By and by, the knights' meal with Princess Kate and Captain Sloan came to an end, and after thanking them heartily for their assistance, she dismissed them. Manfred, Nathan, and Tom all rose at the same time, and after each man gave one last bow, they made for the balcony door.

At first, Manfred's pace would have brought him to walk alongside Nathan, but Tom held a hand on his shoulder to slow him. Nathan entered the main part of the castle ahead of them while Manfred leaned his ear down nearer Tom as they strolled at a slower speed behind.

"I want you to be careful, Manfred." Tom whispered, "Nathan may very well be knowledgeable where you need him to be, but I don't trust his character."

"Why's that?" Manfred asked, "Just curious."

"In his trial, he encountered a hostage situation, and I believe he shed the blood of a defenseless man rather than letting the dispute be managed with words. My advisory council was nearly unanimous in acquitting him of any guilt, insisting he had no alternatives, but I disagree. Nonetheless, without any concrete evidence to the contrary, I had to accept the situation as it was, and so he passed. Maybe that was a mistake."

"Well, I'll keep a close eye on him, sir. Sometimes men enter knighthood as brash hotheads, but the weight of duty eventually tempers them."

Tom nodded. "I do hope that proves true in his case. At any rate, I wish you well on your assignment."

"Thank you, sir. Lord willing, we'll finally get to the bottom of all this."

After Tom muttered something presumably affirmative, Manfred took a few long strides to catch up with Nathan. The dark-skinned Raskan glanced up with a pleasant expression and a nod.

"So, Manfred," Nathan began, "are you ready to go undercover?"

Manfred paused a moment in confusion. His brow furrowed and mouth opened for a few seconds before words spilled out. "Excuse me? Undercover?"

"Yeah, that's what I said. Surely you don't think we're going to the smokin' shadow markets and makin' it obvious we're knights. Much information we'll get out of criminals if they know we're the upholders of peace and justice."

"Oh...that's true. I hadn't thought that through."

Nathan threw up his hands with a wide grin spread across his face. "Hey, that's what I'm here for."

"I guess so. Now...where exactly would we look for a shadow market, anyway? I mean, if that sort of thing can be readily known, then doesn't that defeat the purpose?"

"Well, I wouldn't say it's readily known, but good thing for us, I know where to look."

Manfred narrowed his eyes, and the slightest hint of a smirk crept to his lips. "Do I even want to know how you—"

"It's not as bad as you think. The thing with selling illegal stuff is, though some of it's truly nefarious of course, a lot is due to royal bans on innocent things. For example, you ever seen a Rostacian ruby?"

"No...I've heard about them, but never seen one."

"There's a reason for that. Princess Kate's grandfather banned them from Monterayne several years ago, branding them 'devil's stones' and saying their redness was from being bathed in the blood of infants. Where he got that idea from, don't ask me, but to this day, those perfectly innocent but beautiful gems can't be sold at any honest establishment."

"I think I see where you're going with this." Manfred said, "Looking for harmless but illegal goods like that will be easier, and I'm assuming will lead us to the worse stuff?"

"Exactly. Because after all, if you're a smuggler, the last thing you want to do is make a ton of stops and multiply the risk of getting caught. Thus the shadow markets are born."

"Makes sense. So then, will we have to ask around, or do you already know of one?"

Nathan smirked. "Good thing for us, this one lady I was eyeing a few months ago was something of a gem collector, so I already had to track a ruby down for her. If the shadow market's still there, we can try."

"Alright, where is it?"

"On the south end of town, only open after sunset. It's basically the shacks where a lot of weavers sell their products in the daytime."

"Oh, good, so we have the whole day to prepare ourselves." Manfred said.

"Yep. You wanna warm up with a sparring match?"

Manfred paused before answering. "Sure."

"Alright, let met grab my shield from my quarters."

"Your shield?" Manfred asked incredulously.

"Yeah, my shield. I'm still working on getting my evasive footwork up to par. As it is, I'm always tripping and stuff."

"Alright...I'm just surprised you even qualified to be given a trial if you don't have that skill. Around here, fighting with a shield is like fighting with crutches."

Nathan hung his head and sighed. "I know. Again, I'm working on it, just don't feel confident about my nimbleness yet."

For the second time during their conversation, Manfred gave a slight smirk. "Well, perhaps I can bring the agility out of you."

Nathan chuckled. "We'll soon see."

****

Manfred and Nathan spent the rest of the day together. A few hours of sparring in the late morning preceded their light lunch, after which they prepared to go undercover. They obtained a pair of the most nondescript cloaks possible and opted to conceal their swords in a suitably long handbag.

All too soon, night fell, and the two cloaked knights made their way out of the base. They travelled on foot due to Nathan's insistence that nobody rode to town on horseback after sunset. Though the stipulation significantly slowed their progress, they still made their way to the capital.

Manfred had no way of telling how long their walk to the Monteraynian capital took, but it certainly felt like weeks. Advancing through stretches of darkness with only half a moon to light their path was hardly his idea of a pleasant way to spend the night, but there they were.

Finally, they entered the city and traversed its darkened alleys. Here and there, a solitary torch flickered on a street corner or in front of a business, still burning merely because nobody had bothered to quench it. But aside from the periodic flame, the city was as devoid of illumination as it was of life.

By and by, Manfred and Nathan came to the door of a humble stone shack on the southern outskirts of the city. With the night around them so silent, even Nathan's gentle rap on the door was startlingly loud, and the oppressive silence that followed only made the two knights shift nervously.

When several minutes passed without the least response, Nathan reached out his hand to knock again. But just then, the door swung open, and a robust man with a bushy mustache stepped into the dim moonlight. His beady eyes shifted between the two and asked a silent question.

"The night is cold, and we are in need of blankets." Nathan said, causing Manfred to glance at him with a raised eyebrow.

"But the loom rests now." the other man replied, eyes searching Nathan's.

"We will pay."

With a nod, the man turned and beckoned them through the doorway. An abundance of questions swam through Manfred's mind as he stepped in behind Nathan. Their short dialogue hadn't flowed naturally at all, but yet it had somehow led to them being allowed into the darkened chamber that was a fabric store in the daytime. Not a single candle lit the place, and once the door was shut, even the little moonlight was held at bay.

Manfred strained his ears and picked out the footsteps of their host walking toward one of the ends of the room. He opened a door, and there, some dim lighting from beyond allowed him to see a staircase leading into a basement area. His grip tightened on the handbag as he followed Nathan and their host down.

The sights Manfred beheld upon descending astonished him. Sprawled out in the surprisingly large chamber before them was a bustling marketplace lit by overhead oil lamps and an occasional torch on the floor. Unlike markets of similar size held legitimately in the daytime, this one was unnervingly quiet. Transactions were carried out in whispered tones, and those who strolled between the various booths didn't engage one another unless absolutely necessary. Even the rough characters at a tiny tavern in the corner kept their thoughts to themselves.

"This place doesn't feel right." Manfred whispered toward where Nathan's ear would be underneath his cloak's hood.

Nathan shrugged. "Not really sure what you were expecting."

"I don't know...just not this, I guess."

"Live and learn." Nathan remarked, "Now keep an eye out for anybody selling arrows, bolts, anything like it, and poke me if you see it."

"Will do."

As they strode along, Manfred's eyes landed on a host of illegal items, some as innocent as the rubies Nathan had spoken of, and others causing him to look on with disgust. A host of bottled concoctions spread across one table, designed to kill through inadvertent ingestion, and not far off, another vendor employed a similar concept. He painted and dyed various toxic plants to make them appear like their edible counterparts.

Manfred peeled his gaze from the poisons and followed Nathan over to a nearby booth where bows, bowstrings, arrows, and all manner of archer accessories lined the improvised walls. In the place of the missing fourth wall was a desk where the seller sat, a slender man with piercing blue eyes. So much parchment cluttered his desk that Manfred found himself wondering why such meticulous records would be kept by a shadow market vendor.

"Hello." Nathan greeted with the slightest of bows, "We have a mystery you may be able to help us unravel."

The man narrowed his eyes skeptically and leaned forward with folded hands. "You do realize I'm here to sell goods, right? I'm not an informant."

"I understand that, sir. But believe me, it's in your best interest to help us. We have powerful allies, many of which are your customers already. If you don't help us, we won't take that kindly, and we just may disallow our members from using your goods."

Manfred nearly spoke up to counter Nathan's deception, but found himself at a loss for words. If there was a single place he felt he didn't belong and could never adapt to, it was this shadow market. He shuddered.

"Alright, ask away." the vendor said in an exasperated tone.

Nathan produced a barbed arrow from the folds of his cloak and set it atop one of the seller's many stacks of parchment. "We've got someone running around and shooting our men down with these, and needless to say, they didn't get it at the nearest hunting supply place."

"Of course not."

"So, what I need from you is a list of names. Everybody you've sold these kind to in the past month."

The vendor narrowed his blue eyes as he began thumbing through one of his stacks. "I don't recall selling any of those in quite a while. There really isn't much demand for it around here, but I'll look regardless."

Manfred and Nathan stood and waited while the man searched through his extensive records. While Nathan remained calm and collected about the whole ordeal, Manfred's nervousness continued and deepened. The shifty characters who constantly passed behind him made his heartbeat accelerate and body warm. He gulped at the thought that any one of them could pull out a knife or some other weapon, and surely in this place, they would have no scruples about using it.

The archery supplier glanced up from his records search for a moment to ask a question. "So, what syndicate did you say you were from?"

"That's not important." Nathan snapped, "Who do you think we are, that'd we'd just go around flashing badges? Knights?"

"Fair point. I apologize. Well, it appears my suspicions were correct. The last time I've sold any of those barbed arrows was three months ago, just a single arrow."

Manfred raised an eyebrow. "Just one?"

"Some nobleman wanted his romantic rival dead, or some such drama. I don't know; I merely supply the projectiles. What people do with them isn't my concern."

Nathan shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Well, who makes the barbed arrows you sell, and who else distributes them?"

"Some blacksmith in Danlash, I'd imagine. I've never met the maker himself, because we've got a middle man who distributes. But if your assassin is killing people in Monterayne, I'd look in other nations. I've learned some things about how killers think during my time here. And rarely do they operate in their home country, because nobody wants to sleep in a bloody bed."

"Well, that makes sense. Where would you recommend we search?"

The vendor straightened his stack with deft fingers. "Probably any Alcontean weapons market. With their adamance about free trade, there's little one can't sell over there."

Even though their faces were concealed by their hoods, Manfred and Nathan exchanged a glance. Then Nathan retrieved his arrow with a nod. "That would probably be a good choice for our next place of search. Thank you for your assistance."

"Of course. I do expect to be paid for my time, of course."

Nathan's hood moved as he shook his head in exasperation. He placed a quintet of coins on the table. "Ask for more, and we might just call on some knights to come down here."

"Please don't." the vendor begged.

"Let's go." Manfred said, "We have our work cut out for us."