Schmendrick the Magician had traveled far and wide even before he worked for Mommy Fortuna and her circus of false wonders. In those days, he had been just unmemorable enough that he'd make coin in the morning and be forgotten on the morrow, and he could slip from town without question and without having to hear the wondered dismissals as people tried to make sense of having seen a real (if somewhat untalented) magician. Disbelief had never bothered him much; the bittersweet sorrow of living in a shifting age where magic was leaving the earth only stung for his own inability to conjure the True Magic.

When he was shanghaied into working for Mommy Fortuna, his feelings were similarly lukewarm. He loathed the witch and her squat, scowling henchman for their own lack of charm, but the work itself made him feel little. People would see what they wanted to see, then go home and laugh in their crowd about how silly it was that anyone could have thought a lamed and toothless lion to have been a real manticore.

The unicorn was different though, real and shining as the moon. He had to fumble out the lie that he saw only a white mare when Mommy asked, barely able to wrench his eyes from her horn. The next day, after the unicorn had been outfitted with illusions that would make the unbelieving eye see, well...

Schmendrick had seen enough smoke and mirrors and noise to know the cruelty of watching a crowd weep over a unicorn they could only see for a false horn.