Big Time promised a boat would be ready in a few days and offered them hotel rooms in the meantime. Roy and Bastion weren’t ready to sleep just yet though. It had been an eventful day, and they had plenty to discuss, so they headed to the guest lounge.

  They found it empty. Most of the other guests were still out on Bay Town’s main street, enjoying the shops and restaurants, proving that the Mayor’s plan was already coming together.

  Outside, the rain was picking up, hammering against the windows. That would probably keep people out even later, hoping it would let up before they made their way back.

  They sank into club chairs near the fireplace: blocky masses of wood and fabric from a time before modernism had turned chairs into sleek curves of plywood and plastic, and long before the Warp had turned most people’s idea of furniture into assortments of crates and cinderblocks.

  Roy found the experience enjoyably novel.

  “This feels fancy. I wish I had a waistcoat and a top hat, or one of those big brandy glasses to swish around.”

  “You don’t drink,” Bastion pointed out.

  “Yeah, well, I found an old fitness magazine that said alcohol messes with the chemicals in your blood and makes you weaker. We’ve gotta be strong for what’s ahead of us.”

  “There are a lot of guys in bars who’d try to kick your ass for saying that.”

  “They’d try and they’d fail. Because I’m stronger than them. Because I don’t do things like drink.”

  “Guess I can’t argue with that. Speaking of what’s ahead of us, I can’t believe how good this deal’s worked out. We’re getting everything we need to get started and another treasure tip-off.”

  “So you think Mayor Big Time’s a good guy?”

  “Oh, I think he’s one-hundred percent out for himself, but it’s in his interest for us to succeed, so I’d say this next job’s totally legit. More than that last one anyway. I think we’re on the right track.”

  “Yeah,” said Roy. “It sounds more like a big prize, right?”

  “OK. Now that we’ve got a minute to ourselves, I want to get into that tiny knight in the computer thing more. What was that all about, exactly?”

  “I don’t know. I was just using the computer in what I thought was the normal way. I mean, I can’t really be sure because I’ve never used one before, but it’s just moving the trackball and clicking, right? Then reading off the screen?”

  ”That about sums it up,” said Bastion.

  “But then when I started talking to myself about how to get to Lightner World, a little knight appeared on the screen and started talking to me. He knew my name.”

  “So, assuming my first instinct was wrong and you’re not insane, this was some kind of magic we haven’t seen before. You’d know more about that than me. Have you ever heard of something like this?”

  “No. Automatons can act out their theme, like we saw with the Sea King, but they aren’t intelligent.”

  “So that computer was special?”

  Roy hesitated, but he knew he couldn’t keep this from his best friend. “It wasn’t just the computer. I saw the knight again after that.”

  “Where?”

  “On the cover of Big Time’s book about designing Lightner World. He was standing on the castle battlements, and this time, he wasn’t a virtual image; he looked like a guy in a costume. It happened right after we agreed to the Mayor’s job offer. He gave me a thumbs up, like he was showing me we’re on the right track.”

  “OK then. It’s you that’s special. Makes sense.”

  “How does that make sense?” Roy asked.

  “You’re not exactly typical, Roy. In a good way, I mean. The way you connect with every film you watch, the way you leap around with that sword as though the rest of the world’s vanished. If anyone was going to get something extra from theme magic, it was going to be you.”

  “Oh,” said Roy, realisation dawning on his face.

  “What?”

  “You remember when we fought the giant crab?”

  “No, Roy, I completely forgot about that. Of course I fucking remember it!”

  “Well, when I was attacking it, I felt this kind of…extra strength in my legs and did a jumping attack. I think I saw the knight then, too, in the water. I thought I was just imagining it. Also, my sword was glowing.”

  “You didn’t have the right costume for resonance with your sword, or the right setting, and you still pulled off a powered-up glowing sword strike.” Bastion grinned. “It’s even better than I thought. You’re special in a way that’s useful.“

  “Huh. Thanks. I hadn’t thought of it like that. I just hope it really is leading us to something good. I’ll pay extra close attention if he appears again, so that I can remember any clues.”

  “Wait,” said Bastion. “You saw him on a computer screen and a book cover. Try to see him again now.”

  “How?”

  “With the paintings and photographs in here. They’re similar enough, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  Roy looked around the room. Pictures in brass and gold-leaf frames filled the walls, taking the Gilded Age look very literally. Many had captions beneath them.

  He walked over to one of the smaller ones, the rain growing louder as he approached the windows.

  “Teddy Roosevelt, George Patton, Thomas Edison. Wow, some important people stayed here.”

  “Yeah. Including us,” said Bastion. “Once we’ve made our names around here, there'll be two more pictures in this room. There’s got to be a painter around here somewhere, or a working camera.”

  “What? The one from Big Time’s Bill-Block set isn’t good enough for you?” asked Roy.

  “That was part of a toy set, not the thing for our legacy. Plus, digital cameras all used these weirdly specific kinds of batteries you can’t find anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if that one was just for playing pretend.

  Roy moved on to another framed photograph. The two presidents and the industrialist were rendered in black and white, but this one was in vivid color. It depicted the main street of Bay Town, before it was Bay Town.

  No decorative pillars. No neon logos. Not just a lack of theme magic, but a lack of theming altogether. The unpaved street was rutted and rilled, a soupy quagmire of mud, lined with telephone poles instead of charming street lamps. The buildings were aged brick instead of white stone.

  Other than the general style of the architecture, it had little in common with the street it had become, and standing center frame was the reason why.

  A man with slicked back hair and a thin moustache, looking very magician-like in a red waistcoat and white chinos. A showman standing out amongst the other, plainer men.

  “James Lightner,” said Roy.

  “Really. Let me see.” Bastion got up and joined him by the photograph. “Oh, yeah. Definitely looks like the kind of guy that’d build his own world. He was wearing a costume even before they were magic.”

  “He looks young here. Compared to on the computer.”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Wonder why he came here?”

  “Inspiration,” said Roy. Streets like this had inspired Lightner World, and then Lightner World inspired them right back.

  “Well. This seems like the best one. Try to make your little mascot appear.”

  “OK.” Roy stared at the picture, focusing on different elements: the gabled roofs, the lone clocktower, Lightner himself. He squinted to narrow his vision.

  After about thirty seconds, he gave up. “Yeah. This isn’t working.”

  “Can you try anything else?” asked Bastion.

  “At the computer, he appeared when I asked for directions.” Roy cupped his hands around his mouth and spoke clearly: “Boy, I sure would like to know the way to Lightner World. It’d be great if somebody could tell me. Maybe that way I’d know I was going after the big prize.”

  He waited a few seconds, eyes on the photo. Then he turned to shrug at Bastion, only to find W. standing in the doorway.

  “You guys are going to Lightner World?” she asked.

  “W,” said Roy. “How did you know we were here?”

  “I heard about Mayor Big Time from Tim in the costume store, so I came to ask if he had any costuming work I could do. I offered to improve his guards' outfits first, since they’ve got a kind of naval thing going on but they’re missing a lot of detail. Half of them don’t even have hats. But get this, he gave me a way better job instead: I’m going to theme your boat! Well, actually it’s going to be a hovercraft.”

  “That’s great,” said Roy, thinking of her amazing mechanical horses.

  “Aw,” said Bastion. “I thought he was going to give us a really cool speed boat.”

  “He said the swamps are shallow and overgrown with plants. A speedboat would never make it through all the narrow twists and turns. Don’t worry though, I’m going to make your hovercraft amazing. I haven’t settled on a theme yet, but it’ll come to me once I see what materials I’m working with. I can’t wait to get started.”

  “We’ll help you however we can,” said Roy.

  Bastion nodded. “It’ll help us get going faster.”

  When W. noticed the boxes around their table, her eyes lit up. “Ooh, are you guys making costumes? You should’ve come to me right away. I’m way better at costume design than theming vehicles. Uh, not that I’m bad at theming vehicles or anything, I’ve just had less practice. I’ll still make your hovercraft awesome, promise.”

  “What I have so far is just sports gear,” said Roy. “Since it’s body armor, I figured it’d make me look kind of like a knight.”

  ”Oh, I can help you do way better than that. Show me.”

  Roy unboxed the armor pieces and laid them out on the table.

  “Hmm. These aren’t a set, right? They’re all from different sports?”

  “Is that a problem? I thought as long as it looks like armor, that would be enough?”

  “That’ll give you a little durability boost, sure, but if you want way more baseline resonance and the ability to buff it with alignment, you’ll need something more cohesive. Costuming is about being intentional, from the concept stage onwards. You have to understand the kind of character you’re creating.”

  “And these characters are going to be…ourselves?” asked Bastion.

  “Yes. Amplified versions of yourselves. That’s why your theme should match your personality.”

  “Roy’s already ahead of you there. He’s such a knight that he’s seeing them everywhere he looks.”

  “What does that mean?” asked W.

  “Forget about that for now,” said Roy. “How exactly do you make a costume match a character?”

  “It’s about making each piece tell a story. Take these arm guards. Right now they look brand new, but if I use a blowtorch to melt the plastic and press a rock into it, I can make them look dented without doing the kind of damage that actually having them dented would do. They’ll look like they’ve survived countless battles, and their magical effect will mean you really do survive more battles.”

  “Aged armor works better?” asked Bastion. “I’d have thought shiny and new was best.”

  “It could be, if that’s what your theme’s about, but most things work better with a history behind them. Even a fake history has power, so you want a costume to look weathered and worn.”

  She gestured at Roy. “For your knight armor, I’d spray paint every piece silver, then another color on top. Then you can scratch it up and not only will it tell the story of a seasoned warrior, it’ll look like metal instead of plastic. Add in some faux rivets made from metal buttons, leather belts to replace the velcro straps, knuckle guards on the gloves, and a chainmail pattern pressed into some of the plastic.”

  She turned to Bastion’s pile. “And for you…hmm. You’re going gunslinger, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Bastion. “How did you know?”

  “That pistol on your hip is so old the only way you’ll get it to work is with a theme that makes it work. With a pistol like that, the other options are military or pirate. Military works better for groups, and I keep being told there’s no pirate stuff left around here.

  W. nodded to herself, pleased with her own deduction. “So it’s gunslinger, and you’ll need to make it good because the Free States are full of Gator-men and bulletproof themed armor. No one tries to use guns here unless they’ve got some magic to back it up.”

  “OK, so is what I have good enough?” Bastion asked.

  W. examined the archery arms guards, the fingerless catchers' glove, and the leather hiking boots.

  “It’s a start. The good thing for you is that gunslingers, by their very definition, have a rough, ramshackle look to them, so whatever you improvise will add to that. I’d still do some leather etching on the arm guards, use shoe polish to add some wear to the gloves, and add some spurs to those boots. You’d still be missing two big things: the duster jacket and the cowboy hat. Those are just fabrics, though, so it’ll be easy enough to make them.”

  “Thanks a lot, W,” said Roy. “Are you sure you have time to help us with all that while working on the hovercraft?”

  “This is the kind of thing I live for. I love getting into the details, thinking about who I’m designing for and how they’re going to play the part. I kind of wish I could see the way you both fight, that’d give me a better idea about what connotations the costumes should have to give you the biggest boost.”

  Roy went first, “Well, I really like the sword I have, since I got theme magic to work with it even without any costuming. Anything that makes it work better or protects me while I’m in melee range would be great.”

  “And you were right about me wanting to get my Dragoon working,” said Bastion. “Unlike Roy, I’d prefer to be safely away from the front lines, taking shots instead of trading blows.”

  “OK. That’s something to work with. The sword’s a one-hander, what about this as a shield?”

  W. walked over to a table along the back wall and picked up a plate from beneath a silver cloche. “Metal, shiny, and it even has a handle already where it hooks onto the top part."

  “Will the Mayor be OK with us taking that?” Roy asked.

  “Roy, we’re the next step in his master plan to dominate all of Florida,” said Bastion. “Anything that helps us succeed helps him succeed. I doubt he’d mind if we ransacked the place, much less take bits of the kitchenware. Look, it’s covered in dust, no one's even using it.”

  “I guess you’re right.” Roy grabbed it by the handle and tried it out. It was on the smaller side as shields went, closer to a buckler than the kite shields popular in the movies he’d watched.

  “Is that gonna be thick enough for him to block bolts and bullets?” asked Bastion.

  W. shrugged. “It depends on the rest of his costume, the way he acts while wearing it, whether he’s standing in a castle or in an office building when the projectiles come flying at him.”

  “I can be fast with this,” said Roy. “Deflect melee weapons and not get tired trudging through the mud. It's good for where we’re going.”

  “You can smash something in the face with it, too,” said Bastion. “Since your sword won’t do much to the Gator-men we know are out there.”

  “I’ll try to come up with something for that,” said W. “We also need to sort out Bastion’s weapon.”

  “Can you get the Dragoon firing?”

  “No. Like I already said, only you can do that. What I can do is make that crossbow more thematically relevant.” She pointed at an antique rifle hanging on the wall. “No way that still fires, but a lot of these have detachable stocks. I can fit that to your crossbow and it’ll work better for you. Longer range. Better accuracy.”

  “Great,” said Bastion.

  In no time at all, W. had pulled it from the wall and taken it apart. The barrel was full of cotton balls and the firing pin was gone, but the stock came off easily and was just as easily fitted to Bastion’s crossbow using a tube of glue she kept in one of her jacket’s many pockets.

  “It dries in like five seconds,” said W. “Gotta be careful with this stuff. I’ve stuck myself to things too many times to count. Here.” She handed the modified crossbow to Bastion.

  “Nice,” he said, admiring it from different angles. “Thanks.”

  “You should find somewhere to test it out,” said W.

  “We could go up to the roof,” said Roy. “It looked pretty flat, and you can aim at the trees or those old skyscrapers to see how far your range is.”

  “Take your armor too,” said W. “I’m going to try making a duster out of some curtains. If you test the crossbow with the rest of it first, we’ll know exactly how much it improves your shots.”

  “Don’t you want to come with us, see it for yourself?” asked Roy.

  “I’ll come up after I’ve checked out the fabrics.”

  Roy and Bastion left the lounge and headed for the elevator. The bellboy was nowhere to be seen, so Roy had to pry the doors open himself before they could squeeze inside with their boxes.

  He pressed himself against the back wall, stretching to hit the button. The car groaned into motion, the light bulb flickering above them.

  The rain was even louder in there, punctuated by thunderclaps and the low rumble of crashing waves. Water seeped through the ceiling and splashed onto their shoulders.

  Bastion flinched as a cold drop hit the back of his neck. “I hate this thing.”

  “Would you rather have taken the stairs?” asked Roy.

  “No. I’m far too lazy for that,” he admitted.

  The hiss of the rain grew sharper, the crashing waves clearer.

  “We’re not near the beach,” said Roy, his voice tight. “Do you think the river’s flooding out there?”

  Another crash, louder this time, vibrating the small room around them. Dust sifted from the ceiling. That one came from directly above.

  “No. This is something different,” said Bastion.

  A final crash rocked the carriage, flinging them against the walls. The elevator shuddered to a halt.

  The lightbulb fizzled out, leaving them in darkness.