"You'll handle it?" Fitch repeated.

  "The goblin infestation. The raiding parties. The deep-forest camps. Whatever's out there. I'll find it and I'll clear it."

  "You," said Henk, from the back of the room. "Level 1."

  "Level 1," Levin confirmed. He leaned both hands on the bar. The wood was smooth beneath his palms — polished by seven weeks of wiping, cleaning, and the accumulated friction of a man who spent most of his waking hours standing behind it. "Level 1 Mage. Bronze rank. Thin wrists. Bad boots. I'm aware of the specifications. I've read the label. The label is accurate and also, in this particular case, irrelevant."

  "Irrelevant?" Henk's voice carried the incredulity of a man who had been told that gravity was optional. "The level system exists for a reason. It measures capability. It measures experience. It measures—"

  "It measures a number," Levin said. "The number sits in a box. The box does not fight goblins. I fight goblins. The box and I have a disagreement about how this should be reflected in the official record, and the box is winning, and I have accepted this, and I am asking you to accept it as well, because the alternative is to wait for the garrison, or the Guild, or a mercenary company that costs four times your treasury, and while you wait, the goblins will continue to take sheep and chickens and grain and whatever else isn't nailed down, and eventually they will take things that are nailed down, because goblins have a very loose understanding of property rights and an even looser understanding of nails."

  The room processed this.

  The processing took approximately four seconds, which was the time required for thirty-one brains to receive the information, compare it against their existing model of how the world worked, identify the discrepancy, and decide whether to update the model or reject the information.

  Twenty-three of the thirty-one updated the model.

  Six rejected the information.

  Two were still thinking about the soup that had not arrived yet.

  "He cleared the camp," Aldric said, quietly. He was looking at his ale. His thumbs traced the rim of the glass. "Five goblins. One spell. I got my grain back. My chickens are gone now, but the grain — he got the grain back. In forty minutes."

  "And the rats," Coll said, from a corner near the door where he had been sitting with a mug of ale and the expression of a man who was technically off duty and intended to remain so. "Thirty-one rats. Overnight. The guild basement is clean for the first time in — well, ever. And he found the cheese board."

  "The cheese board?" Garren said, and his voice carried a weight that the words "cheese board" had never previously been asked to bear.

  "The cheese board had an inlay," Coll added.

  "It did have an inlay," Garren confirmed.

  Fitch looked at his ledger. He looked at Levin. He looked at the ledger again. His quill hovered over the page, trembling slightly, caught between the administrative instinct to record the offer and the bureaucratic instinct to question it.

  "The quest posting for the goblin camp specified Level 3 plus," Fitch said. "You completed it at Level 1. The rat clearance specified Level 2 plus. You completed it at Level 1. If I were to post a quest for a goblin infestation of this scale — deep forest clearance, multiple camps, unknown numbers, unknown weapons — the minimum level requirement would be..." He consulted a chart that was pinned to the inside cover of his ledger, a chart that cross-referenced threat levels with recommended adventurer levels and that had been produced by the regional Guild office with the confident precision of an organisation that believed complex problems could be solved by putting numbers in boxes. "Level 8. Minimum. Party of four. Combat classes."

  "I understand," Levin said.

  "You are Level 1."

  "I am."

  "You are one person."

  "Also true."

  "Your combat class is 'Mage,' general specialisation, which the Guild classifies as—" He consulted another chart. "—'support role, rear-line, not recommended for frontline engagement without party escort.'"

  "The Guild classifies many things. The Guild also classified the rat infestation in its own basement as 'negligible' until six rats stole a cheese board during a social function. The Guild's classifications are aspirational."

  Fitch's mouth opened. It snapped closed. His quill made a small, involuntary mark on the page — a dot, a period, a full stop placed by a hand that had run out of sentences.

  "My master can handle it," said a voice from the kitchen doorway.

  Ria stood there, holding a soup ladle in one hand and a bowl in the other, her apron dusted with flour and her braid — combat-ready, as always — draped over one shoulder. The bronze medallion on her satchel strap, which hung from a hook by the kitchen door, caught the candlelight and flashed.

  She was smiling.

  The smile was the wide one, the bright one, the one that rearranged her entire face and made her eyes crinkle and her cheeks bunch and that she deployed at full power in moments when she believed something to be true and wanted the room to agree.

  "My master's here to help," she said.

  Levin's left eye twitched.

  "I'm not your master," he said.

  "You're my teacher."

  "I'm a person who sat on a rock while you fought spiders. That's not teaching. That's supervision at best and negligence at worst."

  "You gave me the shield spell. You taught me theory. Five questions every evening. Force, Form, Flow, and Flux. The four classical elements of magic. You taught me that mana is—"

  "Ria."

  "—reaching for something in the dark that you know is there—"

  "Ria."

  "He's my master," Ria said to the room, with the serene finality of someone who had decided something and was not interested in the opinion of the person the decision was about. "And he can handle the goblins."

  The room looked at Ria.

  The room looked at Levin.

  The room looked at the space between them, which contained seven weeks of spider caves and soup and theory sessions and a relationship that neither of them had named and that the room was now attempting to categorise using the limited tools available to a village that understood family, employment, turnips, and goat husbandry, and found that none of these categories quite fit.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "I object to the word 'master,'" Levin said.

  "Noted," Ria said. "Overruled."

  "You can't overrule me. I'm the—" He stopped. He had been about to say "master," which would have undermined his objection in a way that was both immediate and permanent. "I'm the person you're overruling. The person being overruled doesn't get overruled by the person doing the overruling. That's not how overruling works."

  "It is when the person being overruled is wrong."

  "I'm not wrong. I'm objecting to terminology."

  "The terminology is accurate."

  "The terminology implies a hierarchy that I did not establish and do not endorse."

  "The hierarchy was established when you gave me a spell and sent me into a cave full of spiders. That's a hierarchy. That's the most hierarchical thing that has ever happened to me, and I grew up on a farm where the goats had a pecking order."

  Levin opened his mouth. He closed it. He picked up a glass. He put it down. He picked up the cloth. He put that down too.

  "Fine," he said.

  The word escaped him with the familiar, resigned inevitability of a man who had said "fine" to Ria before and had learned that the word, once released, could not be recalled, and that its release invariably led to consequences that were beyond his control and frequently beyond his comprehension.

  "Fine. I'll handle the goblins. Don't call me master."

  "I'll call you whatever I like. You're my master."

  "That sentence contradicts itself."

  "Most true sentences do."

  Fitch, who had been watching this exchange with the frozen expression of a man whose quill was poised over a ledger and who was unsure which part of the conversation to record, cleared his throat.

  "If I may," he said. "The administrative process for a quest of this magnitude requires—"

  "Fitch," Berta said.

  "—a formal threat assessment, a risk evaluation, a party composition review, an equipment audit, a liability waiver—"

  "Fitch."

  "—signed in triplicate, witnessed by two council members, and filed with the regional Guild office within fourteen business days of quest acceptance, along with a deposit of—"

  "Fitch!"

  Fitch's quill stopped.

  Berta was standing now. The rolling pin was in her hand. She was not holding it like a baking implement. She was holding it like a woman who had listened to enough bureaucracy for one evening and was prepared to introduce the rolling pin to the next piece of paperwork that crossed her field of vision.

  "The man said he'll handle it," Berta said. "He handled the goblins. He handled the rats. He handles everything we throw at him, and he does it at Level 1, and he does it before lunch, and he comes back and makes tea and sweeps the floor and doesn't ask for a parade. Let him handle it."

  Fitch looked at Berta, then looked at the rolling pin. He performed a rapid cost-benefit analysis that weighed the importance of administrative procedure against the density of Berta's bread and, by extension, the density of Berta's rolling pin, and concluded that procedure could, on this occasion, be abbreviated.

  "I'll need a signature," he said. "On the quest acceptance form. And a brief — very brief — statement of intent."

  "Give me the form," Levin said.

  Fitch produced a form. It was a single page — a miracle of bureaucratic restraint, by Fitch's standards — with spaces for name, class, level, quest description, and signature.

  Levin walked from behind the bar to the central table. The room parted for him. Thirty-one people shifted on benches and chairs and leaning-posts, creating a path that was less a deliberate gesture of respect and more the instinctive response of a crowd making room for someone who was moving with purpose.

  He sat down at the table. He picked up Fitch's quill and filled in the form.

  Name: Levin Kai.

  Class: Mage.

  Level: 1.

  Quest Description: Goblin infestation clearance, deep forest, northeast sector.

  He paused at the signature line.

  He signed. Small and neat. Occupying exactly the space allotted.

  He set the quill down and slid the form across the table to Fitch.

  Fitch picked it up. He read it. He read the level line. His eyebrows performed their characteristic ascent.

  He stamped it.

  The stamp was a wooden block with the Thornwall village seal carved into its base — a stylised hill with a tree on top, which was either a representation of the village's geography or a very simple drawing of a hat on a table, depending on the quality of the ink.

  The stamp hit the page with a thunk that carried across the quiet room.

  "Quest accepted," Fitch said. "Officially. Formally. On the record." He looked at Levin. "When do you intend to begin?"

  "Tomorrow," Levin said. "Dawn."

  "And you'll go alone?"

  "I'll go with Ria."

  From the kitchen doorway, the soup ladle rose in triumph.

  "She's Level—" Fitch began.

  "She's my apprentice," Levin said, and the word came out before he could catch it, and it hung in the air between them, and Ria's face, visible in his peripheral vision, underwent a transformation that began at the eyes and spread outward until her entire face was luminous.

  Levin's jaw tightened by a fraction.

  "Provisionally," he added.

  "Permanently," Ria corrected, from the doorway.

  "Provisionally and temporarily and on a trial basis with conditions."

  "You said that six days ago. The trial basis has expired. I survived spiders. I earned a commendation. I fixed the soup. I used a lot of rosemary. The conditions have been met."

  "I never specified the conditions."

  "Exactly. Unspecified conditions are, by definition, met. That's contract law. Tommas told me."

  Tommas, who had been drinking his ale with the quiet contentment of a man who was not involved in the current dispute and intended to keep it that way, choked.

  "I said no such thing," Tommas said.

  "You said it about the goat fence. You said if the conditions of the fence agreement weren't specified, they were automatically fulfilled. I'm applying the same principle."

  "That was about goats."

  "The principle is universal."

  Levin looked at Ria. Ria looked at Levin.

  The room looked at both of them.

  "Fine," Levin said, for the third time in a conversation that was producing "fines" at an alarming rate. "Apprentice. Permanently. On the record."

  Fitch, who had been holding his quill above the form with the trembling readiness of a man who sensed that additional documentation was imminent, wrote something in the margin.

  Levin did not ask what it said.

  He stood up from the table. He walked back to the bar. He picked up his tea — cold now, having been neglected during the conversation — and took a sip.

  Cold tea was, by any reasonable standard, an abomination.

  It occupied the same category as warm beer and room-temperature revenge — technically the same substance as its properly prepared counterpart, but stripped of the qualities that made it worthwhile and left with only the qualities that made it disappointing.

  He drank it anyway.

  The room was shifting around him — the dense and anxious energy of the council meeting loosening, dispersing, replaced by something lighter.

  Conversations resumed.

  Ale was drunk.

  Berta's bread was attempted.

  Ria emerged from the kitchen with bowls of soup, distributing them to the tables with the efficient cheerfulness of someone who had just been officially promoted and was celebrating by feeding everyone.

  Marda appeared at Levin's elbow.

  She had been in the kitchen for the duration of the meeting, visible only as a presence behind the doorway, a shadow that listened and said nothing. She stood beside him now, drying a glass with a towel, her face arranged in its default configuration of comprehensive disapproval.

  "Goblins," she said.

  "Goblins," Levin confirmed.

  "Deep forest. Unknown numbers. North. Dawn."

  "That's the plan."

  Marda dried the glass. She held it up to the candlelight. She found a spot. She rubbed it. She held it up again. She set it on the shelf.

  "Take the good waterskin," she said. "The one without the leak."

  "You have a good waterskin?"

  "I have a waterskin that leaks less than the other waterskin. In this establishment, that qualifies as good."

  She turned back to the kitchen. She paused in the doorway. "And Levin."

  "Hm?"

  "The troll on the south road. The one Garren found."

  Levin's hands, which had been reaching for the kettle, went still.

  "Garren described a hole in granite," Marda said. "Eight inches wide. Clean edges. Melted stone." Her eyes, dark and steady, met his. "I've seen what your spells do to my kitchen floor. I know what melted looks like."

  She held his gaze for two seconds. Three. Four.

  "Take the good waterskin," she said again. "And… come back."

  She disappeared into the kitchen.

  Levin stood behind the bar. The kettle was warm under his hand. The common room hummed with conversation and soup and the cautious optimism of a village that had been given a promise by someone whose qualifications, on paper, were laughable, and whose track record, in practice, was the only thing anyone had.

  He poured fresh tea. He counted to two hundred. He thought about clouds — none visible through the tavern's grimy windows, but he imagined them anyway. Cumulus. Big, white, uncomplicated, and in the shape of a cat.

  He took a sip.

  Acceptable.

  The warmth behind his sternum hummed. The secondary harmonic pulsed beneath the primary, steady and patient, and the five teal notifications — Empower, Mana Bolt, Barrier Ward, Arc Chain, and Beam of Annihilation — sat in their queue in his peripheral vision, faded to background, present and waiting.

  Tomorrow. Dawn. Deep forest. North. Goblins.

  He picked up the broom.

  It tried to pull left, but Levin was wise to its ways.

  He corrected before it could commit.

  [Sweeping: Level 8!]

  He swept.