(A/N: This chapter introduces Kara as well as the story's first alt. Pov. Alt. Povs are not likely to be common when they aren't love interests or exceptionally vital to the plot, and even then they will show up less and less the more familiar the audience becomes with the character whose perspective it is.)

 

-X-X-X-

 

Kara sighs as she finishes sorting the paperwork from the day and closes up the last folder, earning her looks from a few of the other secretaries. It isn’t as though sighing is frowned upon, but acting so exhausted after finishing work first definitely is, even if that standard ignores the fact that finishing first by no means implies she did any less work.

 

Before she even has time to get her coat from off of the rack, her boss, Mr. Buccitte, barrels down the other hallway and into the workroom. Stopping in her tracks along with the rest of her fellow employees, Kara bows a slight greeting to her boss while waiting for him to catch his breath.

 

“Ha… Heh… Kara! Fantastic, someone who’s free! There’s a patron here… Says he’s from out of town, would like… to register… I know it’s late, but before you leave-” Mr. Buccitte puts his hands together in front of him, as if to beg her for her compliance.

 

“I understand sir. I’ll speak with him. Has he said his name?” Kara asks politely while walking back amidst her colleagues' stares.

 

“No, only that he’s from out of town and thought signing up with the guild would be a good place to ‘start out’.” Mr. Buccitte stops for a moment as Kara gathers her needed supplies from her desk, before continuing only once Kara has everything she needs. “He’s armed. Unkempt, like he just woke up. Got a look in his eyes, not sure what about. Ravenous curiosity… I thought he was gonna kill me…”

 

Kara isn’t sure what to make of that. Sure, plenty of people (especially adventurers) walk around armed. Most do it for self defense, or for enemy offense in the adventurer case, but it’s considered common courtesy to only bring your weapon or weapons indoors in places you think you’ll need them or in places where you’re invited to. 

 

If, for example, Kara walked around with her knife on her hip on the street, no one would bat an eye, but if she brought it inside a stranger’s home and refused to leave it with her coat, she’d be committing a major social faux-pas, basically announcing that at best she sees whoever she’s with as a danger or potential threat. At worst it could be considered an active threat against said stranger.

 

“I’ll keep that in mind sir.”

 

This means that either this person isn’t from around a place that observes such obvious social norms or that he simply doesn’t care enough about them to observe them. Or, more ominously, he really does see the guild as a potential threat to be warded off.

 

When Kara finally enters the guild common room and makes her way over to her desk, she does her best to size up the stranger without making it too obvious. Tall, likely six feet or around there. Strong and well built but not actively athletic, judging by his frame. Unkempt is somewhat correct, he clearly looks like he hasn’t been sleeping well in terms of his hair, and also like he hasn’t bothered to fix that look. He doesn’t have a coat, which raises the fourth possibility that he didn’t leave his sword at the visitor's rack because he’s carrying all he owns. His eyes do have a sort of ‘off’ look to them, but not in the way Mr. Buccitte described.

 

Kara thinks the man is just tired and- No, the moment she makes full eye contact with the man, she gets it. It isn’t a glare, nor is it a sexy look, it isn’t an awkward stare or a measuring gaze, no. Kara feels pressured by his gaze. Like he’s trying to pry into her, but only for a brief moment. A second or two later, the man’s eyes wander down to Kara’s boobs, something she’d normally be upset about. Now though, it means he’s not looking into her eyes, which is very welcome.

 

“Um… Excuse me sir! I’m Kara, I’m a receptionist here. As I’m sure Mr. Buccitte explained to you, we’re normally closed to patrons at this hour, but I’d be glad to assist you.” Kara recovers her guild girl persona quickly enough, leveraging the fact that the man was already staring at her tits to capture his attention by bouncing a little as she talks. A common tactic she was taught by her mother.

 

“Hm! Oh yes, my name is Leuen, sorry for not introducing myself to Mr… Buccitte, you said? Please convey my apology if I don’t get a chance to.” ‘Leuen’, if that is his name, locks eyes with Kara again, but this time she doesn’t feel quite that same pressure. It’s less oppressive now, more like…

 

Like boss said. Ravenously curious. Like he’s wondering what I’d look like cut in half, even if he’d never do it. My sex appeal only distracted him for long enough to catch him off guard, not to make that feeling he gives off go away. Shit! How long have I been staring at him!?

 

“So about registering with the guild, have you ever signed up with an adventurer’s guild before, Leuen?” Kara deflects her eyes down to her folder of paperwork, using shuffling around for the information she’ll need to give him as a neat excuse not to look at his eyes anymore.

 

“No, I can’t say I have. This is the first one I’ve even seen.” Leuen answers, and Kara can tell from just a glance at him that he’s telling the truth, with how he moved his hand around when he spoke even though Kara wasn’t watching him.

 

“I see. Well, here in Riverwake, and in most of the Gloucster Dukedom for that matter, we have a set of standard rules for all guilds and a second set of rules for adventurer and mercenary guilds.” Kara shuffles the three papers containing the totality of those rules in front of Leuen. “Do you want to read them now or accept an explanation and read them later yourself? Oh! I’m so sorry, you can read, right? I just assumed…”

 

Kara lies as naturally as she breathes. The presumptive question into rapid apology is another of her mother’s tactics. Against men who affirm the assumption, it does wonders to paint Kara as a kind and caring albeit awkward girl, and against men who deny the assumption it perfectly sets her up in a position of social advantage; the man has to either admit inferiority to her or allow her to dominate the interaction. An insidious and truly powerful social tact. One completely obliterated by the fact that Leuen doesn’t seem to have heard it, and is instead skimming the papers with his right index finger as a guide on where he is.

 

“Period of six days… twenty silver… Property of the Grand Duke?” Leuen looks up at her quizzically, catching Kara’s breath with the damnable eyes of his for a moment before she manages to look down at the paper he’s on.

 

“Ah, yes. Your guild contract itself is property of the state, meaning that the Grand Duke can draft you into military service using it, even if you’re otherwise a Yeomen.” Kara answers while looking for a different paper in the folder, before finding it and turning it around for the man. “Conversely though, you’re covered by the same legal protections any property of the crown is as long as you’re obeying guild policy and aren’t under censure.” Kara pauses for a moment before trying a little joke on the man. “That also means that your body is considered a corpse, as far as being stolen is concerned.”

 

“Ridiculous.” The man says with a slight smile on his face before he begins reading the documents silently again. For a good minute and a half, Kara is left to stand there while the man reads. Leuen doesn’t ask her any questions, nor does he pause, he simply reads and reads until he reaches the end of the papers Kara supplied to him. “Alright, I think I’ve got it. So, how does taking requests work, or… Actually, no, just give me your pitch for how the guild works here.”

 

Kara barely manages to avoid getting caught in his eyes by looking at the slight smile on his face. 

 

“At the beginning of every week, requests from nobles and merchants are put on that board there, every morning requests from yeomen and the churches are put on that second one there, and special requests from the guild or from other parties are put up basically whenever we get the chance to on that third board there.” Kara pauses to wait for Leuen to return his attention to her. “Until an hour before sundown, the receptionists are out here, on two sides of the room. Those over there are for accepting, returning, and managing requests that you’ve taken, as well as getting paid. These desks here, like mine, are for miscellaneous business with the guild like what we’re doing now or for arranging guild benefits like our discounted rate at the blacksmiths in town or passage on seafaring vessels or with merchant caravans. We also handle formation, recognition, disbandment, and dissolution of official adventurer groups. I specifically, as well as Mr. Buccitte, the owner and Evvie, who covers my days off, handle the registration and management of your profile. Speaking of, if you’re intent on joining, we’ll need to write one up for you today.”

 

-X-X-X-

 

Leuen is practically stunlocked by Kara the receptionist. It isn’t just the sheer oozing competence and passion of her explanations and attempt at humor earlier, everything the girl is is both alluring and confusing in more ways than one.

 

For starters, Leuen has no idea what she’s using for breast support beyond her outfit, but he feels like it has to be either magical or extremely uncomfortable. Her tits aren’t the biggest in the world, that isn’t why, it’s the fact that her outfit, a women’s tunic dyed blue over some sort of pants like his, is cut so low that the only part of her upper chest it covers are her boobs and her shoulders. Leuen genuinely believes the only reason it even covers her shoulders is so that the thing can stay on. It’s cut so low that there’s probably only a three inch distance between the edge of the fabric and the beginning of her nipples, assuming of course, that there isn’t some sort of underwear in the way.

 

He’s sure there is, because there’s no way that tunic is holding her breasts up as much as it looks like it is, but he’s not sure how. 

 

That’s probably the most normal part about the interaction so far, too. She’s not particularly ‘supermodel gorgeous’ in her face, but Leuen also hasn’t spent any time looking at it beyond basic eye contact. Her hair. Is. Blue. Blue! Why is it blue? His mind had screamed when he first saw it, and it continues to do so every time he realizes it anew after spending too much time not thinking about it. It’s not even like it’s done up in such a way to be part of her appeal, it's just nonchalantly tied behind her head in a loose bun like she didn’t think about it. That’s confusing and intriguing, and raises so many questions, but it’s not the weirdest part.

 

The weirdest part of all this? The way she’s been acting. When she speaks about the guild stuff, or when she made her introduction, Leuen is inclined to call her incredibly confident. She clearly knows what she has and is putting it to work for her to earn a paycheck. Respectable, competent, and confident. But she seems not to want to make eye contact. And every time their eyes meet, she looks stunned, like a deer caught in headlights for a moment.

 

The first time it happened, he unconsciously drifted to her tits when she was stuck there, and guess what? She’d immediately picked up with the flawless confident secretary persona until the next time their eyes met and then boom! Back to the shy schoolgirl until eye contact broke. It’s beginning to make Leuen wonder if there’s something wrong with his eyes, or if maybe her secretary schtick is more of an act and less of a job than he was giving her credit for. Regardless, the moment he realized that’s what was happening, he'd been trying to be careful.

 

Giving someone proper conversational respect (especially after you’ve been caught staring at their boobs) is incredibly hard when you’re not allowed to make eye contact with them without their initiation, which has resulted in him trying to read anything and everything in sight, including several upside down forms in front of Kara.

 

Now that she’s looking at him after finishing her explanation, he meets her amber eyes with his while he formulates a response. Once he’s settled on what to say, he puts his hand on his chin and look away, to hopefully signal to her that he understands she doesn’t want to make eye contact for some reason.

 

“That makes sense. I assume the profile management part is so that the guild knows what I’m capable of and what I’m good at, so they know which requests I should or shouldn’t be taking, or something like that?” Leuen is being a little facetious, he read that that’s exactly what it's for from one of the upside down papers.

 

“Exactly, Leuen. Are you sure you’ve never been to an adventurer’s guild before? I wouldn’t appreciate it if you’d lied to me about that.” Leuen is tempted to scoff at the obviously faux anger, enough that it gets him to lock eyes with her for a moment before he remembers and looks away. 

 

“Ah, I was telling the truth about that. I just read one of the papers in front of you while you were talking.” A slight blush appears on her cheeks in the corner of his eyes, making him a little bit embarrassed himself, though he recovers fast. “Speaking of the registration fee, I’ve got some money, but I have no idea how it converts to silver coins here.”

 

“Oh? What do you have?” Kara recovers rapidly at the mention of her job duties, Leuen observes. Not seeing any point in subtlety, Leuen undoes a button on his doublet and reaches into the inside pocket to pull out five total gold coins before redoing the button and laying them on the reception desk in front of Kara.

 

“I have quite a few of these, but that’s all.” Leuen feels a little embarrassed about catching Kara’s eyes when he looks for her reaction, but quickly recovers by continuing. “I just don’t know how they convert is all, I’m not used to dealing with coins in general.”

 

After a brief pause wherein Kara cycles through a look of disbelief, confusion, something Leuen hopes isn’t arousal, more confusion, then blatant greed, Leuen lets out a soft sigh when Kara’s visible emotion finally settles on professionalism.

 

“Gold converts to silver at a 1:7 ratio. So for this, I’d need three coins, and I’d be giving you one silver back. The conversion rate changes a lot though, depending a lot on how much gold the mage colleges and such have eaten through in a given year compared to how much has been mined or otherwise introduced to circulation.” Kara then shuffles the five coins into a stack of three and a stack of two. “Should I take it this means you’re going to be signing up?”

 

Leuen picks up the two stray coins and returns them to his pocket while nodding. 

 

“Alright, here’s a couple things for you to sign, Mr…”

 

“I don’t have a surname, as far as I know.” Leuen decides to raise his voice for a little lighthearted joking. “Unless you want me to use yours.”

 

-X-X-X-

 

Finally reaching her room of the women’s housing building, Kara lets out an exhale of unhealthy intensity into her pillow as she throws herself on her bed. She’d been doing so well with someone so… unsettling. If her day had ended without talking to Leuen, if she only hadn’t listened to damn Buccitte, she’d…

 

Fumbling at the hem of her skirted tunic, she manages to pull up her skirt enough to get her hand into her pants, then deeper, into her underwear, before she stops and rolls over to face the ceiling.

 

Pulling her hand out and holding the gold coin up to the lightstone hanging inside the glass ceiling lamp, she curses herself for being so stupid. The richest client the guild is likely ever going to see says he’d like to sign up, and what do you do when he oh so casually jokes about marrying you? You say that he can, for a single fucking coin, like a fucking idiot, and he fucking gives it to you! You stupid little fucking greedy slut! Now all the little bitches in the break room are gonna call you a harlot who fucks adventurers just because you didn’t want to look a-

 

Before she can finish that thought, something clicks in the back of her mind. The moment that that man had finally started acting like he trusted her, when he’d pushed the money at her and asked for genuine, honest advice, and she’d given it, the weight and pressure had gone away. Like it was some magic he used to defend himself, or a battle aura like the warriors use. The moment she felt like he genuinely trusted her, poof, it had gone. Was that why she’d agreed to let him use her name for a single coin? Because he’d asked the question at the same time a very real weight had been moved off her chest?

 

A gold coin, worth seven silver right now, or sixty-two copper, represents an entire two month’s rent and food. Greed played a part in that exchange, surely, but had Leuen even known that’s what he was joking about? The man might legitimately have thought he needed to write down a surname, or at the very least not known that asking a question like that entailed contexts like that. She made more from entertaining his lighthearted joke than she’d made in the last month and a half of real work.

 

Is that how little money meant to rich people? Were merchants that flush with cash? Perhaps Leuen is some noble’s bastard, coming to town to live it up with the money used to shut him up about who his daddy is. Or worse, maybe Leuen is someone actually important, actually wealthy, who’ll see Kara as a cheap wench or worse once he realizes the implications of the joke and of Kara’s response to it. 

 

Forget the fact that his self-evaluation as an adventurer put him as being close to the bottom of the barrel, forget the fact that his eyes seem to stare into your fucking soul, what if he’s rich and will be petty about it the next time Kara sees him?

 

All she can do is curse herself and smash her face into her pillow.