It was still only mid-morning when I emerged from the Guild headquarters, so I made my way straight to the Adventurers' Guild headquarters from there. I had to ask for directions before I could actually go there, but luckily I managed to find someone who both knew the way and was feeling kind enough to help a random stranger rather quickly. Before I knew it, I was standing outside of the building that housed the local branch of the Adventurers' Guild and sending out a silent prayer to Lady Irra that there wouldn't be a line waiting for me inside as there usually was at the Familiars' Guild.
To my surprise, there was no line there when I got inside the building. I never found out if that was just luck on my part, or if the Adventurers' Guild was efficient enough that they were able to deal with regular requests for aid without forming a line. All I know is that there was a desk set up across the room from the entrance, with two smiling young humans, one male, one female, sitting behind it.
I went up to the desk, and before I had even stopped the woman started talking. "Welcome to the Adventurers' Guild. How may I help you?"
"I was referred here by Master Mage Carlyn Mesters," I said, pulling out the letter he had given me. "He gave me a reference letter and told me to ask for someone by the name of Lynna."
"Understood," she said. "May I see the letter for a moment? We will not read it, but we need to verify that it actually comes from Master Carlyn."
I handed the letter over to the man, who held out his hand. He took the letter and placed it in his open left palm. Then he held his right hand over the letter, leaving just enough space to make it evident that he wasn't touching the letter. I'm sure had I made an effort to use spell-sight at that moment that I would have been able to detect magic, probably from both the man and from the letter he was scanning. A moment later he smiled and then retuned the letter to me.
"Sir Lynna is out supervising training with the city guard at the moment," he said. "If you like, I can show you to a room where you may wait for him in peace. Otherwise you can leave and come back after having lunch, since he is not expected back until the noon hour."
"I'll come back later," I said, since I knew I would be hungry by the time Lynna returned if he wasn't expected back until the noon hour. Also, this way I could update Master on the situation and ask him about Carlyn's suggestion that I might hide my true connection to Master. I knew that the Adventurers' Guild had mages and wizards, and seeing the man verify Carlyn's letter had only reminded me of that fact. Even if the mages of this particular guild couldn't understand a silent conversation between Master and myself, they would still be able to tell that it was going on. I didn't want to trouble them with that.
"Very well then," the woman said. "We expect Sir Lynna back by noon. If you wait until a half hour after noon, you have a greater chance of actually coming when he is here."
I took this to mean that Lynna was not always on time. Or perhaps in this case it was the city guard that was the problem. Either way, the woman didn't seem like she was going to tell me if I asked, so I just made a note to remember the time she had told me and then exited the building.
It was still too early to eat lunch at that time; most of the places that sold actual lunches weren't even open yet. So instead I made my way across the large square that the Adventurers' Guild faced. I didn't want to be out in the middle of the public eye as I talked to Master, mostly because I knew that I would attract attention to myself if I did so, but I didn't particularly want to duck into an alley either. The alleys in Thurin were filthy.
Instead, I followed the route I had taken to get to the Adventurers' Guild back part of the way toward the Familiars' Guild. Alone the way, there was a large grassy area that hadn't yet been taken over by the city. The city officials claimed it was there to bring a little more natural ambiance to the city, but I think they just didn't want to go to the trouble of filling in the large pond that had probably been there since before the city extended that far. The grass was actually trimmed rather short, because a few city dwellers chose to keep goats and usually used the grassy area in the middle of the city for grazing when there was enough grass there to warrant it, leaving the grass almost perpetually cropped short.
This area had a few trees planted in it, and one could frequently see people sitting at the base of these trees napping, chatting, or doing countless other things. I saw it as the perfect place to sit down and contact Master, since if I put on my old cloak (which made me look like a "typical" wizard or mage), pulled up the hood (so no one could tell I wasn't quite as old as the "typical" wizard), and closed my eyes, I would look just like some strange old wizard who no one wanted to bother. Or I probably could have just sat there at the base of a tree and closed my eyes, no cloak involved, and I would just look like someone taking a nap. I planned on trying to make a little more money using my magic later, so I decided on using the cloak and trying to put forth the image of a magic user from the beginning.
Needless to say, within minutes of arriving at the grassy area I was seated at the base of a tree, cloak drawn around me and up over my head. It was still early in the day, so there weren't yet other people at the bases of the other trees, but there was a young boy trying to fish in the pond on the other side of the clearing from the tree I chose. More people would show up as the day went on, and by dinner time there would be a person, sometimes more than one, for each of the trees in the area and just as many people spread out in the middle of the grass, all chatting amiably or napping in the sun. I didn't quite need privacy, but I was still grateful for the fact that there were almost no people there at that point in time.
Silently, I reached forward mentally for Master. To be honest, I was glad that he and Topol had succeeded the day before, since that meant that I didn't need to feel them going at it again. Instead, feelings from Master had been almost reduced since the night before, though not to the point where it distracted me simply by being different. As usual, when I reached out to Master, it took me a while to get his attention, since I couldn't just barge into his thoughts the way he could to mine.
"Any progress?" he asked once he had noticed me, assuming that I wouldn't contact him unless I had something to report or ask, which was true.
"Carlyn said I should go to the Adventurers' Guild," I replied. "He sent me to his brother, or something like that. I went, but the guy he sent me to is out for the morning, so I'm stuck waiting at the moment."
"And you needed to tell me this because?" I got the distinct feeling that the lack of magic was already annoying him, and that he was taking some of his annoyance out on me. He usually wasn't quite so... nasty... when I came to him for reasons that weren't immediately apparent to him.
"I was wondering..." I started, trying to be as non-overbearing about things as I could. I didn't want to just blurt out my idea, since that would only piss him off if he really was as annoyed as he seemed at the moment. "It sounds like Carlyn's trying to get the Adventurers' Guild to set us up a faction of bodyguards or something like that. I'm sure most of them will be human and probably not quite as... educated as the average wizard or mage. Maybe it would be better for us all getting along if we... don't mention the specifics of my position within the scheme of things?"
"In other words you want to pretend that you're not my familiar while we have the help?"
I nodded, sending thoughts of wordless agreement toward him since I knew he couldn't actually see me nodding at the time. At least, not without exerting more control over the bond between us, which was not the normal way things functioned between us when we were talking like this. That was only something he did when it needed to be done.
"It's not that I'm ashamed of what I am," I said, though it was an explanation I had made to him multiple times in the past for various reasons. "I just... sometimes it gets annoying. They just don't get it that I'm not some sort of glorified pet, but a person just like them. And they treat me like the pet that they think I am. Don't you think that that might not be the best way to go about things when I'm the only one from our family that still has magic?"
"..."
Things fell silent from his end for a while. The feeling from him was a buzz of thought, and from that I assumed that he was conversing with Topol on the other end. Master had kept a human as a familiar before me, and had some experience with dealing with the unique situation created when he did that. Topol did not have that same experience, and really didn't understand why another niiru would want to keep a human familiar in the first place. After all, we were just that much different to control since there was no way to threaten dissolution of the bond (and thus return to an unthinking state) for a human, who was already a thinking being before the coming of the bond.
Because of that lack of sympathy with the desire for a human familiar in the first place, as well as the lack of experience, Topol usually didn't understand my reasons for acting the way I did. He tried to counsel Master to treat me the same way he treated Basten, the way most wizards and mages treated their familiars. Luckily, Master had quite a bit more life experience than Topol did anyway, being about five hundred years older than Topol was, and he usually took my side out of common sense. I was just hoping that this was a similar situation and that he was trying to explain to Topol why it would be better if we didn't mention my position to the people from the Adventurers' Guild in the first place.
I sat there for a while, waiting for Master to get back to me. The background buzz of thoughts continued for a long time, and I started to wonder if they were talking about something other than me, or if maybe Topol was being particularly stubborn. There was nothing I could do about it, though, except maybe pester Master some, and that would only end up backfiring on me in the end, so I kept quiet.
"Topol doesn't like your idea," he said after a few minutes, startling me with the suddenness of his reappearance. "But I think it has merit. I take it Carlyn came up with this idea and told you to ask me about it?"
"He said that the man he was sending me to would be able to work with me if I wanted to hide things. He will know, since Carlyn said he explained my situation in the letter of recommendation to the Adventurers' Guild that he wrote for me. But he did say that I might find it more comfortable to arrange to not reveal that particular piece of information to the people we end up hiring. I liked his suggestion."
"Well then, I give you permission to do as you wish in this matter. Humans are in general a rather inflexible race when it comes to dealing with situations such as yours, and Academia-trained wizards and mages of any sort are even worse if you happen to bring any of them back. It would not do to have our only in-family magical support be the subject of scorn from the outside help, particularly given your abilities."
"Thank you, Master!" I said. "...I'll probably need to stop calling you Master once I get some help then, too."
"That cannot be helped. You have permission to call me by name until this matter is dealt with."
"Thank you again, Master! I mean... Ruian."
"Though you would be wise to not make use of that permission until such time as you actually need it," he thought, his mental voice a few degrees colder than usual.
"Sorry, Master," I said, a sheepish smile on my face in both real life and in my thoughts. I shouldn't have done that in the first place, especially after noting his annoyance earlier, but the temptation had been far too great. "I'll contact you again once I know more about what's going on."
"Do that," he said, and then his presence faded back to its usual state.
After that, I had nothing to do but wait, and eventually eat. Figuring that I could never have too much money on hand, I had decided even before talking to Master that I should try my hand at making some more. This time, rather than approaching a single person who felt like he needed some sort of magical assistance, I decided on my other usual way of making money, telling fortunes.
I will come right out and say it; I have absolutely no talent when it comes to telling the future. That is a very rare talent, and I had actually never met anyone with the gift at this particular point in my life, including Master and Topol. That didn't stop me from using my other gifts to pretend that I did and make some money off of the normal people. Like simple enchantments, fortune-telling was something that most Academia trained wizards and mages thought beneath them, and in this case they were probably right. But, I wasn't one to complain, since it kept me with some pocket money.
The grassy area was still a little too deserted, so I returned to the square outside of the Adventurers' Guild. I still had on my cloak, with the hood pulled up to hide my too young face. I was fairly good at faking an old man's voice, but my face immediately marked me as a young person, so I needed to keep it out of sight. Of course, it shouldn't have mattered whether I was young or old, but I had found that most people were more likely to pay money for a fortune from someone who looked old and "wise." Thus, the cloak.
One may wonder why it is that I go around making money pretending to be a fortune-teller when I have commented so many times about not liking to lie. It may make me seem a bit hypocritical, but I didn't really see telling fortunes without a future seeing gift to be that much of a lie. Most other fortune-tellers, even the most popular and most successful ones, had about as much talent for telling the future as I did, none. And I used my other gifts, particularly my sensitivity to emotions, to determine what sort of fortune would be appropriate to the client of the moment. My fortunes, rather than being true, were what would help the person the most at that particular time.
For instance, if a young woman trying to decide whether she should marry or not came to me for a fortune, I would usually ask her to think on her sweetheart, and then I would read the emotions coming off of her. If he seemed like a good man and the bond of love between them rang true, I would tell a flowery tale of her happiness after marrying. If I saw only sad images, perhaps of him beating her, I would warn her of the disaster about to fall on her person, particularly if she marries. Marriage, actually, was one of the most common issues that got brought up to me while telling fortunes, and I had helped to match about two-thirds of the young couples in the village of Bytol by the time I was sixteen years old. The fact that none of the marriages I "foretold" had turned out unhappily was nothing but a sign that I was doing something right.
So, I set up "shop" next to a cart selling meat pies that smelled delicious and would most likely end up being my lunch. "Shop" was, in this case, a crate that I found lying around with an old blanket laid over the top of it. I then placed an old glass ball, one of two that I had bought years before from an old gypsy trader, on top of the blanket. Both blanket and ball had been in the stash of items that I had the owner of the inn I always stayed at store for me so I didn't have to carry them back and forth between Thurin and the Bytol area. Then I sat down behind the crate, head down so no one could see my face.
Business went well that day. The first customer came just minutes after I set up, and I had a rather steady trickle of interested people over the next hour. I charged next to nothing for the fortunes, since they weren't true tellings of the future, but despite that I managed to make more than enough to pay for my noon meal in the single hour that I sat there. I was more than happy with the results of that session, and I had just decided that it was time to pack up and get something to eat when I heard a vaguely familiar voice yelling in what seemed to be my direction.
"Exactly what do you think you're doing?" came the shout. I looked up suddenly, causing my hood to fall back. This earned me a large number of whispers as the people who had been considering asking me for a fortune realized that I was young, and thus not "wise." Of course, I had already gained more attention and whispers just from the long haired figure standing in front of me.
It was the same unicorn mage who had bothered me in the inn. This time I saw him in full daylight, and that only made the immediate attraction I felt for him grow stronger. Luckily, he looked livid enough that I didn't dare try anything, not that I was slave enough to my sex drive that I would have in the first place.
"I asked you what you thought you were doing," he said after a few moments when I couldn't quite work my tongue well enough to answer him.
"Telling fortunes," I said. "Do you have a problem with this as well?"
"Of course I do. You admitted yourself that you are not a licensed mage, yet earlier you were performing dangerous enchantments for money. Now you are claiming to powers that you cannot possibly have and trying to make money off of that! Have you no sense of right and wrong?"
The more he talked, the more the whispers from the ever growing crowd surrounding us increased. From what I could hear of the whispers, his fit of anger would have a significant effect on my ability to make money off of fortune-telling in the future. The people who had just gotten their fortunes told were starting to realize that I couldn't tell the actual future, and they didn't seem to be the sort to accept "it's still good advice that I tailored to you" as an excuse.
With that in mind, I took the glass ball and blanket and shoved them back into the sack I usually kept them in. Then I stood up as quickly as I could and reached forward to grab the angry mage by the arm, angrily hissing "This is not the right place to be talking about this." I took him by surprise (and I'm sure my instinctive desire for him threw him off), so I was able to start dragging him away from there before he could resist. Had he fought back seriously, there was no way I would have been able to drag him away.
"Let go of me!" he yelled as I pulled him through the streets of Thurin as fast as I could move. This attracted even more attention to the two of us, so I whipped my head around to glare at him until he shut up. For some reason, it actually worked, and he stopped yelling until I reached the inn where I had first encountered him.
I got a few more strange looks from the people gathered in the common room for lunch as I dragged the silent, but seething, unicorn up to my room. Had I not been panicked about the commotion that was likely to cut off both of my best sources of income, I probably would have realized that I was setting things up almost perfectly to have my way with him, alone together behind locked doors. Of course, I'm sure he would have protested quite a bit more had I attempted that than he had when I dragged him through the streets, and I would just have ended up making myself into a rapist, not something I wanted to do.
"What in the world is with you?" I hissed at him the moment I had the door locked behind me. "You're ruining my only way to make some money! It's not like I'm stealing business from you, since I'm sure a grand Academia mage like you would never, ever fall as low as doing magic for money."
"I cannot simply stand by and let a common boy cheat the people out of their money with his fake magic."
"Fake? Are you saying that just because I don't feel the pressing need to bow to the Academia's every wish that I am incapable of working magic? Who do you think you are, the head of the entire rotting Academia? Even for the typical snobby Academia mage, you're going a little too far."
"You have good instincts for a poorly trained charlatan," he said, and I stared at him in disbelief, especially since his response to my question showed him to be just as much of a liar as he claimed that I was. There was no way in all of Lady Irra's ten hells that he could be the head of the Academia.
I may not have had any ties to the Academia myself, being "beneath" the proper level of beings able to gain certification by them simply by being what I was, but that didn't mean that I knew nothing about the institution. Master was a First Class Master Mage, just like Carlyn. He chose not to have dealings with the Academia most of the time, but he had taught me the history of the Academia and many of the internal working, knowing that if he ever decided to set me free, my best course of action would be to go to the Academia and begin filling in the small holes in m education that would keep me from advancing.
Master was not friends with the head of the Academia, but he was definitely a close acquaintance. Master Yiin, head of the Academia, was one of the oldest unicorns in existence. He was some three thousand years old, and was one of the few beings left who had been instructed in magic by the gods, before the unicorns, dragons, and niiru banded together to beg the gods for a more natural flow of magic to the races of the world. Even for a unicorn, Master Yiin was ancient and should have been dead long ago. The popular theory on why he was still alive was that he was simply too stubborn to let the Lord Death take him to his grave.
I was sure the unicorn mage in front of me was older than he looked - most unicorns were - but I was just as certain that he wasn't that old. Besides, Master Yiin was... a rather well known lecher. He had countless children and was forever chasing around women of all races. At least, that was what Master had told me of the "honored" head of the Academia. The unicorn who had been making my life that much less pleasant was a virgin; that much I knew for sure.
"You are not Master Yiin," I said. "Even if I'm not affiliated with the Academia, I know who heads it, and you're not him."
"I suppose I cannot expect an ignorant person such as yourself to know of news that have not even spread through the entire Academia yet," he said, sounding far too proud of himself to make me feel comfortable.
"What are you talking about?"
"Even the seemingly immortal "Master Yiin" has to get old at some point. Less than a year earlier, he announced his retirement and passed the position of head of the Academia on to a successor of his choosing. The news has been spreading surprisingly slowly, so I'm not surprised that someone like you hasn't heard yet."
"And you're trying to say that you were chosen as Master Yiin's successor?"
"Precisely."
"Bullshit. There's no way you're that accomplished a mage."
"Are you implying that my father chose his successor wrongly?"
I stared at him some more. First he started claiming that he was the head of the Academia and that Master Yiin had retired and left him in his place. That was hard enough to believe. Now he was claiming that Master Yiin was his father, and while I knew that Master Yiin had more children than there were people in the village of Bytol... I just couldn't believe that this particular unicorn was his son. That a creature of such unabashed virginity could come from the lecher who had fathered enough children to make up an entire generation of unicorns... That was enough to make my head spin.
"...You hurt my head," I said, and just as those words came out of my mouth, the bells started ringing the noon hour. I had almost forgotten about the more important matters at hand, but when I heard those bells, I suddenly remembered that I needed to be somewhere in just about a half an hour.
"And you know what?" I continued. "I don't have time for this. I have somewhere I need to be very soon, and I need to get some lunch before then. So I really don't care whether you're really Master Yiin's son and successor, or just some crazy unicorn mage who can't help but make my life difficult. I have enough money to last me a while, and hopefully in a few days I'll be able to get out of this place anyway, and then you'll never have to see me again. Now if you don't mind... I need to find something to eat."
He just stared at me as I unlocked and opened the door and then started pushing him out it. He didn't protest at all, though I did see him flinch when I grabbed his arm again. I'm not exactly sure what it was that changed his attitude toward me for those moments, but he didn't even follow me as I closed and warded the door behind me and then hurried down the stairs to the common room. Since my plans of having meat pies from the stall next to me had been ruined by my rush back to the inn, I paid the innkeeper for a meal from his kitchens and sat down in the common room to eat there.