Wizard of Jatte by Rowan Erlking (librera reader txt) 📕

“You can’t just say you are a guild!” The burly man shouted from across the way. He stossed the leftovers of his meal onto his fire with disgust. “You have to register with an established guild, then set up business under their jurisdiction.”

Theissen made a face, though the others stared at the man with dismay.

“We have to?” Karo frowned.

Teppan cringed with two of his other former birdmen. “Under them?”

Shaking his head, Theissen snorted. “I don’t believe anyone has to do anything just one way. I don’t see why we can’t form our own guild. We can call it the Jadorin Forest Liaison Guild. JFLD. What do you think?”

He looked to Theobold. The birdman laughed. His eyes watched the amazed expressions of the other travelers that spied on them.

“I prefer two guilds,” Dobbis said, patting his bag of demon feathers they still had to sell.

Karo narrowed his glare at him. “You still think you are better than us! Don’t you!”

The former birdman snorted, looking away. “I don’t need your help selling our feathers. We’ve already sold several in the last village.”

Hopping to his feet, the former molemen prepared to smash Dobbis into the ground, clenching and unclenching his fists, though his pants started slipping again. However, Karo pointed at Theissen. Theissen was watching with disinterest.

“Need us?” Karo snapped. “You’re only talking like that because he is around. You wouldn’t sell one feather if the wizard weren’t here with you!”

“Don’t talk like you’re all savvy and superior.” Another former mole man shouted with him. “We’re waiting for our market in Jattereen. Then we’ll outsell you! Our ores and stones are worth hundreds of times more than those feathers you are selling!”

“Why you dirty, ignorant, stunted—” Dobbis’s face flushed to a bright red.

But he was not able to finish his list of epithets. Theissen abruptly had stirred up a wind, knocking them all back on their rumps. It even whipped up the fire into a swirling blaze that singed their eyebrows.

 “One guild,” Theissen said with a stern look on all of them, once the wind calmed down. “Not two. Now quit bickering.”

He sat down and finished his tea. The others stared, including those people from other camps who had seen the blaze light up Theissen’s tall figure like a beacon. Theissen had the look of a harried babysitter, though his body stood firm with power none had noticed in him before.

The distant conversation reduced to whispers while even more faces turned towards them.

“Well now, since we’re exposed and all that, I think I’ll go for a fly about.” Theobold stood up.

Theissen cast him a worn look. “Must you?”

Smirking, Theobold nodded. “I’ve been aching to stretch my wings, and I reckon now that no one around us is in doubt of what you are, there is no harm in being myself. Ta. Ta.”

His wings extended broad in a stretch out from under his robe through the slits. He launched into the sky with a push and a flap, only looking down once to enjoy the stir it made below.

Calling up, Theissen cupped one hand around his mouth. “Hey! Be careful of the city watchmen! I don’t want you to get shot!”

“I’ll be fine!” Theobold’s voice called down.

Scowling, Theissen shouted back. “But I don’t want to have to heal you!”

A cackle responded, but soon echoed out of hearing range.

“Show off,” Ronen murmured, though Daanee giggled. She leaned against his chest affectonately.

Theissen gave them both a smirk, mildly annoyed at how indiscrete their affection for each other had become. His mother would have called them hasty and immodest.

“Leave him.” Theissen cleaned out the last of his mint tea then dumped the dregs out. “We should all be getting sleep anyway. Theobold will probably keep look out for us from above.”

“You think that was his plan?” a former moleman asked.

Just smiling in response, Theissen walked over to the cart’s wheel and rested his back against it. It might not be a comfortable way to sleep, but he felt most comfortable having firsthand knowledge that the carts were not being stolen or tampered with. Touching it gave him that advantage.

“Good night.” He murmured.

Those around him echoed him slightly.

Most in his camp still mused over the last quarrel. A guild? Would they have to form one? Or would the established guilds give them trouble if they did? They all looked towards Theissen again. Their wizard. He was the only thing stopping from them from running back to the forest and living like beggars under the mercy of the merchants they had traded with before. He was the only one who could make their future work. They had to stick by him.

Theobold had returned and nested on top of one of the carts late that night. When they awoke the following morning, it was clear that everyone around them had watched them, sleeping with one eye open. There was a defined empty space between their camp and all the others as everyone had scooted away in the night.

“Look! The gates are opening!” One of the former molemen shouted, pointing.

Their group lifted their heads, turning with eagerness at what would begin the last stage of their journey. After they passed through Dhilia City they would be on the road to Jattereen City, and then to establishing themselves as a business.

Raising his head, Theissen looked also, though not before gesturing to pull up dirt while standing above the fire, attempting to smother it with the earth around it and under it. Most of the merchants around him inched away.

“Look at that,” Theissen murmured before he turned to Karo. “Alright, you keep track of your fellows, and I’ll have Theobold watch the carts with you.”

Karo glanced at Theobold with a side look. Then he peered at Dobbis. He nodded to Theissen. It seemed that the real birdman was more tolerable than the former one.

“And you,” Theissen said to Dobbis with a sterner look in his eyes, “keep track of your fellows and your merchandise. Remember that a city is full of people, especially thieves. Because you all look foreign, they’ll assume you are naïve. So, keep a hand on your pockets and money pouches.”

“Are you going to guard our backs?” Teppan asked, watching the others around them with shifty eyes darting here and there as if every soul would now rob them.

But Theissen, as usual, shook his head with exhaustion, inching towards the front of their group. “No. I’m leading us through and out. We want to leave the city before nightfall and be heading out towards Jattereen by tomorrow.”

“It shouldn’t take that long,” Theobold said sliding off the top of one cart, then hop to the ground. He pointed up the hill where every merchant and cart went. “Last night I scouted ahead. If we stay on the main road and go through the city center on the left over there, we’ll hit the bazaar. It was pretty active at night. But I have a feeling it will be more active in the daytime. Anyway, I guess it will take at the latest five hours to go through to get to the other side.”

“Maybe you want to lead.” Theissen nodded to him approvingly. “You know the route.”

Grinning, Theobold bowed back as his feathers fluffed happily. “My pleasure.”

“Ok, I’ll guard the back!” Theissen practically skipped to the end of their caravan, waving for the others to move ahead. He touched the sides of the cart flaps to make sure they were secure and tight as he passed by.

Theobold nodded again then marched to the front. The others filed in between wondering what had gotten into their wizard.

A merchant passing by said to Karo with a slight huff, “That’s plucky of you, having a demon as your leader and a wizard for your rearward. Where did you find those characters?”

“And how much do they charge?” the tin merchant asked with a passing wink as his donkey cart rattled past. His ting things banged and clanged together like a newfangled musical instrument. He had just about anything made out of tin hanging on hooks under a covered hood.

Karo did not smile. He gestured for his men to push well and hard on their carts, giving only a passing look to the merchants that walked inside the city gates with them.

“Not plucky,” someone in their group said with a snicker.

“No,” replied another former moleman. “Plucky is the wrong word. I’d call it serendipitous.”

“Perhaps advantageous,” another murmured.

“I like the word auspicious,” Daanee said with a giggle.

“You would, but auspicious does not fit it right. How about, lucky?”

“That’s the same thing.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Yes it is.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Don’t argue with me. It is the same.”

Exhausted from exasperation as the former molemen bickered among themselves like they always had, the merchants continued on by. Theissen had listened in with a smirk, thinking back to the first day he had met them. Though their forms had changed to human, their personalities were still the same.

Going straight through the bazaar was like entering a maze full of traps. Besides being a bustling place full of noise, bright colored wares and clanging bells run by merchants to catch their attention—just as Theissen predicted—the thieves seemed to pounce on their carts like rats to a bread crust tossed in a gutter. Kids ran under them, hoping to trip up the wheels and the members of the caravan. But Karo and Dobbis both kept to their charge to keep track of their people so no one was tripped up long enough to end up lost. Of course, Theissen kept his eyes out not only for what was following them, but also on what surrounded them. Half the time Theissen used his magic to trip up thieves, clear out barriers in the road set up by barterers and merchants to catch their eye, even stirring up winds to blow away tent covers so that the merchants were distracted enough to leave them alone. Of course this left a wake that had heads turning.

It took three hours to pass entirely through the bazaar, leaving most of their troubles behind. The rest of the journey towards the northern gate took only an hour. When they had turned another corner and the road opened up so they could see the gates ahead, the group almost cheered. Theobold called to the ones behind him for them to hurry so they could be outside and back on their way towards the future. Theissen echoed the sentiment from behind. All were eager to comply. Unfortunately, at a hundred yards from the gate in the middle of the cobblestone road stood what looked like a line of huge people as if they made up a wall. One of them was a well-dressed man, possibly a magistrate of some power within the city. The rest were thug-like constables, each one harassing the passersby as they attempted to exit the city.

“What are you selling?” The magistrate gestured with a shiny mahogany gentleman’s cane to the packs on the former birdmen’s backs and then at the carts. The head of the cane was a carved wolf, not unlike this man’s ferocious visage. His own beard of hair ran down in chops in front of his ears, going to his chin. All of it stood out a bit as if he had purposefully rubbed something into his hair to keep it from moving in the wind.

Theobold pulled back from him with an aloof expression in his eyes, glancing at the constables with an ironic sigh as the gates were just beyond them. “Nothing. We are just passing through to go to Jattereen.”

Narrowly eyeing him, the magistrate snorted, lifting his nose at Theobold’s unusual but dusty clothes. “Really? Well, didn’t you know there was a toll for going through the city?”

“A toll?” Theobold blinked at him without even a tinge of