by B. T. Narro
Here I was already losing appreciation as I worried about the future. I smiled and lifted my mug. “Just tired. I’m glad you’re here. To your snooping.”
“To my snooping,” Michael agreed as we clanked mugs.
We drink in silence for a little while.
“Did the king tell you anything interesting?” Michael asked.
My skepticism sent off alarm bells but just for a moment. This was Michael. If I couldn’t trust him, then there was no point of sharing anything with anyone here.
“He just wanted a summary and gave me my next assignment. What about you?” I asked, hoping to deflect as I figured out how much I should share. “What will you be doing tomorrow?”
“I’m practicing a new spell, actually, with Leon’s help. ‘Windshield.’ Apparently, I just needed to add uD to the wind spell, which is the highest note I can reach, so it makes it easier.”
“I’m just learning that uD adds density to every spell, also thanks to Leon, actually.”
“The bastard’s actually teaching.”
Another thing for me to appreciate.
After a few sips in silence, Michael asked, “So who do you think is working against us?”
“I’m more concerned trying to figure out what they might be planning instead of who they are.”
“Does the king have any idea?”
I studied his expression, but Michael he seemed more interested in his ale at the moment. He looked up at me and appeared shocked.
“You don’t think I’m a traitor!?” he said, and I could hear he was really offended this time, as opposed to before.
Somebody was a talented liar, and I didn’t put it past Michael. But no, if I had to take a guess, it was not him. “Of course not,” I assured him.
“You had me worried for a moment.” He took another sip, eyeing me the whole time.
“Do you have any guess as to what our enemies might be planning?” I asked.
“Cason clearly wanted us to be afraid. It’s why he threatened you rather than killed you when you first met him. He thought he could use that fear to take power. I’m glad he was wrong. Then he attacked you and Leon in the street thinking he could kill you. Again, he was wrong. My guess is that he’s tired of being wrong. He’s probably planning something with a very low chance of failure. It could be something small, a theft from a noble family. It’s not just power he wants, as the king described, but coin as well. But we can’t let him get this coin, even if it’s from a rich family that is not supporting the king. It’s our true enemies in Rohaer who need this coin. They have been working with Cason for some time now.”
All of that sounded right to me. “So you don’t think any of us are going to be targeted?”
“No. But that’s just a guess.”
We each were taking longer drinks by then.
“What does the king have you doing tomorrow?” Michael asked.
“I have to check up on someone for him. I’ll have the callring in case something happens, but I don’t expect to find trouble.”
Michael seemed disappointed by my answer. He looked down at the table for a little while, then picked up his mug. He started to take a sip but stopped. “I do understand that you shouldn’t reveal too much to anyone until we know who the traitor is, and I’m trying not to let it bother me.” He took a drink. “It is hard, though,” he added.
I’d had a few friends in Bhode, but I wasn’t as close with any of them as I felt to Michael. Most of us growing up in my small town were usually just trying to have fun. There wasn’t a lot of care put into our actions.
I wasn’t sure how to express this to him. I thought on it for some time, but the right words just didn’t come.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It would be much worse for me here without you.”
“Reuben and Charlie as your only friends, can you imagine?”
I smiled. “I can.”
We were getting close to finishing the last of our ale. I had been looking forward to eating quickly and sleeping, but now I didn’t want to leave.
“I’ve been wondering something,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Why can’t the king have Barrett make us sign another binding contract, this one promising we won’t help Cason in any way?”
“I asked that same thing to Eden in the forest earlier. Apparently, a person can only be bound to one contract at a time. The binding spell won’t work with the second contract.”
“That seems strange.”
“Does it, though? Think about if two contracts could be signed. One could have you protect the king and the other could have you try to kill him. Now that sounds like a strange scenario to me. What is this individual to do? I’m glad such a situation is not possible.”
“I mean it’s strange that, by nature, we are limited to only one contract. It’s almost as if it was planned.”
“Eden and Kataleya believe it was, remember?” Michael said. “The rules of ordia were made by one demigod, Nijja. To be honest, I’m starting to believe the same thing. How else would you explain some of these rules? Like how Identify tells the caster what enchantment is active. I just don’t see how that could have occurred naturally.”
“The spell coming to exist naturally makes sense to me. It’s because our mana is capable of so much, probably more than we realize. Normally, we have to speak to our mana to create a spell. Identify is one spell where it works the other way, the mana speaking to us. There might be other spells that work similarly, probably with ordia.”
“You must be looking forward to learning it, if I know you as well as I think I do.”
“I am.” That reminded me that I should be heading to bed. I thought about finishing the last of my ale, but Michael spoke quickly as if to stop me.
“So you don’t believe in the demigods? You know, there have been accounts of people seeing them, even speaking with them. It seems to be happening more recently than before.”
“Eden told you this?”
“She did.”
“What kind of conversations did these people have with demigods?”
He shrugged. “What about the krepps?”
“That’s a good point.”
Even the king hadn’t found a way to explain the krepps learning common tongue, coming to meet with us, and describing an interaction with Souriff, the demigod who created dvinia.
Michael grinned. “All right, last drink because it is too late now.” He lifted his mug. “To when this is over, and we can really celebrate.”
“I look forward to the day.”
We finished the last of our ale. I was certainly starting to feel it go to my head, as it had been a tall mug he’d filled.
We went to leave our mugs and my plate in the washing tub in the kitchen. “What do you think of Eden?” Michael asked me suddenly.
I held in a smirk. “I think she’s funny, but she can be a little rude.”
“I know.” He gave a long sigh. “She’s perfect.”
“For you? There’s probably no one better.”
“What about me for her?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“I have no idea,” I admitted.
“You’re supposed to say I would make her very happy!”
“Oh. You would make her very happy.”
“That was extremely convincing.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Charlie became upset during breakfast the next day. It seemed that he had assumed we would be able to train this morning, but I told him I needed more time. The king was sending me out of the castle, and it wasn’t as if I could just ignore this order. Charlie tried to convince me that working with him to figure out mana was going to help everyone more than whatever I needed to do outside the castle, but all I could tell him was that he needed to take it up with the king.
Soon I was headed out while all my peers stayed behind. It was the king himself who had the other callring, which was enchanted by Eden some time ago along with the one I wore
on my finger. I took my sword with me as I went down the streets this time. I wouldn’t be leaving the castle without it anymore. If carrying it made people nervous, then I was sorry for that, but I needed to have it.
I walked to The Pearl, a large establishment that seemed a little too quiet for an inn. There was a man sitting behind a desk near the entrance, a mean look on his face. I immediately wondered if he was the reason there didn’t seem to be much business here.
The last man I’d spoken to here had a kind face, though it was his fear I remembered most. Looking at this other man, it was difficult to imagine him being afraid of anything, with his prickly beard and grisly expression. He seemed to be a little younger than the last, but still about twenty years my elder.
He did put on a smile that seemed friendly enough. “Are you interested in renting a room?”
“Actually, I’d like to speak to someone else who works here. He’s an older gentleman who was greeting visitors a while ago.”
“Do you know anything about him?”
“No, I…” I stopped as I realized how strange the question was. Why did it feel like I was being interrogated? “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
He stood up. I began to wonder if this man had done harm to the other, but from the way he was looking at me, it seemed that he might’ve suspected the same about me.
“So you’re not at all interested in renting a room, you just want to know about my cousin.”
“I didn’t know you were his cousin.”
“Do you even know his name?”
“Did something happen to him?” I asked.
He came around the desk. “You’re going to answer my question," he demanded.
Although I was somewhat tall and quite strong, this man was larger than I was. Normally I wouldn’t have been intimidated, but the fact that he clearly had noticed the sword sheathed on my belt and didn’t seem to care made me worry.
He spoke again, angrier this time. “You’re going to tell me exactly why you’re here asking about my cousin.”
“What happened to him? Is he all right?”
“I think you know exactly what happened to him, and I think you’re coming here to do the same to me.”
It looked as if a fight was what he wanted. “Relax,” I said as he stepped toward me. “I’m with the king.” I took out my papers.
He huffed with aggression but reached up to take the papers out of my hand rather than strike me, which he clearly wanted to do. He gave them a quick read, his expression not changing much.
“A sorcerer?” He gestured at the parchment. “Is this real?”
I took it back from him and pointed at the king’s seal at the bottom. “It’s real.”
“Why didn’t you say so earlier?”
“Because I suspected—” I cut myself off. “Is there a more private place we can speak?” I didn’t like that anyone could come through the open door behind me.
“Follow me," said the man.
I didn’t want to make the same mistake as last time, so I asked this man his name as I followed him through the inn. He told me it was Henrik Plumb and that this place belonged to his cousin, Mathew Plumb, but his cousin had disappeared today.
“I received a letter from Mathew,” Henrik explained. “He wanted my help, but he wouldn’t say with what. I traveled far to get here. I arrived yesterday, and that’s when he told me about the mages taking coin and threatening him.”
It was still hard for me to completely trust Henrik. He had a tough voice, and even the way he sauntered through the inn was as if he didn’t have any real fear about any of this. I thought about asking for Henrik’s papers to ensure he was who he said, but it wouldn’t make me trust him more. If he wasn’t working with Cason, he could still have been threatened by my enemies into leading me somewhere.
I let Henrik continue without interruption. I wanted to hear what else he had to claim as I was careful around all blind spots.
“My cousin admitted to me that he told someone about the extortion, a young man.” Henrik looked back at me.
I nodded. “That was me.”
“I’m figuring that out now. I’m not the brightest in our family, but I am the bravest. That’s why he reached out. He wanted protection and didn’t trust the guards. He said the mages started coming more frequently after he spoke with you. They took more coin as if they were desperate for it and told him if he spoke about it to anyone, they would kill him.”
The corrupt guards had been removed from power, but Mathew either hadn’t known or hadn’t trusted it to be true. I should’ve returned earlier to ensure he was not continuing to be threatened, not that I was sure when I would’ve had the time. Perhaps I could’ve done it instead of healing people the other day or training one of the days before.
The hardest part about all of this was not the training, not the fighting, but the decisions. Guilt roiled in my stomach as I thought that I could’ve prevented this man’s disappearance.
“When did you last see him?” I asked, still suspicious about Henrik.
“Yesterday, when I arrived. I escorted him to meet with the new head guard, Byron something.”
“Byron Lawson.”
“That’s it.”
“What happened after?” I asked.
“Byron said these threats and thefts have been happening all over the city in great numbers. He said he already has guards watching other establishments, and the mages stopped bothering them. He’ll have The Pearl watched as well, he said. Then he took down my cousin’s description of the man threatening him. I didn’t think there was much to worry about, but Mathew was still scared when we came back. I should’ve stayed in the same room as him, but I didn’t. When I checked on him this morning, he was gone.”
I had the sense that Henrik was keeping something from me. It was the same sense I had when Remi finished her story. There was something both of them didn’t want me to know, but I wasn’t sure it was anything useful, perhaps just embarrassing or hurtful to remember.
It was Henrik’s tone that was starting to tip me off. Yes, he seemed tough, but I had met a lot of tough men who still had compassion for others. I sensed none from him.
I felt for dteria near him, but there wasn’t a trace of it in the air. He didn’t have any essence of dteria on him, which either meant he was very powerful and didn’t need it, or I was letting my fears get the better of me.
Henrik had taken me to an office not far from the entrance. “Anyway,” he said. “I don’t know what happened to him over the night. I woke up and he was gone. I fear the worst. I’ve already gone and told a city guard about what happened. The guard said he would inform Byron and they would do what they could to find my cousin. I asked them what that was. He didn’t give me an answer. He just repeated that they would look for him. The guards here are useless. What is the king going to do about this?”
“The king has sent me,” I reminded him.
“And what are you planning on doing?”
I plan on not getting ambushed by anyone, I thought as I looked around the office with more care. There was a cabinet with a few things on top, including a dirty brass vase that was in need of a wax. Across the small room was a long desk covered by a cloth. There seemed to be a couple of boxes underneath the cloth.
When Henrik saw me looking, he made a comment. “I can’t bear to see his things until I know he’s all right.”
I didn’t trust much of what Henrik was saying anymore, and I wasn’t going to figure out much else by speaking with him. I wanted to get out of here.
“I will speak with Byron Lawson and see what can be done.”
“It doesn’t sound like you have much hope.”
I looked Henrik in the eye. He frowned, but there seemed to be a hint of joy, of excitement, pulling at the corners of his mouth. He offered me his hand.
“I appreciate you trying to do what you can, nonetheless.”
I shook his hand as I watched his other one. But he just ge
stured at the door for me to leave first.
Perhaps there was no trap here, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one waiting elsewhere. I turned to leave but gave a look over my shoulder. Henrik seemed tense as he stood close behind me.
“Was there something else?” he asked.
“I’ll let you know what I find out later today. We will find your cousin.”
Henrik nodded, then gestured at the door again.
I turned and walked toward it, watching the cloudy brass vase to my side. I saw Henrik slowly pull a knife out from behind his back. He must’ve tucked it into his pants earlier. I didn’t know exactly when he had hidden it there, but it had to have been during the short time we were in this room. I pretended not to know he was coming behind me as I reached for the door handle.
I spun around as he closed in and tossed him back with Expel.
The spell wasn’t strong enough to take the heavy man off his feet, but he did stumble back a safe distance. I allowed one moment to judge his reaction as I tried to decide whether to run or capture this man for information. The smirk he showed me gave me my answer.
I spun and grabbed the door handle. I started to yank the door open, but a strong blast of dteria threw me into the opening door, slamming it shut with my head.
A little dazed, I fell to the ground.
I had an upside-down view of my attacker trying to bring the knife down onto my face. I rolled out of the way. Henrik struck the floor and yelped in pain as he grabbed his hand and dropped the weapon.
I started to draw my sword, but he threw me against the door again with a whip of his hand. His magic was much stronger than mine.
I had a strange lack of fear. Instead I found myself jealous that this much older man had been practicing this spell for years, years. And now this overgrown ass was trying to end my life. Why? Because I wanted people to live in a world without theft and extortion?
Anger made me grit my teeth as I landed on my feet this time and threw him back with my own spell. But again, he just stumbled away from me and smirked.
“I’d heard a lot about the battle wizard, Jon Oklar,” he said. “But all I see is a weak coward who tried to run from a fight.”
