There were still a few hours before I’d have to show up for the tourney, so I wasn’t exactly worried about missing my next match just yet. As a matter of fact, I was somewhat hoping I would. The competition really was quite fearsome, and if I was declared a no-show it would at least save me an arse kicking.

  Assuming Gruin didn’t…bugger, I’d better make sure I wasn’t declared a no-show after all. If the Grynkori lost money on me he might well just beat me to death with his bloody hammer on the spot. Fortunately I wasn’t delayed much in meeting with the Thaumaturge, and Wyrickai’s laboratory soon opened up around me like the mouth of hell.

  Perhaps fortunately, the Thaumaturge was nowhere to be seen at first. I was too pissed off to just wait around idly, instead killing time by moving my way around the laboratory and fucking with things. Not intentionally of course, just poking and prodding out of curiosity, then quickly recoiling when anything reacted.

  I probably looked like some barbarian, the way I was acting. Staring exclusively at things beyond my comprehension and making no serious effort to understand them, as much as probe them with a distant, superstitious hesitance. I didn’t manage to blow myself up, though, which was something. Not before the Thaumaturge returned at least.

  “Stop fucking around with my things,” he snapped. There is a very particular response that hearing any Thaumaturge yell at you inspires in a person, and I was, if anything, rather more susceptible to it than most. Don’t mistake my slight toughening up for any level of courage, the fires of the underworld itself couldn’t burn out my yellow streak.

  “Sorry,” I replied instantly, then tried to straighten up in as dignified a way as was possible. There aren’t many options in that regard when you’re pincered between pants-shitting fear and a head-splitting hangover, but we work with the tools we have. The Thaumaturge did not give any indication that he either noticed or cared.

  “Do you know why I’ve called you here?” he spat, “tell me that much, at least.”

  “I…” I did not, and my normally instinctive response of lying seemed suddenly unwise here. What if the Thaumaturge could see through deception? I’d heard they could do that, and any number of other things.

  Indeed, I suspect you, reader, have probably heard that as well, right? The Thaumaturges have worked very hard to ensure that everyone has heard that particular tidbit, as well as an infinite variety of others that they deemed would benefit them to become common knowledge at some point. Sneaky fuckers, are the Thaumaturges.

  But that’s the knowledge of a wiser man than our hero. Or an older one, at least. I suppose wise men find better uses for their time than writing long-winded accounts of how they deserved to suffer more in their own youth, don’t they?

  Anyway, the idiot I was back then didn’t know any of this, and as far as I was concerned the fear of having my mind read like a book was very much real. It doesn’t help that some Thaumaturges can pull off tricks similar to that, either, and knowing me at the time I’d have doubtless acted similarly out of sheer paranoia even if I’d known the full truth.

  “I don’t,” I replied honestly. It was not exactly pleasant to see the Thaumaturge’s mocking sneer at that, but given that I was still under the impression I may have been turned into a snake if I’d lied to him it was far from a negative outcome as far as I was concerned.

  “Then you’re an idiot,” the Thaumaturge cheerfully continued. “Then again, no surprise there.”

  Apparently there was a group of people who thought more highly of themselves than the merchants, and they were the Thaumaturges. I was actually scared to have that thought of course, on account of my mind-reading paranoia.

  “Do you plan on telling me why I’m here?” I asked, temper boiling up at the constant mockery. Not, of course, enough to have me actually back-talk the Thaumaturge, even if resisting that particular urge was a closer effort than I’d have liked. Alcohol and pain were not a good combination.

  The Thaumaturge actually looked like he was considering the question, but I got my answer within a few seconds.

  “Have you come to a decision about what you’ll do, knowing now that you have the Knack?”

  I actually hadn’t really thought about that much. You’re probably baffled by this, maybe scratching your head and struggling to even comprehend how I could have neglected so obviously important a thing.

  The answer is the same one you’re probably used to hearing by now; I was an idiot. Somehow I’d still let myself keep the habit of not thinking about the important things in my life. If something wasn’t an imminent problem, then it wasn’t a problem at all.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  So you can imagine how flat-footed I was by this question.

  Flat-footed, and worried, because if I told the Thaumaturge that I’d not been taking his very serious question seriously, and was now wasting his time as a result…well, I imagined he’d be madder than he would at a lie. Which will help you understand what I said next.

  “Of course I have,” I replied with so great a bluster that it almost had me believing it for a second. “I will be pursuing the magical arts, and have already started looking into how exactly I might go about becoming a Thaumaturge myself to make use of this ability.”

  I knew then that the Thaumaturge Wyrickai did not, in fact, have the ability to read my mind. Either that or he was not in the habit of obliterating bare-faced liars when they fed him bullshit without the slightest hesitation, guilt or self-consciousness. Not such an unlucky day after all.

  “And you’ve spoken to other Thaumaturges in search of tutors?” he asked me. Something about how he did gave me pause, though.

  When you happen to be a pathetic, cowardly, snivelling liar slowly building an ever more unstable tower of deception underfoot, you tend to learn how to read other people. Either that, or you get hanged for fraud. I didn’t live as long as I have by giving up the game in my youth, let me tell you.

  In this case, I noticed very quickly that I was being asked a probing question. Wyrickai was just too casual about the way he phrased it, to an obviously forced extent. He was trying to keep me from reading into his inquiry, and that meant that it mattered a good deal to him. But why?

  Because he felt some way about me getting into the Thaumaturgy business? No, he hadn’t blinked at me revealing I was planning on it. He felt some way about how specifically I did so. That had to be it. He was hoping I’d…what?

  The answer seemed obvious enough.

  He’d met what he knew was someone with a very promising career in his field, and he wanted to be the one to ‘discover’ me. He thought that he could ride my coattails as I advanced among the Thaumaturges of the world, and bolster his own reputation through connection to mine.

  On the one hand, the idea of having him trying to soak up credit for my own abilities was rather offensive to me. On the other, I was still fairly sure that I might just be blown to pieces if I pissed him off. It did not take me long to do the obvious calculations.

  “Not yet,” I said, again slowly, cautiously. I tried to make myself sound as if I were just waiting to weigh offers, to disguise my obvious fear with cautious business-mindedness. I really can’t say how successful that attempt was, but at the very least it didn’t inspire any action from the Thaumaturge. I waited for him to say what he had inevitably come here to say.

  “And what if I offered you the chance to study under me?” he asked.

  Years later, I would regret this conversation as having truly fucked me. Without the first idea what a going rate was for this kind of arrangement I was left to flounder in the dark while he low-balled me at his leisure.

  Even I knew it, at the time, and so it was with something of a frustrated streak that I readied to answer, then paused. So far the Thaumaturge hadn’t been acting as if he knew what was going on in my head…

  “I’d rather not give away that information,” I told him flatly, “it’s rather personal to the ones whose offers I’ve been sent.”

  His face looked like it was convulsing at that, just as I’d hoped. I wasn’t left waiting for long before Wyrickai spat out his own offer out of sheer desperation.

  “I can offer you a grain a day and housing in my tower.”

  A grain a day almost had me laughing outloud, and I took my sweet time in just processing the offer.

  “How the shit am I supposed to afford that?” I blurted out.

  Confusion danced across the Thaumaturge’s face, then realisation. I realised, too, a moment later, that he’d been offering a grain a day in fees for me to receive, not give. Too late.

  He smiled.

  “Well I can accept as little as ten grains a day, given your talent.” I considered arguing, but knew the jig was up. I’d given away that I had no idea what sort of offers would be acceptable here, and by extension that I’d been lying about receiving any others. He knew he wasn’t competing with any Thaumaturges.

  I wonder, as an older man, why it was he didn’t fear that I might be pilfered out from under him by a better offer yet to be made, but realise he was probably hoping to bind me into a contract before one could come. He certainly acted hastily after that.

  “Unless you’d sooner keep yanking me around and lying than give me the courtesy of either accepting or declining an offer?” he added. There was a not-so-subtle note of menace in his voice that motivated me to respond quickly, and unwisely.

  I was young, then. What more can I say?

  By the time I got out of that office I’d already been ‘invited’ back the next day to sign myself into apprenticeship, and was left to chew on what had now become an imminent problem as I walked. I came eerily close to missing my own fight, but fortunately made it by a good ten minutes despite everything.

  Had I known exactly who I’d be facing off against, I might have been deliberately late. Gruin eagerly greeted me in the stands while Devyne practically swooned at my entrance. The crowd was more enthusiastic still, repeating my name so regularly and loudly that it stopped sounding like a word anymore.

  My opponent didn’t get quite the same amount of fanfare, but he didn’t seem to care either. He was a few inches shy of my height but a good deal broader, maybe five years my senior and looking hard as a statue. He carried his sword like he knew what to do with it.

  I knew what to do with mine of course, and maybe I looked as intimidating as him. Though it’s hard to imagine any man in his teens being half the sight of one in his twenties. I wasn’t given long to ponder that, either, because the match’s start was called soon enough, and we closed.

  One exchange of swings, and I already had his measure. This was not a good thing.

  It told me within a second that I was the inferior fighter.

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