"How're you going to resell rocks, lie to them and pretend they're of value? I'm afraid I can't help you do that."

"I make a civil servant salary, I can cover thirty and two, but you can't walk out of here without paying your debt."

"Debt for permits I do not have which were improperly issued. I refuse to believe that there's nothing in the civil servant code that you could come up with to solve this problem. I was attacked in your town by armed savages and I am not going to pay for the privilege."

A guard loads his crossbow.

"Are you going to be happy with the jewelry you can fraudulently sell, or are you going to be mad again once you check and realize it's fake?"

"You've told me it's fake. I think you're lying, but if you're not I'm not going to hold that against you."

"All right." She takes the rings off and takes the necklace off and hands them over. "Don't let anyone use anything sharp while appraising them - claim you're worried they'll scratch it and ruin it - and don't leave them out anywhere where the moonlight strikes them, and you might get away with it."

The civil servant pockets them. "I'm not going to demand the stranger because I don't know what they'd want done with it to avoid escalating, but stop provoking them. No one wants a war with the strangers."

"They want to kill it. They tried very hard twenty minutes ago, and very nearly succeeded. I will steer well clear of them."

"I don't know if they'd want us to kill it for them, or hold it for them here, or bring it back to them, so I'm not going to try, just take it and get out and the next time you run into some just let them kill it and get a new magic-slave from some human farm town."

"I hope you don't get in trouble for the counterfeit jewelry, it couldn't happen to a nicer person."

The civil servant turns and stalks off. The guards follow Iris to the edge of town.

At least the wilderness around here is as mysteriously devoid of hazards as the wilderness she started in.

Yup.

Segda is quiet, following her out.

"You okay, kiddo?"

"I didn't understand what the human who took your jewelry was saying."

"The city wanted money and would shoot us if we didn't pay them."

"Oh."

"I was worried they'd want you too, and shoot us anyway, in which case it'd be better to have the jewelry since it makes me better at fighting, but they aren't sure what to do with you so we're fine. We'll go somewhere else."

"Where will we go?"

"I don't really know. I want to go home. But I don't even know what direction that is and maybe it's a different plane since this one's weird."

"But yours has rocks that eat people."

"Yeah, but we'd be fine. As long as you know the rocks eat people you can just - avoid rocks. And people there could fix you right up."

"There are a lot of rocks. Or are there not a lot of rocks?"

"There are a lot of rocks. You don't really want to be sleeping alone in the woods. Paths are fine."