Hob Stoutbarrel had three days to find a selkie scale, or the grandmasters would call the next name on the list. He stood on the step of the fanciest apothecary in Newhope, a two-story timber house with moss between the roof tiles and colored bottles glowing in every window. He had already been turned away by four shops that morning. His pouches hung heavy at his belt, full of chalk, mirror dust, and folded silver paper, but the one pocket that mattered was empty. Without a juvenile selkie scale, the Vanishing Coin would not vanish. It would only fall. The bell rang as he pushed inside. The shopkeeper looked over the counter, saw a halfling, and shook her head before Hob spoke. He spoke anyway. He said he could pay. He said he only needed one scale, molted, no harm done to the creature. She told him the council had banned the trade six months ago. She told him the last seller had lost his license and his thumb. Then she pointed at the door. Hob walked out and counted what was left in his purse. Enough for one more try, if the try was cheap. Not enough for a bribe. He had been chasing this trick since he was seven, since a pickpocket lifted his coin in the market and made it disappear in the air between them. He had chased the man six blocks. The man had taught him three things and kept the rest, and told him a full cup spills. Hob had carried that line for twenty years. He had performed in taverns and on corners and at fairs, and no one ever remembered him the next week. A grandmaster seat meant his name stayed. The Eastwick illusionist had tried the Vanishing Coin three times in front of the table and failed three times. Hob would get one attempt. He sat on a low wall and watched the street. A covered wagon rolled past, hung with crystals and small bells, pulled by a white goat with curling horns and pale, unblinking eyes. The driver wore no guild badge. Hob had heard of carts like this one. They moved through Newhope without stopping at the customs house. He stood up and followed it two streets to a quiet square, where the driver lowered a step and opened a side panel lined with small drawers. Hob asked, quietly, for a moonlit scale. The driver studied him, then slid open a drawer near the bottom. Inside, on a square of dark cloth, lay a single iridescent scale the size of a thumbnail. The price the driver named was every coin Hob had, and the rent he owed his landlord at week's end. Hob paid. He walked away with the scale wrapped in cloth, the trick now possible and his room now lost.

Hob walked away from the square with the scale wrapped tight in his fist and no place to sleep. The sun was already low. He had two nights to drill the Vanishing Coin until his fingers stopped thinking, and a body that had not eaten since morning. A cold rehearsal in an alley would buy him stiff hands and a head full of nothing. He needed walls, a floor, and quiet. He turned toward the inn at the edge of the craft row, the one with the smoking chimney and the thatched roof, where he had once watched a fiddler trade a song for soup. The common room of the Weaver's Rest smelled of onions and wet wool. Hob stepped onto a stool at the counter so the innkeeper could see him. He laid out what he had: no coin, a trick worth watching, and two nights of work in trade. The innkeeper, a wide woman with flour on her sleeves, said beds cost silver, not patter. Hob asked for one minute. He pulled a battered brass button from his pouch, set it on the counter, and made it crawl across the wood and climb her knuckle. A drover at the next stool laughed. Two farmhands turned on their benches. The innkeeper watched the button, then watched the room fill its cups again. She told him he could have the storeroom cot if he worked the floor every night through the week and washed pots after. Hob said yes before she finished. He ate bread and gravy standing up, then climbed to the small attic above the storeroom, where a square window opened onto the roof. He needed a flat surface and steady light to drill the pass. From his pouch he took the prop he used for rehearsal: a polished gold disc, etched with fine filigree, heavy enough to feel honest in the palm. He set it on the sill in the moonlight and ran the move. Pinch, turn, breathe, release. The selkie scale stayed wrapped in his other pocket; he would not waste it on practice. The disc vanished, returned, vanished again. His fingers found the shape of it. Below him the common room laughed at something he had not done. He had a roof for six nights, a cot, and hands that were starting to remember. The cost was clear and waiting. Every night this week he owed the room a show, and every show was a night not spent alone with the trick that would decide his name.