A Market Con

The square stank of onions, goat shit, and hot piss under stone. A good smell, if you knew how to hide inside it. Nott did.

She looked like a nobody today. Disguise Self made her a ragged wanderer with mud on her hem and a scarf hiding half her face. Not a goblin: just one more halfling tramp with a battered kettle hanging off her belt. She dragged a crate into a bit of shade, laid down sackcloth, and set three chipped cups and a walnut on top like she’d been born to it.

“Shells and nut, shells and nut,” she chirped behind her cracked porcelain smile. “Easy coin, easier pride. You can win, you can lose. Statistically, it’s the second one!”

Her fingers flicked quick, cups shuffling, walnut rattling. She wasn’t as good as she pretended, but Caleb was.

He slouched thirty feet away in a cooper’s shadow, all bone and stink under a long coat. Hair like a scarecrow’s nest, jaw rough. Nothing remarkable. Unless you looked at his eyes. Half-lidded, far away, the way they went when Frumpkin was prowling. The orange bastard wound lazy through ankles, tail high, a street cat with secrets.

The first mark was a dockhand, rope burns on his palms. She let him win clean. Two coppers back, plus one. Easy confidence. The next: the melon seller himself, arms like hams, seed-pulp under his nails. He lost and laughed, a big booming sound, and slapped his thigh. “Ha! Lucky little trick! Again!” A tanner. A milk girl. An apprentice with ink on his sleeves. Smallfolk stacked close, jeering and cheering, and her purse swelled heavy on her hip.

When someone leaned too sharp on a guess, Caleb’s invisible hand held the nut up inside the shell. When someone squinted too long at her shuffle, a phantom voice behind them barked their name and pulled their eyes away. When tempers rose, Frumpkin found the exact ankle to rub and distract with cute.

It worked, until the melons soured.

The melon seller had come back twice, then thrice, his laughter thinning. Sweat beaded his brow; ham-forearms flexed as he slammed down coin. He lost. He lost again. He lost again.

“Rigged!” he snapped, his voice sharp with vinegar. He stabbed a thick finger at her cloth. “I saw it move! Cheating bitch!”

“Sir!” Nott gasped, clutching at her chest. “Language, in front of the children!”

“GUARDS!” he bellowed.

Like the Nine Hells had been crouched behind a barrel waiting for their cue, two Crownsguard turned into the square. Red cloaks bright as butcher’s blood. One was young and eager, his hand already sliding toward his halberd. The other was older, his jaw locked in that weary way that said he’d seen too much market scum to care, until he had to.

“Ahh fuck my balls,” Nott hissed through her teeth.

She scooped cups and nut into her dress and bolted. She got three steps.

That was as far as she got.

Her curse swung heavy. Even wrapped in illusion, the weight was real. Her fat green cock slapped her knee hard enough to throw her stride, and her balls thudded like bruised fruit, hot and low and mean. She pinwheeled, caught herself on a crate, tried to adjust mid-run. Nope. Nope. Ow. She nearly face-planted into a pile of leeks.

“All right, tactical retreat is canceled!” she squeaked, hopping in place and cradling herself. “Plan B for ‘Big’!”

She wasn’t outpacing anyone like this. So she did what she always did when cornered: she turned her shameful self into a weapon.

Skirts to her chin, in the middle of the crowd.

The glamour collapsed like a shrugged coat. No shabby wanderer. A goblin, green, sharp, and unapologetic, bare as sin from the waist down. Her monstrous length swung to mid-shin, obscene and heavy. Her balls sagged like a stuffed coinpurse begging for a loan.

The market went stone-still. A butcher muttered a prayer to the first god who would listen. A barmaid’s jaw dropped; she remembered to gasp only after a heartbeat too long.

“Okay! Don’t look! Actually, look away respectfully!” Nott yelped, already fumbling into the ugly ritual. She seized her cock with both hands, dragged it up her skinny belly, and shoved the slab under the belt cinched across her chest until the blunt head jammed under her collarbone. She cinched leather hard, strapping the obscene length flat to her ribs. Then she scraped her under-apron up, scooped her aching balls into the cloth, and tied both corners to the belt to make the hated sling. The crude hammock lifted them just high enough that her thighs could move without punching herself senseless.

Not dignity. Function.

The guards froze, gawking like they’d never seen a cock before, let alone one that big and goblin-green.

Caleb twitched two fingers. The cabbage cart behind the young guard rolled exactly three inches. Frumpkin slid orange between armored boots with a pleased chirrup. The eager one stumbled on cat and cabbage at once and scissored into his partner; both went down with a clatter, their cloaks flared, and cabbages burst green and white under their backsides.

The crowd hooted. Some laughed, some swore, a few whispered like they were seeing something they’d think about in bed later.

Nott yanked her skirts down over the belt-bundled blasphemy, flashed a wobbly bow, and trilled, “Completely normal cultural custom! Happens constantly!” Then she ran, truly ran, her legs finally pumping free, her apron-hammock bobbing, and coins clinking in her sash.

Two alleys over, her breath sawing, she shouldered into a shadow beside the cooper’s. Her porcelain grin hung cracked against her cheek. She fought the knots with shaking hands; the belt peeled free and her cock dropped with a meaty thump against her thigh.

Caleb was already there, smelling like damp wool and skepticism. He stared at her for a long beat, then sighed through his nose.

“See?” she panted, manic with escape, her eyes bright as bottle glass. She jingled the purse she’d palmed clean in the chaos: a sleight of hand sweetened by civic cabbage. “Shells pay! Distraction works! Also, I hate this part of me,” she added, wagging the heavy thing like an accusation at her own anatomy, “but also it is occasionally a very committed co-conspirator.”

Caleb’s mouth twitched despite himself. “You,” he muttered, “are going to make me grey.”

“Good. I like grey. Makes a man look distinguished when he’s telling me I’m clever with his hand in my hair.”

“Hood and mask, please,” he sighed.

“Bossy,” she purred. “It’s hot.”

"Uh huh. We'll avoid towns and sleep under the trees for a while. The rumors of a flashing surprise goblin as hung as a horse will precede us."

"Yay, camping... my favorite..."