Both of us tempted fate. Busking is not illegal in the Empire, for the sole reason that it is not done. Disturbing the peace, though, did get Sorcha hassled. He did a lot of running from lawmen. He never could play more than one song in one place and never did get any coins from passersby. He liked the running, and he liked taunting the policemen, and there were a few sardonic or brave shopkeepers who would harbor him when he needed to drop out of sight. Myself, my constant watching of the slave market got me noticed. The fact that I constantly scribbled notes while I watched the trade of live goods drew questions. An elf among the buyers there is noticeable. When the Qin agents demanded my papers and saw I had no work assignment there were threats to put me on a factory line. I showed them my injuries and pleaded for time to recover. It worked at first, but it was a temporary excuse, and it was clear I needed a permanent position.

Two and a half weeks after my return to Rabatha, Dirva got me an assignment. I served as a secretary to a minor Qin bureaucrat in the Office of Foreign Relations, a former military man who was placed in Rabatha to issue or deny trade permits to merchants looking to strike out for the Droma grasslands in the east. The first rail to Ma-Halad had been built by the Qin Army a year before, ostensibly to open trade, but the reality was that the only merchants he approved were those that served military supply lines. The Qin Army was gearing up to expand the Exalted’s borders. My job was to transcribe his interviews with Rabathan merchants into documents for later perusal. I was good at my job, and after a week or so, he seemed to forget I was there. He had a loose tongue. The merchants’ tongues were even looser, and none of them noticed me when they came in for their interviews. I might as well have been a piece of furniture. Many of the merchants seeking eastern trade permissions were slavers looking to partner with the Qin rails for easier transport. Some wanted to buy entire cars for transport and were willing to split the profits with the military. It was hard to make a profit, the slavers said, since so many of the live goods died in the trek across the desert. With the rails, more would survive, which would lower prices on slaves generally, and wouldn’t it be something, they asked my employer, if your average middle-class Qin household could afford a slave? I was good at my job, but it was not an easy job for me to have.