Ascendant

“I was practicing and just picked up a few things here and there as I saw them.”

“You were practicing. In the woods. By yourself?”

Nym shrugged. “I needed a place with things to dodge around.”

“Are you trying to get Babkin to kill me?” Cern asked.

“You don’t have to buy them. I just thought you might be interested.”

Cern handed him the pack. “You know I can’t. This was not the deal we had.”

Nym took it back and tried to pretend he didn’t care. “No problem. I’ll just go dump these into the garbage then.”

The alchemist’s eye twitched. He looked at the bag with undisguised longing, but then shook his head. “Nice try. The answer is still no. And stop going into the forest by yourself!”

“Nope,” Nym said. He shouldered the pack and let himself out. “See you later, Cern.”

As the door swung closed behind him, he heard the sound of the two mages laughing over Cern cussing and swearing.

Nym went by the guildhall next, but Navarim was already gone for the day. He left the contents with the mage on duty and explained it was a gift to them to be used for their alchemy classes, as he had no other use for the supplies and they wouldn’t stay good forever. The mage was confused, but politely thanked Nym and cleared them away.

Nym returned to the Trough and Saddle for dinner and retreated to his room. By his figuring, he could scrape together enough for the license exam, but he didn’t have a prayer of passing it. Getting the funds to afford a teleport to Abilanth was possibly doable, but only if he started sleeping outdoors and scrounging for food again. Too much of his annoyingly limited income was going to room and board.

He was getting a decent discount thanks to his willingness to help Shary in the kitchen, though that usually amounted to nothing more than washing dishes. It was probably more than the job was worth, but that didn’t make Nym feel better. If he could have gone into the forest for supplies every day instead of once every other week, he could easily have afforded to buy books on magic and save up for tuition at the Academy. Babkin had killed that dream in its infancy.

He suddenly found he hated staying at the Trough and Saddle, but he’d already paid up through to the end of next week. Once that was done though, he was going to find somewhere else to sleep. In fact, opportunities in Zoskan seemed to be drying up completely. It was too close to Palmara too. Nym decided his best move was to scrape together two crests and get a teleport to Abilanth.

At the rate he was going, it’d be another two months at least. He’d encountered plenty of adults sympathetic to his struggles, but none willing to help him out by offering some work besides Cern. And Cern was too afraid of Babkin to do any more than he already had. Nym needed to figure out something else. He resolved to head back to the guildhall in the morning and ask Navarim if he had any ideas.

Nym didn’t sleep well that night. He had too much on his mind and was impatient to get started on it. In the morning, he helped Shary with breakfast and wolfed down his plate, but before he could get out the door, Babkin’s shadow fell over him. Nym didn’t even have to turn around to confirm, he had such a unique breadth to his shoulders and was the only one who liked to sneak up on people without saying anything.

“What?” Nym asked, turning around from cleaning his plate.

“Please see me in my office,” Babkin said. He turned and walked to the back of the inn.

It was uncanny how a man so big could move so silently. There was definitely more to him than a simple innkeeper, and Nym had picked up enough hints to know that nobody wanted to cross the man. He just didn’t know why. He’d already made up his mind to leave though, so that was a mystery that could remain unsolved.

For the next week or so, he still had to deal with Babkin. As satisfying as it would be to just walk back out of the inn and ignore the innkeeper’s request, Nym dried his hands off and trudged over to the office. Babkin was waiting for him, pipe clamped between his teeth and hands clasped behind his back. He was staring out the window, and didn’t turn around as Nym opened the door.

Neither of them said anything. The only sound was the background noise of Hary working in the kitchen. Silence stretched out between them, Nym’s face getting stormier with each passing second. Finally, Babkin asked, “Why are you in such a hurry to grow up?”

Nym wasn’t really sure what he meant by that question. He opened his mouth to retort, thought better of it, and took a second to really think. Babkin must have taken his silence as an answer in and of itself, because he continued. “Cern came to see me last night. You went back into the forest on your own. I thought I’d made it clear that you were not to venture into that place alone. It is too dangerous.”

That did it. “You’re not in charge of me,” Nym said. “What I do is my business.”

Babkin finally turned around to look at Nym. “I see. I have tried to help you as best I can, Nym. ‘He is a child,’ I say to myself. ‘He does not know any better’. You have no idea what kind of threats you dance around in your ignorance, one misstep from disaster. I think to myself, ‘If I can remove his reason for going into the forest, he will not go.’ That was my mistake. I tried to use an adult’s logic to direct a child’s whims away from danger.”

“No one asked you to do that. I don’t want your help. If controlling what I can and can’t do is the price to stay here, then give me back the shims I already paid in advance. I’ll go find somewhere else to sleep.”

Babkin fished the money out of a purse on his desk and set it out for Nym. When the boy reached out to scoop it up, he said, “Spend it wisely. Cern will no longer buy anything from you and you are not welcome in Therm’s harvesting group. This money will have to last you for a while, until you can find some safer way to support yourself. You are correct. I cannot stop you from taking your own life in your hands in that forest. I can only remove as many incentives as possible and hope it convinces you to stop behaving so foolishly.”

Nym scooped the money up and dropped his room key in its place. “I hope I never have to deal with someone like you ‘helping’ me again.”

The burly innkeeper sighed around his pipe and sank heavily into his chair. “Please leave the Trough and Saddle, as you are no longer a patron of this inn. If you wish to rent a room in the future, you will be welcomed back on the condition that you do not enter the forest again.”

* * *

Nym was in a foul mood. A quick trip to Cern’s confirmed that his only source of income had completely dried up. The alchemist was apologetic, but adamant that he would no longer do business with Nym. Nym stomped out, spitting out every foul word he’d ever heard in one long, unintelligible string of sounds.

Babkin had cut off all his options. It was time to move on. Either Navarim would have a way for him to make some money, or he’d follow the road on to the next town. He still had an hour or two to kill before the guildhall opened, but some of the stalls were open early enough that he could stock up on food. He was going to need that whether he stayed or went, so he filled his pack with some long-lasting staples.

After negotiating a nice cloak to be rolled up in his pack and used as a blanket, since he would now be sleeping outdoors again, Nym headed over to the guildhall. When he got there, there was already a crowd of people standing at the desk. He knew it wasn’t that big of a deal to wait a few minutes, but it was just one more annoyance on top of an already awful day.

He sat down in an empty chair in the corner and resigned himself to a wait. At least they all seemed to be one group, so whatever they were doing, it would hopefully not force him to sit there for too long. The way the day was going, they’d likely be tying up the front desk for an hour, at least.

Nym didn’t pay much attention to what was going on until he heard Navarem say, “It’s five crests to send three people to Abilanth. With all this luggage, it’s six.”

That was semi-relevant to Nym’s interests, so he perked up and started studying the group. That was when he realized he knew almost everyone in it. There was the guard captain from Palmara who’d shown up at Ciana’s house at the front, talking to Navarem. Next to him was Amos and that other boy who’d always been following him around. Two more of the local Palmara guard he knew by sight but not name were there too, as well as some people who had the same color hair and similar clothes. Presumably they were Amos’s family.

They didn’t even balk at the price tag. Amos, his friend, and one of the adults from his family separated from the rest of the group and Navarem led them off to the teleport platform. Nym grit his teeth in annoyance and jealously. That little shit who’d bullied him was going to the Academy to learn magic, and Nym was stuck in Zoskan, unable to even afford transport to Abilanth.

The injustice of it rankled, and he cursed Babkin yet again for his interference. If he had stayed out of it, Nym would have had more than enough to buy a teleport already. He was so focused on how unfair it all was, he stopped paying attention to anything else around him. That lasted until the guard captain was standing in front of him.

“Aren’t you… Ciana’s boy? The one she saved?” the man asked.

Internally, Nym panicked. But he did his best to put on a confused expression and said, “Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Now that their attention was drawn to him though, the rest of the group was looking him over. “Yeah, I think that is him. You’re right, Captain,” one of the guards said.

“Yup. She’s been worried sick about him.”

“You have me confused for someone else,” Nym insisted. He stood up and walked to the door, acting confident enough that nobody moved to stop him.

“Why are you leaving?” one of Amos’s family members asked. “Didn’t you need assistance from the mage’s guild? Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“I just remembered I have an errand to run,” Nym lied.

The captain grabbed hold of his arm. “Hold on there. I remember now. You’re definitely Ciana’s boy. What was your name again? Nam? Nin?”

Nym jerked away from him. “Don’t touch me!”

He darted for the door, and the sudden movement startled all of the guards. Rather than shy back though, the captain darted forward and got hold of Nym again. “Hold up there. We just want to ask you a few questions. You’ll need to come with us.”

“I said don’t touch me!” Nym yelled. He pulled arcana from the second layer and flung out a blast of air that knocked the captain off his feet. Before anyone could do anything else, he was out the door and straight up past the roof of the guildhall.