Chapter 5: Tit-for-tat.

Julius wakes up late in the day, still dazed and half dressed in the clothes from yesterday. He slowly rolls over, shoving his face into the soft blankets and pillows. He pauses and rolls his head around to peek off the end of the bed.

The bedroom is sunlit and cozy. It’s made up of pale colours and clean furniture – the door off to the study open and displaying towering shelves of softened grey packed ever so neatly with inks, papers and alchemy ingredients.

Looks like victory.

Julius moves lazily, sitting up and blinking around slowly. He tries to shove the blanket away on instinct but his left arm has nothing from the elbow down and the empty sleeve just bats at the blankets. He doesn’t remember cancelling his prosthetic, but it must have broken when he fell asleep. Or rather passed out.

Julius doesn’t mind either way and lopes to the kitchen on bare feet over wood to eat breakfast, then finally sheds yesterday’s clothes to duck into the shower. He comes out of the bathroom with a gush of steam and tucks the towel in on itself so it’ll stay up around his waist. He spells on his prosthetic and gets practice with this new one by dressing himself.

Julius woke up late enough that he leaves the little one storey cottage immediately after. The walk through the spot of forest is peaceful, ten-minutes at a leisurely stroll with giant noble holiday houses barely seen through the trees. He comes across enough small rabbits and colourful butterflies that he’s certain a noble brought them in on purpose, maybe just ordered a bucket of caterpillars to be dumped out.

It’s soft dirt for a few more minutes past the tree line until he hits cobblestoned roads and continues the familiar path to his shop in the market district.

---

“Of course,” Julius says, scribbling down nonsense on the piece of paper because he already has fairy wings in the storage downstairs. He lays the pen in its holder and smiles up at the man sitting across from him. “You’d like them powdered, I assume? Seven percent, in sour plum blossom wine?”

The man clutches at the gold lion head of his cane and his facial expression doesn’t shift, but he’s a noble. Those sorts make for magnificent actors. “You seem to be practiced at this.”

“Me?” Julius asks with a smile. “I’m just a simple merchant. I only want to assist you, Viscount Marion.”

The viscount is young but it’s an old title he inherited; it carries weight even in the low rank. He’s dressed like it too, heavy draping cloth over his broad shoulders and rich garnet embroidery across the layers of his clothes. His expression is severe, and he sits straight, eyes sharp for someone with withdrawal shakes in his hands.

“Send a maid next time,” Julius offers lightly. “I feel I’m overstepping my bounds to make a viscount come all this way.”

Marion’s jaw clenches for a moment and he doesn’t rush the decision to speak. Julius waits patiently as he tears up the nonsense scribbles of the order he was pretending to make.

Marion watches the shreds wisp away into dust with a spell. “Good help is hard to find these days,” he finally says.

“Surely even the newest of your maids can pick up an order for specialty cider,” Julius muses. “From the mountains of course, the monastery orchid that’s been gaining quite some fame recently.”

Marion hums. “You do good work here.”

“I aim only to please.”

Ten minutes later and Julius is seeing Viscount Marion out of the shop door with a bow. He then strides across the lobby and behind the stalls, passing staff members who are negotiating regular supplies. He pushes into the backroom, the door automatically swinging closed behind him on one of Jasmine’s interesting mechanisms, and pulls out a heavy bag from his sleeve, dropping it with a loud clank on Omar’s desk.

Omar lets out a low whistle and shoves aside the book of business expenditure he was working on so he can take a peek in the bag. “Is that all gold?”

“Reoccurring,” Julius chuckles. “Contact the forgers in the main warehouse, I want them to whip up something fancy.”

“On it,” Omar agrees but then focuses on dumping the bag out into the weigh scale.

Julius rolls his eyes and since Omar has all the money out, Julius is a lot more cautious pushing the door open and slipping out so no customers can see inside.

Julius looks up and locks eyes with dazzling sapphire blue as the Govain noble steps through the door. He nods to Julius and then walks straight for the stairs with a confident stride. Julius waves off McPherson when she moves to stop Diedrik and instead follows the little noble upstairs, lagging behind by a storey because he refuses to run to catch up.

“Lovey weather we’re having,” Julius says sweetly as he comes to the third-floor landing and sees the noble already inside his office. “Please don’t interrupt my security wards, they’re very difficult to put back up.”

“I’ll remember that for next time,” Diedrik allows, coming to a stop at Julius’ magic-based bookshelf. It’s only one in a room full of other knowledge but Diedrik goes straight for it. He searches the titles, simple black lettering down the spine.

Julius closes the office door behind him and walks up to the boy. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“Do you have anything on mana absorption?”

Julius looks at the books and doesn’t know anything on these shelves. When he gets into one of his moods, he’ll babble in a stream of consciousness to McPherson and she’ll write it up so it’ll stop banging around in Julius’ head. The originals are in the information storage and the staff there make fancy, official looking copies to fill his room with for décor but also in case he needs anything quickly if he gets in one of his moods.

“Would you like a drink?” Julius tries to stall.

Diedrik looks up at him, and then does a slow once over. “You really don’t know what’s in here, do you? You sit on a gold mine and call it dirt.”

Julius only smiles. “We have tea, coffee?” He pauses. “Warm milk.”

“Here to here,” Diedrik says, gesturing at the entire shelf level in front of him. Most of it is filled with clutter décor, and some books are laid flat, but it’s still a good half a dozen thin volumes. “I want all of this.”

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“Right away.” Julius returns to the door and leans his head out, gesturing at a passing Robin. “Get a case for some books.”

Robin nods and hurries along to drop off her box in the storage to one side of Julius’ office.

Julius closes the door again and finds Diedrik standing at the desk. Julius already moved his temporary paperweight into a nice, cushioned box for presentation value and Diedrik has pulled the centurion orb weavers carapace out to study it.

“Does it suit your needs?” Julius asks politely, taking a seat in his chair in hopes of urging the boy to sit down too.

The noble is clearly impatient but coming in for two minutes and leaving again doesn’t hold the same weight or linger in the memory as much. Why is a Govain rushing when nobles have perfected the art of saying and doing nothing for hours at a time? Does Julius need to call it a tea party first?

“High grade,” Diedrik muses, turning it slowly to see the sheen of it under the sunshine streaming in through the window. “One-fifty?”

“A hundred and sixty-three years old,” Julius corrects. “A male, so it is smaller, but I thought that wouldn’t be a problem since you didn’t specify the size.”

“It’s good,” Diedrik allows. He lays it back in the box and finally takes a seat. “What’s your name?”

“Julius Aceveds. I’m the owner of this local speciality merchant shop.”

“I wouldn’t have come to you if you were local,” Diedrik rejects.

The noble’s eyes linger on Julius’ half hidden hands before swinging towards the closest bookshelves, along the wall behind Julius’ desk, which happen to be full of encyclopedias, world maps and dictionaries in various languages. Shallow but holistic knowledge, which doesn’t match the detailed magic theory on the other side of the room.

“You have quite the broad collection,” Diedrik muses.

“I don’t like to not know things,” Julius admits and nods to Robin when she enters. “Everything on the shelf with the blue plant pot.”

Robin places a small trunk on the ground and starts to fill it.

Julius looks back the boy with a smile. “Now the books, I generally price them the same except for the red cover ones-“

“I have more than enough money, let’s not do this song and dance again,” Diedrik scoffs. “How much?”

Julius pauses. “As a token of appreciation, I’ll call it a hundred even.”

“Where did you get the books from?” Diedrik watches as Robin places the trunk on the desk and then picks one out at random, reading the cover. “4^th class magician trigger range.”

There’s a certain range when you cast a spell. Most magicians trigger from their circled hands for stability, but 2^nd class can cast it slightly away from their body if they concentrate. The higher the class, the longer that range gets. That book is rather old though; it’s a been a long time since Julius was 4^th class and excited about it.

“I pick things up here and there,” Julius dismisses. “Are you looking for a supplier of magical tomes? One would think your mother would have more than enough.”

“Careful,” is all Diedrik says to Julius’ fishing comment, flipping a page.

Julius smiles and makes a motion for Robin to stay. “Pay at the front desk.”

“You aren’t going to walk me down?” Diedrik looks up through his eyelashes. “You did it for a lowly viscount when my mother is a duke.”

“Call me when you are a duke,” Julius retorts happily. “Thank you for your patronage, didn’t you have somewhere more important to be?”

Diedrik looks again to Julius’ covered hands and smirks. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

Robin sees the boy down and Julius sits in his office, thinking.

Twice Julius attempted to draw a circle and the boy’s eyes snaped to him each time. The first try was a genuine cast, the second just a test.

It was 1^st circle, a harmless fragrance to help relax people. The spell never formed, so Diedrik must have sensed the unbound mana, not the activation. That discounts the use of a magical detection item, or at least the ones Julius can think of off the top of his head.

Is the little noble really sensitive enough to be aware of unbound mana? Would that be a natural gift or something trained into him?

Robin comes back up, peeking into the open office door. “Mr Govain said he’d be back next week, and your schedule is empty. Should I send a reservation letter to him?”

Julius rolls the thought around for a moment. “Sure. And I want to know what he’s doing with that carapace.”

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