had ordered executed the day prior, based on a scourer's report. The hand-picked troops, upon reading the letter, immediately beheaded the false son for having been an instrument of noble murder.”

  “The mother walked in on the beheading, saw her dead husband, her troops killing her son, panicked and threw herself out the nearest window. Witnesses assumed she thought the troops had turned renegade and were killing everyone, and had decided to go out on her own instead of facing the dishonour of being killed by commoners.”

  He shook his head. “At the end of all that, the long-lost cousin, upon receiving a copy of all of those reports, asked for his estranged family's corpses to be brought back for proper burial on his family's estate, ending up with a set of family members from their bitter rivals interred in their private burying grounds, next to life-long enemies.”

  Niala stared at him wide-eyed for a moment before slowly half-raising a hand.

  “Hmm?”

  “Who in the bleeding pits recorded all of that history if everyone was dying or being killed? And how do you remember all of that nonsense!?”

  “The Scourers, obviously, and I only remember that particular story because it was so sordid that it made me laugh at the time.”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “Ok, but... what does that all have to do with the Wayman family name?”

  David snapped his fingers. “Oh, your original question. It's simple: Any family that manages a Free Courrier way-station is named Wayman. My father, who manages one such station, is a Wayman, and so are his sons. My brother's family is recognized as a Wayman, but, technically speaking, his wife and children aren't. That's why there are Waymans all over the kingdom. There's no blood relation in most cases.”

  She hesitated. “That all sounds... pointlessly convoluted?”

  David nodded. “It pretty much is. Easier not to think about it. Just remember to pick up history books about the fall of the Herniate dynasty. Those are fun.”

  She kept her gaze on him.

  “What is it?”

  She grinned. “That's the most I've heard you speak so far by a wide margin. Are you secretly a history nerd?”

  “You take that back.” He intoned.

  “What? History nerd?” She asked, tilting her head.

  “I am not.”

  “All signs point to the contrary from where I'm sitting.” She said, grinning wider, ears wiggling.

  “We're not on speaking terms anymore.” He said, diverting his attention back to the scenery outside the auto-carriage.

  “Neeeeerrrddd.” She whispered, starting to poke his belly when he ignored her.

  “Please don't physically abuse me.”

  “No, no, tell me another story! I want to hear more!”

  She kept poking.

  “I'm going to keep poking until you tell me another story!”

  He turned his attention back to her. She was bent forward from the seat across from him to be in poking distance. Before she could react, he leaned forward and whispered forcefully in her ears, “Fine, I'll tell you another story.”

  “GACK!” She recoiled, flattening her ears with her hands and glaring at him.

  “All's fair in war and poking fights.” He declared.

  “Your story better be good or I won't forgive you!” She said, lightly kicking his shin.

  He just smiled.

  Then he told her another story.

  And she listened, the rest of the long trip disappearing underneath his voice.