Ascendant

Nym tried to count up how long it had been since his last hot bath, but he had lost track of time while living on the street. His best guess was about two months. It was every bit as enjoyable as he remembered. Unlike the wooden tub that was hauled into his room at the Trough and Saddle and then laboriously filled one bucket at a time, rich nobles had indoor plumbing and a pool-sized marble tub set into the floor.

Somebody poured hot water down a tube, or maybe they used magic to do it. Either way, the servant who’d led him to the guest quarters had asked if he wanted the bath prepared, and when he’d said yes, had promised to attend to it immediately. He supposed they were counting the buckets because they somehow knew when it was full too.

He found fresh night clothes when he was done which were honestly better than anything else he’d worn in his entire life, as far as he could remember. The nice clothes he’d purchased from the tailor when he’d first arrived didn’t compare to the pajamas left out for him, not even when they were new.  And now they were more holes than clothes, but Nym didn’t have the tools or knowledge, or money, to repair them. So the knees were worn out in the pants and there were a few small tears. The shirt was in slightly better condition, but not by much.

But the clothes left out for him were clean and whole and comfortable. Surprisingly, they were a good fit as well. The servant had a sharp eye for size. And then there was the bed. It was easily big enough for ten of him to lie side-by-side, then another row of ten below that. He couldn’t even guess why anyone would need a bed that big.

In short, the guest room was the most luxurious experience he’d ever had. The only thing missing was food and drink, and even that he had no doubt a servant would fetch from the kitchens if he only took the time to ask. It was all wonderfully decadent, and Nym couldn’t really enjoy it once he compared it to how he had been living for the past month and a half.

The furniture in just this one room would have housed everyone in that busted up, falling-down, holes-in-the-roof-and-walls warehouse that was under the control of a criminal who preyed on children. No doubt the curtains and the carpets and the expensive imported wood would have been enough to build a group home for all of them. No doubt the marble that had gone into that tub could feed them for a year.

Nym wondered how often the room even got used. It was a guest room, after all. Then again, even if the Feldstal family housed someone in the room nine days out of every ten, it still would be extravagant and wasteful. Worse, if this was the guest room, he could only just imagine what the rooms for the nobles who lived here looked like.

Then he considered how many closed doors he had passed when he was being led to the guest room, and tried to remember the floor plan he’d studied. He guessed that at minimum, there were five or six more rooms just like his.

“This place is obscene,” he muttered.

Part of him was tempted to sneak right back out and flee the house. He knew he could probably get away without too much trouble, as long as he didn’t run into anyone else with anti-scry runes stitched onto their bathrobe or something. coWhat held him back was that he had failed to complete Valgo’s job, which meant he was in all sorts of danger once he left. That coupled with the fact that it wasn’t too late to turn him over to the city guard kept Nym firmly stuck in the room.

On a more personal level, he still wanted access to the library. That was opulent to the extreme, just like the rest of the house, but at least it served a practical purpose. He was eager to be let loose in that two-story room to pillage and loot the shelves. Hopefully Analia would cooperate with that ambition.

Nym swallowed his distaste for the whole thing and settled into the bed. He felt lost in it until he piled up a few pillows next to him to make it seem smaller. Even then, it was impossible to get comfortable. He tossed and turned and sighed, unable to sleep until late into the night. Thoughts and plans and worries chased each other round and round behind his eyelids. When sleep did come, it was troubled and ended all too quickly.

* * *

The servants woke Nym up by barging into the guest room. His eyes snapped open to the rattle of the door handle, and by the time the servant entered the room, he was already out of the bed and pulling arcana into his soul well. The servant pulled back in surprise when he saw Nym floating in the air.

“Good… morning, sir.”

“You guys don’t believe in knocking around here?”

“Ah, pardon sir. I did knock, but you did not answer.”

Nym was suspicious about that. He was an extremely light sleeper and getting an hour or two at a time had become his normal sleep pattern. It was never really safe out on the street, not even in the sanctuary, especially not after he’d accidentally set the blanket closet on fire.

“Did you need something?”

“I am to escort you to breakfast with Lord Bardin and Lady Amalia.”

“What time is it?”

“Half an hour past dawn, sir.”

Nym groaned. “Why are we up so early?”

“Lord Bardin has always been an early riser, and more so since he began his responsibilities at the Academy,” the servant explained.

Nym shot him a venomous glare. “I did not need you to answer that question.”

“As you say, sir.”

“Just give me a minute,” Nym said. He ducked into the bathroom to take care of his business, then followed the servant across the manor to where Analia was seated at a table with an older teenager, maybe eighteen or nineteen. The family resemblance was obvious, from the hair color to the facial structure to the vivid green eyes.

They were sitting in a room with walls made out of glass watching the morning sun peak up between the mountains and chatting quietly while servants trooped in one after another to load the table with various dishes.

“Ah, our guest,” the man said. “Come, have a seat and join us. Nym, was it?”

“That’s right,” Nym said, pulling out a chair. Ironically, the room put him at ease. Freedom was at hand if he needed to flee. A chair through the window and a flight spell would get him out into open air, and he already knew he could outfly Analia. He eyed the food being piled up in front of him. There was far more than three people could eat. It smelled amazing though.

Nym decided that he believed the leftovers would go to the servants and not be thrown out. Even if the official decree was to toss it, he didn’t think the servants would follow the order. At least, he hoped they wouldn’t. Even between three people, they wouldn’t eat a quarter of the food on the table.

“My name is Bardin Feldstal. I am an adjunct at the Academy. I understand that you are a mage who was coerced into using your magic to break into our home to raid a secret room that we weren’t aware existed. Please, tell me more about that.”

Nym laid it all out while he ate a breakfast of ham, eggs, sausage, thick bread, fresh fruit, and chilled milk. It wasn’t often he got a chance to load up, and he wasn’t about to waste it now. Analia looked slightly nauseous as she watched him pack it away, but Bardin wasn’t fazed.

“How are you still eating?” she asked, aghast.

Her brother started laughing. “He’s paying back an energy debt. You’re going to see this a lot when you’re an upperclassman, twig-skinny mages eating four times as much food as a grown man in a single sitting. Nym’s reserves have been empty for a while. If you cast a medical diagnostics spell on him, you’ll see that he’s actually malnourished and has been using arcana to keep from wasting away.”

Nym had to grudgingly admit that maybe the table wasn’t as over-full as he’d initially judged it to be. He wasn’t quite sure what Bardin was talking about though. All he knew was that he hadn’t gotten enough to eat in weeks and weeks, and now that the food was in front of him, his stomach was a bottomless pit.

“My sister is quite taken with your abilities,” Bardin said.

Analia shoved him so hard he fell out of his chair. “That is not how I would phrase it,” she told him.

From his new position on the floor, Bardin laughed. “To be honest, I’m curious too. She said your telekinesis spell allows you to control dozens of objects individually. If that’s true, you’ll be famous for beating the current Academy record holder of nineteen. And he was an archmage who died about fifty years ago.”

Nym looked over the table, pulled arcana into his soul well, and started lifting the cutlery and flatware. He focused on empty plates first, and ended up with a respectable fourteen items floating around him. Then he ran out of empty plates.

“Not quite a record then, but still very respectable, especially for someone… so… young…”

Bardin trailed off as the remaining six plates, these ones still containing food, rose to join the dishes floating in the air. Nym was starting to feel the weight now, but he was sure he could still manage a few more small items. Unfortunately, he couldn’t spot anything else small enough to be moved that wasn’t also currently being worn by one of them.

So instead he set them to dancing, plates whirling around forks while knives slipped between them. All of it rotated in a hypnotic pattern, in and out and around, spin and return, then start again. The Feldstal scions watched the display, Analia with rapt attention and Bardin with quiet disbelief.

Nym caught the glow of arcana around the older brother as he shot off a number of detection spells. Nym wasn’t sure what they did, but Bardin looked satisfied with the results. Deciding the show was over, he set the remains of their breakfast back down on the table, all except a bowl of strawberries he’d been eyeing up but hadn’t gotten to as they were on the opposite side from where he was seated.

“That is the most efficient telekinesis spell I have ever seen,” Bardin admitted. “I’m not sure it actually qualifies as discrete control of the objects, since a few of them were banded together on a single wave of force, but it’s still a sight to see.”

“Quit buttering him up,” Analia said. “Let’s talk about the offer now. You want to ransack our library, right? Books on magic? I want to know how you built your telekinesis spell and how you do your flight spell. Trade?”

Nym didn’t have to think about it very hard. “I think I can agree to that. What kind of time frame are you thinking?”

“An immediate one,” she said.

“No,” Bardin vetoed the idea. “I want to see this too, but I have a first-year conduit shaping class I have to teach this morning. Why don’t the two of you work on cleaning the library back up for now, and he can pick out a few books. When I’m back in the afternoon, he can awe us with his magic.”

Analia pouted, but acquiesced in the end. Bardin said his goodbyes, shook Nym’s hand, and strode out of the room. He whistled a merry tune as he walked down the hallway, leaving the two of them behind.

“This is going to be fun,” Nym said.

“We’ll see. Maybe. There’s a lot of cleaning up to do. My brother was not happy about the mess.” She paused and stared off into space for a second. “Malk! We’re going to the library.”

“Of course, my lady,” Malk said from behind Nym, causing him to leap out of chair in surprise.

“How long have you been standing there?” he sputtered.

The bodyguard didn’t bother to answer.

Nym glared daggers at his back as he followed the pair to the library, but did his best to put Malk out of mind. This was going to be his first real step into the world of magic, where he could find answers to all the questions he hadn’t even thought to ask yet. Malk wasn’t going to ruin that for him.

By the time they got to the library, Nym was all smiles.