Jane had hoped she was done with the whole sore-feet aspect of travel.

  The last year had involved her walking about half the distance from the capital to her new home in Glenfall, tromping endless miles around that town’s cobbled streets to visit friends, hiking through the wilderness to confront magical contamination or to find injured relatives, and even making short charges towards water-spirit dragons. She was supposed to be nicely toughened up by now: a real travel-ready archmage who was well equipped for the rigors of her job.

  Almost a week into her trip, however, she found herself blistered, sore, and overall cranky about the state of her feet. There was nothing to do about it other than to keep walking. And, of course, to stop every few hours and use her magic to clear the dust and stones out of her shoes and off her skin.

  Bella, somehow, seemed immune to all this.

  “I don’t understand how you can be so cheerful despite the blisters,” Jane told her friend. Sitting down on the side of the road, she winced as she pulled off her left boot. “They hurt.”

  “I don’t really get them!” Bella replied. “I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived in Glenfall longer? I’ve had more time to toughen up?”

  “Maybe.”

  Jane looked at her friend doubtfully. It almost felt like Bella had some secret for keeping her feet healthy that she wasn’t sharing, though Jane knew that couldn’t be the case. Bella contained not so much as an atom of meanness. If she knew a way to make Jane’s life better, she had proved a thousand times that she would be willing and eager to use it.

  In the end, Jane chalked it up to a difference in constitution. Bella was nothing if not active, while Jane was more of an indoor-studying type of person. That had served her well as an archmage candidate, someone who had been expected to study and learn mystic mysteries from her earliest youth. It had served her even better as a know-nothing trying to be a conventional baker, assisted by an absurdly scientific primer for baking written by some blessed, almost-anonymous woman she had never met.

  The only place it didn’t really help was in purely physical, durability-testing tasks. The fact that she was in one of those tasks now was just her luck.

  Jane sighed as she pulled off her other boot. “How long do you think we have left? They said it would take about seven days. It’s been the better part of six and a half. Are we close?”

  “No idea. Trailor isn’t that well-known, and I’ve never had a reason to visit. I’m only going now because if I don’t, you’ll be alone on your birthday. I couldn’t have let that happen.”

  “You really could have.” Jane shook out both boots one last time and pulled off her socks. “I would have been just fine.”

  “Just fine is not good enough for birthdays, Jane. You should be great. I don’t know how we’ll pull that off, but we can try.”

  “A nice footbath and some hot food would be a good start.” Jane rubbed ointment on her swollen feet, pulled her socks back on, and crammed the poor swollen extremities back into the footwear for another long walk down the dusty road. Then, with another sigh, she forced herself to stand. “We’ll find both first thing, once we get into town.”

  It soon became clear they were closer to Trailor than they’d thought. It had simply been hiding from them.

  They were much lower in altitude now than the mountainside shelf where Glenfall sat. The slope had smoothed out considerably, moving from high-mountain pine forest to a sort of dry, scrubby land with few trees to cover up the reddish soil. Trailor, it seemed, was made out of clay bricks taken from the same soil, or of blocks that somehow maintained the same hues. As such, it was camouflaged until they were just a few miles outside of it.

  Jane shook her head. “I can’t believe we missed it this long. How does anyone find this place?”

  “Same way we we did. They use a map and just keep walking.” Bella grinned. “But look out, Jane. I think they saw us before we saw them.”

  It was true. A fast, light carriage was bouncing down the road towards them, pulled by a strong-looking horse and not giving a single thought to anything but speed.

  “What do you suppose they want?”

  Bella rolled her eyes. “Jane, they don’t know you. They just know the new local archmage is coming to help them with their problem. You are an important person.”

  “Ugh. Don’t say that.”

  “I can’t help it if you are going to keep pretending you don’t understand why things happen.” Bella stopped and turned to face her. “But I promise: you are still just Jane. To me, you will always be simple, nice Jane who moved in almost next door and made friends with me. At the same time, you are also… you know. All the other things. You can’t have one without the other.”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Jane was just about to go into more detail on how little she liked the reality of those other things when the carriage arrived, braking to a stop a few dozen feet away. The driver jumped down. He was visibly uncomfortable at being there, but bore all the the signs of a man determined to be as polite as he possibly could.

  “Ma’am.” He nodded at Jane, then Bella. “And ma’am. Hello, and welcome. May I…”

  He trailed off. Whatever he had been expecting, it obviously did not include two separate women, either of whom might be the very important, very powerful wizard he had been sent to retrieve. They watched him glance back and forth between them a few times before Bella and Jane both burst into laughter at once.

  “I beg your pardon, miss…. and miss. What did I do wrong?”

  “It’s her.” Bella pointed at Jane with her thumb. “She’s the archmage. I’m just her friend. Jane and Bella, by the way. Now, listen.”

  Bella stepped forward and looped her arm over the driver’s shoulder, a gesture he rather obviously didn’t expect. Jane felt a distant sort of pity for his poor nerves.

  “We are going to need you to loosen up,” Bella told him. “That’s not a threat. We don’t make threats. I run a breakfast shop. Most days, she’s a baker. Not even a long-standing one. She’s intimidated by other bakers who have been doing it longer. Now, are you afraid of bakers? I’m assuming you aren’t. But if you are, I should know now, because I’d need to figure out another tactic.”

  The man froze for a moment before finally laughing himself.

  “Am I that nervous-looking?”

  “You look like you think I’m going to fry you with lightning bolts,” Jane said. “I don’t do that.”

  She decided to fib a little to reinforce the point, hoping her dishonesty wouldn’t have cause to be revealed during her visit.

  “I can’t do that,” she lied, forcing herself not to look at Bella. “Most magic is a lot of work, all right? I much prefer baking.”

  “And baths,” Bella added. “If she really intimidates you, you should take her somewhere she can bathe and change her clothes. You would be her forever ally. On the same team, so to speak.”

  The man shook his head. “I can’t. Sorry. They told me to bring her straight back. What would I tell them when I returned without her?”

  “Not a problem. They haven’t met her either, right? Just tell them the archmage demanded to rest and change clothes first. They won’t dare say a word.”

  “Still…”

  “Listen.” Jane shifted uncomfortably on her feet. “What’s your name?”

  “Dave.”

  “Listen, Dave. I’m honestly a very nice person, but I’ve been walking for… oh, an eternity. I’m tired. My feet hurt. I won’t really get mad at them if they keep me away from a bath for a few more hours, but can’t we pretend that I will?”

  Dave looked doubtful. Jane furrowed her brow. Then she had an idea, a modification of something her aunt had told her a long time ago. With luck, it just might work.

  “Tell them, Dave, that I have hired you to be my liaison.”

  “Your what?”

  “My assistant. Someone to talk to people for me and handle logistics while I’m in town. I’ll pay you, and it will keep you out of trouble.”

  “What? How?”

  “Think about it, Dave.” Bella was laughing now. “You aren’t just ‘Dave the Carriage Driver’ anymore. You are ‘Dave the Liaison to Jane the Archmage, Reformer of Dragons and Keeper of Glenfall.’ Nobody messes with a guy who has a title like that. Trust me. It’s not worth the trouble.”

  “Is that true?” Dave was younger than both of them, Jane thought, if still technically an adult by most standards. “You know that?”

  “I do.” Bella nodded confidently. “I’ve been dealing with town councils for a long time. It will work just fine.”

  That finally seemed to be enough for Dave. He shook his head and opened the door to the carriage, pointing up to the cushioned seats. “Climb aboard. There’s only one inn, but it’s pretty good, and they have a couple of baths ready to go almost all the time. There won’t be any changes of water, though. You understand.”

  Jane did. She was now known as somewhat of an expert on water, and Trailor was a town that had water troubles. It was possible she might have been called in for this situation anyway, even if she wasn’t the person in charge of magical interventions for this region.

  She didn’t know the details of Trailor’s problem. The only reports she had been able to get her hands on were from normal people who just knew the pumps were drying out, one after the other.

  Dave’s words about the baths meant the pumps hadn’t run out completely just yet. Jane might have screamed if they had. But more important than her bath was the fact that almost nothing could kill a town so completely as a loss of water supply.

  It was a lot of pressure to bear, Jane felt, given that the lives of perhaps a hundred people would be suddenly disrupted if she couldn’t do her job well enough.

  Bella helped Jane up into the cabin of the carriage. Dave gave them just a few moments to settle in before goading the horse into motion. The carriage turned slowly, then started moving towards town at a much more sedate pace than it had used when it approached them.

  “Do you really think you can do it, ma’am?” Dave called down from his seat.

  “I’m not ‘ma’am’!” Jane yelled back. “I won’t answer if you call me that.”

  “Miss Jane, then!”

  “Better.” Jane opened the window and leaned her head out so she could more easily communicate. “And really, I don’t know. I hope so, though.”

  The driver waved one of his hands through the air in a magical gesture, or at least what he probably thought looked like ‘magical.’ “Can’t you just… make water? Lots of water?”

  “I can’t make anything. That’s not how it works,” Jane replied. “I can sometimes correct a problem if I know exactly where it is and what it’s like. That means we’ll actually need you over the course of the next few days, to drive us here and there and help us find the issue. In some ways, you’ll be just as important as we are.”

  Dave seemed to brighten at the prospect of becoming a local hero. But as Jane settled back gratefully into her cushioned seat, she knew the situation would be a little different than what she had said.

  True, she couldn’t solve the problem without someone to drive her to it. But it was also true that she had no idea what was wrong. It might turn out that no amount of quick-moving vehicles would be enough to show her where the issue lay. It could be that the problem was simply unfixable. Not by her, and not by anyone at all.

  These days, there’s almost no difference. I’m the one chance these people have.

  The thought made Jane give a third, and hopefully final, sigh.

  I can’t fail them.

  .

  !