Traveler Day 4

The following morning Sal met Bartido at the door of Bartido's room.

"The mayor is dead," Sal said.

Bartido blinked at him. "Since you're opening with that, I'm guessing that we're not able to leave. Again."

"Yes, sir," Sal said. "I'm not sure you'll be able to get that exception you're looking for. Assuming you're able to catch the magistrate at all."

Bartido sighed. "If it's the mayor, there's no way anyone's getting an exception, even if I counted as an international incident." He gave his manservant a wry grin. "I'll be counting on you with the innkeeper, though."

"Of course, sir," Sal said, falling into step behind Bartido as he headed downstairs. When they got to the bottom of the stairs in the main room, the innkeeper looked up from where he was talking to a tenant and paled as he met Sal's eyes. The manservant stalked over to the bigger man and it was clear that despite the rather stark size difference between the two men, the upper hand was held by the shorter man.

Bartido smirked as he watched the interplay between the two of them before they retreated to a private area to do their actual haggling. This left the tenant of the inn that the keeper had been talking to — none other than Gertrude — alone at her table, blinking at the retreating back of the man she had just been talking to. That seemed like a good place to start.

When Bartido dropped into the seat across from Gertrude, she was startled into looking at him, then scowled. "I don't have time to deal with you, Bartido."

"At least we're on first name basis now," Bartido said with a grin.

Gertrude blinked at him, then made a face that Bartido could not read. Something between a scowl and a rueful smile? Moments later it was a simple scowl that was easy to read. "Irrelevant," she said, rising. "I have things to do, and none of them is wasting time shooting the breeze with you." Very quickly, the young woman had walked out of the inn into the street. The door shut with finality behind her.

"Wow," Bartido said, nonplussed.

Deprived of the ability to flirt with the most interesting person at the inn, Bartido instead ate a breakfast quietly as he thought of the possibilities for the day.


Bartido's hands were starting to get calluses where he had been banging on his cousin's door. It certainly wasn't hurting his hands as much as it had the previous day. This did not go for his throat when he was shouting through the door to try to get Grot's attention, but he couldn't have everything.

After a half hour of useless shouting, he walked away from the house along the main road until he was out of sight and then circled around to the side of the house that faced the church. He glanced around to see if there were any people about, but it seemed that the recent difficulties were sufficient to keep most people indoors, as he hadn't seen many people outside all day. He pulled out his wand and began to draw his most practiced rune.

The Labratory rune was complete and improved quite quickly and he summoned a homunculus to his side. "My Creator!" it said as its presence established itself within Bartido's mind.

"Let's see the inside of this house," Bartido told it.

"Sounds interesting!" Immediately after responding, the homunculus used its Clairvoyance ability, which gave Bartido a mental image of what was going on within the house. He closed his eyes in order to better 'see' what was in the house. Not being a particularly large house, the area of effect for the spell was large enough to encompass the whole thing. Which allowed Bartido to come to the conclusion that Grot was not home this time.

Well then.

Bartido dismissed his homunculus and the rune, making sure that he left no evidence of what he'd done. Of course, none of what he had just done was something that he definitely would be in some hot water for if someone found out; it was what he was about to do. And it was best to not leave your magic around the scene of a crime. No matter how minor. Bartido glanced around one more time to assure himself that there still weren't any bystanders before he stepped up to a window that was about three feet off of the ground.

It wasn't even locked.

Bartido was careful to close the window behind him as he entered Grot's house, finding the haphazardly decorated place to be exactly how he had last seen it, both indirectly through a homunculus and directly the one time he had managed to get inside during this trip. Still, he looked around. With the… troubles that the town was having lately, he needed to make sure that any evidence that might point to Grot wasn't found. No matter what that took. And then… Well, he would have to get out of the town and head toward home somehow. At some point.

Having just cast some magic, Bartido's magic sense was on high alert, and that lead him almost immediately upstairs. There wasn't much of a second floor to the house — just a bedroom and a closet — but Bartido's senses told him that there was active magic up there. Nothing that he had seen through the Clairvoyance, but that was why he immediately looked up at the ceiling of the bedroom when he made it there. He didn't spot it immediately, but only a minute or two of searching was required to find it: a little thing that hid in a corner in a relatively unused part of the room.

Looking straight up at it, Bartido could tell that the — spiraled shell — stuck to the ceiling was the source of the magic that he could feel. And once he was so close to the thing, he could tell what kind of talisman it was. It was Sorcery. And that was very, very bad. He wasn't sure that touching it with his hand would be a good idea — Sorcery was the most unpredictable of the magical disciplines, and the most likely to cause him issues. He probably needed to know there was no protection on the thing before he touched it.

Conveniently, there was a little stool that was sitting in front of the dresser, and after noting where it had been for a good thirty seconds, he picked it up and placed it down beneath the strange shell-shaped thing on the ceiling. He stepped up onto it and looked more closely. He didn't want to attempt to draw a rune within the house, as that was the sort of thing that Grot would definitely notice. And while that wasn't likely to be a huge problem by itself, this was the one visit he was making to the house that he no longer wanted his cousin to know about.

But he remembered that he had the perfect tool for the job.

From his back pocket he produced a eyeglass and held it up to his left eye as he looked at the object. There was one particular aspect of the object that was giving off the magic. If it was defensive, then there was no reason for it to be there.

He'd take the risk.

The object came off of the ceiling with a plop into Bartido's hand. The other side of the object was… ew. It was a mini-imp. It tried to lurch out to bite the hand Bartido had the shell in, but Bartido's reflexes were too quick. He tossed it out the open window.

Casually, he stepped to the window and looked out on the alley that he had entered the house on. Just in time to see the mini-imp shatter into black ichor and fade into the cobblestone below. Bartido smirked. He then returned the stool to its original location, spending another minute making sure that it was as it had been originally.

His job complete — though it was always possible that it wouldn't even be noticed — Bartido left by the same window that he had entered, and closed it once again behind him.

It was while he was trying to return to the main street of the town that he finally spotted the first two people outside that day. And one of them was a man that he particularly did not want to see. The other was a small child.

Bartido ducked back behind the building once he had spotted the two figures, and held his breath for a moment. He let it out slowly a moment later when Bonarda continued talking, just too soft or too far away for Bartido to hear what he was saying. Bartido was about to leave and find another way around the side streets and grassy areas that made up this part of town when he felt magic explode from the general direction from where Bonarda and the kid were. And it had a familiar magical feel. Sorcery once again.

He chanced a look around the corner again, and not much had changed — the only thing different was that the kid was shaking so hard that he was vibrating. It was rather disturbing. Bonarda was looking around, so Bartido ducked back behind the building. Well, if there was anything that could have confirmed what he needed to know about Bonarda being dangerous, that worked.

Shaken by the close call, Bartido headed back towards the inn. But when he was almost there, he spotted that Glamour shop that was on the corner nearby. Operating on a bit of a whim, he stepped inside.

To his private delight, the proprietress — Astoria, if his memory from a few days before wasn't failing him — was not in. Her apprentice Amy was, however, as well as a teenaged girl that Bartido wasn't sure that he had seen before. That would work just fine. He needed something that would restore his mood and heart rate.

He had only been browsing the plants near the front-facing window for a minute or two before the young woman appeared behind him. "Is there something I can help you with today, sir?"

He made a show — though as subtly as he could — of a mild doubletake when he looked back at the apprentice Glamour magician. "I'm not sure. I wasn't always that good with Glamour when I was in training, so sometimes I'm not entirely sure what it can do for me."

"It can do all manner of things," Amy replied with a smile. "And as naturally as it gets. It has a very subtle magic."

Bartido nodded. "That may have been my downfall with it, I'm afraid. I took to Alchemy — more straightforward, even if it had its own subtleties."

"All of the magics have their own, I know," Amy said. "But my own encounters with Alchemy have been… fraught. I don't have good memories of it."

"Then the alchemists you know are not good ones," Bartido said firmly. He the summoned a smile, which came to his call better than he was expecting. "My teacher may have had his flaws, but I certainly don't have any bad memories of what we did when I was learning the craft."

Amy nodded, though she seemed to deflate just a little bit. Subject change, then. "But there's no Alchemy here. All Glamour. And quite well-done if I do say so myself," Bartido said. "And I'd like to think that I would know, given I know Lillet Blan."

Amy's eyebrows rocketed into her hairline, but she inflated once again. Perfect. "You know the Mage Consul?"

"Even if I hadn't met her while training, I spend far too much time at Court to not have regular encounters with her," Bartido replied.

"And she is talented with Glamour?" Amy asked.

"Indeed. She's talented with every branch of magic — and I didn't tell you this, but she might be better than me at Alchemy to say nothing of the other three — though I've always thought that Glamour was the one that came most naturally to her."

"Impressive," Amy said. "I'm Amy Foster, by the way."

"Bartido Ballentyne, at your service," Bartido said. "It's nice to have a magical shop out here."

"That's what happens when a member of the Magical Society retires out here," Amy said. "Though I'd imagine she'd be pleased that you said so."

Bartido chuckled. "Oh thank goodness — for a second, I thought you were implying that you were old enough to be retired."

Amy laughed at that. "No, no. I'm Ms. Waldorf's apprentice. I haven't really even begun, much less ready to stop."

Bartido grinned. "That makes much more sense. Do you know what you want to do when your apprenticeship is over?"

"Not yet," Amy said. "Though Ms. Waldorf has always offered to give me a letter of recommendation to the Society if I wanted to go."

"Well, if you take her up on that, you'll probably be able to see me again," Bartido said.

Amy smiled. "That would be fine, but—"

"Hey!"

Both of them turned to find the teenager with her hands on her hips on Bartido's other side. "No flirting on the clock, Amy."

Amy rolled her eyes. "Sammy, I was just about to tell this nice man—"

"That you already have a boyfriend?" Sammy asked.

Amy squeaked and turned red. Ah, such a shame. But it made sense; an attractive woman of her age would easily be able to have a local boy wrapped around her little finger if she wished it. "In any case," he said, "I would like to know what you have in the way of sleep aids." Sal was probably going to need some once they were underway again.

This seemed to placate Sammy a little bit, and allowed Amy to recover. "I have just the thing," the apprentice said, leading him and the teen deeper into the shop.


A successful mission. Plus some time with a pretty girl flirting to recover his nerves from the scare — and prove to himself that he still could if he wanted to — gave Bartido enough confidence to sit at the same table that Gertrude was working on. She had quite a few papers spread out on the table, but there was plenty of space for Bartido to sit and eat on the opposite side of it. He ordered from that seat, though Gertrude didn't pause in her work.

At least, not until Bartido said something. "I am sorry if I bothered you this morning, Gertrude."

"Then why are you bothering me now?" she asked without looking up.

"Just making sure that you knew I was here."

"How could I not know it was you who sat down across from me?" Gertrude asked rhetorically. "If we must talk, at least wait until I'm not actively doing something. You seem particularly bad about that."

Bartido opened his mouth to reply before his brain told him that it would be best if he just shut up. So he shut his mouth instead of trying to be witty. There was just something about Gertrude in that way — it would have been fine if it had been Amy. It reminded him of an old friend of his. Not that they were the only two that ever shut him down like that — casting as wide a net as Bartido liked to, he was bound to be well-read and shut down quite a lot. But Gertrude did it in a way that strongly reminded him of a particular young lady.

That is, Margarita Surprise.

Margarita, however, was rumored to be running around in the desert far to the south of Albion. Though given what she was supposedly up to and how thoroughly she had disappeared off the map…

Bartido finally shook his head. No way. There weren't much in the way of Archmage remnants this close to the Tower. She would be far more effective elsewhere. At least at what she was up to, supposedly. But who could say what she was actually doing.

"Something on my face?" Gertrude said, though she still did not look up.

"Just trying to figure you out," Bartido said plainly.

That made her look up. "Well, happy to be of service." She looked back down and continued to scribble. "I'll even converse with you more later if you let me finish this."

Bartido raised his eyebrows, but found that he was looking forward to the conversation. Maybe he would attempt to get her to play a game of cards or something. It might even work.