"Ah? A Surdan? It's a long way from Surda, what are you doing?"
Bergan laughed, "My wife and I are actually on an errand for a merchant friend of ours down in Surda, he's a fan of northern mead from the capital."
The soldier laughs, "Yup! Our mead's probably the best or my name isn't Samuel Ninterock! You'll probably try it with your beautiful wife!" He laughed some more with Bergan.
Haya for her part kept a faint smile on her face, a smile that remained until they left the soldier's earshot.
"Damn fool… wasting our time like this."
"Haya…" Bergan chided, "Calm down, if we lose our senses, we'll hurt ours and Faris's chances."
He squeezed his wife's hand tenderly. "We have to be brave for him." She leaned into him, smiling.
"OOOH! That's a comely woman over there!"
"…ignore their catcalling."
"Hey… southerner! How about you get lost so we can talk to the pretty lady!"
Bergan felt someone poke him in the back. Sighing he turned, then looked down at the beefy man, he was a scarred, ugly fellow, and obviously drunk, with his flushed face, slurred voice, and sluggish movements. "Hello sir, let's not have trouble, my wife and I have had a long trip, so we just want to enjoy the beauty of this city."
"Beauty?!" The man laughed, then smashed the bottle on the ground. "The only beauty I see is the one standing behind the idiot in a cloak.
Sighing, Haya walked up to the man, and smashed her fist on the space between the base of his neck and shoulder. He howled in pain, silencing the onlookers. As the man collapsed Haya looked at the onlookers. "Alright Bergan, let's go."
Bergan shook his head, smiling lightly. "No love lost with this city or it's denizens, you'd have simply smiled and left if it was a drunken trader back home." He smirked, "Then again," he mused, "I would have broken his nose if you hadn't knocked him out."
"Let's just find your old friend."
"He's your friend too you know."
Haya snorted, "Gurant? He treated me like a father-in-law treated their soon to be son."
"Does that make me the bride to be?" Bergan smiled, "Gurant can be difficult, but our relationship when we were all first acquainted wasn't the best."
"Don't remind me, I was… an awful person back then."
Bergan hugged his wife. "I fell in love with you as you changed, perhaps more so because of how you started."
They made their way to the blacksmith's district.
"I can't believe it, the city has changed so much, but this location's still the same…" They walked up to a shop.
"And it's as dirty as ever… or… dirtier." Haya muttered. They flinched as a loud boom erupted from within the shop.
Panicking, Bergan sprinted out into shop. "Old man! Old man!" He called out.
"Huh! What?! I told you not to disturb me anymore!" Behind a cloud of smoke, a grizzled old man emerged. He peered at Bergan in surprise. "Bergan?!" Bergan smiled in relief.
"It looks like you're alright."
"Alright?!" The old man roared, "I'm better than alright! I perfected the formula!"
"Formula?" Haya asked, perplexed.
"Oh! You brought her too… well, that's fine, what brings you over, you never right, I though you forgot about this old man."
Bergan scratched his head. "Sorry master Gurant, I didn't want to endanger you."
"Yeah, If I was worried about the Varden I wouldn't have accepted you and her into my home the first time." Gurant smirked, "I spent my life working for the Varden, if I couldn't live at my own discretion, I would have nothing to live for."
"So… what were you working on?" Haya asked, "I hope you weren't trying to kill yourself."
The old man laughed, "Rather, if I'm getting a heart attack, it will be when my favorite customer comes in with another design to challenge me with. That boy is so full of ideas, he would make a great apprentice."
"Who… who was that boy?" Haya asked.
Bergan thought about it, then peered at the couple. "Actually, like if you two had a son."
"When did you last see him!" Haya demanded, approaching the old man with an accusatory finger.
"Wait! Wait Haya!" Bergan stood in front of her, "You know how Gurant is! He probably didn't even know."
"Know what?" Gurant asked.
"My son's been arrested for crimes he hasn't committed, no thanks to you!"
"That boy was your son?" Gurant widens his eyes, "He's Faris Ser?" He shakes his head, "That boy really is peculiar." He puts on a thick cloak. "Follow me."
"Where?" Bergan asked.
"My home, there's some people you may want to meet."
As they made their way towards Gurant's home, they overheard citizens speaking to each other. "Did you hear about the boy who slayed all those children?" One said. "Yes, I heard that, I heard he burned their corpses but left their heart for some profane ritual." "Disgusting." Another muttered, "I heard he had weak magical ability and sacrificed other children to gain power." The first speaker quipped, "Who's to say he's even a child, what if it's an old witch, absorbing the youth of children."
"Haya…" Bergan warned, even as he felt his hand move to his dagger.
"Well, regardless, he's in the hands of the law, and if justice is right, we'll see him hung by the week's end."
"We should burn his corpse after, you don't know how a witch like him might again rise."
Gurant roared in laughter. "My goodness, people like to gossip like idiots." People looked at him with suspicion and anger.
"What's it to you, old man?!"
"Oh, nothing, I just wonder, what would you say if you were wrong? And the boy was innocent?"
"Pfft… what does that matter, something or someone still abused their magic, that child would be released and free to practice magic at his leisure, while the rest of us struggle to put food on the table with real work." This was followed by a few muttered agreements from the others in their conversation.
"I'll hold you to those words." Haya said, as she glared at the man. He looked like he was going to say something, but a glare from Bergan caused him to look away.
"Tsk!"
Gurant and Faris's parents walked up the stares of a dilapidated building.
"You could have moved Gurant. Why do you still live here, you should make a good amount of money."
"True, but I don't want to be any further from my forge, besides, I had made renovations, in case a certain fool and his wife ever visited me. Funny how their son came to pay respects first. As it is, I had two free rooms, now I only have 1 free room. I don't know if you know my 'guests', but they know Faris apparently." He harrumphs as he opens the door. Despite the dirty exterior, the inside of Gurant's home was clean, very clean. Inside the room two children, a boy with dirty blonde hair and a girl with pure white hair, were playing. In the room quietly eating and conversing was a short-blonde woman and a black-haired, tired looking woman. The black-haired woman's fingers were bandaged, as were two of the fingers of the white-haired girl. The two women looked at Faris's parents, recognition slowly dawning as they approached them quickly and fell to their knees.
"Huh?! What?!" Bergan was taken aback.
"I… I'm so sorry, it's all my fault, it's all my fault what happened to your son" The black-haired woman exclaimed as tears began to fall from her face.
"Explain." Haya demanded, eyes turning cold.
"Actually…" A voice interrupted them. Walking into the room was a violet eyed teenager. "I think it's best if I explained." Elva said. At her side, Solembum in his humanoid form looked at the members of the room.
"Where's Angela." Haya demanded.
"She's getting help…"
In a quite round room sat two figures.
"I'm surprised you came here yourself Witch."
"I'm surprised you'd bare yourself before me, alone." Angela responded. "Tell me Jaya, why is your daughter not with you?"
Lord Jaya regarded Angela with his sharp, hawk like eyes before sighing, "She has become smitten with the boy this entire city's gone into a fuss about."
"Has she?" Angela raised an eyebrow. "I must confess, that is surprising, when you beseeched me for help after your foolish blunder, she was just a monster, craving blood and the pain of others. Such to the point that you've adjusted yourself to be able to still love and care for her. And now here she is, falling in love like a young maiden. How does the boy in question feel?"
"That's irrelevant. What does matter is the freedom of every mage in this city and nation."
"Does it? This feels more political than anything else." Angela sat back, "Faris is framed for a crime he didn't commit, and made an example and scape goat of, because he belongs to no faction yet, and has no real ties to royalty or nobility. Just being friends with those related to the nobility have nothing to do with him as a person, and thus unless he was marrying into a family, which his mother would disagree with immediately, he has no protection." She pointed to Jaya, "If you stepped forward to defend him, and put yourself at risk." He would socially be in your debt, regardless of his true guilt or innocence, and it would be unseemly for him to publicly go against you."
Jaya smiled, "As shrewd as ever, except I didn't frame him. Rembrant did."
"That magic fearing idiot?" Angela groaned.
Lord Jaya frowned. "Rembrant has a deep distaste for Faris born from when his son tried to kill him."
"Rembrant's… son tried to kill Rembrant?"
"You know who I'm talking about!" Jaya snapped. "As it is, Rembrant discovered a soldier garrison that was home to a gang of child traffickers. Enough evidence was gathered to determine that hundreds of children had died in there, and that Faris had entered there and killed men, their argument was that Faris was somehow under their employ, and as ridiculous as that sounds, Faris did something absolutely moronic."
"Which was?"
"He didn't report it. To anyone, He didn't report his findings, there are at least two dozen men at large who were partially responsible for those children's deaths, and yet we don't know where they are, or who they are, only that they are in the slums, and given that the majority of victims are in the slums, only a callous idiot would purge those areas, and I've already politically destroyed the bastards who'd even think of that sort of foolishness. Rather though, the woman of the ring leader and his daughter were captured, money being traced back to money extorted from the slums, and when the people couldn't pay, their children were taken." Jaya sighed, "The moron should have either killed them all and washed his hands, or captured them all and allow them to face condemnation, but he decided to be compassionate it seems." He handed Angela a paper. "Discounting Uglauw, the ring leader, everyone Faris killed was reported to either have no family or to have committed the worst of the crimes, while the others he let go, most of whom we don't have clear images of even with mind-reading the one idiot who turned himself in. And that idiot, who's the only word against Faris as he's in jail, states Faris was aware of the child trafficking plan, was part of the pay, and was simply tying up loose ends."
Angela lowered the notes, "All before he went unto a duel with Rembrant's son, nearly ending up with the boy and his squad being expelled, stripped of magic, then executed, then Rembrant being humiliated." She laughed, "And you mean to tell me the people believe this?"
"A person is intelligent, normally, but people have lives to live, and if they already fear what a mage can do, the idea that a child could slay two dozen men, despite what those men were, is terrifying." He closed his eyes and massaged his temple. "The worst is probably the fact that I don't fully understand what Rembrant's final goal is. If it was simply destruction of mage society. He needn't frame Faris, the boy faces an uphill battle defending the fact he killed citizens, criminal citizens, but citizens, without even a provisional state mage license or a warrant for investigation."
Angela sighed, Faris was likely still saddled with his guilt over Venka's parents, given what she was reading and what Rembrant stated, the school had heard his warnings of the gang, but he had still respected their rules keeping him from leaving premises for one month. "So… Rembrant," She began, "When he stated that he believed the extorters were dangerous elements, why didn't you act, or move it to the guards?"
Rembrant raised an eyebrow, "I did, it was handled by…" He paused, then grinned. "Bastards…"