Pelape gets down and waits for the arms to go over her shoulders before performing the hoist.

Eefa can guess how this is supposed to go.

Hup! And off on through the market.

Eefa has never been this high while walking around! It's actually a lot easier to look around this way, which is good.

Every day is Take Your Child To Work Day if you are an Amentan. What's up in the market today?

Someone is trying to sell what a competitor claims are spoiled pies, someone else is attempting to start a matchmaking service that will work 100% of the time, money back guaranteed, and a fish monger and farmer are arguing over who signed up for a stall at a prime location.

What's the evidence against the pies? What if anything is substantiating that guarantee? What does the signup sheet say?

And where is Laithan?

The pies smell off, according to the competitor. They've also heard about someone who ate one getting sick.

The matchmaker has a flawless record and can recite many glowing testimonials about herself from people in different cities.

The signup sheet is illegible, they both claim it's clearly their own name but it's impossible to tell.

Laithan is having a meeting with a merchant who supplies almost half of the town's fresh food.

She'll take down the name of the person who got sick if they have it. Has the pie seller got anything to say about ingredient provenance?

So it sounds like she moves between cities a lot, huh?

Does the person who mans the signup sheet remember?

When Laithan's due to be done with the meeting she'll put all that down to swing by.

They do not have the same. The pie seller with the supposedly spoiled pies uses only the finest meats and foodstuffs.

She does, yes! Because she is so in demand.

Nope! They just make sure that people don't fight over who gets to sign first, not remember who signed for where.

Laithan is still in the meeting at the moment.

"Only the finest" is not the name of a supplier.

She may advertise her guarantee if she includes in lettering of equal size that it is only good for a limited time while she's in town.

She'd like to see handwriting samples from each guy writing their name.

He uses Tomston's Beef.

Oh, that sounds like such a hassle, she'll just drop the guarantee and keep advertising her stellar 100% success rate.

Wow these guys are terrible at this. This second guy is plausibly terrible in a way that's similar to the illegible signature on the sign-up sheet.

Tomston's Beef will get a question about whether they recently filled an order from this guy.

That is tolerable.

Second guy gets the stall.

Yes, for somewhat old animal rations.

-and Laithans meeting is scheduled to end in five minutes.

The pie seller should feed dog food to dogs and stop trying to pass it off to customers! Cut that out! Yuck!

And she goes to meet Laithan on his way out.

Apparently the merchant was spooked by news of Wendigo taking an interest in Kenton, so now Laithan is going to need to sell one of the gangs in town on providing security, or find a less cautious merchant. It's not a great situation to be in, but he'll figure something out.

"Hey, how goes it?"

"A merchant got skittish because of Wendigo, though not so much that we can't handle it by providing them with some extra security. What about you?"

"Eefa identified Dragon as a wolf. Dragon hasn't done anything about this, and it's just about the most inconvenient person it could be, too, but..."

"Has Eefa... identified anyone as a wolf who hasn't been an issue?"

"This would be the first time, if nothing happens."

"Ah."

"Um, Eefa do you know what causes someone to be a wolf or if there's a way to get them to... not be a wolf."

Eefa blinks at him.

"Has anyone ever been a wolf and then stopped?" Pelape tries.

Eefa shakes her head.