Sylia Silverglow quite literally had nothing to wear. She was no stranger to having long hair at least, and quickly dealt with that, tying it back as she looked over her clothing options. Eventually deciding it was hopeless, she did her best using her—Syril’s?—clothes.

  Already she was getting a bit turned around in her head. Sylia was no stranger to deception. While she didn’t always resort to it, she was skilled in its application. She found that the best deceptions were the ones you yourself believed.

  So, to sell the deception of Sylia Silverglow, the female adventuring bard fresh from the woodland kingdom, she had to live it. Unlike most assumed identities she used, temporary, flimsy and with no real legend behind them, she intended to make this one a long-term option.

  Sylia—or rather Syril—missed singing. More than that, he hated hiding his true talent. He’d been in hiding, forced to present himself as a passably adequate bard to avoid alerting his pursuers when the truth was, he was fabulous. Sylia gave him an outlet to finally have what he became a bard to have, fame.

  Now how he felt resorting to becoming a woman to achieve it was something he was still coming to terms with. Based on Bill’s brief experience, he’d expected the turn to be more distressing than it had thus far proven to be. Aside from the minor bathroom inconveniences, she’d been pleasantly surprised by the experience. Though, she had yet to actually leave her room.

  Syril’s room, she reminded herself.

  She needed to completely disassociate herself with her…self if she wanted this to work. Thanks to Linar, Syril was thought to be dead. Raphael was a temporary flimsy cover to help sell that fiction, and this cursed belt had given Syril a long term out.

  He—she—didn’t intend to live forever as Sylia, but in this moment it was exactly what she needed.

  Well, that’s what Syril needed. Sylia needed something to wear.

  She threw something less than passable together, using her new magical belt to keep it all up. Though, she had no intention for Sylia’s first appearance in public to be so shabby. Before leaving the room, she cast a spell, donning the guise of Raphael, belted her rapier, and moved to leave.

  Gathering her courage, she stood before the door to her room, grabbed the handle, took a deep breath, and ripped the door off its hinges.

  “Oops,” she said, in a distinctly feminine voice. “Hells. I forgot about the belts other effect.”

  She experimented throwing her voice into a lower range. She could make it sound more masculine, but not nearly match the voice she had been using for Raphael.

  Grom burst out of his room across the hall at the commotion.

  “What happened?” he demanded, looking around.

  Sylia saw Sherry in the bed behind him, just now waking up.

  “Belt,” Sylia said.

  Grom looked her up and down, taking in the disguise,

  “Ummm,” Grom said, unsure what to say.

  “I’ll be back in a few days,” she said, letting the false voice drop.

  Grom’s eyes went wide at the change in voice.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” Sylia asked. “I don’t trust any of their ability to keep a secret.”

  “Linar’s pretty good at keeping them,” Grom said.

  “Only if he can profit from the keeping,” she said once she finished laughing at the statement.

  A laugh that she found quite beautiful. Syril had always appreciated a good laugh in a woman, and he found Sylia did as well—even if it was her own.

  At that thought, she took in Grom with new eyes.

  Nope, same old eyes, she thought, finding him as squat and unattractive as always.

  That’s a relief.

  Then she took in Sherry. She saw what Grom saw in her, with her cute, but not beautiful, country girl look. She wasn’t her type, but she was comely enough.

  Satisfied that the changed hadn’t appeared to be more than physical—so far at least—Sylia gave a nod and left, making straight for Syril’s and soon to be her local tailor.

  While Estevan specialized in men’s clothing, he would do for what she had in mind. Sylia wasn’t some isolated daisy of a wood elf, raised as high in the trees as elves saw themselves above men. No, she—while distantly of noble birth—strove off to make a name for herself as an adventurer and setting off into the realm of her human father to do so.

  There would be a time and place for the elegant clothing due her station, but Sylia was practical above all else, and her wardrobe would reflect that.

  ***

  The bell range as Sylia in the guise of Raphael entered Estevan’s Elegant Men’s Wear.

  Estevan moved to greet the new arrival, but Sylia signaled him to wait, and moved to the blinds she knew he employed to grant privacy to those who wished to keep their fashion choices secret in advance of the season.

  Once they were closed, she let the illusion drop.

  Estvan gasped in surprise at the look of the scandalously clad woman before him. In that moment, Sylia realized her mistake.

  “One of Master Syril’s…. acquaintances I presume?” Estevan said, eyeing the clothes he himself had tailored.

  Blasted hells, she cursed.

  Already she’d failed at keeping her and Syril completely separate.

  “Just a fellow bard helping another in need,” Sylia said. “I was waylaid on my way to the city, and I lost everything. By chance I ran into Syril. My clothing was less fit to wear than even this, and he gave me some of his own. I quite liked the craftsmanship and he directed me to you to commission a new wardrobe.”

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  Estevan’s brow rose at that.

  “I’m flattered, but I specialize in men’s wear. I couldn’t presume to adequately clothe a woman of your obvious beauty,” he said.

  “Nonsense,” Sylia said. “I’m hardly a delicate flower. I require clothing that can survive what I mean to put it through. Ballrooms and court are not the only—or even most likely—battlefields I will find myself in.”

  Estevan took the words in, and then nodded, his mind racing over the new opportunities.

  What followed was an impassioned two-way discussion on what wardrobe he would prepare for her. While typically, Syril—and by extension Sylia—always commissioned their clothing from scratch, never before had they needed to start that wardrobe from nothing.

  They went around the shop, selecting the pieces that would best fit the theme they envisioned, and then Sylia waited as Estevan took her measurements and got to work immediately tailoring something to serve her for today as he worked on the rest.

  While she waited, Sylia sang, exploring the new range of her voice. It took some getting used to, like playing another’s instrument, but like any bard worth the name, Sylia adapted quickly and found that the new voice was filling her mind with new potential avenues for her magic.

  Syril had tried to explain bardic magic to Ellen in the past, but the conversations had devolved quickly. Syril had explained how he found the magic within the rhythms, and when she asked follow-up questions with strange mathematical terms he didn’t know, she would accuse him of making things up while he personally thought she was the one with the made-up terms.

  Bardic magic was somewhere between sorcery and wizardry. While sorcery was purely instinctual and wizardry purely knowledge based, bardic magic was based on talent.

  Singing was the best analogy for it, and a fitting one at that. Everyone can sing, though not all can sing well. Regardless of the natural talent one has, those who put in the work can improve their ability to sing, but one born with the vocal range of a rockslide will never have a hope of besting one born with perfect pitch and the voice of a celestial.

  Syril—and by extension Sylia—was born with a beautiful voice and a passion for music that pushed him ever onward in perfecting his craft. In his quest to be ever better, he naturally discovered his penchant for bardic magic one day as he did the orphanages washing. As he scrubbed, he let the music within him guide his song and before he knew it, the clothes he was washing were made clean.

  Ever since then he’d made the study of music and the magic behind it his life’s purpose. As he grew, he learned the power existed more than just in the music, but in the minds of those that heard it. He found performing another avenue to draw upon power, and as his fame grew in Renmarch, so too did his ability to weave music into magic.

  It had been years since he’d receive such recognition, and with it gone so had much of his inspiration. But now, being Sylia, she’d become her own muse and sitting in the tailor shop, idly singer to herself, she wove magic.

  Which was a great relief, for the plan Syril and made and she was to execute required the acquisition of some spells she didn’t currently know.

  Sometime later, she stopped singing to herself. She’d found it. She’d sung a melody of inquiry, a subtle tune that inspired the listener to peak under every corner and find what was there but unseen. When she pulled the magic from the song, she felt power flow through her and her vision alter. Suddenly objects in the room began to glow with an inner light, denoting the magic within the seemingly innocuous devices.

  Satisfied, she stood, moving to check on Estevan’s progress, only to find the work done and the man listening to her.

  “I just finished a moment ago,” he explained. “But I didn’t want to interrupt.”

  She dressed quickly, only struggling a bit with some of the undergarments. She was very familiar with the taking off of such things but putting them on was a whole other matter.

  Once it was all on and together, she took herself in in the mirror. She wore a oversized man’s tunic of black silk, long down to her mid thighs, but tailored to hug her figure and tied tight with her gold accented belt. The sleeves were left baggy, with the intention to restrain them around the wrists with armor. Over the tunic she temporarily wore a brocade jerkin but had plans to quickly replace it. Beneath that she wore black leather pants.

  It wasn’t complete, but she knew just where to go to finish the outfit and begin equipping herself.

  She paid and left deposit for the full wardrobe, finally making good use of the coin Syril had been sitting on as he contemplating investing with Linar. At the cobbler next door she found some suitably adventurous high boots that she thought would hold up well enough in battle while not embarrassing herself on stage.

  Next, she had to leave the garment street in the Brown District and head toward the clinking of the more martial departments. Still in the guise of Raphael—it wouldn’t do for Sylia to make her first appearance in an incomplete outfit—she went to a leather worker’s shop.

  “I might have something on hand that would do you nicely,” the owner said when Sylia described her desires. “I had a noble girl commission a fancy set of armor she intended to use to run off with her adventurer lover. He left without her, and she came back heartbroken asking to return it. I didn’t have the heart to enforce my no returns policy.”

  The armor is question was exactly what she needed. A leather cuirass, pauldrons and skirt of armored tassets, all covered in gilded leatherwork. They came with a pair of gloves, but those would not do for one who used instruments as often as weapons in battle, so they were exchanged for bracers of similar coloring.

  “She had good taste in style if not men,” Sylia said as she left the shop.

  Next, she went to a weaponsmith for the next piece in her arsenal, no longer hiding her appearance.

  The difference was immediately noticeable. Syril had been used to attracting looks from woman as he passed, and a few men. She found now that she attracted looks from everyone.

  The women eyed him with varying looks from envy to lust, while the men all fell into the latter.

  This will take some getting used to.

  While she generally appreciated the looks, this was an adjustment. It would, however, make her plan much more likely to succeed.

  “What’s the heaviest rapier you can make?” she asked.

  The smith looked up from his work, eyes grew wide, taking in the beauty asking him the odd question, and then recovered himself and considered the question.

  “Why?” he said.

  In answer, Sylia walked over to his anvil and lifted it, keeping sure to hold it away from her new outfit.

  “Ah! I see,” the smith said. “I got some granite that might work.”

  He walked over to the back of his stop where he kept ingots of materials, all neatly labelled, walked past all of those to the crane beside it, and started removing small weights from the back of it. Each was a fist sized ingot, but the burly smith had to use both hands to lift them. He placed three on a sturdy wooden cart, and the thing groaned under its weight as he pushed it over to Sylia.

  “I took these in trade, hoping I’d think of something to do with them. They make for good war hammer heads, small and heavy, but that’s not a popular weapon amongst my clients. I suppose I can make a rapier that weighs about fifty pounds with this.”

  “Will it hold up in battle?” Sylia asked. “I don’t want it for show.”

  “Oh yes,” the smith said, going over to a barrel filled with failed projects due for the smelter.

  He took from it a sword that seemed fine to Sylia’s untrained eyes, and gestured for her to stand back,

  With the strength of a smith, he swung down on the ingot, and the sword snapped in half with a loud crack followed by the clanging of loose steel flying across the floor.

  “Impressive, but is it brittle?”

  “You’re gunna have to take my word on that one,” the smith said. “But I guarantee you’ll be happy with the results.”

  Sylia told the man what she wanted, agreeing to come back in a few days. She bought some other more mundane weapons, such as daggers and knives she could secret away in her outfit and then went to buy her most powerful weapon of all.

  A viola.

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