"The best is recently-dead, just starting to rot. Well, live works better in theory but executioners for thrull-making are a specialist skill I had absolutely no interest in observing, let alone learning. But yes, I don't expect to get anything exotic until I'm well-established and found a market for something I can do. Though if you have dog-sized bats or something I might be tempted to try."

"There's engine-sized bats. Right terrors, Curators are, and smarter than you and me. So probably some in the middle exist out there somewhere. Trained bats are a valuable commodity, do thrulls need... Maintenance? More than food and water, I mean."

"Sapient giant bats? That would be... terrifying even as thrull, and those are stupid and slow compared to the living. Thrulls don't usually need maintenance, but they also are usually kept in a much higher background-mana environment and routinely interacting with people with Orzhov blood, which lets us use small amounts of mana to give them commands. They might only last a year or so independently here before they start rotting."

"Probably not worth the effort then. What about living wood, does it have to be fleshy?"

"No wood, too much green mana. Scrive-spinster wood probably double-no, artificial life usually can't be used either for one reason or another."

"Turn here. All I can say now is good luck, I s'pose. Got any other tricks up your sleeves?"

"Always. But not any that are obviously useful. Bending law won't do me much good until I understand how the arcane law works here."

"Hm. Well, we're almost to Nibble's place."

They pass another engine, one with what is obviously a Correspondence sigil carefully carved into the side, with a few singe marks.

"Are there Correspondent engineers, or some such thing?," Teysa says, nodding to the singed engine, "I can't imagine just carving those signs into metal at random would do anything pleasant."

"Hm? Oh, I recognize that, 'an inevitable return to the place where one began'. Not random. There's engineers, and sequencers, and linguists, and biologers, and statisticians, and librarians, and poets, and all sorts of other academia out there, some of which focuses more or less on it."

"I can see how that concept might be helpful. Or at least good luck. As long as it didn't... pull that particular metal plate toward home like a magnet, which I suspect would be a valid reading of the core concept. Are there many of those academics in Pan?"

"Some of everyone in Pan, really."

"I suppose that makes sense. Getting out from under the law is a wide-ranging motivation."

"And my breadth of contacts is relatively narrow. Ah, there's the place," she points to a rough-looking wooden shack along the road with a sign painted in white that says "RAT-BUILT GUNS".

"Rat-built?" 

"Oh aye, Rattus Faber are cunning little mechanics. Tiny hands, tiny details. Nibble's a good sort. Grumpy, but proud of his work."

"I'll... take your word for it. Ravnica's rats tend more toward large, angry, and destructive, with optional swarming. And, hrmm."

She turns to the thrulls, "Bephel, wait at the door. Elpheb, hang two feet back from me and don't approach the rat unless he attacks me."

"Right," she says, turning back to her helpful guide, "After you."

The officer shrugs and heads in. Inside, in contrast to the dilapidated exterior, everything looks sturdy and well-maintained. The guns, accessories, and ammunition are neatly laid out in padded glass cases, with small labels. There's also a sign that says 'Shoplifting? This is a gun store.' With a target reticle over a hunched figure carrying a bag.

"Nibbles! I've got a customer for you." The officer calls out.

An overall-wearing grey-furred rat leaps down from an overhead walkway, scurries across a shelf and tiny bridge, and up to the counter in a handful of seconds.

"Grits, if that thing stops another customer from coming in, shoot it!" Is the squeakily shouted reply. 

A ratty face wearing an aviator cap peeks its head out from a hidden slat just long enough to be obvious, then shuts it with a slam.

"Your friend doesn't look very happy to be here, Mox," the rat-owner says.

"I'm not the Ambiguous Officer anymore?"

"You'll always be Mox to me. Why should I sell to her, eh?"

"Because money. And being one of the first to witness the new gossip."

"Point. Welcome to my store, miss. You can go wrong with ratwork, but only by hiring the wrong rat."

"It's not that I'm unhappy to be here, it's that I'm very foreign and intelligent rats are the second most surprising thing I've encountered so far. Our rats had enough size and ferocity to win fights with my thrulls, and enough viciousness and stupidity to start those fights. Please don't shoot them, they're slow to replace and won't act out unless I tell them to."

"Grits, amend that. Regular rules."

Tap-tap from inside the wall.

"Right, well I promise we can provide you the equipment to ruin your foes' day quite thoroughly. What kind of weapon are you in for today, Lady...?"

"Karlov, or the Dire Lady. Very foreignness comes with not being trained with guns at all, so I was suggested a shotgun."

The rat sighs.

"Probably want it low-maintenance too."

He sighs again. "Well, I can do shotguns, I can do low-maintenance and smokeless powder and safe as Port Avon, but this is really seeming more and more like a waste of my art on someone who won't be able to properly appreciate it."

"If I've made a mistake bringing her here we'll get out of your hair..."

"Very foreignness, hmm? I don't suppose you have some interesting engineering tidbits or exotic weapons that I can puzzle over, that'd be fascinating. No Rattus Faber? Who maintains the wiring and the piping? Who gets inside engines to oil and clean?"

"We have a lot fewer of them, I'm afraid; most things run on magic, which is much better-behaved than the kind you get here. I think sprites and fairies - humanoid but about your size - do some maintenance on them, but mostly for precision pieces. The rest is made to be serviced from the outside, and Izzet goblins handle it. They're about yea high," she holds her hand at about stomach level, "and have green scaly skin. The Izzet are the guild of mad scientists - they make their dull ones handle the infrastructure for the rest of the people. Which we're all thankful for, because if they let the clever ones do it, it'd work ten times as well but explode once a month."

"That's the reputation ratwork has, but it's a damned stupid one because it's the socioeconomic system that oppressed rats and made us all desperate to survive. Sure, hire a rat to fix your boat and they'll do it for a tin of biscuits but it might fail suddenly later. We fixed it with gum and string because that's all we have, because people were literally hunting us. C'mon, give me something, some colorful Izzet thing that you have half a clue how it works?"

"Hmm, closest thing to guns we have are 'bam-sticks', which look pretty much like the barrels of these. Two-part charge, enhanced by red mana - if I work out how to teach anyone to use it, I'll come to you first - but basically alchemical, they either burn mercury and cyanide in precise conditions - hmm, that might need magic, actually - or dissolve mercury in... acid of ammonia, I think it's called, and some simple alcohol. Or if you like alloy-forging I know something about mizzium, which is the toughest metal known."