💸 💰 💸 💰 💸

Abigail had her doubts about following the strange person through the back of the spices-and-herbs store, but Liv seemed definitely enchanted by the whole thing.

“Beavers?”

“Well, as I said, not literally. We don’t have any Animals here, not of the sort you’d find in Narnia or Oz. It’s just not the right environment for them, and nobody but the Raccoons and the Magpies really enjoy shopping, anyway. Oh, and the Corvids, of course. Can’t forget them.” The person pushed aside a beaded curtain, opening up a narrow wood-paneled hallway. “This area isn’t open to everyone, but I see that you’ve already met Tinaia, and that gives you some special leeway.”

Abigail shared a look with Liv, or tried to, but Liv was staring down the hallway. So, “leeway?” she asked, and hoped their guide would give some sort of useful answer.

“Oh, there’s always halls within halls, worlds within worlds. You read the tales of Narnia, so I assumed you knew. Everything is like an onion and a TARDIS: More and more, and bigger on the inside.”

That made very little sense, but considering the way they were having, Abigail decided not to complain too much. She kept an eye on Liv instead.

“So where are we going, then?” Liv persisted, even as she stuck close to their guide. “Down another layer of the onion?”

“More, and yet less, less, and yet so much more. Here.” The person swished aside another curtain, this one heavy and velvet. “Here you are. Have fun, and remember me when you come back around.”

That sounded a little ominous to Abigail, but Liv was already darting through the door. She followed, with a hasty and uncertain “thanks” aimed at the spice proprietor.

Liv had stopped a few steps inside the curtain, and Abigail could understand why. The floor was covered in a myriad of carpets; the walls were covered in bookshelves with more bookshelves jutting out at right angles. And in the middle, at a writing desk with a dip pen and a large book, a blue woman was sitting, writing.

She looked up when she noticed Liv and Abigail staring. “Oh, I see. Anto brought me some more company, mmm? Anto likes to do that. Well, then, come on in, don’t linger in the curtain letting in the mundane. You have three choices. You can take a book, make a book, or leave a book. But all three of those are going to have consequences and prices.”

“We don’t…” Abigail touched her bag. “Oh. I have a schoolbook and a copy of Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase. I could leave one, but … there’s a price for leaving something?”

“There’s always a price for leaving something.” The blue woman had gone back to her writing already. “The question is, can you pay it?”

Part 5: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1337419.html


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Protected: Chapter Eleven: The Watering Can

Jun6

Funeral – best-Laid Plans

Jun5

First: Funeral
Previous: Funeral: Introductions

Senga smiled crookedly at Erramun. “We fix problems. Sometimes we end things, sometimes we start them, but mostly people just pay us to solve situations they need solved.”

“That sounds really, really vague.”

“It’s meant to be really, really vague.”

“So which side of the law are you on?”

“We’re a legal organization. Most of the time, we stay on the proper side of the police and of the law. Sometimes we fudge things a bit,” she admitted. “Those moments where the Ellehemaei in us has to be more important than the law-abiding citizen.”

“And in those times?”

“We clean up after ourselves. So, back to advice.”

“It’s advice you want when you run a cleaning service and you’ve just been handed someone named Death Comes Silently.” He sounded bitter rather than dubious. “You want advice.“

“Well, I don’t want you for wetwork, although if you fade away without something to kill, I’m sure I can come up with someone who needs ending.” She looked him in the eye and watched his responses.

There was a little twitch of surprise and then a tiny smirk that barely touched his lips. “I can live without killing. I’m not one of those. But if I was-?”

“If you were, we’d have to shift our business model a bit, but I’d keep you fed.”

“…Generous. So you don’t have a problem with killing, but you don’t want me for wetwork. So…”

“So I don’t mind killing generally, but I don’t like it in the specific. It’s messy, it gets to be too easy, and it’s really hard to be sure someone’s evil enough to deserve killing. So. Death Comes Silently. What do you do that isn’t death?”

“Come Silently?” He smirked a little bit.

“I think that was actually a joke. Or at least a pun. So, ah. You’re the world’s quietest at orgasms or you sneak?”

“I do a lot of things very quietly. I’m pretty good at B&E, actually.” His smile had vanished and he was really looking at her again. “You really want me to advise you?”

“I’ve just been handed an Ellehemaei several times older than me, at a guess. You know things I don’t. You’ve have had to have been living in a box to not know more than I do.”

She didn’t miss his twitch, but she didn’t think he wanted her to see it, so she ignored it.

“You’re not gonna lose face, having your Bond Servant tell you want to do?” He was holding himself very still in his chair. Not like he was afraid, she thought, but maybe like he didn’t know if he moved, if he could stop moving.

“There’s a difference between telling me what to do and advising me. And mostly, we’re family, my crew. The good sort, not like my cousins. If I have you giving me advice, they’re going to think it’s cool.” She set her hand on his knee and watched how he went even more still.“Okay,” she said, more quietly. She stood up and locked her door, then throw up a complex Working that meant that nothing short of a bomb was getting into her room – or out of it. “I think we need to have a more important conversation first.”

“More important than what you want to do with me? I’d like to know what I’m going to be doing for the next six years.” He stood up, then, as she closed the distance between them, sat back down again.

“What’ve you been doing for the last six years?” Damnit, no, she was letting him distract her. Well, maybe he needed to say it.

His face shut down.

Maybe not.

“You going to order me to tell you?”

“Not yet. So. I don’t get to know what you did for the last six years and you want to know what you’re going to be doing for the next six. So. Advice and back-up, until I know more.”

“So… rather than ordering me into telling you, you’re going to blackmail me into telling you?”

She found herself smiling. “Seems fitting for me. You think being advice and back-up is a punishment?”

“I’m not so old I need to be the grumpy old sensei in the back of the room just yet.”

“Well, I’ll keep that in mind. Now that we’ve decided we don’t agree on that in the least,” she sat back down on her bed, “more important things.”

“-than what you’re going to do with me?”

“Well,” she smirked at him, unable to resist the straight line, “I thought we’d talk about what I’m going to do with you.”

He glowered. “Make sense, woman.”

“Telling me what to do already?” she teased, and then almost regretted it as his face underwent contortions trying to deal with a guilt-surge. “Easy, easy. I’m not mad at you.”

“I don’t care if-” He trailed off, grumbling. “Fine. You’ve got me by the short and curlies. What are you going to do with me?”

“Now that’s an image. And maybe I’ll think about that later,” she admitted. He was a handsome man. “You’ve been under a collar before.”

“I’ve been Owned before.” He touched his bare neck and shifted his shoulders. “The last one didn’t survive.”

“I don’t think you’re going to kill me. If you were, I think you would’ve done it in the funeral home. Would have been easy; you wouldn’t have even had to get your hands dirty if you didn’t feel like it, you could just say ‘no.’” Senga shrugged. “So. So’ve I. I know how it gets weird in your head. I can’t stop that, it’s the way the natural law works for fae.”

“I know that,” he snarled.

“You know it, but you’re twitchy and fighting it and making yourself feel like shit, if I’m any good at people – and I’m pretty good at people, and it’s just gonna get worse, and you know that too. The bond’s pushing at you, it does that. It’s magic.”

“I know that!”

This time it was a shout.

“Then why are you acting like a nervous virgin in his first collar?” She didn’t shout back, but she snapped it out.

“Who are you to tell me anything about how I’m acting or what I’m doing or how I’m feeling?” he bellowed back at her.

“The person who’s responsible for it,” she retorted. “Remember? I just agreed to take you as my Bond Servant, which means that I agreed to be responsible for you, body, mind, and heart, for the next six years. This, I have a vested interest in what you’re doing.”

“You don’t know anything!”

“Then maybe you should tell me.”

“I-” He cut himself off and glared at her. “All right.” He looked far too angry for the concession she heard in his voice – or maybe, she supposed, he was angry because he was conceding. “I will tell you one thing. But then I’m going to ask you a question.”

“I welcome it.” She folded her hands in her lap and waited.

“I don’t like the collar.”

When it became clear that he wasn’t going to elaborate, Senga tried her best raised-eyebrow look at him. He looked back at her implacably for several minutes before finally sighing.

Senga was fairly certain she’d only won that staring contest with him because he was currently her Bond servant. She made a mental note not to be in a position where she had to try that otherwise.

“I don’t like the physical collar. The sign of it. The way it feels. The restriction.”

“Aah.” She studied his neck for a minute. “That makes me wonder what sort of collars your previous owners put on you. That being said…” She considered her words for a minute. The collar, within fae society, was the sign that he was hers, sworn to her. If he wasn’t wearing one, it suggested that he wasn’t under her control.

Considering she was pretty sure everyone was going to think that anyway – she was definitely going to think it! – she had to play this one carefully.

Her thoughts were either a lot more transparent than she’d meant them to be, or he was having the same thoughts. “You can’t afford to look weak, or everyone will assume I’m in charge.” He shifted a little. “I’m not an in-charge sort. I don’t want that.”

“I don’t want it either. It’s the feel you hate?” She looked at him again and thought about a strip of leather like a dog collar around his neck. She thought about pulling on the d-ring in front and watching him resist it. She thought about him wearing nothing but the collar…

…this was not helping her have calm conversations. On the other hand, if those thoughts were transparent, he hadn’t picked up on them. He looked nervous.

“I’m not a dog,” he muttered. “I don’t like being treated like an animal on a leash.”

“…Aaah. Well then.” She reached out and touched the side of his neck. “That, I can work with.”

He leaned his weight ever so slightly into her hand, as if pretending he didn’t want to feel the touch. “You can? What are you going to do?”

“I can’t afford to look weak,” she reminded him slowly. “You’re going to have to wait until I do it. Until then-”

Her phone buzzed, interrupting her thoughts. She forced down a curse while she glanced at the screen.

“Well. Job calls. You can make yourself at home, or you can go check out Monmartin Manor and see how much we’ll have to do.” She tossed him her car keys. “I assume you know where it is.”

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Worldbuilding June Day 1, B

Jun2

1. Introduction
B. Portal Bound
Many centuries ago — nearly a millennium — portals opened between an untouched planet and several other worlds, and a few people came through, a farmer and his family.

Over time, those portals shifted — when they were open, where they opened from — until a clever wood-carver discovered that with the right bits of magic and the right bits of wood, you could stabilize a portal. It still opened when it pleased, of course, but with the proper doors, it would open to the same place and in the same place.

The main nation of this story is run by a bureaucracy that balances on the mandate of the long-missing Prince. It runs well enough, this nation, and the bureaucrats like it that way.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1333342.html. You can comment here or there.

Worldbuilding June Day 1

Jun1

1. Introduction
Desmond’s World
The world Desmond lives in is on the cusp of industrialization, a word in which most people don’t believe magic exists. Poverty, class struggle, hunger, and crowding are, however, all too real.

The nation Desmond lives in is isolated on all four sides: on three sides by nearly-impassible mountains, and on the fourth by an ocean which is inhospitable and almost entirely non-traversable. It’s a small nation, seven days’ travel by horse long from pass to pass and three days’ travel by horse wide at the widest.

While magic is not believed to exist, it underlies everything, just as the tight isolation, the high price of any trade goods, and the stratified class society do.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1333031.html. You can comment here or there.

Protected: : a piece of its history

Jun1

Funeral: Introductions

May31

First: Funeral
Previous: Funeral: Coming Home

Senga shifted herself between Allayne and Erramun quickly. “Don’t kill her, either,” she whispered. “Allayne, this is Erramun, sa’Death Comes Silently, a former associate of my great-Aunt Mirabella’s and, ah, currently, thanks to Great-Aunt Mirabella, my Kept, my bond servant. Oh, we got the Manor, too.”

Allayne looked Erramun up and down. “Forget the Manor, your aunt gave you a man? How do I get to be part of your family?”

“Generally,” Erramun answered, with a dangerous rumble to his voice and an obvious lack of being impressed by Allayne, “by losing some of your current family, often violently. At least, that’s what seemed to happen to Senga here. Sa-” He frowned down at her. “You can’t call me sa’, you own me. And I can’t call you sa’, I don’t know your name.”

“You seriously Own him. You Own him. You went to a funeral and came back with a man. Only you, Senga, only you. I told you you should have taken me with you.” Allayne clucked cheerfully. “Well, hello to you, Erramun oro’Senga. And if she wants to call you sa’, I wouldn’t argue with her. She had a fun sense of protocol. Probably comes from growing up with Mirabella as family matriarch. I know that would make me absolutely crazy, and I think Senga here just sublimated it into some strange manners.”

Senga coughed. Erramun looked a little off-put and a little confused. Allayne often had that effect on people she wasn’t in the middle of hooking in.

“Allayne. I survived the funeral, I have to figure out relocated Erramun and then relocating us to the Manor-”

“-you have a bond servant now. Delegate. He can figure out how to move himself, he can figure out getting us into the Manor, and then you and I can gossip about your horrible cousins.”

“She has a point,” Erramun pointed out. “I can get my stuff.”

“You don’t have a car here.”

“You are…“ He trailed off, turning a slightly-funny color, and bowed. “I’m sorry. My temper got away with me.”

“That was your temper getting away with you?” Allayne asked. “I mean, man, I can see it, you shouted and threw shit and-”

“Erramun,” Senga asked carefully, “what am I missing?”

“Other ways of getting from one place to another,” he answered, and then frowned.

“You know -” she trailed off. He wouldn’t thank her for talking about the way the Bond was pressing on him in front of Allayne. He probably wouldn’t like it even when they were alone. “If you want to go get your things on your own, you can feel free to do so. Be back before dark, and if you have more than will fit here and in the garage, we’ll have to work something out.”

“I don’t have much.” He bowed and left – presumably before she could give him any more orders.

—

Senga spent the next hour fending off questions from Allayne she didn’t want to answer, packing up as much of her stuff as she could, fending off questions from Chitter once Allayne had gone there, and trying to remember Monmartin Hill Manor.

She’d been very young when they moved out – not quite to her fifth birthday – and she remembered mostly the feeling of being torn from a place rather than many details. The closets had been huge for a four-year old. The whole place had been bigger than she could even fathom at that point.

Putting all of her team in there was still not going to fill it.

Maybe she could put Erramun on the far side of the building. That would make him happy.

No. She folded another set of dresses into a garment bag. No, it wouldn’t actually make him happy; that wasn’t how being a bound servant worked. He’d think he was happy right up to the point where he was screamingly miserable, and then it would echo through the building.

No, she’d accepted responsibility for him; she was going to have to actually accept him, one way or another.

She was in the middle of packing up a box of weapons when he stomped back into her room. He was carrying three large duffle bags and wearing a glower – as well as older jeans and a t-shirt. He looked at once more comfortable and less.

“This is it.” He hesitated, and then said, when she didn’t question him, “I put three boxes in storage with a friend of mine. Stuff – I don’t want anyone else getting their hands on.”

“Anyone but your friend.” She wasn’t offended, she told herself sternly. He didn’t even know her. Of course he didn’t trust her.

“He won’t open them and he won’t touch ‘em without my permission. He’s a good friend.” He smirked crookedly. “Offered to kill you for me.”

Senga tensed, and tried not to show it. She could tell he noticed from the way his smirk shifted. She was really going to have to up her game around him.

He snorted. “I said no. The day I can’t handle a collar is the day you kill me, not the person holding the leash. And besides,” his smile faded into a grimace, “those damn envelopes.”

“I know the feeling. She liked her blackmail, didn’t she?”

“Mirabella? Always got the feeling she liked knowing things. Blackmail was just a convenient result of knowing a lot of things.”

“You knew her better than I did.” Senga sat down on the edge of her bed and looked up at him thoughtfully. “I get the feeling there’s a lot you know better than me, actually.”

He looked down at her for a moment before his smile faded and he sat down slowly on the only chair in her room. “Well, I should hope so,” he joked weakly. He wasn’t quite meeting her eyes. “I’ve got a few years on you, I think.”

“Probably more than a few. So – how would you feel about advising me?”

“I’m not your Mentor, I’m your Bond Servant.” The retort had very little heat in it, and she thought he’d surprised himself with the concept. “But – you’d take it? Advice?”

“Probably better than most of my family, though that’s not saying much. When I’m on a job, I’m not going to want you following me around telling me what to do – especially since my job might be the one area I know what I’m doing more than you do. But the rest of the time, yeah.”

“What exactly is it that you do, anyway?”

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Classes

May30

First: Slaves, School
Previous: Collar Food

It turned out Hellina and Meshron had a secondary purpose in shadowing the new students through breakfast – it was their job to guide all of the first-year blues to their first class.

That turned out to be a lecture room big enough for all twenty-seven students (with three seats left over, Des noted), fronted by a tall person with a very long white beard dressed much more like the students than most of the adults they’d seen.

The person wore long pleated pants that touched the floor in brilliant blue, a jacket in a lighter blue, and a shirt underneath in crisp white. The collar was gold and seemed to sparkle and shimmer.

“I am Professor Hapdegh, and I am here to teach you the basic theory of collar magic and its history. You may call me Professor Hap if it is easier, and I generally answer to he and him pronouns, although I’m not all that concerned one way or the other. Now, I don’t think I’ll remember all your names, but I’m going to try. Let’s start in one corner and work our way around, shall we?”

They went around the circle, giving names and, in some cases but not all, pronouns. That was how Desmond learned that Talia was she, Doria did not name pronouns, and Wesley was he, although none of those was very surprising. Jefshan choosing to go by she was a little surprising, but not horribly so; Des had seen taller women.and quite a few women in pants, lately.

The rest of the circle held few surprises until they got back to Professor Hapdegh, who began telling them about magic. Magic, the reason they were all here; magic, the thing that, until just two days ago, Desmond had thought something relegated to the annals of history.

“Magic,” Professor Hapdegh began, “as you – as most people – think of it, has long been relegated to the annals of history. It is not magic that we do here, the way a magus or a wizard would; it is not the world-shaking power that we can hold or anything nearly that great or exicting. No, here, we wield something small and something very, very controlled.

“There are things that you need to know, and one of them is why you were chosen. Much of this will be covered in later classes, so I will say now only this: not everyone can work with magic.”

He waited for everyone to either process that or scoff it away as an of course, and then continued. “You might say the mages all died. Indeed, you will probably find yourself saying that quite a bit over the next few weeks, and I will tell you this: that is truth. You are not, nor will you ever be, mages.

“What you are, on the other hand, are magic-users whose power is focused, filtered, and controlled by your compatriots, your collars. You are not mages. You are never alone in your own heads; You will never find yourself blowing up city blocks, because if you have those thoughts, the collar you are wearing will shut down your access to magic.

“If this sounds particularly harsh, I will remind you that the rest of the nation still believes that mages are all dead for a very good reason – the mages did an unforgivable level of damage to us, to our nation, to our people – even to the world around us – in their heyday. You are not mages, because mages would be killed on sight, or hunted until they were forced to go into hiding.”

Desmond swallowed. He could see Talia fiddling with the loose blue cravat that looped over her steel-grey collar.

But Cataleb asked, rather loudly, “then what are we? we’re not mages, but we have power, we can’t do damage, but we can do magic?”

“We are slaves,” Professor Hapdegh answered calmly. “We are people who would have the power one way or another, so we are controlled. The flip side to that is – we are very well compensated and, as long as we cooperate within limits, we can lead comfortable lives.”

“I don’t like that ‘cooperate,’” Cataleb complained. “We do what we’re told like good little minions?”

“The trick, Cataleb, is to become strong enough and wise enough within your chosen area of expertise – that will come later – that you are given a very good position which you can enjoy. And the first part of that is to chose an area of expertise that you enjoy. But that will come later. Now, moving on. We are collared because that way the nation can use our magic without risking us destroying it. It is a trade-off, I will admit, but I have not found it a bad one.”

“How did you end up a teacher, Professor?” Jefshan asked. “Was that your chosen area of expertise?”

Professor Hapdegh coughed. “in a way, in a way. I went into research – we did, my collar and I. Learning about old magics and then about new ways of using them.”

“So… you were learning about magic and now you teach about it?” Jefshan raised her eyebrows. “What if one of us wants to do that?”

“Then do very well at this class, for starters.” The professor’s smile was wide and a bit teasing.

“Now, as I was saying,” he continued, before anyone could interrupt again, “there was a time when mages controlled almost everything, because of their ability to wield magic in vast swooping attacks. Nobody questioned them – not and survived.

“But there were benefits. The mages could tame the demon waters. They could make the dangerous passes passable. They could help with industry and with agriculture, and they did, on their good days.

“The problem was that they had many bad days as well…”

Desmond left class with his mind swimming and found himself flanked by Talia and Jefshan. “So. I want to be a magic historian,” Jefshan declared, to nobody’s surprise.

“I,” Talia mused, “want to ride on the ships and ‘tame the demon waters’. I want to kill the demon waters, but I’ll settle for taming them a little bit.”

“I…” Desmond shook his head. “I don’t know yet. I wanted to be an accountant,” he muttered. “This is not a good path to being an accountant.”

“No,” Jefshan agreed, “but you could be a school administrator. Or you could teach math, if we learn math here. Or… well, maybe even this school needs accountants.”

“Maybe it does.” Desmond was pretty sure it didn’t.

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Beauty-Beast 18: Free Time

May28

First – Previous – Landing Page – Next

🔒

It was telling, humiliating, and sensible. Do you know what you like to do for fun?

He ought to. He ought to know things that were enjoyable. Everyone did, right?

Ctirad swallowed around a keening sound that refused to quiet itself. He wanted to bow until his forehead was on the floor, but he’d been told to lean back, so he stayed leaning back.

“Hey, hey.” Timaios stroked his shoulders gently. “Hey. Ctirad. Come on, kitten, come on.”

Kitten? The nickname drew him out of his panic for a moment. “Kitten?”

“Sounds better than ‘puppy’ and I don’t think you’d like ‘pet’,” Timaios admitted. “So you’re my kitten.”

“Yes… yes sir. I’m your kitten.”

“So, kitten. Do you like team sports?”

“I’m good at soccer, sir. And okay at volleyball.” He could remember that. Playing volleyball on the beach at sunset. With… With… no. No, those memories weren’t allowed.

“But not enjoyable. Hrm… Weapons?”

“I’m proficient at any number of weapons, sir. At least fifty, depending on how you count.”

“But do you enjoy any of them?”

Knives. It was an image, a feeling, rather than a word. Tossing a knife up in the air and catching it. The way it felt when he threw it. The way it felt cutting into skin. “Knives, sir.”

“Good. Very good, kitten, thank you.” Timaios leaned down and kissed the back of Ctiard’s neck.

Ctirad tilted his head forward, baring more neck, finding he wanted more of that contact.

“When Ermenrich left you alone, what did you do?”

Whine.

No.

“When,” Ctirad asked very carefully, “he left me and didn’t cage me or restrain me?”

“Did that happen? That is, were you given time to yourself?”

“Sometimes.” More in the last few months.

“Then yes. What did you do?”

“Sometimes I just walked. Whatever my um. My leash was, the distance I was allowed to go, I walked that. Usually just laps of the house or the office. Sometimes I read, if there was anything around to read. A lot of times I just did push-ups or sit-ups until I couldn’t anymore. I don’t like being idle for too long. I like having something to do.”

The last surprised him, but he found it was true. “I liked reading the best,” he admitted more quietly. “A couple times I managed to jog on the treadmill while reading, and that was very good.”

“Good.” Timaios kissed the top of his head. “Very good, kitten.”

Ctirad moaned very quietly at the praise. “Thank you… um. Thanks, Tim.” He glanced up at Timaios nervously.

“It’s good to have some idea what you like to do when you’ve got idle time. I don’t need you for household chores, but I might need you to be out of the way of the people doing that work. So it’s good to have things you want to do during that time.” He looked down at Ctirad thoughtfully. “Did you like being caged or restrained?”

Ctirad found himself blushing. He looked away, because he could, and struggled with an answer. “I didn’t like it when he left me alone that way.”

“I see.” Timaios’ voice was a soft rumble too close to Ctirad’s ear. “Interesting. Well. I’m going to have to make sure we draw some lines before we get to that point, but I won’t ever leave you caged or restrained alone for more than… half an hour, okay?”

“Even – even when I’m being punished, sir?”

“Things that are done for fun should not be used for punishment,” Timaios replied firmly. “So yes, I won’t do that as a punishment.”

“Sir?” A tall man stuck his head into the living room. He was tall, although maybe not as tall as Timaios, with his curly blue-black hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. “Mr. Talbot and Ms. Tansure are here to see you?”

“Of course they are.” Timaios’ tone was dry. “Send them in, and bring in the Chateau Kamine ‘92, if you would, the Riesling, and have Danny whip up a cheese platter.”

“Of course, sir.” The man bowed deeply and departed.

“Well, I guess we’ll see how you fare with company.” Timaios patted Ctirad’s hair. “Please don’t be too concerned; you can consider this a practice run. That’s Tristin, by the way. My… butler, I suppose.”

“Ah.” The man looked intimidating. He moved in a way that was a lot more common for a hired killer than a butler. “Do you want…” What was he supposed to even ask?

“You can be yourself, but remember to call me Tim. Ah, here they are.” He patted Ctirad’s head and rose to his feet.

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