Chapter 2: Drops?

“Something about the costs not being covered because the ingredient was more expensive to get than we predicted,” Julius dictates as he makes himself some more tea at the small bench off to the side of his viewing chair. “You know, maybe that she’s such a good patron we’ll do it out of pocket, et cetera.”

Hien sits at the side of Julius’ desk, obediently writing out all the reply letters to reoccurring clients. Like her mother who’s working downstairs, Hien has brown hair but simply done in a bun. She sits upright, knees together, and writes lies with perfect penmanship – a result of Julius paying to send her to the finest commoner school in the empire.

Hien’s scribbling fills the room as Julius cancels the small spell and it breaks into gold dust. He takes the teapot off the metal plate, the circle still emblazoned on it in hot red lines that slowly cool. He pours himself a cup and then takes that and a small box of snacks over to his viewing chair, settling in with a satisfied sigh.

The world outside the window is dark now, the glass leeching a warm orange glow into the shadows from all the spirit fire still drifting lazily around the office. Rain splatters against the glass, runs down in streaks and splitting rivers. The staff downstairs are packing up, chatter heard through the open door with the occasional burst of laughter.

Hien finishes off the letter with a flourishing forgery of Julius’ signature. “Would you like me to read it to you?”

“No,” Julius hums, selecting a nice shortbread biscuit with an almond in the centre.

To maintain relations, Julius gets several letters a day from various contacts talking about nothing at all in particular, and manners dictate he sends something back. This is on top of the letters that actually are business specific.

McPherson usually writes for him – for his books and scrolls as well that currently litter the office (a tidying spell would actually be rather complex now that he thinks about it) but as the only bouncer in this shop she needs to stand at the door and act intimidating. The company has just crested a wave into public notice instead of catering to mostly specialists and with that shift in clients comes people too confident for their own good. Poor McPherson has to get her hands dirty often now.

There’s some shuffling paper as Hien cuts open the next letter and reads through it. “Another ‘hope you are well’ correspondence,” Hien reports softly.

“Do the usual reply,” Julius confirms, putting his soft leather boots up on the fringed ottoman that has indents from years of taking the same shoesize. “Wait, who is it from?”

“Duke Birch,” Hien admits. She’s already slowly moving it to the bin under the desk.

“Post him one of the standard,” Julius says carelessly. “I know for a fact he doesn’t read any of it.”

Hien picks up a premade letter and writes in the small gaps left out; name, date, weather condition. She then puts it off into the outgoing pile and opens another letter. “A request for jewellery, common, under thirty gold.”

Julius hums and takes a sip of tea.

Hien drafts her own letter to a nearby warehouse for the product and then sends a more official one in Julius’ name back to the client with the date to pick it up and the market price.

“An order for metal, rare,” Hien reports the next one. “It’s from Jasmine. She says she wants a drop of unprocessed mithril.”

“Unprocessed?” Julius asks in curiosity.

“She doesn’t say why,” Hien says, although that’s a nice way of putting it considering the letter is one sentence long on what looks to be a scrap piece and scribbled in pencil.

“I’ll ask later,” Julius muses. “Give her two drops. Is ‘drops’ the official term?”

Hien is already reaching for the bookshelf nearby with encyclopedias of everything Julius could find.

“It’s not important, I can control myself,” Julius stops her, waving a hand over his shoulder and then turning when he hears footsteps at the doorway. “Packed up?”

“Henry was the last to go home,” McPherson reports as she walks in and comes to a stop at her daughter’s side, hand on Hien’s shoulder. She has her satchel slung over a broad shoulder and umbrella in her other hand. “Any more letters?”

“This is the last,” Hien replies, adding a request for a drop of unprocessed mithril onto the end of her previous letter to the warehouse. “Should I write back to Jasmine?”

“I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” Julius says and leans around the back of his chair to smile at the two, gold eyes almost reflective in the light of his own magic still drifting around the room. “Have a goodnight you two, I’ll be in late tomorrow.”

“We’ll drop off the letters on the way home,” McPherson offers, stepping aside so Hien can quickly neaten up the desk. “Do you need me to escort you back?”

“I’m touched, but no,” Julius huffs out a laugh. “You can stop asking.”

He almost gets mugged once and she suddenly thinks he’s a child.

Julius puts the lid back on his box of snacks and drinks the last mouthful of tea. The three of them head downstairs together, past the second floor with private rooms, down to the first with a large open foyer and more a basic service desk. The spirit fire follows them down, casting shadows that lean around corners.

At the front double doors that open to a sheet of rain, Julius rolls his wrist to draw two circles in the air with his finger and a soft honey gold spell like the colour of his eyes appears over the heads of the two McPhersons.

A circle in flawless symmetry, with thin spokes branching off the middle, thicker lines wrapping around to denote magic flow, and runes that glow in their mathematically perfected placement. A 2^nd level spell, so a smaller circle forms under the first to denote aim and both lazily spin. This was the first spell he ever made and he’s still quite proud of the clean efficiency.

“Thanks,” Hien says quietly, peering up at him.

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“Half an hour on that spell, better move fast,” Julius says lightly, giving her a pat on the head.

Obedient children are so cute, not like that little boy earlier today. Ugh, it’s not even satisfying making him pay more because the boy suggested it himself.

Julius waves the two off as they step out into the rain, the spell keeping every part of their body dry even with the rain splattering on the ground. Half the spirit fire baubles drift after them and half stay inside as Julius closes and locks the doors.

Then Julius simply teleports home with a blaze of a gold 4^th level spell.

---

Julius spends the early morning lounging in bed reading but eventually he has to get up properly. He draws a circle in the air and a 5^th level spell wraps his residual limb at just below the elbow and then sinches in tight to the skin like a tattoo in gold, stitching his left limb to a new forearm. He rolls his new wrist, does some finger exercises. It’s always a bit numb at the start.

There’s no need to get fancy for the meeting so he dresses in his normal clothes. Grey slacks that tuck into leather boots. A tight top in black with long sleeves that form triangles over the backs of his hands and loop around his middle fingers. His usual loose robes are a dusty sort of white and gold, slits up the sides to his hips to allow for comfortable lounging.

And long, billowing sleeves because it always makes people nervous when they can’t see a magician’s hands and Julius likes to be difficult.

His little one storey cottage is separated from the rest of the city by carefully preserved and neatened forest, right in the middle of the bird conservation in the south of the city, and all of his neighbours are nobles wanting a holiday house ‘in nature’. Julius doesn’t particularly enjoy birds or other such creatures, but he does enjoy the quiet.

The streets are busier the closer to the main shops he gets, as damp as always with a chill in the air that speaks of another heavy rainfall. Wet enough the colours stand out stronger, sharper maybe, with bright green moss growing in every crack possible.

Some of the more rundown buildings have lichen scars carved into the brick or rotting wood but most have enough money to hire magicians for maintenance. The wealthier streets don’t even have puddles and wouldn’t dare get muddy.

He takes a winding path through the artist district and stops by Jasmine’s blacksmith shop, the windows and doors all thrown open because it fogs up so much inside. The squat building is split into two to form a fully-fledged blacksmith and the other side more of a mobile workshop with smaller equipment for finer crafting scattered about.

If Julius had a tidying spell that mess would be nothing, but it would have a lot of moving parts which might bump up the spell to 4^th level. Is he going to waste his time making a spell that only two hundred people in the kingdom can cast?

What a pity, that does sound like him.

Julius steps through the open door and weaves around benches to the heavy machinery half where he finds Jasmine standing at the open furnace in pants, boots, a leather apron and nothing else with sweat running down her arms and naked back, trying to mould the metal with long pliers while it’s in the furnace.

“Shouldn’t you be doing that part out of the fire?” Julius muses.

“I’m trying out a new technique!” Jasmine says happily. “It’s a bit hot, sorry, I really needed to ramp it up. This is the mithril by the way, came in not an hour ago! I was having trouble-“

Julius realises how this is going to go and backs all the way up to the door where the cool air is on his back, letting her chatter on. Seems like the courier beat Julius here. It must have been Henry.

“-designing a hinge point because it had to take so much strain and my usual metals weren’t doing it. Really hoping this does the trick since I know you can get me stronger stuff-“

Julius smiles and nods at two passing staff members on their way to the bank.

“-but this is already a challenge to work with. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun challenge, but I’ve had to kick out all my staff because I didn’t want them roasting, you know? By the way, really appreciate the extra, turns out I definitely need it. I can totally pay you back though, I’m making more than enough these days.”

“No need,” Julius dismisses. “I’m keeping count and we’ve evened out on favours.”

Jasmine takes a step back and dumps everything in her hands into a nearby barrel of water, pliers and all, a plume of hissing steam exploding outwards. She shoves up the visor and turns to grin brightly at Julius. “Damn, I’m not winning anymore? You should come around more often; I like your challenges!” She looks around like he’s hiding something behind his back. “You got any for me today?”

“I was meaning to ask, is the correct term for a size of metal ‘drops’?”

Jasmine blinks. “Most people I know use it but I think it’s a regional thing. If you’re working with a lot of metal, weight isn’t going to work the same for all the types and it turns into a calculation nightmare. You can go by square centimetres, but unworked metals don’t come in squares. Drops is basically ‘a ball of rock this-ish big’ and you eye it off, pay whatever weight it happens to be instead of ordering a particular size.”

“Huh,” Julius says. “That is absolutely not something I needed to know.”

Jasmine becomes sympathetic. “Were you stressing about it last night?”

“I do have impulse control,” Julius dismisses, already turning to go. “I’m leaving before I bake. Tell me if you need more drops.”

“Bye!”

Julius ends up sloping around the market district -the height of his shop a blip in the skyline- and passing through a brief portion of the magical neighbourhood before arriving at the school for training magicians. His meeting is in ten minutes - he's cut it close.

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