Page 2

The uneven pebbled courtyard was a poor choice.

Actually, the whole estate seemed to be a poor choice.

The carriage driver that brought Harlow from town didn’t even bother to take the horses down the path.

Apprentice or not, the man seemed not to care.

Far enough out of town and into the coastal woods, the town’s wide-cast translation spell couldn’t reach this manor.

She didn’t get to test this with the driver, though.

He didn’t even speak to her or answer her.

He communicated with stares and gestures.

It was to the point that Harlow leaned halfway out the window of the carriage once it stopped to question him.

But he just stared equally intensely back at her.

Was this a test? Did all the apprentices have to go through this routine? Sure, she could have asked him why he and his horses didn’t dare get closer to Daggerroot Manor but that would mean she’d have to break the silence first.

Harlow didn’t know how this became a contest of silence, but it was and she was going to win it.

Mere moments passed but then it dawned on her that perhaps the Spellsaven would be watching from somewhere and all they would see was two grown adults glaring at one another and nothing happening.

She’d be late.

And even though wizards were never late, she couldn’t risk such a social faux pas being the start of her life as an apprentice.

She leaned back into the carriage and began to crack each finger.

It was a terrible habit.

And an even more terrible one for a thief to have.

Any damage to her fingers could surely affect her quality of thieving.

But it just felt like it was a better option than wringing someone’s neck.

Harlow took and held in a deep breath as she drew the curtain aside, this time to gaze out at the ill-kept manor instead of staring daggers at the driver.

This was it.

If she could just get through this, she would finally get approval from the Guildmaster.

And she needed that so badly. She needed his swing vote to secure her seat on the council. If she could steal just this one thing, then she’d be able to start her own legacy. No one could forget her then.

Blowing the air back out slowly, she nodded to herself and opened the carriage door.

With careful steps to not trap her coat tail, Harlow grimaced when she fully emerged in the bright, cheerful sunlight.

Too cheerful.

Too bright.

As she brought a hand to her brow to ease her vision from being blown out, the carriage lumbered away.

She sucked in her breath and her stomach bottomed out.

She suddenly felt nauseous, and it wasn’t from transitioning from a moving carriage to standing on solid ground.

No, it was that the carriage was her last chance to give up the ruse, to go back home and say “ENOUGH, I don’t need to parade as a wizard, I’m a rogue, damn it.”

The nausea was only kept at bay with mild panic – her things! She patted her coat, and sensing the anchor object that held the spell to access her actual things safely where it should be, she felt an overwhelming sense of frustration.

With herself.

She had been using these compartment dimensions for their things for the last few years.

It was incredibly difficult to get used to.

A target’s greatest flaw was believing things were perfectly safe when out of sight.

Her natural instinct pulled her away from trusting her own magic.

The gravel crunched loudly, making any smooth arrival nearly impossible.

The manor’s white paint was flecked and peeling in most places and what places still held paint were dirty enough that Harlow couldn’t quite tell if it was supposed to be white or ivory.

A few shutters hung askew, and the windows were dark with grime.

The Spellsaven was legendary, and it would be so easy… basically thoughtless to cast a quick enough set of spells to fix up the manor, so why was it like this?

In the three years of studying magic, she couldn’t ever really pin down why so many wizards were like this.

It was as if it was out of sight, they couldn’t be bothered.

Or perhaps, such a messy appearance was a warning to stay away, that anyone’s presence was indeed not welcome at all.

Harlow tested her weight on each stone step up to the porch and then with each floorboard so she wouldn’t fall through.

The door was massive and the framing even larger.

It had to be solid oak.

There were intricate carvings of leaves and eyes of all different types.

She brushed her fingertips against the wood, which with just that easy motion, dirt parted and revealed runes written among the designs.

Protection spells from the quick look of it.

There might be more but without cleaning the whole frame, she couldn’t be sure.

Above the door was a large stained-glass window depicting an eye with a golden iris that shone so brightly it cast a reflection upon the porch floorboards.

Harlow took another deep breath and let it out slowly.

She had to take the moment to put on her mask, to change just enough of herself to make her approachable.

To make her seem a well-mannered and eager apprentice.

She knocked boldly.

One should always knock boldly.

A knock is an announcement, a proclamation of you and yours.

Let all that hear or feel it know, you are very much here.

Don’t let them doubt your existence, don’t let them forget you are indeed here.

She stepped back and as she waited in a very practiced pose with both her hands clasped in front, she eyed the edge of the doorframe once again.

The door itself seemed slightly shorter on the right side, as if an odd shape, but when she took a half a step forward and eyed it closer, it seemed to pop back into its right-angled self. Unusual.

The brassy doorknob began to turn and with a gasp, Harlow stepped back into place.

The door creaked open but only so slightly.

Just enough to allow a person’s mahogany-haired head to poke through.

Their long hair cascaded down like a curtain while a few large strands were caught on the various beads and angles of their glamoured earrings.

Harlow had heard a lot about the Spellsaven but no one, but no one, told her about how absolutely stunning they were.

Full, strong dark brows framed their golden eyes and she found herself caught between staring into them and following the way their jawline jutted just so into their chin.

“…Yes?”

One of those quirked brows lifted as whom she assumed was Daggerroot peered deeply at her.

Harlow shook her thoughts from her head and cleared her throat. She fought against herself to take a step back but decided against it and stretched her back to accentuate what height she had.

“Spellmaster Daggerroot, I’m Harlow Hedgewater.”

She winced slightly as the clearing of her throat didn’t do a good enough job and her voice cracked a bit at the end.

“Hmm, never heard of you.”

Daggerroot shrugged and started to close the door.

Panic began to edge in so Harlow stepped quickly forward, “I’m your new assistant? The guild reached out several times…”

“Ohhhh, that Harlow Hedgewater that’s meant to be my assistant…”

A wide smile broke across their face as if it all made sense now and they opened the door a bit more. They were a bit taller than she expected.

Harlow let the breath out slowly that she caught herself holding and nodded with a curt, tiny smile, “Yes.”

“Well, off with you. I’m in no need of an assistant.”

Daggerroot shrugged and waved her off.

“But… you must.”

Harlow’s brows knit together, and instead of panic she felt a growing intense annoyance brewing.

“Must I?”

Daggerroot leaned now against the top of the doorframe with their left hand while holding onto the interior doorknob with their other. They seemed amused, which Harlow was definitely not.

“Yes… it’s the law.”

Her patience was growing thin, which she expressed by almost hissing the words through her teeth.

“Well, that’s not a very good reason at all. Good day.”

They bowed their head and began to close the door with a quick shrug as if their attention was already drawn elsewhere.

“Please.”

Harlow heard the desperation in her voice and hated herself for it. That she would be brought to this point so quickly by just such little pushback. “I’m here and I understand that you might have some misgivings about new people but… I’m here. I deserve to be here…”

“Do you now, Harlow Hedgewater, assistant to Spellsaven Daggerroot?”

There it was again, that wide smirk now paired with eyes that caught the bright sunlight filtering through the cracks in the porch roof.

“Yes.”

She stared into those welcoming eyes. Hers were harsh thanks to the practice glaring at the driver when what seemed like days ago already.

“Hmm. Can you hold a pen?”

They crossed their arms and the several layers of their mismatched patterned clothing accented their movement with a gentle sway.

“Yes.”

What kind of question was this?

“Show me, then.”

Their lithe body was relaxed against the doorframe, but their expression was intense. It caught her off guard how quickly Daggerroot could shift between stoic and carefree.

Clearly now flustered, Harlow bristled as she began to pat down all her pockets. Each pat became more desperate than the last as she realized she did not actually have a pen anywhere on her person. Biting her lip, she refused to be dismissed and instead mimed holding a pen and wrote her own name on a completely and utterly ridiculously made sheet of imaginary paper.

Their smirk dropped and they leaned very far forward as they inspected her aerial writing. “Oh yes, that’s good.”

They nodded, very sure of themself. Daggerroot backed up and opened the door wider.

“Welcome, then, to Daggerroot Manor.”

They stood completely off to the side to allow Harlow to enter on her own, unimpeded.

Her shoulders dropped as she finally relaxed, but only just a bit. “A rather… beautiful home. I’ve always found the manors among and within these woods to be so interesting… they of course change their names with each owner but always end up feeling like home.”

This line was practiced, something she thought might compliment such a wizard.

“Oh, it’s never changed names.”

The grin was back, the one that Harlow began to find herself favoring already. They were already moving around the foyer. It seemed to her that the Spellsaven was never quite at a perfect rest, always in motion and always fluidly in the middle of something.

“Oh, excuse me, I assumed it wasn’t inherited. I apologize.”

Great. Just great. She was already so uninformed, and it would have been such an easy thing to prepare for. It would be another thing she’d privately chastise herself for later.

They stretched their hands wide and gestured to as much as the foyer as they could, “It’s always been Daggerroot Manor. When I came to live here, I changed my name in suit.”

Ridiculous. “Wh-hy?”

Daggerroot stepped quickly around her and peered over her shoulder at the house with her. “Seems a shame to change a name. It was here first. I only exist within it as much as it allows me to. To have me arrive and change its name… seems like an eraser, yes?”

Harlow tried to ignore the closeness but their voice beside her ear spoke with such excitement that she found herself tilting towards them. It was as if she could achieve viewing the world the same way they did if she just got close enough.

“And your name, did you not like it either?”

There was power in a name and to abandon one for the sake of a house seemed absurd. Was this why no one seemed to have enough information, let alone much of an opinion, on the Spellsaven?

“Oh, it was a perfectly fine name. I’m the same me, just with a new name. It suits me, I think. The house and I now make it a family name.”

She stepped aside with a shake of her head as she noticed herself watching just their lips. “It’s just a house.”

Daggerroot laughed and clapped their hands together. “Indeed! It really, really is!”

They turned quickly on their heel and headed off down the hall as if completely finished with their conversation.

It took two seconds of confusion as she watched them leave to decide if she was meant to follow them or not. Harlow started down after them but refused to hurry to catch up. She would take up the all the space and time she needed. That was mostly for herself. She had to establish boundaries. She may be a charlatan, a ghost of a wizard, but she was still Harlow. And with that Spellsaven would have to adjust to her just as much as she adjusted to them. It was one thing that getting older had taught her, although it was something she wished her younger self would have learned much, much earlier.

As she followed down the hall, she took the time to inspect the peeling damask wallpaper, the once-soggy, now-dried baseboards, and the state of things. With the general upkeep of the estate outside, she assumed that perhaps the inside would be immaculate. After all, even a recluse would be faced with looking at everything every single day. But no, it matched the distressed state just the same. The Spellsaven was, although eccentrically dressed, well dressed all the same and appeared to be fairly clean, so why did that not extend into their home?

Harlow peered up a grand staircase that would have been far better suited to have been at the main entrance instead of stashed at the end of this corridor, and gazed up into the darker-than-it-should-be second floor landing. A sudden chill blew across her, causing Harlow to pull her arms around herself. “Quite chilly in here, hmm?”

Popping from around the corner, the Spellsaven surprised her with a reply and a quirked brow. “Yes, yes it is.”

Their tone was curious, on the verge of a scolding, but they said no more and continued down the adjoining well-lit hallway.

They walked at such a brisk pace that Harlow felt as if they were about to be incredibly late. Daggerroot would pause at each door, knock, and open the door with a flourish to show Harlow the room inside. With each open door, Harlow crossed her arms behind her and tipped forward to peek inside.

Each room was barely kept and sparsely decorated. But the ones that had any sort of personality… oh, they had PERSONALITY. There was barely a spare inch of space between various portraits and paintings hung up along the walls. Fabric would drape corners and danced across lavishly dressed windows. All topped with a rather inelegant layer of dust.

It was about after the eighth door that Harlow cleared her throat. “I was under the impression it was just us here. Will I be meeting the other inhabitants today?”

“There’s no other inhabitants other than us and whatever spare creature that might find its way briefly inside.”

She was confused. “Then why the knocking?”

To emphasize her point, she knocked on the door she had just peeked through – dry reagent storage. Exciting enough for the stock but nothing out of the ordinary for a spellcaster.

“Well, it would be rude to open a door without a knock, yes?”

Daggerroot chuckled as if it was a quirk of the region, a cultural expectation, before turning on their heel and heading around the corner.

Harlow cracked two of her knuckles this time. The questions she asked seemed pointless when given the odd replies from the Spellsaven. They responded as if the answer was to be expected and perfectly rational. She took the next few moments for herself. Her expectations had been wrong. And that was on her. If she didn’t readjust her way of approaching Daggerroot, her entire time there would be mounting frustration after frustration and that would only lead to resentment. She reminded herself her overall mission was not to get answers from them – not in the way that such roundabout suggestions would matter. She only needed to get the relic.

Finding a new sense of calm, Harlow followed after and was surprised to find that around that corridor was yet again what appeared to be the same exact darkened staircase. The Spellsaven was waiting for her at the bottom and when she saw them she noticed herself smiling.

The wizard was tapping their foot only slightly impatiently but the ease with which they held themselves kept Harlow’s attention. Which was saying something when she found herself gazing down their chest where their white silken undershirt was left untied down to their navel.

Catching herself and heavily embarrassed at that, Harlow looked back up the staircase, wishing for another cool breeze to chill the heat in her face. Daggerroot glanced upstairs again, and their face scrunched with frustration.

There was a quick murmur and a wave of the hand as the upstairs finally illuminated. Without looking back, Daggerroot climbed the stairs, taking two at a time with their robes billowing behind them. Watching them climb, Harlow wondered why they seemed bothered when looking upstairs. For a person who seemed to have emotions on their sleeve, it was the ones that they pulled back that intrigued her. This wizard seemed so uncomplicated. What was that like?

Harlow spotted them at the end of the hall when she finally caught up and they leaned against the wall outside one particular door. The frame of it was cleaned and oiled, quite a change from all the others, and it looked like the doorknob was new or at the very least recently polished.

“And these are yours.”

Daggerroot took a large deep bow and gestured to the door.

Harlow titled her head and surveyed the wizard. They still held their bow, and she began to wonder, why was it she wanted them to like her? Why would it matter if her every day could be met with such a free spirit like Daggerroot? She wanted to do her job, of course, so why was it she was now wanting more?

With her attention back on the door, she shrugged and gave the door a steady but polite knock. And then it dawned on her. Why was such a knock so different than how she felt hours ago when she first arrived? Hadn’t she even thought how a knock was important? A proclamation of existence. What were these knocks if not to just announce to the world, “Yes, I exist!”

As she turned the doorknob, she feathered a quick peek back down to Daggerroot where she noticed a corner of a smirk on those tinted lips.

The room beyond was at least three times larger than her quarters back at the Thieves’ Guild. She never needed much, so a bed, a side table, and a simple chest were basically all she kept. She hadn’t even decorated as she was always worried that she could leave any private information for others to steal and sell. But this room, this room she could spin around with all of her skirts and it wouldn’t touch a single thing. There was an animal portrait of a white, curly-haired dog above the mantel; the fire was unlit but the wood pile was fully stocked.

“This? This is all mine?”

It made sense to her that there would be large rooms in a manor such as this one, unkept or not, but the reality of it being hers was something she didn’t prepare herself for. It was such a shame she wouldn’t be staying longer than she had to. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy it while she had it.

“As long as you’ll have us.”

Daggerroot smirked from the hallway and then mimed a tipping of a hat. “I’ll leave you be for the evening. Rest up, we have a big day tomorrow.”

Harlow dipped her head politely as the Spellsaven left and she turned to the room once again after closing the door softly.

She had much to do.

The room would have to be inspected and she’d have to place her own set of safety runes. All standard for a thief. But for now she could take her time and live a little.