Cass waited as Odal sent a message to have a Warrior escort Natalie back and considered what she should do next. Surely, the palace would be trapped just as her room was, and despite the Matron giving her ideas for how to get in, they would not let her walk around unattended… She would not be able to rely on her bracelet to disperse the traps, by its nature it would set them off even as it destroyed the trap.

“Are you ready to go back?” Odal asked as he returned.

“Of course,” Cass smiled. “Thank you for tonight, Odal.”

“It was my pleasure,” Odal blushed slightly, so Cass must be doing something right. “Also, I have a Warrior who will come to take Natalie home when her shift is done. Much as I hate to say it though, you won’t be able to ask for this for long.”

“True, I will have to find another solution.” Cass was more curious about what was going on with Natalie, but that would have to wait for tomorrow.

She said goodnight to Odal at the door and went inside her rooms. Today had been productive, but tomorrow the real work began. Through the Matron, Cass probably would have some limited influence in the Sand, through Odal she may have some with the Warrior’s and in the regions he patrolled, so tomorrow she would have to meet her neighbors and investigate Natalie… Then she would need to use these connections to expand her own influence…

Cass sighed, and wondered if her personality had always been like this. Would she have tried to grasp at power and influence like this if she had the chance before? Probably not, she decided. Nor would she be doing it now if she felt any strength or vision from the people she had met here. Free of the streets and seperated from her Master, Cass almost wondered if she could not help but test boundaries, to see if these people could actually contain her… And if they couldn’t…

Maurice probably was more right to worry than Cass had originally thought, whatever had twisted inside of Cass was dangerous without something to suppress it. Without Hall holding her leash, she felt… Wild…

She laid down in bed, considering that thought. As she fell asleep, it occurred to her that she did not mind the feeling at all, she just missed Lord Hall and worried about what Maurice and Heather would think…

The next morning, Cass got up to meet her neighbors. The mansions of the Strioi very interestingly designed, incorporating communal public areas that branched off into the various suites of rooms provided for the Strioi. It could be downright labyrinthine if you did not know where you were going, and so Cass started simple, with her closest neighbor.

The lady Strioi that invited her in was maybe fifty or sixty years old and with her brown eyes and hair was honestly very bland and forgettable, but Cass strived to remember her name and face anyway.

Berentrad Hoissen was a very odd person for Cass to meet, because she had never had someone gush over her so much…

“Oh my, but you are just so little!” She crowed, “And so well mannered for fourteen… Just how wonderful!”

Berentrad called for her servant to bring tea, which made Cass curious when he had arrived. She had come quite early in the day, and she hadn’t thought anyone had entered the mansion… But then, the mansion was quite large and she could have missed it.

“I have quite the weakness for cute little kids,” Berentrad patted her servants head, a boy who could not have been more than eight years old. Cass noted that the boy himself was not precisely comfortable with being patted on the head, but aside from Hall neither would she be.

“This little guy is actually a pretty sad story actually,” the older woman had noticed Cass observing him. “His parents have trouble with addiction and they actually tried to sell their son! Of course, slavery is illegal here in Beergmutar, so they would have ended up in the Sand… But instead I told them I would hire the boy and pay them part of his wage, so now he stays with me.”

“I see,” Cass sipped her tea but had no real idea what to say to that and so turned the subject to other small talk before thanking Berentrad and excusing herself. Berentrad had gave some casual warnings about the neighbor she was visiting next, saying that he was a rude and uncouth loute. However, given the standards of this layer of society, Cass doubted she would even really notice.

Five minutes later, she learned that she was wrong when she got the door slammed in her face and was told to fuck off in such colorful language that Cass actually had to admire it. She knew that the man’s name was Salev, and from her third and last neighbor she learned that he and Berentrad had be feuding for the last few decades.

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“Salev is a paranoid old coot,” Gerogina laughed, a thirty something, rather large woman who was Cass’s final neighbor. “He is Sandborn, and that is not supposed to count with Strioi but… Well… You heard him right?”

“Sandborn?” Cass could easily guess what the term meant but had not heard it used before, “so I presume that one’s caste has an impact still among Strioi?”

“As I said, it isn’t supposed to…” Georgina sighed, “and for the most part it doesn’t, but the Sandborn have an awful reputation and Salev can’t really control his mouth…”

“But as a Strioi he can’t really be punished for something so minor, so people just avoid him.” Cass finished the thought and Gerogina nodded to confirm.

“He isn’t right in the head,” Georgina did not use servants but instead used her magic to bring out treats and snacks for the two as they talked. “You should hear some of the accusations he has thrown out over the years… He once claimed that Berentrad and I were spies for the Elhven and that our ears and eyes were fake, then he claimed that there was another race living under the mountain, which was investigated in case the dwarves had made a return, but nothing was found… And then…” Georgina laughed, and began ticking off each one on her fingers, “he claimed that the Voni were supply drugs to the streets and that those drugs turned people into mindless soldiers, claimed that Berentrad was running a brothel filled with kids out in the Sand district, and something about the Priests being lizard people…”

“Wow…” Salev certainly did not sound stable, but a couple of those claims piqued Cass’s curiosity. “And he is still allowed to use magic?”

“He has never actually hurt anyone,” Gerogina sighed. “Frankly, anyone who meets him would agree that he is harmless. And occasionally he produces some amazing magical systems… So it is often best to just let him be…”

“I see,” Cass said seriously. “I will keep that in mind…”

“Honestly, there are so much nicer subjects to talk about, like how you are enjoying Beergmutar!” Georgina said happily, clearly hinting Cass to answer the unasked question.

“It is quite lovely here,” Cass said truthfully. “The architecture, the clothes, the jewellry and food… It is all wonderful, although I don’t have much to compare it to…”

“I would have thought Tyine would have some nice places at least…” Georgina frowned, and Cass realized that she didn’t know about Cass’s background.

“I was an orphan on the street who was arrested and enslaved,” Cass wondered if that would make her associated with the Sand caste, well, better to see the reaction now. “It was not until just before the event that led me here that I received anything of luxury at all.”

“Oh you poor thing!” Georgina obviously did not think of her as Cass had thought she would… Though she had no idea why… “I am sorry to ask about such a troubling subject, but you don’t have to worry about that kind of thing here!”

“What kind of things do you study?” Cass hated the pity in the woman’s eyes and changed the subject. Magic was both a safe topic and useful to Cass.

“Nothing grand, I don’t really have any ambition to be honest…” Georgina sighed again, the way she would shift emotions suddenly and to such extremes unnerved Cass a bit. “I guess you could say I study home magic, but a lot of my peers would say I study useless magic.”

“Home magic?” Cass had never heard it mentioned before, something that worked with the systems of houses? But what even were those systems and would they be useful?

“Cleaning, cooking, upkeep.” Georgina waved her hands and Cass could hear pots and pans moving in the kitchen nearby. “They are all systems, and we all do them everyday, but they are overlooked by us Strioi because it is easier to hire servants.”

“So why don’t you do that?” Cass asked curiously, as she wondered what was going on in the kitchen.

“No reason in particular,” Gerogina smiled. “I just would get bored if I did nothing, and I don’t have the ambition for much else.”

A tray with sliced bread spread with jam floated out of the kitchen and onto the table between them. This was… Actually quite impressive… The mage in front of Cass would have had to manipulate several objects at once, without seeing any of them, to accomplish this and do so while carrying on a conversation at the same time… But that level of skill being used for something so mundane…

“I see the look on your face,” Georgina laughed. “I see it all the time!”

“I apologize,” Cass bowed her head slightly, she did needed to make contacts in the Strioi after all and could not afford to alienate her. “I was admiring your skill, to be honest.”

“But wondering why I don’t use it for more?”

“Well, kind of…” Cass hesitated, then continued. “But thinking about it for a bit I don’t think it matters. If this is what you want to do, I see no reason not to do it. I would just worry about someone taking advantage of me if I studied that.”

Having a dream was a basic tenet of Cass’s religion, so following your dream was not a bad thing to Cass. But Cass could see someone pushing Georgina around with ease because of the lack of power and influence she would have…

“You would think so,” Georgina admitted. “But it is all about who you know. The Klein family loves my cooking and are always first in line to try anything new I come up with.”

That was something Cass had never thought about before… The power to kill or control was not the only power out there. She would have to be careful not to write people off who might have more influence than they appear to.

It was around noon when Cass said goodbye to Georgina, having come to honestly like the woman for turning her dream into her own form of power. She was an interesting woman. Odal was waiting for her when she got back to her rooms, all part of the plan for the next part of her day, which was finding out what Natalie was so desperate to hide from her...