Morgan felt incredibly giddy. Here she was, stepping off a pirate ship and onto some creaky wooden docks that smelled like years of bad decisions, and it was great. Because it wasn’t her sheltered life back in Borix. It wasn’t on anyone’s orders. She wouldn’t be measured for a single froofy dress, and she might even pick up some of those dashing pirate pants with the ragged hems. She was in Bustardo and could do anything she wanted; she could go debauch herself with the other pirates, or shop for striped shirts and kerchiefs, or maybe even bathe! But instead she wanted to team up with an unelfly elf and investigate the sinister Mutae Mercantile Association. Because otters.

“What’s the plan?” Alobartalus asked.

“First, we need some distance between us and the sea lions around here.”

“Oh, they’re not that bad.”

But Morgan wasn’t so sure. The Bustardo docks and shore were simply rotten with sea lions. Desperate for attention and even the tiniest sorts of nourishment, they barked and clapped and fought to interrupt every thought. “Odd, odd, odd,” they barked, splashing the passersby and befouling everyone’s conversations and shoes and generally ruining everyone’s day. When Al reached into his pocket and held out a piece of hardtack, Morgan jumped between him and the obnoxiously capering swarm of sea lions.

“Kindness won’t work,” she said firmly. “They’re not reasonable. Give them an opening, and they’ll overrun you. We don’t have that kind of time to waste.”

“Odd, odd, odd!” the sea lions clattered, and a few large ones muscled their bulk onto the shore and tried to galumph directly at Al, their beady eyes shining with avarice.

“I didn’t think they’d actually come after me,” Al said, nervously shoving the hardtack into his pocket and backing away from the oncoming menace.

“They definitely play on your good faith and altruism,” Morgan admitted. “That’s why the ship is fitted with such heavy chains—so they can’t climb aboard and make a nuisance of themselves.”

“But they seem so clever—”

Morgan slashed a hand at the sea lion standing on its nose and waggling its tail. “Performative cleverness is all a ruse. Don’t fall for it. Keep walking.”

They hurried away from the dock, glad to hear the obnoxious calls of the sea lions fading into the distance. At least the loud, offensive things were limited to the foul, chummy waters of the harbor and couldn’t invade real life.

“Now that we’re out of range, we should find a fishmonger to make sure Otto is well fed,” Morgan said, for the otter was still draped around her shoulders and chirping at her every so often to remind her that he would enjoy a little smackerel of mackerel. “Then get ourselves to a Dinny’s and see if we can’t find out who’s behind the Mutae Mercantile Association.”

They quickly found a bustling market full of assorted mongers and got Otto a bucket of clams from a clammonger, and a small bucket of oranges for themselves from a fruitmonger, and a smaller bucket of bonbons for later from a bonbonmonger.

“I wonder if all the mongers buy their buckets from a bucketmonger?” Al asked, and that was the moment Morgan knew they would be friends.

They paused to sit on the rim of a bubbling fountain to enjoy their quick repast. Morgan could almost feel the citrus beat back an incipient case of scurvy, and it was good to taste food without the fumes of grog dulling her senses. Otto splashed in the fountain and ate his clams while floating on his back, and Morgan smiled at his adorable antics. She was happy that Tempest was following her dream, but she already missed her friend. At least she still had Al and Otto.

“So what’s our angle at Dinny’s?” Al asked. “Elf magic? Force? Stealth?”

Morgan wrinkled her nose. “Elf magic is messy, and force would bring the city watchmen pretty quickly. But I don’t think we should go in there as customers either.” She fiddled with her beard as she considered it. “Because then we’d have to deal with servers, and if experience is any guide, they’ve been trained to deflect questions about EATUM and ultimately say they don’t know anything, which is probably true. We need to see the manager and get him or her to show us some paperwork. So I say stealth.”

“Yes! Subterfuge. I like it,” Al replied. “What did you have in mind?”

“I think we should pretend we’re from the MMA.”

“Great! Uh…how do we do that?”

“Well, first of all, we probably need to look like we didn’t just walk off a pirate ship.”

“An excellent point. A bath, then, and clothing that looks mercantile. Very middle management. Wrinkles easily and shows pit stains.”

“Hopefully we can find something pre-wrinkled and pre-pit-stained, because we don’t have all day.” Captain Luc planned to ship out with the tide around sunset.

Al pointed to a large board off to one side of the public square in which they sat. It was plastered with notices and advertisements, and a small throng was clustered in front of it, reading them. “That might tell us where we can find a clothier.”

They finished up their oranges, and Morgan checked on Otto. “How are you doing? Still eating?”

He squeaked at her. He’d finished off most of the bucket and only two clams were left. He’d made quite a mess, however, and she and Al had to pick up the empty shells and put them in the bucket after she set aside the two survivors. “We’ve gotta go. You want to come with us, right?”

Otto squeaked in protest as she stood up, and he put his little otter paws on the two uneaten clams.

“Go ahead and eat them. We’ll wait that long.”

Otto cracked open the shells with his sharp teeth and sucked out the mollusks inside in a minute. Morgan reached down to pick up the shells, and Otto used the opportunity to scamper up her arm and curl across her shoulders again. He was, of course, soaking wet from the fountain, causing Morgan to cringe a wee bit, but she figured she’d be bathing soon anyway. Being chosen by an otter was, after all, no small thing.

They joined the crowd in front of the board, looking for clothiers but finding mostly dwarvelish-potion vendors claiming that they had the absolute freshest and strongest batches of Ol’ Chub’s Tubby Nub Elixir for Potent Virility sold in convenient crocks. But there were also several notices advertising handsome purses for the capture or slaying of various criminals and, in one case, a hefty reward for the recovery of a lost lady.

“Oh, badger buns,” Morgan cursed.

“What?”

She pointed at a flyer in the lower left corner and whispered, “That one’s about me.”

Al squinted at the artist’s rendering of her likeness, which included long, flowing locks, a dainty dress, and an utterly hairless, ethereal face. “Looks nothing like you.”

“I know. I’m glad I kept the beard and lost all the floof.”

“Yeah, good call.”

Morgan ripped the sheet off the board to study it more closely.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS LADY FAIR?

THE LADY HARKOVRITA OF BORIX HATH GONE MISSING

STOL’N FROM HER COMFY TOWER BY SOME DASTARD

THE EARL OF BORIX WILL PAY HANDSOMELY FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO HER SAFE RETURN

SHE MAY OR MAY NOT BE ASLEEP.

“You were stolen?” Al asked. “Uh, pardon me: stol’n, which is for some reason more sinister when pronounced as a single syllable?”

“No, I left on my own. My father just can’t believe that. He thought I was property to be married as he chose, so of course he thinks I must have been stolen like property. Plus, as far as he knew, I was under a sleeping spell.”

Al grinned at her. “And now you are a pirate. Not the career path he would have chosen for you, I’m sure.”

“No. I was supposed to be married to Lord Vendel Vas Deference of Taynt, whom I’ve never even met.” She crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the fire upon which a local vendor was roasting hot chestnuts of the non-equine variety.

“And are you happy now? You’ve defied your elders and you have an uncertain future and few resources, none of the comforts you’re used to.”

Morgan nodded and smiled. “I do miss pie, but I’m very happy. I’m seeing things I’ve never seen before. Making new friends who appreciate me for myself rather than for who my father is. And my future’s quite certain, as far as I’m concerned: I’m going to save the otters.”

“And after that?”

Morgan shrugged. “Turning the rich into the poor through piracy sounds like justice to me. Odds are they got rich through means far more villainous than piracy in the first place. If you knew how most lords and earls got to where they are, you’d need a long weekend with a brain leech.”

“No need. I’m well aware. My uncle is a king.”

Morgan looked at the elf with concern. “So you ran away too, I take it. What will you do now, Al? I know you were disappointed by the Sn’archivist. Are you going to head back to Proudwood Lighthouse?”

The elf’s amusement faded. “I don’t ever want to go back. Comfort is a trap. I’d much rather remain free, like you. And I think my disappointment was my own fault. I’d built up this fiction in my head about what the Sn’archivist was, and there was no way he could live up to it. Besides, he might have given us a clue about…all this.”

“Really?” Morgan folded her arms across her chest. “Do tell.”

Al leaned in and spoke softly. “What do you know about the Sn’archivist? Do you believe that he’s divinely inspired by Pellanus?”

“I suppose it’s possible, although I’m not sure I believe it, especially considering your Grand Huff after meeting him.”

“Well, divinity is mysterious. And there’s definitely a mystery here. The Sn’archivist just wrote a new book filled with only two words, repeated again and again: otter balls.”

“Why?” Morgan asked as Otto screeched in outrage.

“He said those words would save me in my most trying hour. That those were the words that I needed to hear, or was destined to hear, or something. Also, uh…there were two more words that he said were important…”

Al’s eyes glazed over, horror suffusing his features, and Morgan shook him gently by the shoulder. “What is it, Al? Come on, you can tell me, no matter how terrible it is.”

Al blinked, then gulped and licked his lips nervously. “This is going to sound ridiculous. I apologize in advance. But it seems we might somehow be saved by…my own butt.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Elf butts. Pellanus has supposedly been obsessed with them for decades, and the Sn’archivist has thousands of tomes on the subject. Apparently they’re far more important than anyone realized.”

“What the Pell…?”

“I don’t know,” Al said with a shrug. “Like I said, it’s a mystery. But perhaps you can now understand my disappointment. I expected knowledge. Enlightenment. Wisdom. And all I got was otter balls and elf butts.”

“Right. Lots to unpack there. We’ll get to that later. But look, Al, you don’t have to go back and be what someone else wants you to be. I mean, you can, or you can choose to do anything else—that’s all your decision, which should be made for your own reasons. Are you still willing to go with me to Dinny’s?”

“Yes,” the elf said, nodding nobly to emphasize his willingness. “We have a mission here. We should get to it.”

It took them little time to find a dwarvelish inn and bathhouse: The Divine Suds was adjacent to the market and offered a quick De-Slime the Grime! option for sailors such as themselves on limited shore leave with limited funds. The owners cleverly offered basic garb as well so that sailors could get a new pair of trousers or a shirt that didn’t bear a thousand stains. Morgan and Al each took advantage of this, consigning their old clothes to be bleached, restriped, and resold, and asked where they might find a clothier selling used uniforms to complete their disguises. They were directed to Madam Merkin’s House of Jerkins around the block, and there they found some sober forest-green jerkins made of scratchy, cheap-looking fabric with a few lines of fake-gold thread to suggest that they were at least adjacent to wealth if they did not possess it themselves. They agreed that getting the same color and cut would make it seem like they were wearing a company uniform. And, honestly, they couldn’t afford much else. Until they hit the loot, Luc said, fickels would be scarce. They would even have to supply their own pit stains.

The nearest Dinny’s was just a short walk away; the district near the docks was a bustling area catering to sailors and tourists alike. Morgan smelled the restaurant before she saw it, compelled by the delicious scent of cinnamon buns and crispy bacon. But once Alobartalus showed her the clever, glittering, elven-made urinal cakes hanging from every eave, she understood better the magic she’d been huffing with every breath. Nothing near a fisherman’s wharf could smell that good without a lot of help, and Dinny’s had its own greasy odor to cover up.

Morgan could see through the large windows that this Dinny’s was packed. People shoveled EATUM into their faces, ignorant of what they were really consuming, ignorant of the true cost of it; despite what the menu said, it wasn’t free. The sad emptiness of Otter Island had been testament to that. She reached up and gave Otto a reassuring caress, and he purred and went back to sleep. He would hopefully remain so and just resemble an unwashed mink stole, as long as no one looked too closely.

Steeling herself, she said, “Follow my lead,” and strode into Dinny’s, with Al close behind. A cheerful halfling hostess greeted them with a practiced smile.

“Welcome to Dinny’s. Two for lunch?” she said. Her name tag read Mallorie Butterbuns of the Muffincrumb Butterbunses, and Morgan really hoped that was her actual name.

“No thank you. We’re here to see the manager on a rather important health issue.”

Mallorie’s smile faded. “Oh. Wait here; I’ll go get him.”

They waited, and after a couple of minutes a harried man with light-brown skin, an untrimmed mustache, and an atrocious haircut appeared to meet them.

“Yes? I’m the manager. How can I help you?”

“Hello, sir. I’m Verna Veal and this is Ham Hamlin. We are from the MMA, and we’re concerned about recent shipments of EATUM you’ve received. We’re afraid some containers may be contaminated.”

“Contaminated with what?”

“An infection that causes severe foot sweat, a shriveled tongue, and a dire possibility of intestinal explosion ending in a very sudden death.”

Some customers who had come in behind them gasped and walked right out the door, and the manager’s eyes flicked between the busy waiting area and Morgan. “Let’s go back to my office.”

He turned, and Morgan and Al followed close behind. “Have any of your customers reported feeling sick after eating here?” she asked his back.

“No.”

“Well, if they died,” Al said dryly, “they probably didn’t report it because they went home and exploded.”

“In my office, please,” the manager ground out, tension in his voice. He was very aware that some diners were catching snippets of the conversation and looking uncertainly at their plates.

They walked through the hot and steaming kitchen, past a stack of barrels of EATUM waiting to be used, and into a small office with a desk piled high with receipts, employee schedules, payroll ledgers, and old menus of Dinny’s past specials. There were also a couple of locked filing cabinets and a macabre motivational poster hanging on the wall. It was a painting of a tombstone, the name worn away by time but the grass doing quite well around it, and the bottom of the poster was emblazoned with the slogan TAKE HEART. SOMEDAY YOU WON’T HAVE TO MANAGE ANYTHING.

Once the door was closed, the manager rounded on them and crossed his arms defensively. “All right, what’s all this, then? You’re not the regular health inspectors.”

“Yes, they regrettably blew up,” Alobartalus snuck in.

But Morgan had a spiel all ready to sling. “Recent shipments to Kakapoh, Cape Gannet, and Bustardo may have been contaminated. Two people in Kakapoh have already died, and we have reports of shriveled tongues in Cape Gannet. We’re relieved to hear you haven’t had any problems so far, and we’d like to prevent that from happening. We need to examine your shipping manifests for just the past month to see if you received one of the contaminated containers.”

The manager nodded, a bit of sweat on his forehead now. “Sure. Sure, I can do that, easy. Haven’t even filed them yet.” He rifled through the papers on his desk until he said, “Aha!” and snatched one from the pile, presenting it to them with a flourish.

Morgan scanned it, ignoring the shipment numbers and dates and looking only for names and addresses. Success! The EATUM had been shipped by the Mutae Mercantile Association on Mack Guyverr, with a Pellican Postale Service box accepting mail at Banhai in Teabring. Interesting. If one assumed that the mail would be near their place of business, that would put the location of Mack Guyverr somewhere in the Chummy Sea between Mack Enchiis and Banhai, rather than somewhere near Khugas or Sinuicho.

“Who’s your sales representative?” Al asked, and Morgan blinked. That was a genius question. It would give them a lead to pursue, at least. She would not have thought to ask that.

The manager frowned. “Don’t you know that already?”

“No, we’re not connected to sales. We’re troubleshooters. We work for the big guy.”

The manager’s eyes widened. “You work for Angus Otterman? You’ve met him?”

“Angus Otterman?” Morgan recalled the chewed-up hat they’d found on Otter Island with the letters ANG on a label inside.

“Yes. What’s he like?”

Morgan improvised, making an assumption based on Otterman’s name and the fact that he was more than willing to kidnap and kill otters to make his fickels. “Terrible,” she said. “Fearsome.”

“So I’ve heard!”

Al pounced. “What else have you heard?”

The manager gulped. “Well, uh. Only rumors.”

Morgan didn’t let it go. “What rumors have you heard exactly? And please remember that our report will go back to the inspection division, not to upper management.”

“He…maybe eats people,” the manager almost whispered.

“Maybe?”

“Well, a bit.” The manager put his thumb and forefinger close together to illustrate the concept of a smidgen. “Just a little.”

“Which people?”

“His employees on the island.”

“You’ve heard he eats just a little bit of his employees? Like, one or two bites?”

“No, I mean, he eats all of a few of them.”

Al asked, “Why would he do that?”

The manager shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe they misbehaved? Or they looked delicious or tried to unionize? I sympathize, believe me.”

“You do? You want to eat your employees?”

The manager waved his arms. “No, no, that came out wrong. I sympathize with the employees who get eaten. Never mind. They’re only rumors and nobody believes that stuff.” Desperate to change the subject, he pointed at the shipping manifest. “So, did we get a contaminated shipment?”

“No.” Morgan handed the paper back to him. “You’re in the clear. Thanks for your cooperation.”

“Who’s your sales rep again?” Al pressed.

The manager responded without thinking, relieved. “Brenna MacFleshgrinder.”

Al and Morgan blinked, exchanging a glance. “Isn’t that a troll name?” Al said.

“Well, of course it’s a troll. All the sales reps are—hey, wait! You’re not really from the MMA, are you? What is this?” The manager’s eyes, half dead with dread and the spirit-crushing weight of customer demands before, now glittered with suspicion.

So Morgan kicked him squarely in the groin.

“Oof!” The manager curled in on himself and collapsed. Otto screeched a war cry. Al opened the door and they bolted out of the office, heading for the employee exit.

“Back to the ship?” the elf asked as he ran, huffing and puffing a little.

“Back to the ship,” Morgan agreed, grateful for her superior physical fitness. “We have a target now. He employs trolls, kills a lot of otters, and occasionally eats all of some of his employees or possibly some of many of his employees.”

“Or so the rumors go.”

“We know two out of three are true. So that’s reason enough to go after him.”

Al chuckled as they exited the filthy, grease-spattered alley behind Dinny’s and slowed down. “By Pellanus, that was fun! This is so much better than selling Morningwood rods to tourists. It scratches that elvish itch for mischief while also being useful.”

The door burst open behind them, and they whirled to see the manager pointing in their direction. “There they are! Get them!”

Three rather tall and athletic Dinny’s employees sprang into action, each of them holding a weapon and each of them bigger than Morgan and Al, and the manager shouted something at their backs, which Morgan didn’t catch because Otto screeched in alarm.

“Well, this isn’t better,” the elf corrected.

“I agree,” Morgan said. “I don’t want to die behind a Dinny’s. Run!”