Some faint yelling slips past the closed windows. Two floors below, a palace guard is hurled out of the front door of the merchant shop and splashes into the muddy street. Three gold, the woman had said, as if Julius was running a charity.

He might not be a noble but he’s built up enough recognition as a speciality merchant that he’s now allowed to do things like kicking people out.

And taking the rest of the day off.

Julius turns from the window and falls into a cupped armchair, his layered mage robes spilling off the seat in dim white and hushed gold like a blanket. He settles in and picks up his teacup from a round table to the side.

The window Julius faces is wide and stretches across the large office, ducking out of sight behind loaded bookshelves in need of a dusting that he's not going to do. The clean glass is split by angled beams of dark wood, the same beams that slant across walls and the ceiling, and run underfoot. The inscriptions on them are so small the rune chains look like natural divots in the grain and his hand was cramping for days afterward.

His office is on the third storey, a block of a building jutting above the lichen-covered rooves. The view is far above the constantly damp, dirt-packed roads and the people rushing past the busy street towards the nearby market. Magic in the walls keeps the racket to a whisper but the occasional shout can be heard from a particularly committed hawker – or the swears of a particularly upset palace guard.

In fact, the cupped armchair is low set enough that Julius sees right over the steep shingles of nearby buildings and up into the storm clouds rolling in. A sheet of rain off in the distance disappears into the thick forest, the far-off mountains already a ghost.

The view is wide, undisturbed, and the exact opposite direction to the castle built upon the high ground; the colossal, ugly thing with wide sweeping gardens that the royal family is still trying to introduce foreign flora to. Three gold is not nearly enough for Julius to source six types of magical plants, native to so far west that they’d drown the second their leaves touch these eastern rains.

Julius hears a scrape of paper as a mound of thick scrolls stuffed into a corner threatens to finally fall. He takes a sip of lightly spiced tea, and tips his head against the backrest so his white hair puffs up, the ends flicked out into a messy halo.

No need to stay presentable since he doesn’t have any more appointments today. His staff downstairs can handle the rest.

There’s another long hiss as the scrolls struggle to hold on but they inevitably cascade, which then triggers a precarious stack of books to topple in a rustle of paper and thump of hardcover spines onto the wooden floor. It sounds like it might be the pile near the uncomfortable chairs he puts the annoying clients on.

Julius sighs but isn’t worried enough to check which stack went down. He needs to invent a tidying spell, except just hiring a cleaner would be faster, cheaper and easier. It makes no sense to put months of research and testing into a spell that doesn’t have market value and can only be used for one situation, but the way things have slowed down he’s going to have a lot of time on his hands anyway.

There’s a knock on the closed office door. “Julius, a client is here for you,” McPherson calls.

“Check again,” Julius drawls and sips his tea, fingers pressing into the curls and curves of the rosebush design, the cup’s glaze softened with wear of his fingerprints.

“It’s a Govain,” McPherson insists with a bit more emphasis to her words. The Govain are noble family, notable for the current matriarch being a 3^rd class magician particularly good at environmental spells.

Unfortunately, not especially interesting to Julius and not powerful enough to force him to fake it. If they don’t have a booking, he doesn’t have to see them.

“What a pity I’m home sick today,” Julius says, his eyes lazily following a flock of birds going past in the distance. “Send the servant back, tell them to book a meeting next time so they don’t have to come all this way before I reject them.”

McPherson just shoves open his door. Julius plants an elbow on the armrest of his chair and leans around the back of it to see across the room, eyebrow raised.

McPherson’s solid frame fills out the doorway with shirt and slacks stretched over muscles, hair up in lovely delicate brown curls today. Her hairpins glint under the light with their large jewels because apparently, Julius pays her too much to bother him when he’s slacking off.

Her lips are lightly pursed. “It’s the son.”

“Tell me why I care,” Julius says and genuinely means it this time.

“He used a 3^rd level spell.”

“The mother’s genes are strong.”

“Julius,” McPherson says. “He’s a little boy throwing around 3^rd level spells. His mother could have taught him every spell she knows, he could be incredibly powerful already.”

Julius has a wry smile on his lips. 3^rd isn’t particularly impressive when it goes up to 9^th. “You people get so excited as soon as you see a magician, it’s adorable. Fine, what does he want?”

McPherson pauses.

“You don’t know why he’s here?” Julius asks, amused. “He, what, stormed in and threw around a spell, then you rush up here to brag about seeing it? What spell was it?”

McPherson clears her throat, expression calming. She adjusts her curls, making sure today’s hairstyle is perfect. “He hid the casting behind his back but I was at the right angle to see it. The spell was a shield - to stop the palace guard from throwing a rock at the shop window after I tossed her out.”

“It must have been a terrifying rock to need a 3^rd level shield. Did it have teeth?”

“It was quite large,” McPherson deadpans.

Julius gasps in exaggerated shock, hand clutching his chest. “Goodness, do you think it was hiding some tiny concealed weapons too? We could have been in trouble.”

McPherson simply nods to Julius. “I’ll send him away.”

Julius rolls his eyes. “No, bring him up. Make sure he hasn’t just gotten lost and stumbled into the shop though. I’m not helping him find his parents.”

McPherson closes the door behind her when she leaves. Julius sets down his tea and stands, shaking out his robes so they fall properly and will billow dramatically if he walks fast enough. He moves around to the large desk and takes a seat, patting around for something suitably smart to read.

The clients who see him in person instead of just asking a sales assistant downstairs are either doing something illegal or think they’re important. Regardless, they’re here for an experience and Julius is more than willing to sell it. If he has to see a client now, he might as well commit.

The knock on the door comes again and after Julius calls them in, McPherson opens the door, her stocky body looming over a child.

A little noble boy in fancy black clothes toddles in, maybe stomach height on Julius. He looks squishable dressed in a deep blue ruffled shirt and tiny bowtie, even with the severe cut to his black tailcoat and shorts. Twelve, perhaps thirteen?

The boy doesn’t look around curiously like so many do - doesn’t even start with greetings. He just walks right over and takes a seat on the chair opposite, short enough his feet hang a bit off the ground.

“I need a centurion orb weaver’s carapace,” the boy orders, neatly done black hair swept out of big blue eyes. It’s the colour of a clear sky but when Julius stares into them, they feel like a cracking sheet of ice underfoot.

A common sort of noble then.

Julius waves out McPherson before she can walk in further and take up her usual position at his side. No need to be scared of a child, much less a child with talent but none of the raw strength to make it into the big leagues judging by how little Julius feels in the air. It should be sparking with the two of them so close if the boy was anywhere near to Julius’ level. 3^rd class isn’t bad, just a bit disappointing after McPherson hyped it up like that.

McPherson hesitates just a moment at the dismissal before she nods, brown curls bouncing, and leaves the room. The door closes and faint gold light shines from the edges, sealing it to eavesdropping which is simply standard practice when there’s a client.

“Do you need the carapace in one piece?” Julius asks, closing the thin but well-bound book he wasn’t reading and settling it off to the side. He laces his fingers together and leaves his hands on the desk because people are usually quite twitchy around magicians. They prefer to see hands, as if that would even slow Julius down if he really was upset.

“No, but I do need the entire structure, or the equivalent mass,” the Govain boy says. He pauses and looks at the book Julius just set down. “And that.”

Julius looks at the book and knows he wrote it but has completely forgotten what it’s about, which means it’s not interesting enough for him to remember after he emptied out his brain onto the pages. “Eight gold.” Or a small plot of farmland, which in today’s financial climate is an outrageous price for a book that isn’t magical, but nobles can spend that amount getting a new gala outfit.

“When should I expect to pick up the carapace?” the boy asks, already standing and reaching for the desk.

Julius puts a hand on the book’s cover, pinning it down, and the boy’s hand stops with fingers brushing the edge. “The book is eight gold. The centurion orb weaver will unfortunately be a bit costly.”

The boy narrows those big blue eyes -his spells must shine a beautiful blue- and grabs the book anyway, easily pulling it out from under Julius’ light pressure. He takes a seat again, paging through the book. “Continue.”

Julius smothers his smirk into a polite customer service smile. “The orb weaver spider being a centurion is not only rare but difficult to harvest. I’m afraid it won’t just be the price, but also the time it takes to receive it at this shop.”

Julius picks up an already neatly folded set of basic guidelines and places it on the boy’s side of the desk.  “In situations like this where we’re not certain we can accommodate your request, you can pay half upfront and the other half when you come to collect instead of the entire fee right now. I do have to warn you that if we can’t deliver the merchandise, we’ll still keep the half payment you’ve given us.”

“When will it be here?” the Govain boy repeats, genuinely going through chapter titles of the book to find something, not just pantomiming like Julius was.

“We’re a small merchant shop so the best I can estimate is maybe three weeks,” Julius answers.

“How much do I have to pay to make it two weeks?”

Julius sits back, a carefully crafted mask of apology on his face. “We do value your patronage but-“

“I’m rather busy,” the boy says, looking up from the book. “You seem to have an open afternoon to chat, I don’t. What’s one week? Twenty gold, thirty?”

“Forty-five,” Julius admits with a small frown like he’s really quite ashamed of scamming this little child.

“Fifty and you tell me why a 2^nd class magician, like you’re pretending to be, was reading about in-depth experimentation on 3^rd level spell power output,” the boy negotiates, holding up the book in his hands.

“A man can dream,” Julius murmurs with an enigmatic smile and doesn’t try to deny nor confirm anything.

The boy snaps the book shut with a loud thump. “You’re getting fifty, but keep the extra five as a tip for the large woman downstairs.”

“She likes you,” Julius says with a smirk. “Was very impressed with your half-hearted sleight of hand.”

“It was either that or do something dramatic to make you let me in,” the boy admits and smiles at the joke.

It’s not a nice sort of smile.

In fact, it might be a threat but that’s hardly the worst Julius has gotten. The boy is a child after all, it’s expected he’s a bit soft.