Here is a fact about disguises that nobody tells you until you’re standing in front of a cracked mirror trying to make yourself look like a woman who has never once been an empress: it is significantly harder than it looks in the movies.
“Too obvious,” I mutter, tying a scarf over my hair for the third time.
“Too fancy.
Too obvious again.”
“You’re overthinking it,” Mei says, watching from the doorway with the patient exhaustion of someone who’s already offered three perfectly reasonable solutions that I’ve rejected for reasons I can’t fully articulate.
“I’m not overthinking it…
I’m engineering a very specific vibe.
Common vendor.
Unremarkable.
The kind of woman nobody looks at twice.” I finally settle on a plain brown dress, dirt smudged deliberately onto one sleeve for authenticity, and step back to admire the effect.
“How do I look?”
“Like an empress wearing dirt.”
“Rude, but noted.” I smudge more dirt on for good measure and grab the basket of surplus produce we’ve been sitting on for days, more scallions and amaranth than the two of us could possibly eat before it goes bad.
“Okay.
I’m going to the market.
Selling this.
Coming back with actual currency instead of vague goodwill and vegetable barter.
This is a big day, Mei.”
“Should I come with you?”
“No, you’re too recognizable as my servant, someone might connect the dots.
I need to be a mystery vendor nobody’s ever seen before.
Very low profile.” I sling the basket over one shoulder and head for the gate with the confidence of a woman who has definitely thought this entire plan through.
“I’ve survived a mountain avalanche.
A market can’t be that hard.”
The market, it turns out, operates on an entire economy of unspoken rules that nobody thought to write down anywhere I could study them in advance.
My first mistake is pricing.
I set my scallions at what feels like a reasonable rate, watch a woman’s eyebrows shoot up in something that reads suspiciously like delight, and hand over an armful of produce for what I later learn is roughly a third of what everyone else charges.
“Wait,” I say, as she hurries off with her prize before I can renegotiate.
“Wait, was that too cheap?”
The vendor next to me, an older man with the world weary expression of someone who’s seen every kind of newcomer make every kind of mistake, glances over.
“Very cheap,” he says, not unkindly.
“You’ll starve at that rate.”
“Right.
Okay.
Adjusting.” I recalibrate on the fly, and by my next customer I’ve overcorrected so hard I’m basically trying to charge triple the going rate, which results in a woman staring at me like I’ve personally insulted her ancestors before storming off without buying anything.
“Too expensive now,” the older vendor observes, clearly enjoying this more than he should.
“I’m learning a curve,” I say, with as much dignity as I can muster.
“Everyone has to learn a curve.”
By my fourth transaction I’ve found something resembling a reasonable middle ground, and I stand there feeling genuinely proud of myself for figuring out basic commerce, which is a strange thing to feel proud of when you consider I once negotiated safe passage through hostile terrain using nothing but a knife and confident body language, but here we are.
It’s my fifth customer who nearly gives me a heart attack, because the man approaching my stall in an ill fitting laborer’s tunic and a hat pulled low enough to be genuinely suspicious is, unmistakably, unforgivably, Casimir.
“Scallions,” he says, in a voice pitched slightly lower than usual, apparently attempting an accent that fools absolutely nobody.
“That’ll be two coppers,” I say, equally stiff, equally committed to the bit even as I want to laugh out loud at the sheer audacity of a prince trying to blend in wearing a hat that does nothing to hide the fact that he stands like someone who’s never once had to worry about being pickpocketed.
He hands over the coins.
Our fingers brush.
Neither of us acknowledges it, both staring resolutely at the scallions like they’ve suddenly become fascinating.
“Fine produce,” he says, still in the terrible accent.
“Thank you, kind sir, I grew it myself, using nothing but garbage and spite.”
Something flickers behind his careful disguise, the corner of his mouth threatening to give the whole thing away, and he clears his throat and moves along before either of us can break character entirely in the middle of a crowded marketplace.
I watch him wander to the next three stalls, buying things with the same terrible fake voice, the same overly stiff posture, clearly keeping half an eye on me the entire time under the guise of extremely thorough grocery shopping, and I have never in either lifetime found anything quite so simultaneously ridiculous and endearing.
By the time I’ve sold most of my basket, there’s a small parcel sitting at the corner of my stall that wasn’t there before, wrapped simply, no note attached. The source of this chapter is novelping(.)com.
I unwrap it discreetly.
A pair of proper gardening gloves, well made, exactly the kind I’ve been complaining about not having for weeks.
I glance up.
Casimir’s three stalls down, very studiously not looking in my direction, very obviously listening for my reaction anyway.
I don’t say anything.
I just tuck the gloves into my basket and let myself smile at them for a second longer than strictly necessary before packing up.
I’m folding the last of my earnings into a pouch when I catch the conversation happening at the grain stall behind me, two women trading complaints in the low, tired voices of people who’ve had this exact argument too many times already.
“Another tax hike,” one mutters.
“Third one this year.
My husband says the district collectors are taking more than what’s reported up the chain.”
“Everyone’s saying that.
Nobody’s doing anything about it.”
“What can anyone do?
Complain to who?”
I don’t turn around, but I file it away carefully, the same way I file away everything useful these days.
Rising taxes.
Skimming collectors.
Rations already thin enough that a palace guard was grateful for scallions a month ago.
It’s not my problem, technically.
I’ve got a garden to run and a mystery conspiracy to help unravel and, apparently, a very poorly disguised prince to keep not-noticing three stalls down.
But it sits there in my chest anyway, uncomfortable and persistent, the way problems do right before you decide, against your better judgment, that they’ve become yours to solve too.
I sling the empty basket over my shoulder, pocket my well earned coins and my new gardening gloves, and head for the gate, already turning the day’s takings over in my head.
Not bad, for a first attempt at capitalism.
Not bad at all.