"Oh, it's getting dark. Let me take care of that."

Owen stood up and took a lantern off a chain hanging from the ceiling and placed it on the table in the middle of the den. He opened a small door and placed a single lump of coal inside. He took flint and steel and struck them together, the resulting sparks ignited the coal as soon as they touched it and the flame sprung to life. Owen returned the lantern to its place on the chain so it could cast a warm light throughout the room.

"It is so bright!" Svarja exclaimed as she stood up and moved close to the lantern to look closer. "Are you doing this with magic?" She asked, not taking her eyes off the flame.

"I just got it started, don't want to futz around with starting it naturally," Owen replied, "the brightness is due to the lamp itself. If you look closely at the base you'll see numerous symbols etched into the metal to encourage the flames to burn brighter, longer. The reflector on the top is inscribed to reflect the light and heat back into the room more efficiently."

"Incredible." Svarja mumbled. She continued to examine the lantern for a few moments before sitting back down on the sofa across from Owen, taking another sip of wine from her cup.

"You don't have lanterns like this up north?" Owen asked.

"Not like this!" Svarja replied, leaning over to pick up a crumb off her mostly-empty plate and popping it into her mouth, then wiped her fingers on her tunic. Owen had apologized profusely for the meager dinner his cook had prepared despite it being the richest food any of them had eaten in weeks.

"Magicians will manipulate the flames at festivals," she continued, "but the druids frown on frivolous displays of magic."

"Frivolous," Isaac began, chuckling, "your druids would hate many of our Callers, then. I had a friend who was a Caller. Julian, his name was. He would play dice with us sometimes, when it got dark he would cause the camp fire to flare up just so he could count the pips easier. Sometimes he would dim the fire to embers on our turns to make things difficult."

Svarja grinned but shook her head. "The druids would definitely scold a magician who did such a thing outside of a proper festival. If it was one of their own there would be punishment for such flagrant disrespect of nature."

"But it doesn't bother you?" Owen asked.

"No? Why would it? I am no druid, it is not my place to enforce their rules," Svarja said, before finishing her cup. Her hand moved slightly towards the wine bottle on the table before she stopped herself, instead pulling back and running her fingers through her hair. Owen saw, smiled, and stood up to pour his guest another cup. Svarja accepted, grinning widely, and took a sip from her third or fourth glass of the evening. Isaac had lost track how many she had. His head was swimming after one glass of full-strength wine, so accustomed to the watered down stuff Frederick had available. Before that Isaac hadn't had a proper drink since before the Tarid invasion half a decade ago.

"Is it hard to do?" Svarja asked as Owen sat back down, "Call to the fire?"

"Oh, goodness, no," Owen replied. "Fire is the easiest thing to Call. It wants to burn, we encourage it to burn hotter or brighter or longer and it is eager to respond. Trying to force a thing to behave against its nature, that's where Calling becomes a challenge."

The conversation turned to talk of the city and Wollema as a whole after that. Frederick shared news and rumors he encountered in his travels, Owen discussing events in the city and ongoing construction projects or machines he was working on. Frederick listened intently to everything, stroking his beard that was now as much grey as it was brown.

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Svarja stood and plopped herself down between Isaac and Mark on their couch. "Easier to talk this way without being too noisy and interrupting those two," she said with a loud whisper and a wave of her hand.

"So, it sounds like we will be done this job in a few weeks," she began, turning her head from side to side to look at the two men beside her in turn, "the druids will be safely loosed in the lands beyond the mountain to fix your country. What will you both be doing afterwards?"

"I'll probably stick around Frederick," Mark said first, "see if he gets another job lined up."

"Same." Isaac added.

"Yes, me and my people will probably do so as well," Svarja said, slouching down on the couch and picking at dirt under her nails. "It's just, I don't know, I expected mercenary work to be more... exciting? So far this journey has been pretty dull."

Mark chuckled. "That's a mercenary's life, though. Weeks and months of boredom, occasionally interrupted by brief moments of terror and violence."

"Same as a professional soldier," Isaac added. "At least, it was until a few years ago."

"Yeah," Mark said in a low voice, "then it was months of unending terror interrupted by even more terror."

"I know life cannot always be like the poems of the heroes, and the skalds omit the boring parts, but... so far, since we set out from the north, all we've done is frighten travelers as we passed by. Other than at the beginning of our journey when we were attacked by those bandits but I didn't get to do any fighting, your guns did all that," Svarja said with a wide gesture towards Mark that nearly struck him in the face.

"At least Frederick feeds us, and we'll get paid at the end." Isaac said. "That's better than what a lot of people get these days, you've seen the beggars lining the streets, sleeping in alleys, coughing and covered in sores."

"That's true," Svarja said, focused on her hands as she continued to pick at them. "Perhaps a few more jobs and I can return home with enough money to buy a better life."

"What will you two do when you're done with mercenary work?" Svarja asked after a moment, looking at her companions. "Surely you don't plan to do this until your hearts give out."

"I'll keep doing this until I save up enough to buy a farm back in Osterval. Find a wife, have some children, try to forget everything that's happened over the past few years."

"And you, Isaac?" Svarja asked after looking at the other man expectantly for a silent minute.

"I'm, I'm not sure." Isaac stammered. "Keep working for Frederick for as long as I can until I figure something out. When my twenty-five years were up I was going to re-enlist each year until I was too old, then either return to my parents' farm if they would have me, otherwise I would have had to figure something out."

"Why don't you return to your parents now?" Svarja asked.

"They're dead." Isaac said plainly. Mark muttered an "I'm sorry" while Svarja continued to look at him.

"I tried to go back as soon as I was discharged, seeing as how my severance pay was just my armor and weapons, and not even enough coins to pay for a month's lodging at the prices landlords were charging here. I travelled back to my home only to find strangers living there. Fever had run through and killed most of the village a few years after I left. So I came back to the city to find work, that's when I met Frederick."

The group continued their conversation after that, telling jokes and stories of their past. Svarja occasionally broke into verses of songs in her native tongue, laughing as she would then try to translate the dirty lyrics for her companions. Eventually Owen stood up and stretched. He wished his guests a good night as they each moved on to one of the four sofas. Isaac's feet dangled over the edge but it was infinitely more comfortable than the hard ground he had been sleeping on for the past weeks. When everyone was settled Owen made his way to the door leading out from the den, turned, raised his hand towards the brightly burning lantern and closed his fist. The flame was snuffed out in an instant. Svarja began snoring mere seconds later, Isaac drifted into a deep sleep moments after her.