Published at 24th of February 2024 10:34 am

Chapter Book 2, Chapter 9

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

The plan was simple. I’d go a block or two over and let myself get spotted, run from them for another few blocks, then ambush them and find out what they wanted. I’d only been inside my hideout for a few minutes, so with any luck, they would think I’d just temporarily evaded them and not linger in the area to search it more thoroughly.

Though, even if they did, I doubted they’d find my new home. Between the wards and the physical obstacles preventing entry, I was safe from casual inspection. If someone did manage to correctly deduce where I’d set up camp at, it would be another matter, but it didn’t feel like much of a concern yet. Worst case, I could always relocate.

I hopped back down onto the streets and started off in a direction parallel to the one the two kids were taking. I caught up with them easily enough and made sure to time it so that we crossed the same street at the same time. A quick glance to my left confirmed that they’d spotted me, and I took off at a run.

Keeping track of their mana was difficult, far more so than using a spell like life sense, but I had better range this way and besides, I wanted to save my mana for the more important task of fully empowering my phantom space enchantment again. There weren’t that many people in what I assumed was a residential area right now anyway, so despite the relative difficulty of following the two tiny slivers of mana that represented my pursuers, I had a solid idea of how far behind me they were.

I led them across a few more blocks, then ducked behind a building that was mostly in one piece. It even had a ground floor entrance with a door, though nobody was home right now. I wasn’t interested in that building though, except as a means to access the second floor of the one next to it. I scrambled through a scraggly garden that reminded me of the ones back home, scaled the rough stone face of the house itself until I reached the roof, then flung myself across six feet of open space to grab the lip of the hole in the wall of my target building.

The two kids caught sight of me just as I pulled myself up and disappeared inside, exactly as planned. I knew there was an entrance at ground level, too small for an adult to squeeze through due to the partial collapse of the second floor. This had actually been one of the buildings I’d considered briefly before determining that the surrounding block was too populated for my needs.

I was counting on the kids to know that too, but if they failed to find a way in, I’d have to adapt my plan. I waited near the stairs leading up to the second floor and watched the little balls of mana circle the outside of the house, find the gap just big enough to let them squeeze through, and for both of them to enter. Perfect.

“Must be upstairs,” one of them said softly.

“He could have jumped back out,” the other argued.

“If he did, he’s sitting on the ground with a broken leg. He barely made the jump the first time, and then was jumping down to the hole. No way he gets back on that roof.”

“Magic,” the second one said simply.

There was a brief pause, and the second one said, “Let’s hurry.”

I didn’t need to use any magic to keep myself hidden. I just sat down on a block of stone that had fallen out of the wall behind the stairs and waited. A few seconds later, the back of one kid’s head came into view. He scanned the room, but never turned far enough around to notice me, and by the time the second kid appeared, the first one was all the way up the stairs.

“Gone,” the kid muttered. He walked over to the hole in the wall and leaned out to look at the ground. “Maybe he did make the jump.”

I gave it a second for the kid to step away from the hole, just so I didn’t scare him so much that he fell out, and said, “Why are you following me?”

I must have underestimated how jumpy they were, because the kid nearly fell out anyway. Only the quick thinking of his friend allowed him to keep both feet under him. He lunged forward and grabbed the first boy’s windmilling arm, then pulled him back to safety. Both of them immediately spun to face me where I sat in the shadows.

“Spirits save me, don’t ever scare me like that again,” the first kid said.

“I’ll do a lot worse than that if you don’t answer the question,” I told him.

“Easy,” the kid said. “Look, we just wanted to ask you something.”

“Must be important if it couldn’t wait,” I said.

The two glanced at each other. Both were among the older kids from the crew, nine or ten years old I figured. I wasn’t exactly sure how the seedy underbelly of Derro operated, but my guess was that there was a reason there weren’t any teenagers in the crew. They probably got snapped up by whatever passed for local gangs as soon as they were old enough to be put to work. In neighborhoods like this, participation was mandatory.

“It is,” the younger of the two said, his face serious. “It’s recruiting season. Blue Rat’s boys have been all over East Wall looking for fresh meat, and we’re just about the right age. We don’t want to join his crew.”

“Survival rate is shit. He sends the new guys on the worst missions, uses them as bait or distractions. What does he care if half of them die? Just go round up some more later,” the older kid said bitterly.

“That’s a shame and all. What’s it got to do with me?” I asked, but I already knew where this was going.

“You know magic. Could you teach us how to do it too?”

I could admire the proactive mindset. They knew they had a problem coming up and they’d latched onto a potential solution. It wasn’t a good solution, but I wouldn’t expect them to know that. Even if I agreed, that would be months and months of work and it would cost me a fairly large chunk of mana to do it. It wasn’t outside my budget or anything, but that was a lot of investment for no real return.

“I doubt you could learn the spells you’d need to defend yourself even if you had the mana to do it,” I said. “Which, you don’t. You going to steal that from somewhere?”

“If I have to,” the younger one said, his jaw jutting out as he puffed up his chest. “I do what I need to survive.”

“You know what a full shard gets you?” I asked. Without waiting for an answer, I said, “Four weak spells. Maybe five. How much could you buy with a shard? Is it worth it?”

“A shard doesn’t buy me a ticket out of being the bottom rung of a gang,” the kid said. “It doesn’t keep me safe. That gets me a week or two of food, maybe a safe place to sleep, but then I’m right back out on the street again. Please. I need a way to protect myself.”

In my previous life, I might have considered it. Back then, mana was everywhere. An economy built on leech stones would have been absurd. Here, the mana costs of training would be far too much of a burden unless I ignited the kid’s core, which would itself necessitate weeks or even months of training. I just didn’t have that much free time to devote to him. It would be faster and easier to just go kill whoever this Blue Rat guy was.

“No. I can’t help you,” I said. “Either of you. Sorry.”

The older one seemed to deflate. His shoulders slumped and he let out a long sigh. Perhaps this had been their last resort, a desperate move to sidestep a situation that had no good answers. He didn’t try to argue or convince me, to wheedle or threaten or beg or haggle. He just accepted the answer and collapsed in on himself.

His friend was not so graceful about the rejection. “Come on,” the kid said. “I work hard. I’m smart. I can do whatever you need me to do. Just tell me what that is, and I’ll do it. I am not going to work for Blue Rat. I’ll die trying to get out. Have a heart here and give me a fighting chance.”

“Look, if I help you, it’s going to put a target on your back,” I said. “You know the people on the other side of that big wall in the center of the city? They’ll be the ones hunting you down, not some slumlord running his tiny empire in the corner of the city.”

“Why would they ever care about me? Just because I learned a few spells? You know them. Are you worried about them coming after you?”

In fact, I was worried about exactly that. Dealing with the cabal that had taken over my village was one of the primary reasons I was in Derro. I needed to find those mages and take care of them before they sent more mercenaries out. I’d left my home with very little in the way of defenses, mostly because I only cared about my own family’s safety. They could contact me via the scrying mirror I’d left them, but it would be better if I took care of the threat here instead of letting it attack my home again.

“Those are my problems, not yours,” I said. “I can take care of myself.”

“You think I can’t?” the kid demanded.

“Well, you’re here begging me for help, so… no, not really.”

“I’m not begging! I want your help, and I’ll pay for it, but I’m not begging. Tell me what I need to do, and I’ll do it.”

“I want to get to the other side of that wall without getting caught,” I said. “Do you know how to do that?”

The kid faltered, but quickly rallied. Before he could speak, the older child said, “Tanner, no!”

“We don’t have a choice,” Tanner shot back. “If that’s the price, we can pay it.”

“That is the price for me to show you how to cast a spell,” I said. “If you want to actually use it, you’re going to need far more mana than you have now. Imagine using a shard a day, just to practice. Can you afford that?”

If I ignited his core for him, he’d be able to fill a shard every day, but without the ability to shield his mana from detection, it was only a matter of time until some mage in the city spotted him. Given the attitude Noctra had displayed toward my father’s supposed talents, I suspected that those with magical abilities were highly valued in the city. I also suspected that value was in the mana they could produce. An orphan child of the streets who spontaneously ignited his core was almost certain to be abducted and milked for every bit of mana he could produce.

But it was his decision, if it came to that. I’d make sure he understood the risks, and if he decided to go ahead anyway, it was his life. That was assuming he could meet my price, of course.

“I’ll find a way,” the kid said.

“No,” the older boy said, shaking his head again. “Bad idea. Don’t do this.”

“There’s a way under the wall,” Tanner told me. “It’s dangerous, but only because it’s in Hyago’s territory. If we can sneak through, you’ll be able to get to the other side of the wall. I can show you, but you have to teach me how to fight with magic.”

“You’ll be responsible for supplying your own mana,” I said. “I’m not giving you any.”

“Deal,” Tanner said.

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” the other kid told him. “Don’t do this.”

“Then I suppose we have an agreement. For your first task, come back with a full shard. I’ll show you how to extract the magic from it.”

Share