The market at midday was loud in the particular way only market days ever were — vendors calling out prices over one another, a cart wheel creaking somewhere behind a wall of baskets, a dog barking at nothing in the way dogs sometimes did. Finn waded into it like a man returning to his natural habitat, already scanning the stalls for the specific kind of vendor who looked like they hadn't had a decent conversation in days.
"There," he said, nodding toward an older woman selling dried herbs, her stall a little quieter than the rest, no line of customers to interrupt anything. "She's got that look. The 'nobody's asked me a real question all week' look."
Nym followed a step behind, hands tucked into his sleeves, eyes moving carefully over the crowd the way they always did now — not with fear exactly, not anymore, but with the watchfulness of someone still relearning how much space he was allowed to take up in a place like this.
"How do you know," Nym asked. "That look."
"Practice," Finn said cheerfully. "You learn to spot the lonely ones. They talk the most, if you let them."
He approached the herb stall with the easy, unbothered confidence of someone who'd never once worried whether a stranger would like him, and within a few exchanges — a compliment on her chamomile, a question about the best inn in town, a joke that landed well enough to earn a real laugh — the woman was talking freely, the way people so often did once they decided a stranger was worth the breath.
Nym hung back a little, listening more than speaking, drifting slowly toward the old stone well at the square's center, worn smooth by generations of hands and rope. He rested his palm lightly against the rim without quite meaning to, the way a man might lean against a wall out of habit rather than purpose.
But something under his hand felt different than ordinary stone.
It was faint — the way a smell can be faint, present only if you stop and notice it deliberately — but it pulled at his attention regardless, tugging his focus away from the noise around him and toward something underneath it. Fragments. Half-formed and layered over one another, the way voices sound when several conversations bleed together through a thin wall.
*...gone again, third time this month...*
*...the guild won't say where the ledger went...*
*...if the debt's forgiven, no one can prove it was ever owed...*
*...my daughter would be dead if not for whatever he did to that record...*
He held still, trying to separate one thread from the rest the way he'd learned to do in the tunnels — not straining, exactly, since straining only ever scattered the fragments further, but simply waiting, letting them settle into some order on their own.
"Nym?"
Finn's voice pulled him back. Nym blinked, and the ordinary noise of the market rushed in all at once, louder than it had been a moment ago.
"You went somewhere," Finn said, studying him more carefully than his usual tone suggested. "Everything all right?"
Nym considered how to explain it — or whether to explain it at all — and settled on the simplest true version.
"I heard something," he said. "Not now. Before. People talking, here, at this well. About someone forgiving debts. Erasing them, maybe, so there's no record they ever existed."
Finn's easy expression sharpened into something more focused. "That's not nothing."
"There was a daughter," Nym went on slowly, still working the pieces into order. "Someone said she'd have died, if not for whatever this person did to a record. I don't know what record. I don't know a name."
"Well." Finn glanced back toward the herb seller, still talking, unaware of the conversation happening a few feet away. "Let's see if she's got one to give us, then."
He returned to the stall with renewed purpose, steering the conversation with practiced ease. "You know, we heard mention of a fellow causing some mischief around here. Sounds like quite the local legend."
The herb seller's expression flickered — something between amusement and wariness. "Depends who you ask. Guild calls him a criminal. Half the poor families in the lower quarter call him a blessing." She lowered her voice slightly, though there was no one close enough to overhear. "My sister's husband owed the moneylender near enough his whole life's savings. Papers just vanished one night. No proof it ever existed. She still lights a candle for whoever did it, though she'd never say his name where the guild might hear."
"Do you know his name?" Finn asked, keeping his tone light, curious rather than pointed.
The woman shrugged. "Everyone's got a guess. Nobody's got proof. That's rather the point of him, I'd wager." She glanced between the two of them, a flicker of genuine curiosity crossing her face. "Why the interest? You two don't look like guild men."
"Just travelers," Finn said easily. "Interested in local color."
"Mm." She didn't look entirely convinced, but let it go, turning back to arrange her herbs. "Well. If you're looking for local color, you'll find plenty asking about him. Just don't ask too loud. Guild doesn't take kindly to folk who sound too sympathetic."
Finn thanked her, tossed a coin down for a small bundle of chamomile he didn't particularly need, and steered Nym gently away from the stall, out toward a quieter corner of the square.
"Well," he said, once they were out of easy earshot. "Sounds like our thief's got a fan club."
"And an enemy," Nym said quietly. "The guild."
"Two very different reputations for one person." Finn glanced back toward the well, thoughtful in a way that didn't suit his usual manner. "Depends who's telling the story, I suppose."
Nym was quiet for a moment, turning the fragments over — a daughter saved, a debt erased, a sister lighting candles for a stranger she'd never seen.
"I know what that's like," he said finally. "Being one thing to some people. Something else to everyone else. Feared by people who never once asked why."
Finn glanced at him, something softening in his expression. "Yeah. Figured you might."
They stood there a moment longer, the market carrying on around them, oblivious — and somewhere beyond the rooftops, unaware that two strangers had just spent the better part of an hour piecing together fragments of his own story, Silas Marchetti went about his ordinary afternoon, one step ahead of a truth that was slowly, carefully, beginning to catch up to him.