What We Do to Survive

As I had decided the night before, it was time to start cleaning up loose ends. Thus, after a productive morning grinding through a small pile of assignments and some combat magic practice, I left Avalon and headed towards the edge of town where many noble families had mansions built for their children attending Lightcastle.

I had already done some initial investigation into the six students that had cornered and assaulted my Lea on the day I’d first found her, but today it was time for something a little bit more thorough. My goal was to analyze the wards on the homes of Nettle and Doran Shieldlight, Gilbert and Goran Firewalker, and Lilac Seasong, which were all conveniently within a few minutes walk of each other.

Unfortunately, the last attacker, Calvert Timetouch, didn’t have his own home in town. His family had only become noble within the last two generations due to the achievements of his grandfather, a healer who had saved the previous king’s life after a hunting accident. He was living in one of the small dormitories inside Lightcastle itself, which was apparently considered rather pedestrian by other nobles but made it very hard to get to him. Still, I could always come back for him later. He had been one of the boys lurking near the back of the group without doing much of anything at all so he was a low priority regardless.

I arrived at the small square I’d identified a few weeks ago just before noon and sat down at a small table just outside a rather fancy cafe. I was dressed as a young nobleman, wearing a fine undershirt, loose leather pants, and a leaf-green coat. My usual boots nearly gleamed in the bright afternoon sunlight, polished to a fine sheen by my ever-so-helpful pet, and the sleeves of my light coat embroidered with circles of flowering vines done in silver thread.

It was not an outfit I felt particularly comfortable in, and the cost of buying it had been nearly physically painful, but it let me blend in perfectly with the midday crowd so I considered it money well spent. In all honesty, it hadn’t really been that expensive, the entire ensemble came in at less than five pieces and that included the reagents I’d used to painstakingly layer an entire array of defensive spells into the fabric. Even if it looked like just ordinary, if rather fine, clothing from the outside, I was confident it would turn a blade or absorb a force lance if necessary

A young waitress came over to me after a minute and set a menu down on the table beside me. “Blessed morning, good sir,” she began, a faint accent coloring her voice, “welcome to Alam and Malar’s Fine Flavors. My name is Ambala and I’ll be your server for today. Can I start you off with anything or would you like some time to peruse the menu?”

I glanced down momentarily at the elegant paper covered in fine, flowing calligraphy and winced internally at the prices. You could have gotten bread at the Sweetglass bakery everyday for a week for the price of a single slice of cake here. I could afford it, rather easily in fact considering the very favorable exchange rate from pieces to the local currency, but even just two years ago I would have balked at spending so much on so little food when I could eat at Avalon’s cafeteria for free.

Well, nothing for it. This was easily the most convenient place to sit in and I was rather curious just how good the sweets had to be to fetch such a price. I looked back at the waitress, who was standing silently beside the table with a warm smile on her face and her hands clasped over her stomach.

“Some tea, I think. A pot of this… East-Island fireflower blend. Oh, and a slice of nine-berry cake.”

“Excellent choices, good sir,” she simpered, “I can see you are a man of impeccable taste. I’ll be out with those in just a moment.” She swept away, the long skirt of her traditional blue dress fluttering behind her in the cool breeze.

I was rather confused what that was about, I’d mostly just picked the first normal-ish sounding thing on the menu. Apparently this place was far too fancy to have ordinary teas on their menu. Instead they all had overly dramatic names that didn’t really tell me anything about what I was actually ordering. I was certainly going to be casting some analysis spells before I ate or drank anything.

I leaned back in my chair, watching the people flow through the square around me. Two young women sat together on the edge of the fountain at the center of the square, each with a small child bouncing in their laps. In a shadowed corner two teens kissed passionately, hands clasped together and clothing rumpled. A group of boys in grass-stained finery chased each other through the crowd. At a nearby table, an older gentleman with a short, well kept beard flirted shamelessly with a blushing waitress that had to be thirty or more years his junior.

It was all so very familiar, and yet I felt like an outsider looking in. It wasn’t just that these were all rich merchant and noble names while I’d grown up a mere peasant, but just the overall… peaceful normality of it all. These people did not fear for their lives, did not worry that the man beside them might stab them in the back or sabotage them at a key moment. I was sure they all had their own problems and worries, but they felt so… tiny.

Before I could get too distracted the waitress returned, balancing a wooden tray carved with geometric patterns precariously before her. She curtsied deeply and set the tray down in front of me, “Your food, good sir. Enjoy! If you need anything, anything at all, please do let me know.”

“Thank you, it looks wond––” I paused mid word and looked sharply to the left where I’d felt an oddly familiar ripple of mana. There was nothing there. I squinted at the polished stone wall of some small, overpriced clothing store, straining my mana sense as far as it could go. Nothing.

I reached into an inner pocket of my coat and pulled out a pair of glasses, the edges of each lens carved with mana-perception runes. They had been an early prototype for my much more complex multi-lense design; less powerful but much more convenient. I slipped them on and looked again. Still nothing. Strange.

“Sir?” the waitress asked quietly.

I shook my head, “Sorry, I thought I heard something. Everything looks wonderful, thank you.”

Her smile returned and she curtsied again, “Of course, of course. My pleasure.”

She walked away and my gaze slowly turned back to where I’d felt the disturbance. There was nothing there, not that I could sense at very least. That meant either a mage multiple circles above my own skills, or perhaps simply one highly specialized in stealth magic, or that whatever had caused the disturbance was long gone.

I watched the spot vigilantly for another minute, then slowly let out a long breath and picked up the teacup Ambala had brought me. Whatever that had been, I wasn’t going to learn anything by simply staring in its general direction for the next half hour while my food got cold. I was paying a truly unreasonable amount of money for this tiny slice of cake and pot of tea so I best enjoy it.

I stared suspiciously at the deep crimson liquid in the fine porcelain teacup. It didn’t really look much like tea to me, more of a well-filtered berry juice or dark wine, and I could feel tiny droplets of fire-aspected mana floating freely throughout the cup. I gave it a tentative sniff and my eyebrows went up when I smelled the bright, sweet, flowery fragrance gently rising off the cup. Huh. I set the cup down and cast a few analysis spells under the cover of the table. Nothing suspicious. I squinted at the cup, then picked it up and took a single, tiny sip. Damn. That was… really good. Sweet and light, but with a touch of spicy heat that lent the cup a wonderful depth of flavor. I took another sip, then another. Very nice.

Before I could get too distracted, I finally decided to do what I’d actually come here for. Setting the cup back down in its saucer, I hid my hands under the table and began to cast one of the few divination spells I was truly familiar with. Over the course of about a minute, I carefully shaped my mana into one of the most intricate spell matrices I knew until, with a dim flash of light and a small flare of mana, a nearly invisible spectral eye appeared above my cupped hands.

The eye floated unmoving for a moment, then began to slowly rotate. I closed my eyes and focused on adjusting to the newly gained third viewpoint, not that I could see much of anything right now. The tablecloth hid everything except my legs and hands from sight, even as it concealed my own actions.

After about a minute I decided I was ready. The first time I’d cast the spell it had taken much longer to adjust but my mental circulations had improved significantly since that day. The eye stilled for a moment, then faded fully out of view and dove downward, slipping smoothly through the cobblestones and disappearing into the ground. Pulling mostly away from its senses, I directed the divination probe towards the first of my target houses. It was very disorienting to use while moving through solid objects and the eye was sufficiently sophisticated to navigate to a fixed location without my direct intervention.

I took another sip of tea, then picked up my spoon and tried a small bite of the cake. It didn’t look like much, a long, thin slice of pale cake colored with the occasional bright spot of a berry and heaped with more of the same on the top. It was good. Really good. Not exactly my favorite flavor combination, but it was undeniably some of the best cake I’d ever eaten. Maybe not worth quite as much as I was paying for it, but much better than the desserts served in Avalon’s cafeteria. Damn it.

The next two hours proved to be both enjoyable and highly productive. I finished my pot of tea and ordered another, along with two more too-small and far too delicious baked goods. While my body was focused on that, the majority of my attention was with the spectral eyeball as it floated slowly around the homes of my targets. The eye possessed incredibly keen vision capable of peeling back and filtering many different types of mana radiations. It wasn’t quite as effective as the lenses I’d left in my room, but far more subtle and mobile.

The information I’d found was rather positive as well. The wards on the small manor maintained by the Shieldlights were comically simple. I was pretty sure I could have brute forced my way through them by the end of my first year, though that would have taken a few days of preparation and wouldn’t have been anything approaching subtle. Now? I could tinker up an effective anti-ward formation that would render me completely invisible to those defenses with a few hours of work. It was some really amateurish stuff, especially for a family that apparently specialized in defensive magic. Either that, or I was missing something important. That bore further considerations, but I wasn’t too worried about it.

The Firewalker estate was somewhat better protected, but that wasn’t saying much. Those would take a bit more effort, but I was once again confident I could get past them if given some time to prepare. There was an obvious vulnerability near the back of the grounds where some careless gardener had improperly trimmed a five-petal peony bush. The inherent mana flowing through the plant was interfering with the wardstone buried not far from its roots and had worn some serious gaps into the protections over what must have been several years of neglect.

Finally, I was just starting to analyze the last set of defenses when suddenly I felt a small tremor of mana from one of the inner pockets of my jacket. I half-jumped, nearly dropping the empty cup I was still holding loosely in one hand as my attention refocused on my body. After a moment of confusion, I realized that it was coming from the small communication device I’d used while working with the Earthshadow men. Apparently I had forgotten to return it after Adonia had decided to try playing games.

Glancing around the bustling square, I considered simply not answering. More likely than not they were just trying to retrieve the missing device. Still, I was not particularly far from the manor and maybe Adonia was finally interested in talking like a normal person?

I weighed my options for another few seconds, then reached into my jacket, dug out the gold ring, and slipped it into my ear.

“Hello?” I asked quietly, channeling a narrow stream of mana into the device, “O speaking.”

Silence. Had I misinterpreted what the device was doing? I hadn’t seen anything other than a heavily modified message spell in the ring’s enchantments, but perhaps I’d missed some sort of locator function? Most regular divination spells should just bounce off of the mysterious necklace the Myrddin had given me near the start of the semester, but as I’d discussed with Brenda, no defense was foolproof.

“Sorry, sorry,” a familiar voice called out hurriedly just as I was about to remove the device from my ear, “I wasn’t expecting you to respond this quickly! Oh, um, sorry! This is Four speaking.”

“You’re fine,” I curtly told the young mage, “What is it?”

“Oh, right. Sorry, sorry. We’ve got something, sir! Thirteen found a way around one of the prisoners’ oaths. We have a picture of the culprit! No one has been able to identify it yet, but we’re hopeful we will find something soon.”

My heart skipped a beat in my chest. That was… that was fantastic! A picture wasn’t perfect, but it should be enough. A picture drawn by someone who had seen something wasn’t a perfect conduit for divination magic, but I definitely remembered seeing some spells that might work. I could always try to consult with Brenda again, she’d been very helpful last time.

“I’m on my way,” I said sharply, digging out a few coins from my jacket to leave on the table. “I’ll be there soon.” The spectral eye collapsed into a rapidly diffusing cloud mana as I let the focus keeping it together lapse. I would simply have to come back and finish up another day. This was much more important.