“This place was my uncle’s,” said countess Patricia de-Braccarte, over the breakfast table where we all had gathered some days later. She sat beside Iskander, with some respectable distance between them, but both of them leaned towards each other, though avoiding each other’s gaze. “But after he left to do some strange experiments with… what was it, aetheric-induced temporal dislocation some twenty years ago, there was nobody who would take care of the estate. I certainly didn’t have time for it, being the heiress of my father’s duties, and my brothers were all too busy with their important work in the capital. So in the end, nobody took it for themselves. The old groundskeeper still comes by every month or two and keeps the estate from falling apart, but I’m sure it would’ve fallen apart sooner rather than later.”

She sipped from her cup and put on a slight smile meant to disarm and charm. “So when Our Majesty offered this chance at a gift, I thought this would be fitting for a fresh nobleman such as yourself, Jonas. It doesn’t hurt to be on the good side of a new powerful player in the high society.”

“I can only offer my heartfelt gratitude for your generous gift, Patricia. We are all delighted to be here. But I don’t plan on taking part in the social life of the high society,” I said casually, to which Patricia smiled as if she knew this would never work.

“As part of the nobility of the Pania province, Jonas, you may have to attend at least some of my dinner parties, just to familiarize yourself with the rest of us. We’re a friendly bunch, I promise. And perhaps, Jonas, you might even enjoy yourself.” I sensed Florencia suppress some excitement over the idea of a fancy dinner party.

“Perhaps… it might be of some use,” I mumbled.

“Ah, you need so little convincing, Jonas. How delightful. I’ll be sure to invite you to Collard some day soon before your duties demand your attention elsewhere.”

“Collard, how far is it from here?” I asked. Collard was the capital city of the province, and where Patricia had made her home, built on the southernmost tip of the peninsula. It was said to have more people living there than in Lottie and its neighboring villages.

“Three days of quick riding, straight south along the same road that you came on,” said Patricia. “Should you wish to visit me and my estate without an official invitation, all of you are most welcome. We have beautiful wineries that shadow all the others in Lienor. And not to engrandize myself too much, I am most proud of my splendid greenhouse that I’ve spent decades building.”

“Hmm, in this case, we must have a visit someday,” said Iskander abruptly, much to the annoyance of Jaxine who huffed out an annoyed breath and crossed her arms. Patricia smiled warmly and did not seem at all bothered.

“Isn’t life strange…” mumbled Iskander, looking into his glass of marmalade drink. “Half a year ago Jaxine and I sat in some moldy inn, spending the solstice by ourselves, in the middle of nowhere in Roncolde County, thinking if we should follow… Vranik’s steps into Lienor. I couldn’t decide, but she insisted we should. The next morning I woke up in a ditch, hung over. Now? I’m on the southern coast of the continent, sitting with who I would consider my friends, and talking about dinner parties with a countess. How things change…”

“What about me?” said Jace, pouring the last drops of strong coffee into his own cup. He added milk generously and stirred in two spoonfuls of brown sugar. He disliked bitter drinks but loved coffee. “Six months ago I was Guardian of the Lodge, and preparing for a mission in Rasker Keep. I could have never imagined my life would take such a turn, though I admit that I had been feeling… lost these past few years. As if all the reading I was doing was simply wasting time or distracting me. I can’t explain it better. It feels to me like the course of our lives was all changed by this man right there!” He pointed his tattooed index finger at me, but he had no malice behind his words.

I raised my hands up in mock defeat. “You got me! It was all my master plan.”

“Life is full of twists and turns if you let it,” said countess Patricia de-Braccarte, flicking her dark hair from her face and handing Iskander a piece of garlic bread. “I had a feeling about you, Jonas, back in Sanermo, but I couldn’t explain it, either. I just sensed you would play an important role. You just have this... radiance with you, Jonas, though you keep it well hidden from the commonfolk. But alas, the commoners have this natural knack for sensing the odd ones out amongst them.”

“This has been our experience as well,” said Florencia. “Keeping our powers suppressed demands a heavy tax whenever we’re in the midst of them and need to blend in. They do notice the strong mages quickly.”

Patricia nodded along. “Which is why many mages are either loners, or only associate with other mages. It is a vicious circle.”

Jace shifted around as we talked and waited for a pause in the discussion. “Jonas, if I may switch topics, but I fear there is an outrage that we must address!” said Jace suddenly, and I looked at him with a frown. “You have no books in your library! There’s such a gorgeous shelving in the study but it has no books! This is a travesty, Jonas. I shall head to town tomorrow and go look for some.”

“Pff,” Iskander scoffed lightly and shifted his weight towards Patricia. “We have too many repairs to do before we should even think about books—”

“And clean all this dust and trash!” said Jaxine, in a sort of half-bored tone. But her shoulders were relaxed, and she wore not a smile, but also not her familiar sour disdain. She seemed pleased to be away from the busy life of the cities.

“Iskander, a home without the Word of the Three and no icons of protection is no place worth staying! And you have golden hands for these sorts of tasks, but me? I’m wasted. You saw how I bastardized the gate. No! I shall make better use of myself in a way that fits my skills. Besides, I need to see whether we have some cloister close by, or some place of worship that has some spare books. The study in your estate, Jonas, is something to be envied. It’s fortunate that your uncle—” Jace nodded at Patricia, “didn’t throw the furniture away. The bookshelves and the study desk are exquisite.”

Countess Patricia shrugged, not caring one bit about the state of the library, and sipped her coffee with a content sigh, quickly stealing a glance at Iskander.

Both hid a grin.

*

For the next few weeks, we talked much and often, but not a word about the terrors we had gone through, or about our upcoming task as the Order of Hiskandrios.

Instead, much of our time was spent doing repairs on the estate, as if nothing in the world did concern us, and in a strange sense, it didn’t. It felt like we were in our own little realm, tucked away from the eyes and attention of others, and merely spent our time in leisure and homesteading, which was just the height of absurdity—like a play by Assandro Rosbanca. I had never seen one of his plays, but I heard they were sublime.

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“He’s probably dead now...”

Some of the work I had done before, either in Darnel or in Bessou, all those years back. Cleaning and lifting heavy things was my specialty, and none could match me, but Iskander was the organizing commander of the work. He had, as Jace said, golden hands for all the necessary tasks, starting with cleaning rust off old hinges, to descending the well to see whether everything was alright.

He and Florencia were working from morning until evening, barely tired by the end of it. They went around with vigor and probably did more work in a day than me and Jace put together. I simply didn’t have the eye or skill to make the estate into a home, but they did, and I was most thankful to them.

Jace meanwhile went around the nearby villages atop his horse, drawing eyes of all in his light-blue coat and meticulously arranged hair and goatee, looking lordly amidst the peasantry. He visited all abbeys or cloisters, though no temples or churches were close enough, much to his disappointment. The nearest was the one in Collard, which was too far for a simple day’s ride.

Before long, the shelves in my study were filled with books of diverse varieties—most on faith and morals, but some were tales of old or songs and poems, which I had a rather strong dislike for. And others were of more practical homesteading guides.

Then Jace delved deep into his studies again, surrounded by his papers and thoughts and the smell of pipe smoke and cider, and we went around the estate, drumming his fingers against his books and with a smirk on his lips, as if he was unlocking the secrets of the world, and none but him knew it.

In a sense, he was correct, and even Goxhandar urged me to let him be. His work would become most valuable.

*

It was a day with strong wind coming from the ocean, and many massive merchant ships with three masts and countless sails were anchored in the shallow parts of the water.

Iskander and I were hard at work to repair the front door, so it would finally sit straight and not slowly open during the night.

“Keeping a villa this large is quite an undertaking, Jonas,” he said. “Believe me, I know. My homestead was much smaller, and I always had things to do. Sooner or later, you will need workers to help you. I don’t think that won’t be a problem for a fresh noble, such as yourself.”

He smirked and wiped wood chips off his lap. We had just finished removing rotten pieces from the entrance doorframe.

“How would I pay for them?” I mumbled, putting away a set of chisels that I paid quite a few cuenos for.

“Earning good coin is never hard for mages, Jonas,” said Iskander with a surprise on his face. “You could even just work as a scribe in the town hall to earn some additional cuenos. Most here can’t write, at least not from what I’ve seen. Then again, maybe muscle work is easiest for you. I don’t know if that would reflect on your reputation as a nobleman, though. I’d just ask Florencia. She has a good mind for these things.”

He fell silent for a moment. “Have you thought about… it?”

“All the time!” I replied, too quickly and too loudly. Iskander shushed me silent. “But I don’t even know how to bring it up.” I felt tension in my shoulders again. That topic seemed to be the only thing I could think about lately.

“I don’t want to hurry you, but you should at least let her know you’re thinking about it. I asked my wife’s hand at the dinner table as an afterthought. It worked.” Iskander shrugged, and we went to work on straightening the front door itself as the hinges were bent and rust had gathered everywhere.

I didn’t think Florencia would respond well to that kind of proposal.

*

Later that week, Florencia, Patricia, and I were almost done with fixing the greenhouse, and it looked lovely in the sunlight and crispy air. Smooth glass panes gleamed in the sunlight and the brass frames complemented well its appearance.

As I descended the spiral staircase, Florencia was finishing up raking the gravel covering the pathways, and Patricia was hard at work finalizing the magical processes that kept the greenhouse constantly warm and the watering system functioning.

The air was damp and warm under the thick glass panes, and hanging from the ceiling were thick pipes from cast iron that had holes in them, for watering the plants. I could even hear the buzzing of insects and some birds chirping above, and the countess said that she keeps some windows open, especially during the winter for the birds to stay here.

This was done through the workings of the magic-fueled system that Patricia’s uncle had developed over decades, and her perfecting it in her estate in Collard. She said hers was more effective and easier to maintain, but the one in my estate was more robust and would work on its own for, pretty much, perpetually.

One thing was for certain—the departed uncle of Patricia had been a man of high skill in mage-craft and the sorcerous systems at work in the recesses of the greenhouse were all but incomprehensible to me. But while I was wasted in understanding how these processes worked, Patricia did try to explain some of it to Florencia, who seemed to get an understanding of them.

“Jonas, stop dawdling and come help me!” said Florencia suddenly and poked my shoulder. “What is up with you lately? You hardly speak and always thinking about something. Talk to me! Tell me what’s wrong!”

“Nothing…” I said after mumbling to myself and, much to the annoyance of Florencia.

In truth, the idea of marriage that King Landoros told me in Loran seemed to float on the surface of my mind without my input. It was the only thing that I was able to think about, and every passing day I felt more guilty over having let this matter draw on and on.

“Fine!” she said with a spiteful tone, and filled the final bucketful of old dirt, marking the last touches of our repairs on the greenhouse. “Whenever you’re ready, come and help me take away this trash. You don’t have to talk.”

The very same day we decided enough was enough and we went to clean up the old cellar that extended all the way under the estate. This would be the final project to finish, which would make the estate at least presentable to guests.

Going down the stairs, I had to lean forward as to not hit my head—I was too tall. The cellar itself was an old place with strong moldy smell, and the low ceilings and thick walls of grey stone were covered in cobwebs decades old and layers deep. It also still had dozens upon dozens of old bottles of wine, liqueur, whiskey, and other, more exotic spirits, and most of them were very much drinkable.

Florencia kneeled to grab a few bottles of wine and blackcurrant liqueur—a strange coincidence that this cellar had my favorite drink.

“You do understand why Patricia gave you this estate, right?”

“She said she wanted to do a good thing.”

“That’s just an innocent lie. They all do that. I don’t doubt her sincerity, but I think she’s trying to make up for her passivity these past decades. She’s withdrawn from her duties in the Cappesand Council, and many think that her province is cut off from Lienor. I think she sensed she has become too isolated, with too few allies. With how things are going, she needs a powerful ally, and the opportunity presented itself—”

“So the King said something in Loran that I can’t stop thinking about!” I spat out.

“What?” asked Florencia, genuinely confused now. She came close and stood before the torchlight, her green eyes glimmering.

“So… I told the King that I thought your reward for the whole thing was not enough, and that you should be more rewarded. And, well, then he said something about him seeing us as a couple, and that he thought we should think about—”

Florencia immediately angered and the torchlight flashed bright and hot. Candles flickered in the corner and a few snuffed out.

“No!” she all but screeched. “Stop! Here? You’re bringing this up here, now, in this old, moldy, stupid cellar?”

“It’s not a stupid cellar,” I stuttered.

“Yes, it is!” she countered. “No, Jonas, not here. Not now. I want to, really, but not now. We have so much work ahead of us, we can’t distract ourselves with that now. It…” she breathed out and closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m very happy that you’re even thinking about this. Now I understand why you’ve been so distant.”

She took my hand and kissed it.

“Not yet.”

It was as if a terrible weight fell from my shoulders, and we went upstairs to make dinner, and all was right again in the estate.