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“Listen, boy! We are the lawful tax collectors for the city.” he spread his hands as though it made him more impressive. “THIS city, in point of fact. You will PAY or we will SHUT YOU DOWN, is that clear?”

“I find it more likely that you are confolk, looking to trick the newly minted shopkeep.”

“How dare you!” the woman belted out. “This is...”

“I don’t care.” I said. “I don’t care who you say you are. My papers,” I held them up, “identify me as Theodore Omnifex. They further indicate that I only manage this shop, and that the owner, whom you should be approaching for any legal taxes, is the Lady Theresa Mockingthrush.”

His face had turned an unhealthy shade of red. “I have never...”

“I AM NOT DONE!” I screamed at him. “Your papers, if you are whom you say, clearly indicate your name, your profession, and WILL show a tax collector’s mark. So if either of you have those...”

“Like all loyalists to the city, we burned those foul booklets.” the woman said.

I blinked, and sighed.

.....

“You may pay now, or when I return with a squadron of the town militia in tow.” the man declared.

“Please do so.” I said. “It will prove that at least the guards believe you are whom you say.”

“The cheek!” he exclaimed, “The sheer cheek of the man! There’s a place in the salt mines for YOU, boy!”

“Do you know the advantage of having an open window without a pane of glass in it?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t dare. My name is... BWAAAAAaaa...”

I threw him as gently as I could, but cobblestones aren’t named such because they are made of feathers and down.

The woman looked at me with her lips hanging open. “That was poorly decided, shopkeep.”

I clenched and unclenched my fists. “If you are further posturing and delaying my customers...”

She waved a hand. “The lord will never forgive you, and I see no reason to, either. How DARE you collaborate with...”

She took a step backward as I advanced, and then turned to walk briskly to her...

No, didn’t care. It was the third group of official tax collectors for the city to pass through, and the week wasn’t even over yet.

I was irritated because I’d taken in three lambs, knowing them to be sickly. Their fevers were gone, but it would be two days, at least, before I could sell them. Each of them had a healthy appetite, and they gluttonously devoured bales of hay that I had been hoping to ingest myself.

But that crankiness aside, it was shaping up to be an excellent day. I’d met a contact in the farmer’s market, and she was willing to take all manner of perishable food. I’d be surprised if more than half of the food on the carts I dispatched made it to her, and she paid a pittance for the food she received, but she paid in coins.

I’d be surprised if I got my fair share of those back. I know that I shouldn’t begrudge my urchins the purchase of a shirt, or a pair of pants. And YES, MY urchins. Those I’d found I could depend on, at any rate.

I’d formed them into ‘fake families’, little more than gangs, really. If you could have gangs without weapons or crime. They had a tendency to pick up levels in Street Rat, Urban Scavenger, and similar unwholesome names.

Ugh! But the woman had the right of it, making them CARRY papers, much less the arguments required for them to report to the army to get them in the first place... it was like trying to convince kobolds not to eat their birds raw, feathers and all.

Like trying to convince the town’s population of tricksters, frauds, and cheats to just leave me and my store alone. It was like they were drawn by the scent of coin. They tried things such as selling me watered-down milk, or silverware stolen from their neighbors. It was the sort of thing that I was absolutely supposed to ignore, passing along any losses to future customers.

Three guesses how I expected THAT to work out.

Yet they kept coming back, thinking that a wig or a different accent was going to hide their smell from me. Or... maybe it did work, on people with normal human senses. I found myself... bored by them. Oh, they came up with interesting and compelling stories, that much I can’t deny.

Speaking of stories, I’d asked Mattie Hawkwing why the army was mobilizing to head south for a siege of Narrow Valley if they’d already taken it.

“How am I supposed to know?” she asked. “Must have been a rebellion, or something.”

And that was when I became aware of the end of my time in Whitehill; four of the hobgoblin soldiers had parked a wagon in front of the store. Two made a beeline for me; the other two began boxing up anything that didn’t resemble trash, starting with the jewelry display.

“Sergeant,” I asked, “what’s going on?”

Without a word, Mattie looped around a low table and swooped out the exit.

“Papers.” the sergeant said, in highly accented Achean.

He didn’t look at them for long before handing them to the private next to him.

“Welcome to the army and to the faith, Mister Omnifex.”

“I... what?”

He handed me a scroll, saying “You are now and for the remainder of your life a member of the Covenant of Thorns, and a member of Second Quartermaster until such time as the army no longer has need of your services. You will be issued a copy of the Ballads of Loki, and you are advised to study and memorize them. Help us load the cart, Private Omnifex.”

I blinked. “That must be some mistake.” I said.

“Dead or alive, private, you are coming with us.” he deadpanned. “You will serve your new position, or die. You shall practice the one true religion, or die. In fact, whenever I open my mouth to speak at you, presume there’s an ‘or die’ at the end of everything. Now, pack up everything of use to an army from this store.”

He glared at me. “What do you think you are doing?”

“Creating a list of everything we take so that we can properly assess and compensate the owner.” I said.

“Ignite.” he said, disposing of my list. “Look, I realize this is happening quickly, but do try to keep up. You. Do not. Work for her. You work for us. Private, show him the necktie.”

Grinning like a hunting cat, he drew out...

“A slave collar?” I asked.

“Look, I can either put you into a grey and silver uniform, such as the fashionable wear my lads and I are wearing, or you can go naked except for that around your neck. Or, as I’ve stated, you can go naked with your heart cut out and eaten.”

I blinked. “Eaten.”

“It’s not cannibalism if they aren’t proper people.” one of the other privates said, chuckling at his own cleverness.”

I sighed. “Those are the only options you’ll allow?” I asked.

“Sergeant, he’s thinking of running.” the private said, unlocking the collar.

“I don’t care what you THINK of, private.” he said. “So long as you obey and cause no problems. Before you try jumping out the window and running, though, please consider that I already know your Might is rating five.”

“How could you possibly know that?” I asked.

“My reticule identifies your Might as better than my own; humans max out at five Might; it’s the only rating that makes sense. So yes, we know you can run like a horse or a hunting hound. So the question you need to ask is: where are my other seven squad-mates?”

Someone behind me cleared her throat. “The other six, he means. If you’re even half as clever as you thought, you knew one of us was behind you.”

She tapped my spine gently with a hex-flanged mace. She made an appreciative purr. “Second level skin, sir.”

“You’re shitting me.” he said. “What armor rating does that give him?”

“None.” I admitted.

She nodded at him. “We could force him to toughen up by say, hitting him a lot every day. It’ll be quicker just to throw him in armor.”

“Not our orders.” the sergeant said. “And not his... yet.”

She shrugged, and stepped back out of my cone of vision.

If they knew my Might score, did they have a sense of the others? My Agility, my Valor? My odds of escaping went down sharply if they could plan for those.

And... did I want to escape? Inside an army’s supply train seemed like a pretty good place to know what they were doing.

“Give me the uniform.” I said. “Do I address you as sergeant, or as a brother in the faith?”

“Sergeant, everyone alive is a brother of the faith.”

“And the Kamajeen?” I asked

“Every person who will be alive at the end of this war is or will join of the faith.”

I know, I know. It was a strain upon my Lifeshaper abilities, and I was dealing too much with disease lately. I’d already unlocked a title called Twelve Plagues, which, like all titles, could be improved to give bonuses.