Danielle led Akari, Jordan, and Gideon to the tent the Ranger Healers had set up in the middle of the road, centered between the four road-facing buildings of the Rooms. It was a much shorter walk from Tom’s room than from her own, so it didn’t leave them much time to talk.

  “Thanks for explaining a little about Ezra,” she told Gideon.

  “It’s not going to be a problem, is it?” he asked, a bit anxiously.

  “Don’t worry,” Akari said. “We won’t let it be. It’d be nice if you could help us get a little better idea of what his limits are, though.”

  “Maybe you can talk about it while I’m talking to Ranger Michael about whatever he Now Hear This’d me over,” Danielle said. “Not that I don’t want to know, too, but I am the one they messaged for.”

  She stopped outside the tent flaps, where an unfamiliar Ranger stood guard with a clipboard. “Name, room number, temperature, and who took it for you,” he recited in a bored tone of voice.

  “Um, I’m Medic Falconer, responding to a Now Hear This message from Ranger Michael,” Danielle said. “Ranger Flo did a med check on me this afternoon, I don’t think I need another one.”

  The Ranger blinked at her, gears almost visibly turning in his head. “Please wait here a minute,” he said, then stepped into the tent.

  Danielle turned to Akari. “Is this normal?” she asked.

  Akari nodded. “Since Tuesday, pretty much.”

  “Huh. I bet they’re pretty tired, too,” Danielle said as the Ranger stepped back out.

  “You’re good to go in,” he told her. “No patients at the moment, but watch out for that SA lady who thinks she’s in charge. I don’t know what she’s even doing here, she’s not a Healer at all.”

  “Are you?” Danielle asked. “I thought I’d met all the Healers from our Ranger Station.”

  “I got pulled in from a different station,” he said. “Aaand then I got posted as a door guard on a tent. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the clinic-case numbers have been lower than they were thinking, but any Ranger at all could be doing this. Just not a Sending Authority flake! It’s none of their business.”

  “I see. Well, I’ll pay attention to what the SA woman does,” Danielle said. The Ranger nodded seriously, and she went in.

  Inside, she found Ranger Michael, the Ranger she’d been calling “Stranger Ranger” (whom she now suspected was Ranger Hart, the senior Healer), and Agent Bea. There was also a portable exam room setup, the almost-normal looking padded table with paper cover looking even more impossibly out of place in the tent than it had in the warded room at the Fenceline building. The Rangers were sitting at a folding table, while Agent Bea leaned against a cabinet of some kind, the hand cart they’d used to bring it leaning against its other side.

  “Hello, Ranger Michael,” Danielle said distractedly, listening for the wards. “Am I correct in thinking this is the tent with the privacy wards?”

  “It is, or we wouldn’t try to talk business with you in it,” Ranger Michael said.

  “There is more than one,” Agent Bea said. “Did you think to bring any mana with you?”

  “A little, but the message didn’t say what specific deal you wanted to discuss,” Danielle pointed out. “It could be anything from the thing where I make the Rangers a few tokens whenever they have an excuse to interact, to you wanting to discuss things I can buy so you can get back some of the – the unclaimed mana from Sunday. What’s the D word for that again?”

  “Discretionary?” Ranger Hart suggested with some amusement.

  “Yes, that. I did remember you wanting me to spend some of the discretionary mana once I wasn’t so out of it,” Danielle said. “There’s also the rented room doors in the other five buildings, because I only made it to buildings one, two, and six on Sunday night; and then there are the discount tokens – long story short, the message wasn’t specific enough to prepare for very well.”

  “We would actually like to buy three more Combat Medic tokens,” Ranger Michael said. “Since you have now seen all three of our Healers today. This is actually about the discount sales of Sterilize Object and Local Antihistamine, though.”

  “I’m level 2 in token making now,” Danielle reminded him. “Does the rule limit you to exactly three tokens, or is it three skill activations now?”

  “Oh! Congratulations. Uh, do we have an official answer on that one, boss?” Ranger Michael looked to Ranger Hart - that confirmed his identity, didn’t it?

  Ranger Hart gave a satisfied smile. “It’s always about Skill activations, if we have that much mana available. After all, Activation Tuning is a tier 5 Trait, so we know for sure she doesn’t have it available yet. We might have to renegotiate with the Inside when she hits base level 6, if they’re still trying to micromanage our interactions, but until then it’s one Skill activation per interactable Ranger per day. And yes, I’m prepared for that.”

  “Great – that’ll be helpful if you sold more than five tokens around camp,” Danielle said with a rueful grin.

  “So far, we’ve taken 28 orders,” Ranger Michael said. “We’ve currently got requests for 14 Sterilize Object tokens, including from a girl who says you rescued her practice hide and un-stunk her room with it?”

  “Oh – yeah, I was out checking temperatures with Healer Orellana this morning, and this one room had a rabbit hide in there that was definitely not sterile, shall we say?” Danielle shook her head. “I’m glad someone in there decided to do something about it for herself after we aired it out for them.”

  “I see. Well, 14 of those, and 4 Local Antihistamines are on order. Are you willing and able to make them for us tonight?” Ranger Michael said.

  “Yeah. Um, it’ll just be faster if you buy the Combat Medic tokens first, so I don’t have to go back to my room for the actual token mana,” Danielle said.

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  “They have the mana on hand,” Agent Bea said dryly. “These are prepaid orders.”

  “Oh! Well then yes, bring it out and I’ll get started,” Danielle said.

  Agent Bea watched as Ranger Hart brought out a strongbox in a familiar style, and started laying out tokens on the table. “I hope you don’t feel the need to collect all the 50s individually,” he said, “We’ve had to make change for everyone.”

  “I don’t care that much what exact tokens go into the profit part, as long as it’s the right total in the end,” Danielle said, picking up the first four 100-mana tokens. “Four of Local Antihistamine?” she confirmed.

  “Correct,” Ranger Hart said, watching closely as Danielle activated Manifest Token and produced the first four Skill Tokens. When she switched to Sterilize Object and started working on the next batch, she felt a Skill bounce off her Mana Deflector, and Ranger Hart gave himself away entirely by muttering, “Oh, right.”

  “Why do people never think to just ask?” Danielle asked rhetorically.

  Ranger Hart gave her an odd look. “Ask what?”

  “Permission to do whatever it is you just tried to do! I mean, you’re a Ranger and you have witnesses, it probably wasn’t anything I wouldn’t give permission for if you bothered to be polite!” Danielle said.

  “How – oh, Mana Sense. Right. Sorry, I’m not used to such new Sent being able to notice a quick System check, let alone prevent it,” the Ranger apologized.

  Danielle huffed in annoyance. “It would still be rude even if I didn’t notice you doing it, you know,” she pointed out. “ ‘I didn’t think you’d catch me’ isn’t much of an excuse!”

  “That’s, ah, fair. I apologize,” he said, a bit more formally. “May I have a quick look at your System, though?”

  Danielle sighed. “Wait until I’m done with the tokens, please,” she said, “it’s distracting. Also, what do you want me to do with the extra two Sterilize Object tokens?”

  “Extra two?” Ranger Michael asked.

  “I’m making them in batches of four, so four batches is sixteen, but you only asked for fourteen,” Danielle reminded him.

  “You can leave them with us, and we’ll do our best to sell them. If we haven’t sold them by the time the Catalog Fair is done, you’ll get them back to sell at a later date,” Ranger Hart said. “If we do sell them, we’ll bring you the profits with your catalog things, or whenever we meet to have you make more catalog tokens.”

  “Speaking of which,” Agent Bea said, “have you by any chance thought about what you’d like from the catalog? Some emergency supplies for your bolt holes, perchance?”

  “That’s a good idea, but no, I haven’t thought about it,” Danielle said. “Let me finish the tokens, please.” She made the other three batches of Sterilize Object tokens, and accepted 900 mana in 100-mana tokens from Ranger Hart. Then she made three batches of Combat Medic tokens, which added up to a whopping 7200 mana.

  “Ugh, I can’t even fit all this in my little purse,” she said, contemplating the pile of 150-mana tokens with some dismay. “Not even if it was empty on the way here, and it wasn’t!”

  “Well, then let’s talk about alternate payment methods, shall we?” Agent Bea began.

  “Ugh. Why are you so short of mana if you buy this kind of stuff all the time anyway?” Danielle asked.

  “A number of reasons, but most notably these two: first, Firmitatem has lost some of our oldest and highest mana producing citizens in the last decade, which means that while we are financially stable, the government has been bringing in noticeably less mana in taxes in recent years. Second, our Inside and Returned Skill Sharers generally prefer to be paid in Inside currency of equivalent value, rather than mana itself,” Agent Bea explained. “In short, it’s Karen’s fault.”

  “It’s her fault you’re buying from me, for mana, you mean. Her fault, but I’m the tool she’s using to do the damage,” Danielle said unhappily.

  “Yes. It is not, of course, your fault; and I fully agree that you have a right to receive your just compensation in whatever format is most useful to you. There’s technically no reason Sent can’t have money, for the record, but so few of you actually do that the seasonal fairs don’t use it either; mana is the de-facto currency of the Sendings for entirely obvious reasons,” Agent Bea lectured. “Not just because we don’t let you bring out any normal currency when we Send you, either! Half the reason we don’t is that previous Sent have found it entirely worthless for the first year at least, and many go without for their entire Sending careers and don’t miss it. Worse, early on, sometimes fighting broke out over this locally-worthless currency, making its practical value negative instead of positive!”

  Danielle chuckled. “You don’t have to convince me mana is valuable, Agent Bea. I’m a Skill Sharer and an Enhancer, I don’t think I’ll ever run out of ways to use mana. So your issue is, your budget for these tokens was in money not mana, and it’s hard to exchange it in the direction you need to; so you want to sell me stuff to get the actual mana back if possible, so I’m not shortchanged but you’re also not out any more mana than you need to be.”

  “Correct,” Agent Bea said. “The Rangers have a similar situation.”

  “I let the Rangers have a tab for some of the tokens I made Saturday; that’s where I’ll be buying extra catalog stuff, I expect,” Danielle said. “You have a good point about needing to get some supplies in the emergency bolt-hole rooms. We also need to finish setting the doors.”

  “We’re planning to handle that during the catalog deliveries, since it’s another chance to work while everyone else is in their rooms at the same time,” Agent Bea said. “I wanted to do it this evening, but apparently you told everyone to take a walk, and half the camp actually listened. I don’t know how you managed it.”

  “Me either,” Danielle said. “Finishing the doors next week should be fine, though. I don’t know when else we could, either.”

  “Anyway, I don’t know where the Rangers expect to keep getting the mana for all of these 5-fold value tokens, but you really should consider making some additional purchases, through them and through us. You don’t need all that mana sitting around in one place tempting the foolish. The Rooms have very good security, but no security is perfect.” Agent Bea shook her head. “I really am worried about how many reasons you give people to come after you.”

  “Enhanced items and things are pretty obvious in use, though,” Danielle pointed out, “while mana tokens are easily concealed. Besides, as nice as a couple more of those cooler thermos things would be, I don’t want my party to get all spoiled and weak. We’ve got meat to hunt and blueberries to pick and dry and Skills to unlock!”

  “Indeed. Speaking of which, the quartermaster made known to me your interest in Find Prey, of all Skills,” Agent Bea said. “I don’t suppose he convinced you to rethink that?”

  “I, uh, no? That was Sunday, and I’ve been delirious ever since. I haven’t had time to think,” Danielle said. “He did explain to me why it’s not offered to just anyone, and I’m prepared to admit there are very good reasons. What I really need is any Skill that can be used the way my friend was using Find Prey – that is, to identify which potential prey out of a group is the most appropriate target. You know, the older ones, females that aren’t nursing babies, things like that.”

  “Hm. I’ll look into it some more, but I doubt I’ll be able to justify selling you that token,” Agent Bea said.

  “Well, I am level 2,” Danielle said. “Probably three not long after catalog time! So if you find a higher tier Skill that can do the job, don’t be afraid to offer it to me. I may end up unlocking something for myself in the meantime, though; because let’s face it – my party needs it, and that means I need it. I mean, I’m not saying I need to have absolutely everything, but I’m saying, I have the resources to take more Skills than the rest of my party, so, you know.”

  “You probably have more resources to take Skills than the rest of your party put together,” Ranger Michael said. “Certainly the rest of your roommates.”

  “Well, we’ve added people since you last saw us, but counting all this token-making mana, you might still be right,” Danielle said. “Listen, I know you don’t like me giving away tokens – “

  “You can’t be making a habit of that,” Agent Bea interrupted.

  Danielle interrupted her back, “I know, there’s the proper payment laws or whatever,” she said. “Listen! Remember how you were saying you didn’t know if you could save me from the backlash of the whole Saint thing? The first day we met? I need to protect them from that backlash, hopefully in a way that lets them protect me in turn. I’m going to work on it the hard way, but if things turn for the worse, I’m going to give them Body Shield, or whatever seems most useful when the time arrives.”

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