Free The Wind Merchant by Ryan Dunlap

the hat.  
    A gray mustache accentuated his gaunt face, and he bore the haughty look of a man accustomed to having authority. His disquietingly blue eyes looked down a long nose at Ras. “Erasmus Veir?”
    Ras paused for a moment and gently reached out for Callie’s arm.  “Can I help you?”
    “Yes, yes you can.” His tone held a roughness to it. He wrinkled his nose as though Ras offered an offensive odor. “If I could borrow you for a word.”
    Ras glanced over to Callie and said, “I’m afraid I promised to get her home. Perhaps another time.” Ras couldn’t imagine a stranger having good news for him and thought it more likely the man would lead him to a waiting lynch mob.
    The tall man narrowed his eyes. “I am a patient man, Mr. Veir. I can wait.” He stepped aside to let the pair pass.
    Ras and Callie took their cue and continued walking, remaining silent until they were well past the man.
    “Who—” Callie began.
    “I have absolutely no idea.”
    “Creepy,” she said.
    “All right, maybe we should take a skiff,” Ras said.
    “Can’t. The city is cracking down on Energy usage. It’s not much further.” She hugged herself for warmth. “It’s kind of thrilling, isn’t it? Being followed.”
    One thing Ras always admired about Callie was her incredibly romantic imagination. The few days Ras had spent cooped up inside his own house led to pure boredom, but somehow Callie never got bored. She read and she wrote, and Ras imagined this moment being an addition to whatever book she was planning on writing next.
    “I suppose thrilling could describe it. What happens next, oh worker of fiction?” he asked.
    “Well, the couple unsuspectingly—”
    “Couple?” Ras blurted, wishing desperately to pull the word back.
    “…yes, couple. Two people makes a couple. Three makes a few. What does four make?” She hid well whatever embarrassment Ras caused.
    “A crowd, I think.”
    “Or death, classically.”
    “Then let’s hope Mr. Hat hasn’t brought a friend,” Ras said.
    They glanced over their shoulders to see the man keeping pace with them, not caring about being detected. “Nope, still a few.” She resumed walking, “Where was I? Ah, so the couple doesn’t suspect that the reason they’re being followed is because he has a secret mission for one of them that the other can’t know about.” She narrowed her wild eyes, reveling in her storytelling.
    “You doing spy work on the side?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.
    “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
    “Hah, I knew it.”
    “What?”
    “All your books. They’re just secret cyphers you’re sending out to The Elders or The Clockworks.”
    “Same thing,” she corrected.
    “Hmm…that’s something a spy would know.”
    “Or someone who didn’t sleep through history classes,” she said.
    “Or that,” he said, “So what sort of spy job are you getting this time?”
    “No clue. I’m not the one he wanted to talk to, remember?”
    He did remember, and began to wonder about the old man’s reason for pursuing him. They were only a block away from Callie’s house and the man still followed them. “Hey, if I’m missing in the morning…”
    “I’ll put it in my story that you put up a heroic fight, but in the end were no match for an old man.”
    “Thanks, that’s exactly what I was hoping for. Just give me more muscles in the story.”
    “Your muscles are fine.” An awkward moment. “I mean, unless of course you wanted to further the irony,” she said.
    They made it up to her porch, and Ras turned to see the man across the street, staring. “Maybe if I get to be a spy, your books will start making more sense to me.”
    She crinkled her nose. “Now you’re just being mean,” she said, opening the front door. “See you tomorrow?” She rested her head on the door and gazed at him with blue eyes that sparkled in the porch light.
    “Wouldn’t miss it. You’ll have to show me the