The Teller of Small Fortunes
Tao is a fortune teller who tells only small fortunes. Big prophecies carry a price she refuses to pay, so she wanders the kingdom with her mule, reading the little futures of strangers: a fine catch tomorrow, a loaf that will burn, a letter on its way. Keeping to herself has always been safest for a half-Shinaran woman in a land that eyes outsiders with suspicion. Everything changes when an ex-mercenary asks her to help find his missing daughter. Against her better judgment Tao agrees, and the road soon fills with company, a baker whose pastries look terrible and taste wonderful, a former thief, and a cat with a touch of magic. As the unlikely group travels together, Tao has to decide whether a life spent avoiding connection is really a life at all, and whether the family you stumble into might be worth the risk of staying.