“Hey!” he shouted, waving a hand.
Adam and Zeren turned. The man jogged over to them, panting heavily as if he had just finished sprinting.
“What are your names, lads?” he asked between gasps for air.
“Adam. And this is Zeren.”
“Well, Adam, Zeren,” the old man wheezed, wiping sweat from his brow, “would you be so kind as to help me repack this wagon? I didn’t expect the gate checkers to empty the entire load for an inspection. My son helped me pack it at the shop, but he isn’t with me here, and I can't lift all of this myself.”
Adam and Zeren exchanged a glance. Adam reached into his pocket and pulled out his small coin pouch. He tipped it over his palm, giving it a shake. Only two meager pennies clinked out.
He looked at the two coins, then up at the old man with a knowing, helpless smile. The old merchant smiled back, understanding the boy's situation immediately.
Two minutes later.
“What... how did you do it that fast?” The old man’s jaw dropped.
Using a subtle, controlled application of his physical strength, Adam had restacked the massive wagon perfectly in a matter of seconds. It was so fast and efficient that the stunned merchant immediately reached into his purse.
“Whoa, you gave me eight pennies,” Adam said, looking at the generous handful of copper in his palm. “We only agreed upon four. Are you sure?”
“Yes, yes,” the old man insisted, still staring at the neatly stacked crates in disbelief. “I didn’t expect you to save me so much time. Thank you, lad. Besides, you will need it. I'm not sure if you’ve been here before, but this place can get incredibly expensive.”
With a final wave of thanks, the old merchant climbed onto his rig, snapped the reins, and departed toward the checkpoint.
Adam pocketed the coins, feeling slightly more prepared for what lay ahead. After a brief, routine check by the guards at the entrance, Adam and Zeren finally stepped inside the City of Gold.
Stepping fully into the city, Adam and Zeren were immediately swallowed by the sheer scale of the district. The market streets stretched out like an endless maze, lined with towering, multi-tiered stalls. The variety of merchandise was staggering. Merchants aggressively shouted prices and product names, trying to sell to the crowded streets.
Zeren’s head swiveled nonstop, his eyes wide. He suddenly stopped, pointing eagerly at a stall roasting beef that smelled absolutely divine.
Adam smiled, feeling the eight pennies the old man had given him jingling in his pocket alongside his original two. “How much for two skewers?” Adam asked the vendor.
“Two silver pieces,” the large man grunted, not even bothering to look up from his grill.
Adam’s smile froze. He slowly let his handful of copper pennies drop back into his pocket. “Actually, we’re not that hungry anyway,” he told Zeren, quickly dragging the disappointed boy away.
A few minutes later, Zeren admired a beautifully crafted backpack. The price the merchant quoted was even worse. By the end of their first hour, they realized a painful truth: their combined wealth of ten pennies made them practically beggars in the City of Gold.
Exhausted by the crowds and their sore feet, they eventually found a wide, sunlit plaza built around a massive, cascading water fountain. The atmosphere here was much lighter. Families sat on woven mats across the surrounding grass, enjoying midday picnics and laughing. Adam and Zeren collapsed onto the cool stone edge of the fountain, splashing the clear water onto their dusty faces.
“What do we do now?” Zeren asked, kicking his legs over the water.
“We wait,” Adam said, wiping his chin. “It will be quite a while before Lian Mei and the others catch up to us here. Because they are compromised by traveling without as much supplies as us, it will take longer for them to arrive here.”
Zeren nodded. “So we just look around?”
“Exactly. We gather information,” Adam explained. “Ideally, I need to figure out exactly where Evelynn is and find a way to get in contact with her. While we do that, we keep our ears open for local legends, rumors, or any talk about weird objects. Anything that sounds out of the ordinary could be a clue to finding the next of Solomon’s Remnants.”
“Excuse me!” a bright voice interrupted them.
They both turned to see a tall woman standing a few paces away. She wore practical but colorful clothing and had an incredibly cheerful, welcoming smile on her face, she was also very good looking.
“Are you two travelers?” she asked, stepping closer.
Adam stood up, nodding cautiously. “We are. Newly arrived.”
“I thought so! You have that look about you,” she beamed. “Do you have a place to spend the night yet? If you need rent, I can point you in the right direction.”
Adam hesitated, thinking of his meager coin pouch. “We don’t have much money.”
“Then you definitely don’t want to rent a classic house inside the city walls,” the woman explained, still a very welcoming smile on her face from the moment she showed up.
“A decent place in here will cost you about eight to nine pennies per night, per person. But I know a small farm just north of the city, slightly outside the main gates. The owner rents out sleepover space to travelers for only three pennies a night.”
“Three pennies?” Adam asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes, it’s a very common practice here,” she clarified. “Farm owners rent space for cheap in exchange for a little bit of money and some help around the farm during the day. It gives travelers a place to stay while they get their finances together and find a real job in the city.”
Adam exchanged a look with Zeren. It was exactly what they needed. “Alright. We’ll take it.”
“Wonderful!” The lady smiled wider, holding out her hand. “I’ll just require a small reward for the recommendation and directions, if you please.”
Adam dug into his pocket and handed her two pennies. It left him with exactly enough to cover the farm rent for both of them.
“Thank you kindly,” she said, pocketing the copper. She then reached into her coat and handed Adam a small, folded piece of parchment. “Here is a map indicating the farm's exact location.”
Adam unfolded it, looking at the intricate lines with genuine surprise. “A map? Just to navigate a city?”
The lady let out a warm laugh. “Of course! The City of Gold is extremely big compared to other settlements. If you don’t use a map, you’ll be walking in circles for days. Good luck, you two!”
With a cheerful wave, she turned and merged back into the bustling crowd of the plaza.
Adam had half expected the cheerful woman's parchment to be a swindle , a few confident lines leading nowhere, the kind of thing you paid two pennies for and cursed an hour later. But the streets unfolded exactly as drawn. The fountain plaza behind them, a left at the spice row where the air went sharp with cumin, a long curving avenue that climbed toward the inner tiers. Wherever she'd gotten it, someone had walked these roads carefully enough to set them down true.
"Adam." Zeren had stopped again. The boy stopped roughly every forty paces, and Adam had learned to keep walking a step or two before turning, on the theory that it discouraged him. "Adam, look."
He looked.
It was a poster. Not the cheap kind, the smeared woodblock notices plastered three-deep on every other wall , this one was printed, clean black ink on heavy cream paper, pinned alone in the center of a board that had been swept clear of everything around it. As though the other notices had been removed to give it room.
A single image dominated it: a hand, palm open, and balanced on the palm a small theater curtain mid-draw, the way a magician balances a coin. Beneath it, in a tall narrow script:
ONE NIGHT ONLY.
THE TROUPE OF THE OPEN HAND.
A performance for those who can pay.
And those who can think.
"What's it say?" Zeren asked. He could read, mostly, but the tall script defeated him and he hated admitting it.
"It says there's a show tonight." Adam read down. Below the flourish, in smaller plain letters, the practical business of the thing. Admission: one gold sovereign. He felt his mouth go flat. A gold sovereign. He had ten pennies and the holes in his pockets. A gold sovereign was not money to him; it was a fantasy. "And it says it costs more than we'll ever have."
"Oh." Zeren's shoulders dropped.
Adam almost moved them on. But his eyes had already caught the last line, set apart at the bottom, smaller still, the way the most important clause of a contract is always the one in the smallest type.
Or solve the door, and enter free.
He stood there a moment longer than he meant to.
"What?" Zeren said, reading his face instead of the poster. "What is it?"
"Solve the door," Adam said slowly. "It's a puzzle. You solve a puzzle, you get in free." He read the line again, and a second time, turning it over. Solve the door. Not answer a riddle. Not win a game. The phrasing was specific, and specific phrasing on a printed poster was a choice somebody had paid for. Whoever ran this show didn't want clever people to spend a sovereign. They wanted clever people to come prove it.
Which was, Adam thought, an odd thing to want. Most men who put on a show wanted gold. This one was fishing for something else, and using gold as the thing you didn't have to give if you had the other thing.
He became aware that he had been frowning at a poster for some time.
"Can you do it?" Zeren asked. "The puzzle?"
"I don't know what it is yet." Adam pulled his attention off the paper. "But we're not paying a gold sovereign we don't have, and we've got nothing else to do until nightfall." He glanced down at the boy. "And before you ask , no, this isn't reckless. It's a free show. The worst that happens is I fail a puzzle in front of strangers and we leave."
"You won't fail," Zeren said, with total, unburdened confidenc.
Adam huffed something that was almost a laugh. "You think that highly of me?". He checked the map , the venue's address was printed on the poster, and when he traced it against the woman's lines, it sat only a few tiers up, near the inner wall. Close. Closer than the farm. He could feel the small itch of excitement and challenge behind his eyes already, the one he'd never learned how to ignore. "Come on. We'll go look at this door."
It took them some time to get there, but at last, Adam and Zeren finally arrived.
The venue was a converted granary.
You could still read it under the paint , the high windowless flanks built to keep grain dry, the wide loading doors at the front now hung with deep red cloth. But someone had spent real money making it forget what it used to be. Lanterns lined the approach, and not the cheap captured-sunlight kind Adam had grown up under in the City of Light; these were warmer, oranger, throwing long soft shadows that moved when you moved. A small crowd had already gathered in the forecourt.
And off to one side, away from the main doors, under a smaller awning of the same red cloth, sat a table.
It was a plain table. A single chair behind it, empty. On its surface, nothing Adam could make out from a distance except a low dark shape. And standing beside it, not sitting, was a figure in a long coat.
Little did Adam know, this encounter, could be the most important one of his entire life.
END OF SEASON 1