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It was raining in Braavos. It was always raining in Braavos. At one time that had been a selling point. Braavos, the foggy swamp where no fire-breathing flying lizards will kill you and enslave your entire family and force them into volcanic mines! I was reluctant to admit it was a decent pitch. As I walked along the canal trying to step over the puddles that dotted the stone path the amulet I was holding twitched. The movement was a little stronger than the last time, the closer it got to the turn of the tides the stronger my tracking spell got. At the moment they changed I could have found anything, but that one moment of clarity was drowned out by the rest of the day's slow moving water grounding out my spells. I was close though, the item, a shipment of silk stolen off of a quay was on this island. I turned to the slight man who'd been following me as I tramped all over Braavos "We're near. If you want to get any of your buddies, now's the time." The guard of the silk's nominal owner nodded but didn't make a move. "Your boss hired me to find the cargo, aren't you going to get it back?"

"There's no need Dresden." It was the first time the man spoke in half an hour. My old shtick back home of being irritating chatty didn't really fly here, especially when none of my well timed quips and jokes were anything anyone had ever heard of. Well except Maggie but as she was raised in Mexico until she was eight I assumed her pop culture knowledge base was a little less than mine. The short man turned from staring at the canal back to me. "We knew where the silk went from the beginning."

"This was a test." stating the obvious was one conversational gambit that still worked.

"Just so" The slight man began to walk back the way we came. "We were aware of your claims and spoke to some of your previous clients. Your reputation is well founded but it is said that sorcery is a sword without a hilt. We wanted to see if it was true yours was safe to grasp."

"And are you satisfied?" I might have been irritated once at being challenged. Here in this world where I was the only thing keeping my daughter safe I was willing to swallow a lot of my pride.

"Indeed Dresden." He handed me an oiled envelope. "You'll find a draft on our account inside, my employers will contact you for further work if its needed." With that the man resumed his silence as we continued to walk towards the residential part of the city.

"Who are your employers and how will I know them?"

"They are a consortium of trading houses and merchants, anyone from our group will pay half in advance from the same account on the draft you're holding."

"Good enough for me then." Honestly I was relieved, I'd have worked for the local mafia as long as they paid on time. I had kept my abilities limited, people only knew I could find anything in the city as long as they had a part of it. Finding people seemed like a dangerous skill to admit having, helping identify thieves and possible murderers for the city based on their loot was as far as I would go. For Maggie's sake I wouldn't make any enemies. A trading firm was much more palatable though, the Iron Bank wouldn't admit to having an account for criminals, at least until they had enough wealth they could join the upper classes.

Staying useful to everyone and not a threat to anyone was a fine line to walk, thugs had tried to shake me down a few times, one nice thing about the canals everywhere was that I could throw the mooks around a lot harder without worrying about the first law. My coat had saved me from at least one stabbing although I didn't think that had to do with my work and the threat of my little ball of sunshine had prevented any of the local talent from trying anything. After two years of struggle I was finally feeling like things had gone back to the way they were in Chicago, I even had my same ad: "Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties or Other Entertainment"

Past the whole medieval Venice/Holland thing going on the only real change was my family. I'd lost all of my friends in the event that had transported Maggie and I here, but I did see the Red Court die as we left so I was hopeful that they had survived. I worried for them, but having Maggie here made her my first priority beyond finding a way back.

The guard split off as we reached the island I lived on, he had further to go towards the harbor. I could feel the wards on my house as soon as I stepped off the bridge, living with Maggie had given me a threshold immensely stronger than my old burned apartment and I had spared nothing on the defenses. I often wished Bob had come with us just so he could see the work I had done without him. For the first six months I hadn't let Maggie out of my sight but now with the wards, the locks, and the help of the wives and families in the neighborhood I felt confident enough to leave her for part of the day.

Two years in it wasn't as big a shock to see her. She still had Susan's complexion even in the perpetually cool, cloudy and rainy Braavosi weather and she was beginning to look almost coltish from the height she got from me. I could see her with her friends, she had adapted marvelously from her suburban life to being kidnapped by vampires and then thrown into a fantasy world with a man claiming to be her long lost father. She spoke the numerous languages of Braavos with fluency I couldn't match, I had learned some Braavosi but the so called common tongue of the Andals was much closer to English and I used that whenever possible. We had both learned to read, her almost embarrassingly quicker than I but I'd made too many friends in books to be illiterate. "Papa" she cried on seeing me "did you find it?"

I smiled as I shouted back "Of course, that's why you get to hang around all day and have fun while I crawl in the mud!" She laughed, the other fathers on the island told me I was lucky to still be in the stage where I was my daughter's hero. I knew I didn't deserve it but that didn't stop me from loving it.

She ran back towards her friends, they were giggling about something, apparently gossip was universal. I lowered the wards as I walked up to our house, the first room going in was where I met clients, behind that was the start of the house, a two story stone building that backed onto a shared courtyard. It was larger than my apartment had been and while lacking many comforts it was a home. The bedrooms and my lab were upstairs, I had replicated Little Chicago and I had the start of a library. Maggie had recently shown her first signs of magic and I wanted to ensure that all the magic I knew and the laws were preserved in case anything happened to me.

I wasn't too worried. Braavos was a peaceful and strong city, unlike the kingdom across the sea or the other free cities there were no hereditary nobles. In many ways Braavos was the best city to land in. Finding lost items was more lucrative here than in Chicago, I had a healthy amount saved in the Iron Bank and even owned a partial share in a trading cog who's captain owed me for finding his stolen cargo. It wasn't America or the twenty first century, but it was home and had my family. Things certainly could be worse.