Chapter 1: Pay at the front desk.

Julius falls into a cupped armchair filled with throw pillows in muted but chaotic colours, fluffy white hair bouncing, layered mage robes spilling out like a dim white and hushed gold blanket. He picks up his teacup from a round table to the side, fingers pressing into the curls and curves of the rosebush design, the cup’s glaze softened with wear of his fingerprints.

The window Julius faces is wide and stretches across the large room, ducking out of sight behind loaded bookshelves that simply couldn’t fit anywhere else, the clean glass split by angled beams of dark wood that tie in the feature to the rest of the darkly shaded office. The same dark wooden beams slant across walls and the ceiling, run underfoot, the inscriptions on them so small the rune chains look like natural divots in the grain.

Julius puts his soft leather boots up on the fringed ottoman that has indents from years of taking the same shoesize and takes a sip of lightly spiced tea, unmindful of the cascade of thick scrolls that pour from a mound stuffed into the corner, that then triggers a precarious stack of books to topple in a rustle of paper and thump of hardcover spines onto the wooden floor.

The office is on the third storey, a jutting block of a building above the lichen covered rooves, so the window doesn’t overlook the constantly damp, dirt packed roads and the people rushing past down the busy street towards the nearby market. The noise is muffled down to a whisper by the magics in the walls, but the occasional shout can be heard from a particularly committed hawker.

In fact, the cupped armchair is low set enough that Julius sees right over the steep shingles of nearby buildings and instead gazes up into the storm clouds rolling in, a sheet of rain off in the distance disappearing into the thick forest, the far-off mountains already a ghost. The view is wide, undisturbed, and the exact opposite direction to the castle built upon the high ground, the colossal, ugly thing with wide sweeping gardens and not an ounce of personality.

Some faint yelling slips past the noise cancellation as a palace guard is hurled out of the front door and splashes into the muddy street. Three gold, the woman had said, as if Julius was running a charity.

Julius sips his tea and tips his head against the backrest so his white hair puffs up, the ends flicked out into a messy halo. He rearranges his robes so they’re bundled around him and extra comfortable, then just settles in to relax. He doesn’t have any more appointments today, the people downstairs can handle the rest.

More scrolls topple over, from somewhere else in the room. Julius sighs but isn’t worried enough to check which pile went down.

He needs to invent a tidying spell, except just hiring a cleaner would be faster, cheaper and easier. He doesn’t want to put months of research and testing into a spell that doesn’t have market value and can only be used for one situation, but the way things have slowed down he’s going to have a lot of time on his hands anyway.

Julius worries at the rose cup, rubbing his thumb over smooth flower petals. Tidying is more complex than it sounds – a lot of moving parts which might bump up the spell to 4^th circle at the highest. Is Julius going to waste his time making a spell that only two hundred people in the world can cast?

What a pity, that does sound like him.

There’s a knock on the office door and Julius ignores it. He can use a base wind spell, which is what he does now, just needs a more rounded sort of gust. Maybe add in a telekinesis layer for better handling? But then he may as well just use telekinesis for everything.

Julius rolls his head to the side and lifts a hand. A palm sized circle in blazing gold blooms, with thin spokes branching off the middle as an anchor, thicker lines wrapping around to denote magic flow, and runes fizzle and spark in mathematically perfected angles. It’s a 2^nd circle spell so a smaller circle forms in front of the first, both spin clockwise because this spell is a controlled one compared to ‘set and forget’ as Julius likes to call them.

The spell triggers when both circles finish forming and a gust of wind seeps past the large office desk and gains strength to blow the scrolls back up into a pile in the corner, then swings around and forms a miniature tornado to whisk up the other pile that fell near the uncomfortable chairs he puts the annoying clients on.

The circles shatter after the magic stops feeding them and turns to glinting dust that fades as it drifts through the air. The books are still a mess but the scroll piles hold, for now.

More knocking comes. “Julius, a client is here for you.”

“Check again,” Julius drawls and sips his tea.

“It’s a Govain,” McPherson grunts with a bit more emphasis to her words.

A noble family, notable for the current matriarch being a 3rd class magician, one of dozen in the current kingdom and a particularly good magician at environmental spells. Unfortunately, not especially interesting to Julius.

“What a pity I’m home sick today,” Julius says regretfully, eyes lazily following a flock of birds going past in the distance. “Send the servant back, tell them to book a meeting next time so they don’t have to come all this way before I reject them.”

McPherson just shoves open the door, her solid frame filling out the doorway with shirt and slacks stretched over muscles, hair up in lovely delicate brown curls today with jewelled pins because Julius pays her too much. Her lips are lightly pursed. “It’s the son.”

“Tell me why I care,” Julius says and genuinely means it.

“He used a 3^rd circle spell.”

“The mother’s genes are strong,” Julius muses.

“Julius,” McPherson says seriously. “He’s an eight year old little boy throwing around 3^rd circle spells. His mother could have taught him every spell she knows, he could be incredibly powerful already.”

Julius finally turns to look at her, a wry smile on his lips. “You people get so excited as soon as you see a magician, it’s adorable. Fine, what does he want?”

McPherson pauses.

“You don’t know why he’s here?” Julius asks in amusement. “He, what, stormed in and threw around a spell, then you rush up here to brag about seeing it? What spell was it?”

McPherson clears her throat, expression calming. She adjusts her curls, making sure today’s hairstyle is perfect. “He hid the casting behind his back, and it was a shield to stop the palace guard from throwing a rock at the shop window.”

“It must have been a terrifying rock to need a 3^rd circle shield. Did it have teeth?”

“It was quite large,” McPherson deadpans.

Julius gasps in exaggerated shock, hand clutching his chest. “Goodness, do you think it was hiding some tiny concealed weapons too? We could have been in trouble.”

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McPherson simply nods to Julius. “I’ll send him away.”

Julius rolls his eyes. “No, bring him up. Make sure he hasn’t just gotten lost and stumbled into the shop though, I’m not helping him find his parents.”

McPherson closes the door behind her when she leaves and Julius sets down his tea and stands, shaking out his robes so they fall properly, untucking the billowing sleeves from the tighter inner top. He moves around to the large desk with a throne like chair and pats around for something suitably old and rare looking to read.

The clients who see him in person instead of just asking a sales assistant downstairs are either doing something illegal or think they’re important. Regardless, they’re here for an experience and Julius knows how to play along.

The knock on the door comes again and after Julius calls them in, McPherson opens the door, her stocky frame looming over a child.

A little noble boy in fancy black clothes toddles in, maybe chest height on Julius and looks squishable even with the severe cut to his black tailcoat and shorts, with a deep blue ruffled shirt and tiny bowtie. Twelve, perhaps thirteen? The boy doesn’t look around curiously like so many do, doesn’t even start with greetings, just walks right over and takes a seat on the chair opposite, short enough his feet hang a bit off the ground.

“I need a centurion orb weaver’s carapace,” the boy orders, neatly done black hair swept out of big blue eyes the colour of a clear sky but when Julius stares into them they feel like a cracking sheet of ice underfoot.

A common sort of noble then.

Julius waves out McPherson before she can walk in further and take up her usual position at his side. No need to be scared of a child, much less a child with talent but none of the raw strength to make it into the big leagues judging by how little Julius feels in the air – it should be sparking with the two of them so close if the boy was anywhere near to Julius’ level. 3^rd class isn’t bad, just a bit disappointing after McPherson hyped it up like that.

McPherson hesitates just a moment at the dismissal before she nods, brown curls bouncing, and leaves the room. The door closes and faint blue light shines from the edges, sealing it to eavesdropping which is simply standard practice when there’s a client.

“Do you need the carapace in one piece?” Julius asks, closing the book he wasn’t reading and settling it off to the side. He laces his fingers together and leaves his hands on the desk – standard practice because people are usually quite twitchy around magicians. They prefer to see hands, as if that would even slow Julius down if he really was upset.

“No, but I do need the entire structure, or the equivalent mass,” the Govain boy says. He pauses and looks at the book Julius just set down. “And that.”

Julius looks at the book and knows he wrote it but has completely forgotten what it’s about, which means it’s not interesting enough for him to remember after he emptied out his brain onto the pages. “Eight gold.” Or a small plot of farmland, which is an outrageous price for a book that isn’t magical, but nobles can spend that amount getting a new gala outfit.

“When should I expect to pick up the carapace?” the boys asks, already standing and reaching for the desk.

Julius puts a hand on the book’s cover, pinning it down, the boy’s hand stopping with fingers brushing the edge. “The book is eight gold. The centurion orb weaver will unfortunately be a bit costly.”

The boy narrows those big blue eyes -his spells must shine a beautiful blue- and grabs the book anyway, easily pulling it out from under Julius’ light pressure. He takes a seat again, paging through the book. “Continue.”

Julius smothers his smirk into a polite customer service smile. “The orb weaver spider being over a century old is not only rare but difficult to harvest. I’m afraid it won’t just be the price, but also the time it takes to receive it at this shop. In situations like this where we’re not certain we can accommodate your request, you can pay half upfront and the other half when you come to collect instead of the entire fee right now. I do have to warn you that if we can’t deliver the merchandise, we’ll still keep the half payment you’ve given us.”

“When will it be here?” the Govain boy repeats, genuinely going through the index of the book to find something, not just pantomiming like Julius was.

“We’re a large merchant franchise but the best I can estimate is maybe three weeks,” Julius answers.

“How much do I have to pay to make it two weeks?”

Julius sits back, a carefully crafted mask of apology on his face. “We do value your patronage but-“

“I’m rather busy,” the boy says, looking up from the book. “You seem to have an open afternoon to chat, I don’t. What’s one week? Twenty gold, thirty?”

“Forty-five,” Julius admits with a small frown like he’s really quite ashamed of scamming this little child.

“Fifty and you tell me why a 2^nd class magician, like you’re pretending to be, was reading about 3^rd circle spell power output,” the boy negotiates, holding up the book in his hands.

“A man can dream,” Julius murmurs with an enigmatic smile and doesn’t try to deny nor confirm anything.

The boy snaps the book shut with a loud thump. “You’re getting fifty, but keep the extra five as a tip for the large woman downstairs.”

“She likes you,” Julius says with a smirk. “Was very impressed with your half-hearted sleight of hand.”

“It was either that or do something dramatic,” the boy admits and smiles at the joke.

It’s not a nice sort of smile.

In fact, it might be a threat but that’s hardly the worst Julius has gotten. The boy is a child after all, it’s expected he’s a bit soft.

“Pay at the front desk,” Julius says politely.

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