Hugil and Arvay were waiting at the door to the indoor field when Elach returned. But Brynn was nowhere to be found.
“We might be a little late.” Hugil admitted, motioning at the crowd in the middle of the field. “Brynn’s still out there giving advice and showing off.”
Arvay grimaced, and the cracks in the group started to show. “That girl just can’t reject someone asking her to show how great Glasrime is. We’ve been waiting here for almost twenty minutes, and every time we call out she says she’s ‘almost done’ in that haughty tone she gets when she’s in Glasrime mode. Stuck up little prick.”
“Almost feels like we’re less important than Glasrime.” Hugil muttered, glaring daggers at Brynn. He let out a humourless laugh, crossing his arms over his chest. “But we already knew that, didn’t we?”
“Not in front of the new guy.” Arvay chided Hugil, knocking him on the shoulder with her knuckles. “It’s so damn hard to find someone who doesn’t want to use us to get to Glasrime, and you want to scare him away?”
“Better now than when Brynn ditches us in the middle of something super important and fffuu… screws us over again.” Hugil shot back, catching his completely unknowable word before it came out. “You want another Metea/Irric situation?”
Arvay ran her hands through her hair from front to back. “No, no I don’t.” She let out a long, calming breath.. “Alright. Seems like we’re having this talk before dinner instead of over it.”
“Probably better Brynn isn’t here for it.” Hugil said. “Saying she wouldn’t take it well is the understatement of the millennium.”
“I’m still here, you know.” Elach pointed out. “And I can hear everything you’re saying.”
“Not everything.” Hugil said ominously, scanning the crowd with visible distaste. “But she,” He pointed with a shaking arm at Brynn, “doesn’t even know you’re even here. Doesn’t care, either. And if she did, spreading the gospel of Glasrime is more important to her. More important than anything. Hells, it’s the most important thing in her damned life.”
“Then why are you hanging out with her? Is there some law forcing you into groups of three?” Elach asked.
“You hit the nail on the head with that one.” Arvay nodded. “Glasrime corrals us in groups based on how old we are. Doesn’t matter how powerful we are, or how long we’ve been bonded to them, or if we even get along. And if one of us tries to break it off, one of us gets our bond revoked.”
“What the… that’s almost worse than killing someone.” Elach said in disbelief. Losing a bond on this side of the eternal divide wasn’t quite a death sentence, but it was a certain end.
“Oh, Glas lines up another patron before they revoke your bond. But it’s as a punishment to them and you.” Hugil shuddered. “I’d never have accepted the bond if I knew it was going to be like this.”
“I probably still would have.” Arvay admitted with a shake of her head. “I wasn’t exactly in the best state of mind from my last bond. Any port in a storm and all that junk.”
“So how does Glasrime decide who gets screwed?” Elach asked. He had an inkling, but it seemed a little too barbaric for a city like this. But then again, he really knew nothing about this half of existence.
Arvay shot a glance over at Brynn and shuddered. “Free-for-all. First person to lose gets revoked. And you saw how powerful Brynn was. Neither of us would stand a chance.”
“And then the other would still be stuck in a team with Brynn. Alone.” Hugil added ominously. “The system just flat out doesn’t work, but it also works perfectly. Did we tell you how Brynn got her bond?”
Elach shook his head with a sarcastic grin “Brynn didn’t want someone like me learning her secrets. But I think I’ve got a pretty good idea from what Sechen told me; she was bonded at birth, right?”
“Mmhm. Now, what if I told you Glas bonds exactly one newborn every year, and two fourteen year olds from the trials? And all the other bondings look for someone who is a specific age?” Hugil asked.
Elach raised an eyebrow, then slowly lowered them as he understood what Hugil was implying. “Oh. Ick.”
“Yeah. Ick.” Arvay chuckled. “We’re glorified babysitters, paid in Glasrime’s Issi.”
Something tickled the back of Elach’s mind. “Didn’t you two say you were twenty? And that you’ve both been bonded for less than five years? How does that work?”
“Exactly how you think it works. We both replaced people who used to be in Brynn’s squad.” Hugil said. “I worked with someone else for a year before Arvay came around. We never really meshed well together, so Brynn's eccentricities,” Hugil made finger quotes around the word eccentricites for emphasis, “were too much for them.”
“She didn’t seem that bad.” Elach said. “It looked like she felt bad for hurting me when she tried to capture me back there. So what if she’s a little obsessed with her patron?”
“Not that bad isn’t something you build what’s supposed to be a lifelong partnership on. And she wasn’t sorry for hurting you. She was sulking that she didn’t catch you unharmed.” Arvay said. “Especially when you can’t even talk to her about it, because she’d just report it to Glasrime and screw one of us over.”
“That’s how our old third got screwed. Tried to talk it out with Brynn, and got sacked for it. I warned Arvay about that the first time Brynn left us alone for a week or two.” Hugil said. “Didn’t even bother to tell us where she was going, or what she’d be doing.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Wait, how did that break apart your friendship with Metea/Irric? She seemed nice enough to me.” Elach said.
“You met her already? You really have been getting around for your first day here. But that was the problem; she was nice. She tried to talk to Brynn about her habits without us warning her. While we were with Brynn.” Hugil said. “We had to act like nothing was wrong, siding with Brynn on everything Metea/Irric tried to bring up. Seeing Metea/Irric just getting more and more sad and frustrated hurt in a way I never want to hurt again.”
“We did meet up with her afterwards and clear everything up,” Arvay quickly added, “but the damage had already been done. She said everything was all right, but her eyes and body language said differently. She still tried to hang out after that, but it just felt fake. The invites petered out both ways until they stopped altogether.”
“And if we’d just had a talk like this right when we first met Metea/Irric, all of that wouldn’t’ve happened.” Hugil said with finality. “And here she comes. Act like we’ve been talking about nothing.”
“And she brought her whole posse with her.” Arvay muttered through a toothy smile.
Posse was too small a word for what Brynn was bringing along with her. It looked like half the crowd from before was here. The only ones missing were the patrons, or at least the obvious patrons. Brynn approached with a wide smile on her face, striding right up to Arvay and Hugil without so much as acknowledging Elach’s existence.
“Come, we’re going to the arena to showcase Glasrime’s glory to these fine people.” Brynn said haughtily, raising her arms as if to encompass the entire group of murmuring fans.
“We already have dinner plans with Elach.” Hugil tried, motioning at Elach.
Brynn turned to him and seemed to notice him for the first time. “I am sorry, but you will have to reschedule your outing for another time.”
She seemed to hold no malice, which Elach wasn’t sure if that made this better or worse. He put on his best fake smile and spoke words that were utterly saccharine. “Of course. We wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea about Glasrime’s apprentices, now would we?” Elach turned to leave with a wave back at Hugil and Arvay. “I’ll see you later, whenever that is.”
Elach started to walk towards the stairwell, but remembered that Sechen was still being looked after by the two doctors. And he did not want to be there when Revel eventually came back, since that felt like it should be a private moment between Sechen and Revel. So that left him with one place to go.
“We’re closed right now, sorry. My apprentice must have forgotten to….” Rainshear spoke from behind the counter, her back turned to Elach as he walked into the dimly lit cafe. She turned around in the middle of her sentence, her apron and buttoned shirt from earlier replaced with a sleeveless top and comfortable looking pants. “Elach? Didn’t you have somewhere to be?”
“It fell through.” Elach said with a shrug. “One of Glasrime’s apprentices vetoed the dinner.”
“Ah.” Rainshear said, nodding sympathetically. “You know, Metea/Irric went through the same thing a few years ago. Seems like you got off a little better than she did, though. Mind me asking who blew you off?”
“The same ones who Metea/Irric had trouble with.” Elach said. “Are all of Glasrime’s baby bonds as entitled as Brynn?”
“No, definitely not.” Rainshear said with a laugh. “About a quarter of them are really good people. And about a quarter of them are real bastards, way worse than Brynn could ever be. And the rest of them are just people; living their lives and not doing anything particularly amazing or awful. Brynn’s on the line between average and awful.”
“Hope I never run into one of the bastards.” Elach shuddered.
“As do I.” Rainshear chuckled. “How long do you think you need to stay? With Sechen out for the count for a few days, are you planning to sleep there with her and Revel?”
Elach was fairly certain he had explicitly decided not to tell Rainshear about what had happened to Sechen. Which meant someone else had. Rainshear noticed his change in expression and tried to hide a wince. “I’ll go see how they’re doing tomorrow morning and go from there.” Elach said. “Do you know anywhere else I can sleep for a night? Oh, and can you tell me if this is worth anything here?”
He grabbed a coin out of his purse and walked over to the counter, handing it to Rainshear who studied it with a discerning eye.
“Currency from the eternals’ domain, huh. Sorry, but this is pretty much worthless.” Rainshear handed the coin back to Elach with a shake of her head. “Anyone can sneak down to a bank and take these by the hundred, and the world will replace them without a second thought. They would decimate the economy if we put any real value to them.”
“Not even worth the materials they’re printed on?” Elach tried. He had an entire purse full of these, and a backpack he’d... left in Prisoner’s cell. Whoops.
“Well, the material they’re printed on is as worthless as the coins for the exact same reason. You might get the equivalent of two or three of Glasrime’s coins for an entire chest worth of these.” Rainshear said, pointing at Elach’s coin.
“Hoo boy.” Elach sighed, fumbling around in his pocket for Prisoner’s coin. “Just for curiosity’s sake, how much would this be worth? My, er, master gave this to me so I could make it into a focus, but that won’t matter if I starve on the streets before then.”
Elach reached into his pocket and pulled out Prisoner’s coin. Rainshear looked at it in confusion as he held it up to her, and she gingerly took it with two fingertips and held it at arm's length while she studied it.
“Yeah, don’t tell anyone else you have this. You could probably buy a quarter of the glacier from Glasrime for how much this is worth.” Rainshear hesitantly handed it back to Elach, a shiver running through her body as she let it go. “The last I saw of those metals were on a broken sword thought to be made by some long dead patron who could have ended Glasrime’s reign with a swipe of their hand. All rumors, of course, but the powers those metals hold are the real deal. And those gems…” Rainshear shivered again. “Whatever they are, they feel like they could end me in a millisecond.”
“My master said they were crystallized existential bleed.” Elach said, pocketing the coin.
“Yeah, that would do it.” Rainshear said. “If someone managed to crystallize some of the last artificial bleed, that’s what it would feel like.”
“Oh, and I have one more thing.” Elach said, slipping Sentence’s ring off of his finger. As he placed it on the counter, he wondered for the first time why he was trusting Rainshear with all of this. She could have easily looked at the coin and run him through with her blade, taking it for herself. But she seemed almost afraid of the coin’s worth, instead of drawn in by its value. As if the attention she’d attract for having it wasn’t worth the exorbitant price she’d just quoted.
“A ring?” She half stated and half asked, picking it up and studying it. “I feel a connection to something far away, but this thing isn’t valuable at all. Just a circle of dark iron.”
“Really?” Elach asked in disbelief. The ring was supposed to show him everything he needed to know to become an actual practitioner. “The person who bonded me gave me that. Said it would help me become a better practitioner.”
“That’s probably what the connection is.” Rainshear said, offering the ring back to Elach. He accepted it and placed it on his middle finger. “Things don’t have to be valuable to be powerful. And vice versa.”
“Well, thanks for helping me out.” Elach said, turning to leave with a wave. “I’ll come back when I have coins that are actually worth something.”