Tools...
Things no noble son should buy if he wanted to preserve his dignity. Things that would make guards ask questions if purchased openly and criminals ask better questions if purchased poorly.
He did not need to become strong before entering the dungeon.
Vela slowed as the road grew busier.
By sunset, traffic thickened around him. Carts creaked under sacks of grain, barrels of fish, bundles of dyed cloth, and cages full of squawking fowl. Traders shouted at one another over broken wheels and toll complaints. A pair of mercenaries rode past with dented breastplates and swords too clean to have seen recent work. A priest in brown robes guided three orphans along the roadside, ringing a little copper bell to ask for alms. Somewhere ahead, the air began to change.
Prav announced itself first by smell.
Smoke. Wet leather. Frying oil. Horse dung. Cheap perfume. River mud. Old blood from butcher lanes. Spices from southern caravans. Beer spilled into alley stones. Too many people pressed behind too many walls.
Then the city appeared.
Prav rose from the lowland like a bad decision that had learned masonry. Its outer walls were not grand, but they were thick, patched in a dozen places, and stained by generations of smoke and rain. Watchtowers leaned over the southern trade road, their lamps already lit as evening darkened. Beyond the walls, Lucien could see rooftops crowded together in uneven layers: merchant houses near the gate, warehouses near the river, old temples with cracked domes, gambling halls with painted lanterns, and the distant red glow of the district his father had warned him without naming.
He felt something in his chest tighten.
In his first life, Prav had eaten him slowly.
He had arrived there angry, ashamed, and wealthy enough to be worth exploiting. He left poorer, harder, and too drunk to remember half the names of the people who had helped ruin him. But beneath the filth of those memories lay useful things. Streets. Faces. Prices. Secret doors. Men who lied. Women who lied better. A child who would one day clear a dungeon and disappear from history after the Empire's spy took everything from him.
Lucien's fingers tightened around the reins.
"Not this time."
A city guard at the outer gate lifted a hand as Lucien approached. He wore a dull iron helmet, a short cloak bearing Prav's municipal mark, and the bored expression of a man who had seen too many travelers to be impressed by another noble youth on a fine horse.
Stolen novel; please report.
"Name and business," the guard said.
"Lucien Valehart," he replied. "Private business."
The guard looked at him again after hearing the family name. His gaze dropped to the quality of Vela's saddle, then to Lucien's clothes, then to the lack of attendants.
"Noble traveling alone?" the guard asked. "Brave or stupid."
"Today? Probably both. But I say you're rather Brave calling me stupid."
The guard snorted despite himself and waved toward the toll clerk. "Prav is a free city, but fine. Two silver for entry. More if you're bringing goods."
"No goods."
"Then two."
Lucien paid without argument.
As the clerk counted the coins, a shout erupted near the side passage. Lucien glanced over and saw three men in rough leather surrounding a fourth man whose face was already bleeding. One held a knife. Another had a short sword half-drawn. The third kept tapping the flat of a blade against his own palm, smiling as if the sound pleased him. The bleeding man tried to explain something about borrowed money and tomorrow's payment.
Prav had not changed.
The guard noticed Lucien looking. "Not your concern, lordling."
"No," Lucien said. "Not yet."
The guard frowned, but Lucien nudged Vela through the gate before the man could ask what that meant.
Inside, the city swallowed him with noise.
The main road descended from the gate into a wide merchant avenue, where lanterns swung from ropes between buildings and shop signs creaked above crowded doors. A butcher argued with a fishmonger over stall space. A woman sold skewers of spiced meat from a smoking cart. A group of sailors sang badly outside a tavern with a cracked blue sign. Two children darted between legs, one laughing, the other clutching what looked like a stolen purse. Somewhere nearby, someone screamed in anger, then someone else laughed louder.
Lucien kept Vela moving at a slow pace, eyes scanning the street.
He was not looking for the dungeon yet.
He was looking for an apothecary with a green rat painted under its window.
Old Mother Renn.
That was what people called her, though she had not been old in the way tavern stories made her sound. In his first life, Lucien had bought hangover tonics from her, then sleeping powders, then stronger things, then once, after a knife fight in an alley he barely remembered, a black salve that sealed the wound and left a scar shaped like a hook. She had overcharged him every time. She had also never sold him anything that failed.
If she was still alive, still in Prav, still willing to sell what he needed, then the first step was simple.
Become weak enough to survive the dungeon that killed the strong.
The irony would have amused him if the stakes were not so high.
A blue window flickered at the edge of his vision again.
[Band of Swords.]
[Condition Pending.]
[Be in a situation where more than five blades are pointed at you.]
Lucien glanced toward a narrow street branching away from the merchant avenue. Three men leaned beneath a hanging lantern, watching passersby with the lazy hunger of street knives. One of them looked at Lucien's coat. Another looked at his horse. The third looked at his purse.
Lucien looked away and rode on.
Not yet.
He needed the items first.
Then, if Prav was as generous as memory promised, the blades would come to him.