Caspian Quickwhisker stood outside the wager hall with an empty purse and a crown to win. He was four feet and five inches of gerbil, one eye behind a patch, two sabers at his hips, and one trial away from being knocked out of the trickster god's tournament. The purse on his belt was a small enchanted thing, leather cinched around a mouth that never filled up no matter how much you fed it. A narrow cloth band across its belly showed the count in stitched numerals. The number read zero. He tapped it twice. It still read zero. He knew who had the rest of his coin. A purple goblin with a shock of red hair had cleaned him out at the last table, laughing through crooked teeth while raking silver toward his side of the board. Caspian had watched him pocket it and slip out the back before the ink on the ledger dried. Chasing him now meant a knife fight in an alley, and Caspian had not come this far to spend the next trial bleeding. Inside the hall, competitors were already lining up at the cashier's cage to lay down their opening stakes. Caspian could see them through the tall windows: neat desks, glowing tablets, guards at the grille. No stake meant no seat. No seat meant forfeit. Forfeit meant the rival he had been shadowing since the second trial would advance without him, and the trickster's crown would go to someone else's head. That left one door. Down a side lane sat a shack of mismatched planks and rusted sheet metal, a crooked sign nailed above it that still read Loans if you squinted. Caspian had heard the stories. Everyone had. The lender inside took interest in teeth as often as coin, and no one who signed his book left the same shape they came in. Caspian pushed the door open. Behind a warped desk sat a shark in a black suit and top hat, mustache combed over rows of yellow teeth. Finneus “The Tooth” Sharpwater looked up and smiled like the smile itself was a contract. "Little gerbil. Big trial tomorrow." He slid a page across the desk. "Two hundred silver. Payable at sundown after the next trial. Miss the hour, and I take it out of you. You know how." Caspian read the page. He read it again. He drew one saber, pricked his thumb, and pressed the red print onto the line. The cloth band on his purse flickered and stitched a new number: two hundred. He walked back to the wager hall with the weight swinging at his hip and a deadline stitched to his skin. He had his stake. He had one trial to turn it into more, or Finneus would come collecting with those teeth.