A wind flew through Matty's hair as she sludged through mud and sewer water. Mana charged through her arm, gathering at her hand, vibrating against her fingers as she watched the mud move. The city's sewers tended to overflow with mud from time to time, and they needed someone to clear them from time to time.

The old mud-shoveling methods weren't working very well, so she came up with a new one. After a little over three years of effort, her business was finally taking off.

There was finally enough mud in the sewer, and her mana was ready to strike. Matty moved the mana to the tip of her finger, stretching her control to the upper limit.

But she had spent a decade in the Novice grade, there were few people in the entire city that could claim that they had better control than her. And this was Garron, the fortress that guarded the sea.

Matty tapped the mud as the mana reached its peak, causing a single ripple to spread through the mud. A fierce, guttural sound spread through the sewers as the mud moved, transforming into a more liquidy version of itself for a few seconds. But that was enough. The mud moved as it discovered the holes in the walls, seeping through.

"Now!" she shouted, her voice echoing through the tunnels and outside, and suddenly the holes widened, sucking the mud away as mana pulled the mud from the sewers. In under ten minutes, they were clear again.

Matty ran her mana through her hair, clearing it of mud, as she let some trickle into her clothes. The thin fabric turned wet in seconds, the mud flowing away as she guided it out of her cloths. And then she called the water. Manipulating magically conjured water was significantly easier than manipulating more polluted forms of water, or worse, other liquids.

Matty unlatched the sewer's characteristic hatch, climbing up the ladder, expecting at least some cheers. The operation had, after all, been successful. And that meant that they would have food to eat for one more month. But the atmosphere was stiff, her colleagues were looking at her with hesitant faces, gesturing towards something with their eyes.

"What happened?" she asked.

The crowd split, making way to show one gaudily dressed man with an overly long sword on his back. Purple eyes and a long brownish-black beard left little doubt about his identity. Lord Forling Garron, brother to the late Admiral Garron, And acting Admiral. Oh, and her uncle.

"Follow me. I need to talk to you." he grunted out before she could even greet him. Well, she didn't want to do that, but since when did he leave her with a choice?

"Ask Johny for payment, make him cough it up right now, even if he makes excuses. Tell him to use his own funds if the guard doesn't have any." she instructed her second-in-command.

"Are you talking about threatening a guard in front of me?" Lord Garron asked. The crowd around her turned still, stepping back in fear. Come on, people, even a Lord couldn't do that much without cause. And threatening a guard because he wouldn't cough up payment was not a crime.

"Yes." Matty replied, turning to face her 'uncle'. "I wouldn't have to if you solved the corruption problem."

Lord angry-face grunted. "Just follow me."

Matty rolled her eyes and followed. What did her family want now? The bastards couldn't cover living costs, but they could turn up whenever they wanted something.

Lord Garron sniffed at her, making a disgusted expression. "What is that smell?"

"The sewer." Matty replied. The water cleaning might make her look less disgusting, but the smell still needed a lot of scrubbing to get out.

"This is not a job suitable for a lady." he said, taking out a spray bottle. Matty barely got a "No" out before she was attacked by the legion of perfume.

The coughing spree that came over her was almost worse than spending so long in the sewer.

"I. Am not. A lady." Matty coughed out, waving her hand to dispel the lingering perfume.

"Now you won't offend the street." Lord Garron said, ignoring her protests.

"I don't think the street is offended by me. I would think it likes me, after all, it would be the one covered in sewage if I wasn't around." she replied, huffing as she observed where they were going. Not the Garron mansion. The opposite direction, in fact. The slums. The fucker was taking her to the slums. Where she stayed.

"Why are we heading towards the slums?" she asked.

"Are you unaware of the location of your own house?" he asked. Matty turned around, grabbing his wrist as she stared at him.

"And why are we suddenly heading towards my house?" she asked. Lord Garron looked at her for a second, holding her stare, before he shoved his hand out of her grasp.

"Admiral Garron is dead." he stated.

"I know, it delayed our operation." she replied.

"I would have thought you would be sadder by the loss of your father." Lord Garron said. Matty just rolled her eyes. "But I have come to expect little from you."

"I don’t see what that has to do with me?" she said. "Did old lady Malice finally decide that she wanted to deal with me? Are you here to warn me and help me run?"

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Matty said it as a joke, but she was only half-joking. The reason she and her brother had remained in the city was precisely due to this woman, their so-called 'stepmother'. But there was very little motherly to her, more of a cruel sea witch. The Admiral had kept her at bay while he was alive, perhaps out of some leftover responsibility to her.

The thought of running away had occurred to her, but she simply could not disappear well enough to escape that woman. The only chance was remaining here, and counting on this uncle of hers. As old-fashioned and irritating as he was, she doubted he would let anyone murder her.

Lord Garron had just been staring at her while she thought, a bored expression on his face. "Are you done calculating your next plan?"

"How can I plan when you won't tell me the facts?" she quipped back.

"I cannot speak of it here." he replied, looking at the street around them.

"Well you can't come to my house, people don't know I am related to you and I would like to keep it that way." she answered.

"I would not call it a house. And this is not negotiable. Tell your neighbors I was doing an emergency check on your living conditions. Or something similar. I am sure you will figure out an excuse."

Matty grunted in frustration as Lord Garron came to her home. The man was an Adept and a noble, she couldn't deal with him. But him coming to talk business with her might work. In fact, it could boost business.

The fact that she was cleaning the sewers for the city wasn't secret, if she hinted that there were other projects coming…there might be other business waiting for them. There weren’t a lot of other sewers to be cleaned, but there were still a lot of greasy, hard to clean places in this city.

Matty's house was in the outer perimeter of the slums, between the slums and the proper houses really, it was a nice little place.

Lord I-stay-in-mansions disagreed, of course, something clear from the frown that graced his face.

The two of them entered her home, Matty frowning as she noted the open door.

"Jaris!" she screamed.

"What?" her younger brother said, peeping into the room from behind the tattered sofa that was also his bed. Matty took the mattress.

"The door!" she yelled. "How many times have I told you to keep it shut?"

"But it's hot!" her brother protested, turning to look at the not-really-old man beside her with suspicion.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

"Malerice is dead." Lord Garron stated. Matty tilted her head. Malerice, the real name of Lady Garron, wife to Admiral Garron, her step-mother. The one she lovingly called Lady Malice.

"And you came here to invite us to the celebration?"

Lord Garron just stared at her. Not a festive occasion, got it.

"Malerice died without giving birth to a legitimate heir," he said. Matty frowned. This was not going well.

"Aren't you the Admiral, then?" Jaris asked. "Does that mean sister does not have to work in the sewers anymore?"

Jaris, being a boy, had a much better impression of their uncle. The many, many treats he had received probably had something to do with it. A fifteen-year-old really shouldn't be that influenced by treats, but Matty had eaten a few. Even the twenty-two-year-old girl was influenced.

Lord Garron sighed. "That is not how inheritance works."

Oh, no. A normal person might think Jaris becoming the Admiral was a good thing, but she knew better. There were too many powerful people in the Garron family. Jaris would be dead in a week.

In fact, there was a chance he would have been accepted as the heir when he was born. The Admiral had a very hard time having kids, especially with his cousin-wife. But Jaris just had to have a 'weak' element, Sea Wind. Not wind, not water, but a combination of the two that did little but blow a salty breeze. That was literally the limit to what Jaris could do.

"The inheritance, as of now, is unresolved." Lord Garron continued after letting her think for a while. Matty had little doubt that he wanted the position, he had been aiming for it for decades. "The fire took the ancestral books with it."

"What is next then?" Matty asked, worried. "A battle royale between heirs? A competition to decide the next in line? Or does the family line end here?"

Jaris was looking at them with worry, sneaking glances down at his hand hidden behind the sofa that surely had things that weren't supposed to be there. The amount of sugar he had would make him sick one day. Matty would mention getting fat, but if he was going to be fat, he would have been fat by now. Even if they were poor, they weren't starving.

"No." Lord Garron said, levitating a bag of -was that strawberry? Where did Jarvis get those? And since when did he eat fruits?

"The Diery family keeps records of the modes of inheritance. I have made arrangements for us to travel to the county." Lord Garron said.

"Wait, us?" she asked. "I don't have time-"

"The trip will take less than a day. And you need to come. If Jarvis turns out to be the heir, then you, as his guardian, become regent. So you get to come with." he said.

Matty narrowed her eyes. "How come you aren't asking me to transfer guardianship?" Jarvis stared at her, trying to signal his disagreement with his eyes. Even he knew that Uncle Garron was good only for treats, living with him would be a pain.

"Would you agree?" he asked.

"No." she answered.

"Then I will not waste my breath, come on." Lord Garron walked out of the room, leaving her alone with her little brother.

"Should we…" Jarvis asked.

"I don't think we have a choice." Matty sighed. "Come on, any food we leave will be stale by the time we get back."

The trip to the mansion didn't take long, the city was quite small to begin with. But what waited for her there was a great deal of irritation.

"Oh no." Matty shook her head. "I am not doing this."

"The seventeenth young duke is an experienced space mage." Lord Garron said. "And the only one willing to teleport us."

"I will not teleport her." the young man standing in front of her said, his tone laced with disgust.

"See, even he agrees." Matty pointed to him. "And we don't agree on anything!"

Lord Garron groaned. "I should have known. Come on, we will take the carriage. But the journey will now take us a week."

Lord Jerus Zerolian, her ex-fiance and spoiled brat of the year, huffed as he teleported away. Matty said fiancé, but really she was going to be sold to a boy three years her junior as a concubine. Not her kind of thing. And being acknowledged and becoming a lady just wasn't that much of a plus when it involved being married to that guy.

The carriage was fine. Even if it involved being hurtled through the air at very high speeds by an Adept that really wasn't that good at control.

Jarvis held up a particular packet of strawberries towards her, seemingly, guessing her thoughts.

Hmm, strawberries.