Sansha hunched over a small table in the back of Jopetto’s bookshop as the last of the customers exited. He heard the shaking bell clang to a stop. The series of door lock clicks and flipping of the sign.

Jopetto hobbled back through the shop toward his apprentice’s table, grabbing his pipe and pouch along the way.

“How goes it, lad? You can finish Sorrows of the Sword in the morn’ ya’ know,” the old man said as he took a rickety seat across from the boy.

“Finished that an hour ago, Uncle Jo,” Sansha said without looking up from his copying.

Jopetto paused in the packing of his pipe. His mouth open and a pinch of longweed between his gnarled fingers. He shook himself and leaned in over the table to peer at Sansha’s work.

“Taker’s knees! You’re getting faster each day. There’s no doubt in that. Whatcha’ workin’ on now then, eh?” Jopetto asked with an inquisitive crane of his neck as he lit his clay pipe with a match.

“A bilingual text of Old Gandish folktales by The Brothers of Thrim,” Sansha said proudly as he finished the last of his page. He dropped his quill in the well of ink, closed the original he had been copying from, then dusted the page of his own version with sand.

“Aaaaah. Choice excellent, my friend,” Jopetto said with a grin as he exhaled a thick milky smoke from his nostrils.

“Did you get to The Harper of Dellin yet? Or The Keeper of the Keys in Ostanee?” the old man asked excitedly as he poked the air with his pipe.

Sansha smiled at his mentor and held up a finger. “The Harper of Dellin—yes. Haven’t made it to The Keeper yet, though, so no spoilers!”

“Right, right, ‘course,” Jopetto said as he nodded his approval of Sansha’s words and leaned back in his seat.

“The Harper of Dellin, though,” Sansha began as he held his head in mock frustration. Jopetto raised an eyebrow with a knowing look of where this was headed.

“His friends and lover went through all that trouble to break him out of his cell in the night and escape his execution in the morning—” Sansha held out his hands as he struggled to curse at an appropriate level of vulgarity.

“And then kills himself with hemlock anyway!?” Sansha said with a face half bewilderment and half awe.

The old man crossed his legs and laughed at the boy’s reaction before taking another pull of his pipe.

He blew smoke rings into the air, there in the back of the lantern-lit bookshop, and threw Sansha a sly look.

“Well…Why do you think he chose to remain yet die by his own hands, my lad?”

“Because he’s a fekin’ idjyut!” Sansha laughed and threw his hands up in surrender.

They both laughed, and Jopetto knocked out his pipe ashes into a flowerpot by the windowsill.

“Well, as I’ve said before,” he started as Sansha jumped from his chair to perform a mock soldier salute, echoing the old man’s words.

“Why save you the trouble of figuring it out yourself? Intelligence can be gained in the first reading, but wisdom must be earned,” Jopetto and Sansha finished in unison.

Jopetto scrunched his nose in an angry imitation of a bearded troll, his mouth disappearing behind his gray whiskers.

This made Sansha burst out in laughter, and the old man stood as well.

“At ease, soldier,” Jopetto said, as he ruffled Sansha’s already messy hair.

“Come now. If we’re to be up at the butt-crack o’ Sha in the morn, we best be joinin’ the Fae in the Dreamrealm soon.”

With that, Sansha pinched the wicks of the lanterns, and they both hobbled to their beds on the small floorspace above the bookshop.