The expensive water clock in the main office drips and clicks through another three full cycles. Hiraeth tries to ignore it, but his eyes hurt from the glare of noon light magnified and distorted by too many garishly expensive mullion windows. He aches from kneeling at the ridiculously low desk all morning.

Still, he checks his numbers a third time and sands his report twice just to be certain against smudges. He tries to be careful when he stands, and he does manage to catch the ink bottle before it can tumble completely from its little well. It spoils the desk - but doesn't splash his papers.

He breathes a reflexive prayer of thanks to spirits he hasn't believed in since he was small enough to hide in kitchen cupboards, and wipes his hands on the dark flannel handkerchief he always carries in his coat for emergencies like this. He slips his gloves back on before he dares touch his report, but when he carries it to the head clerk he catches his reflection in the mirror in the little man's office. He's gotten ink on his best blue waistcoat, and tugging his red scarf askew only hides half of it.

The clerk does not notice. He turns pages, squinting as if he suspects to find something hiding between the crisp Hylian letters. "I can appreciate your precision, young Hiraeth, and you are swift enough with your figures I can forgive some of your rustic habits while you adjust to life in Castletown. But if I agree to take you on as my apprentice, you must learn that while this paltry sum may have been significant in your home village, a discrepancy of two rupee is a rounding error, not a crime."

"With all due respect Vah Dano, I cannot agree. The deviation in these account books are consistently within an otherwise allowable tolerance of error, and if you will compare the figures for laundry soap and roasted hops, although the measure and value are different, the numerical units are the same. You might expect a steward poor at maths to make the same exact numerical error but-"

"Perhaps you do not appreciate the motivation for attentive arithmetic that three hundred rupee can evoke," says Dano, but he lays the two pages side by side, frowning. "I admit you've found the ledgers imperfect. But five rupee is hardly significant."

"I cannot agree," says Hiraeth, reminding himself not to growl and give himself away as an uncultured provincial. "In six months alone, the errors in these minor household accounts accumulate over two hundred fifty rupee. If these books belong to a modest household - a knight, an esquire - this is not only significant but a potentially devastating indulgence of either negligence or greed."

Dano grumbles, shuffling pages. "I will consider this… analysis and make my decision by Lightsday. But if I am persuaded to take you under my wing, the cost of a sufficiently stout desk will come out of your wages."

Hiraeth grinds his teeth and bows, anger and shame burning in his throat. He waits until he gains the street to wrap himself in his heavy gray cloak, though it is snowing again. Better not to knock over anything else in this interview. Especially after completely ruining his prospects with the first five.

Years of rejected solicitations, and now that his father finally agrees to move to the city, no one wants to do any business at all with a half-Gerudo giant. His stepmother says it is only because of the border raids - constant incursions from the honorless desert bandits have magnified the consequences of drought in the far west and south provinces. Castletown itself suffers less than most places, but everyone has friends and family elsewhere.

Hiraeth stumbles on a patch of black ice. A few townspeople snicker at him, and moon-faced children point and shriek. Hiraeth hunches his shoulders and takes the first available turn out of the plaza.

Within minutes, he's lost. Again.

Hiraeth swears, hurrying his stride as much as he dares, looking at every corner building for the street-crest, trying to remember the map. He wonders how the cartographers who surveyed the capital could be so incompetent - or if somehow the streets and alleys have moved. It seems ridiculous to him that a city of tens of thousands packed between curtain walls and castle should be built with wattle-and-daub more often than honest timber or fired brick.

"If it ever stops raining for three days together, one little kitchen fire could torch a whole quarter," he grumbles to himself, shaking his head at another street inscription too weathered to read. "Completely irration-oh!"

"Oof-! Vento e onda," cries the stranger as they collide, both scrambling for balance.

Hiraeth swears, and loses his footing as he tries to pull his cloak from the other man's grasp. His knee screams at him, and frigid water is somehow leaking into his boot. "Watch where you walk, outlander."

"Scusa, I did not think - no, thinking too much, careful too little. Here, you are not hurt from my - foolish little wanderings? Yes? Here, taking my hand?" The breathless stranger braces himself on the cobbles and offers his hand as leverage.

Hiraeth glares and pulls himself to his feet on his own. He would only overbalance the man again if he were dumb enough to accept the offer. He dredges up his best Labrynnan, vaguely amused to see the man's hazel eyes pop wide as anything when he looks up at the giant he's stumbled into. "Keep your pity for your own follies, I have no need for-"

"Goddess bright you're enormous! This is the most amazing thing that's happened to me all week," says the stranger in the same tongue, tugging off his glove and offering his tawny brown hand cordially. "Name's Julien Oro, I'm here with my cousin Max but he's a bit of a heel, you won't like him. I sure don't. Can I buy you a drink?"

"Hn," says Hiraeth, tugging his waistcoat straight again and hoping his shattered thoughts will reassemble themselves before next year. "You hardly look old enough to buy your own cakes."

Julien laughs, artless and open. "Ah, no, I'm seventeen, but Hyrule has funny laws don't they? There's a place I found last month though, they understand civilized customs, thank the goddess. Terrible wine, especially the white. Godsawful bitter. Does the job though. Come on, I'll introduce you. Good sort, Nido, even if his ears make him look the startled goat half the time. That's fashion for you in this country I guess - oh no!"

Hiraeth steps back as Julien reaches towards him, but he only brushes his fingertips against the ruined waistcoat and moans in in sorrow.

"Oh. That's nothing," begins Hiraeth.

"No, I'm so sorry! Clumsy Jules, ruining another expensive thing. Such a beautiful floral print, and that was squid ink in my pen too. I knew I should have taken it back to the room after breakfast but I really didn't want to listen to Max going on about every little thing. He's insufferable when he feels flattered," says Julien with a sigh. "Come on, if you won't have a glass of wine, give me your tailor's direction at least, so I can make it up to you?"

Hiraeth laughs, dropping his own hand on the smaller man's shoulder, surprised to feel whipcord muscle under his heavily embroidered salmon-pink coat. "You aren't afraid of anything, are you?"

Julien rolls his eyes, but he smiles. "Who has time to be afraid of anything in assembly season? It's busier in this town than stormwatch two days from a narrow harbor, and I hear rumors the Hylians are twenty times more frantic than this when there's a wedding on the horizon."

"Probably. Most people love showing off at parties as well as they love gossip, and anyone who wants to be thought of as somebody tries to fix their engagements during festival. It's all very stupid. Hiraeth Anjotyr Vohenia. We just moved here a few months ago ourselves. Better prospects for my sisters I guess."

"My sympathies," says Julien, gesturing down an unmarked street. "Never mind the glass, let me buy you a bottle."