"I thought Valemark was a city," Reyn said as they stood atop a hill overlooking what had to be the most ambitious example of urban sprawl she'd ever witnessed. Communities stretched across the valley like spilled paint, each settlement bleeding into the next until determining where one ended and another began required either excellent eyesight or blind optimism.

  Far to the north, she could make out what might have been a tower beside something that glimmered in the afternoon sun. A lake, probably, or it could’ve been an extremely ambitious puddle.

  Venn shrugged. "Well, no. And yes. This region was mostly farms and a merchant hub before, but over the years they all grew into each other. Like moss. With more property disputes."

  "Eventually someone formed the Council of Valemark, with the seven largest families taking responsibility for the area," Jarek said, shifting the weight of his pack with a sigh. "Farmers established noble houses, and the region started to somewhat cooperate as one society. A ramshackle society, but still. They want to be recognized as a city."

  Both women turned to stare at him.

  "What?" He adjusted a strap that didn't need adjusting. "I grew up here. I think. But I *have* been here. The smell of pompous agriculture is very distinctive."

  "I haven't," Venn said, tilting her head as she studied the sprawl. "I imagined taller buildings."

  "Why would farmers want taller buildings?" Reyn asked, already starting down the road. She moved a braid with a fresh handmade fishing fly from Rivier behind her ear, the small token catching the light. "Grain doesn't grow better if you're higher up."

  "Actually," Jarek began, then stopped. "No, you're right. That would be ridiculous."

  They arrived first at what looked like two farms that had achieved the agricultural equivalent of a bad marriage: grown into each other over the years but maintaining rigid boundaries through sheer stubborness. A fence made of leftover materials ran between them, incorporating everything from proper posts to what appeared to be a repurposed scarecrow.

  In front of this monument to neighborly discord, two groups had assembled, facing each other as if they were the frontlines of two very small opposing armies.

  "My sheep need the space," declared one of the most impressively bearded men Reyn had ever seen. His facial hair had achieved the kind of volume typically reserved for winter blankets, cascading down his chest in waves.

  "Oh, and my grain don't, Hendrick?" spat another man, this one sporting the kind of mustache that suggested compensating for follicular failures elsewhere. He punctuated his argument by coughing up something brown and moist that landed just before Hendrick's feet as he spit. "Three of your wooly menaces broke through last week. Ate half me seedlings!"

  "Seedlings?" Hendrick's voice rose to a pitch that his beard would have been embarrassed by. "You mean them weeds you're trying to pass off as grain?"

  "What seems to be the problem?" Reyn interrupted, stepping between them with the confidence of someone who'd never met a situation that couldn't be improved by direct intervention. Which, in Reyn’s case, often was the case.

  Both groups turned to stare at her. The sudden silence had the quality of a pot about to boil over.

  "And who might ye be?" Hendrick demanded, his hand moving to what Reyn now noticed was a sword hilt. An actual sword, worn by a farmer. For what agricultural purposes was a mystery.

  "Just a traveler," Reyn said with a shrug of her shoulders. "But you seem upset about sheep and grain. A bit too upset, may be. Surely there's enough space for both?"

  The mustached farmer snorted. "Shows what you know, outsider. This is a matter of honor between House Woolworth and House Grainsley!"

  "Houses?" Venn whispered. "They have houses now?"

  "Agricultural nobility," Jarek murmured back. "Very serious business these parts. Or so they believe."

  None of them even bothered to mention the obviously fabricated names probably meant to sound more noble than their birthname.

  "Honor?" Reyn's eyebrows performed an elaborate dance of confusion. "Over sheep eating plants?"

  That, apparently, was the wrong thing to say.

  Hendrick's face achieved a shade of red that matched an embarrassed beet. "JUST sheep? JUST plants? This is about HERITAGE!"

  "And boundaries!" Mustache added.

  "And the ancient rights of grazing!"

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  "And the sacred duty of cultivation!"

  "And my great-grandfather's blood feud with his great-grandfather!"

  "That was over a chicken!"

  "It was a prize rooster!"

  The argument might have continued in this vein indefinitely, but Hendrick made the error of shoving Mustache to emphasize a point about theoretical property lines. Mustache responded by attempting to punch Hendrick in his magnificent beard, which proved as effective as punching a dense hedge.

  "Enough," Reyn said, stepping forward.

  What happened next occurred with a speed that made observers question whether they'd actually seen it or just imagined the aftermath. Reyn moved between the two combatants, caught Hendrick's wild haymaker with one hand and Mustache's follow-up swing with the other. A slight shift of her weight, a careful application of leverage, and both men found themselves seated on the ground, looking up at her with expressions of profound confusion.

  "Violence over vegetables seems excessive," she said without a change in her breath.

  That's when everything went, as Jarek would later describe it using his recovered vocabulary, "unnecessarily perpendicular to optimal outcomes."

  Hendrick's men, seeing their leader floored, decided this constituted an assault on House Woolworth's honor. Mustache's supporters, not to be outdone in the defense of agricultural dignity, joined what was rapidly becoming a melee. Someone threw a turnip. Someone else responded with a cabbage. Within seconds, the air filled with produce and profanity in equal measure.

  Reyn sighed and began the tedious work of separating combatants without seriously injuring anyone. She didn’t dare to pull on her Rage, but she didn’t need to.

  She pulled apart two men who'd decided to resolve their differences through strangling, deposited another in a nearby water trough to cool his enthusiasm, and caught a flying melon that someone had launched with more anger than accuracy.

  She was just beginning to think the situation was under control when she heard a sound that definitely didn't belong in a vegetable-based conflict: the wet whisper of steel piercing flesh.

  Hendrick stood very still, looking down at the knife handle protruding from his magnificent beard and the chest beneath it. His expression suggested this wasn't how he'd expected his day to go.

  Reyn followed the blade, the hilt, the hand that held the hilt, and the man owning the hand: A wide-eyed Jarek.

  "What?" Jarek said, still holding the blade's grip as Hendrick toppled backward. "He attacked me! With vegetables! I thought he had drawn his sword."

  The fighting stopped as suddenly as it had started. Everyone stared at the fallen Hendrick, whose beard was now gaining an unfortunate red tinge.

  "You... you killed him," Mustache said, his voice containing equal parts shock and something that might have been relief.

  "He was trying to hit me with a sheep," Jarek said. "Or a vegetable. It was very chaotic."

  Reyn looked at Jarek, who was studying his bloody hand with the look of someone trying to remember if this was normal behavior. The amnesia made it hard to tell if he'd always been prone to casual murder or if this was a new development.

  "Thank you!" Mustache suddenly exclaimed, grabbing Reyn's hand and pumping it enthusiastically. "You've resolved the boundary dispute! With Hendrick dead, House Woolworth has no direct heir. The land reverts to common use until the Council sorts it out, which should take approximately forever!"

  "Is that... good?" Reyn asked, extricating her hand.

  "Good? It's magnificent! I'm in your debt, stranger. Mustache Grainsley never forgets a favor." He paused. "Or a slight. Or a memorable meal. Memory's very important in agricultural nobility."

  "Right," Reyn said slowly. She noticed the Woolworth contingent was already dispersing, some heading back to their farm with a stride that suggested looking for things to inherit. "Actually, we're looking for information about a beast that's been troubling the area?"

  Mustache's expression shifted from gratitude to concern so quickly it probably strained something. "Ah, the Beast of Valemark. Yes, nasty business. Been killing livestock on the outskirt farms for months now."

  "Months?" Venn asked. "And no one's dealt with it?"

  "Oh, several have tried. House Greenfields sent their best hunter. House Riverbend contributed a tracker. Even the College sent a student to investigate." He shook his head mournfully. "The beast got them all. Well, it didn’t kill them all. But injured enough that he’s supposedly recovering at the Temple of Healing."

  "The lone survivor at the Temple?" Reyn found this convenient. Sometimes life just was convenient, perhaps.

  "Aye. The beast has left some." Mustache glanced at Hendrick's cooling corpse. "Unlike some conflicts, which have more permanent resolutions."

  Jarek wiped his blade clean with the casualness of someone who'd done this before, even if he couldn't remember when. "Should we hide the body?"

  "Hide it?" Mustache looked offended. "This is a proper agricultural dispute resolution! We'll need to document it, file it to the Council, and arrange a tasteful funeral that doesn't imply his sheep were inferior to my grain." He paused. "Which they were, but it's impolite to mention at funerals."

  "Where's the Temple?" Venn asked, clearly eager to move past the casual discussion of agricultural homicide.

  "North side of the market district. Big building with all the healing and judgmental silence. Can't miss it." Mustache was already directing his men to deal with Hendrick's remains. "Tell them Mustache Grainsley sent you. They'll either give you a discount or charge you extra. I can never remember which."

  As they walked away from what would later be recorded in Valemark's archives as "The Boundary Dispute Resolution of Upper Field, Hendrick's End, Surprisingly Efficient," Reyn found herself reconsidering their group dynamics.

  "Jarek," she said carefully, "do you often solve problems with stabbing like that?"

  He considered this with the kind of serious contemplation usually reserved for philosophical debates. "I don't think so? But he was very aggressive. And his beard was intimidating. Also, I think I remembered that I don't like being hit with sheep."

  "Sheep?"

  "Or possibly turnips. As I said, it was very chaotic."

  Venn walked slightly apart from them both, clutching her quarterstaff with renewed appreciation for its non-lethal nature. "Maybe we should establish some ground rules about conflict resolution?"

  "Good idea," Reyn agreed. "Rule one: Don’t stab unless stabbed first."

  "Even if they attack first?" Jarek asked.

  "Yes. Dead farmers can't give directions."

  "That's... practical," he admitted. ?I’ll try my best.?

  Behind them, Mustache Grainsley was already measuring the disputed land in a way that showed that Hendrick's death, while unfortunate, had certain advantages. The rest of House Woolworth seemed to be taking their leader's demise with the acceptance of people who'd been expecting something like this ever since he'd started wearing a sword to harvest season.

  Valemark, Reyn decided, was going to be interesting. Though perhaps not in the ways she'd anticipated.

  "Next time," she said as they walked toward the city proper, "let me handle these sort of things."

  "But you did," Jarek pointed out. "You stopped their fight very efficiently."

  "And then you stabbed one of them."

  "Which resolved the conflict permanently. Teamwork!"

  Reyn looked at Venn, who shrugged as if to say she'd given up trying to apply logic to their situation several days ago.

  In the distance, the Temple of Healing waited with its beast-hunting failure and, hopefully, something that didn't involve agricultural nobility or competitive vegetation rights.

  Though given Valemark's tendency toward unnecessary complexity, Reyn suspected even a simple beast hunt would somehow involve property disputes, theoretical nobility, and at least three different houses claiming ancient rights to whatever field the creature happened to be standing in.

  She was certain she was about to be proven right.