“Keep him occupied while I talk to his spouse. Don’t let him leave,” Grandmother said softly to Ed as they walked down the hallway after Jeremy. Ed nodded his agreement.

  Jeremy knocked on an apartment door to alert his spouse to their arrival. Before he could open the door, it opened from within. A flash of anger crossed the face of the woman who opened the door, before she fully took in her spouse's tortured appearance. The anger disappeared as she recognized that he still struggled against his addiction.

  “Why are you back so early?” she asked with concern.

  “Umm…” Jeremy stumbled over his words.

  “I want to hire a woodworker,” Grandmother said. Jeremy’s spouse stepped back, startled. This woman recognized Irene. “Can we come inside?”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” she responded.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” Grandmother commented.

  “It’s Tessa,” Jeremy’s spouse responded as she held the door open for them to enter.

  The door didn’t completely shut behind them. Todd was holding it slightly open with his foot. The warrior was keeping a watch, both in the apartment and the hall outside. There was a soft child’s cry from the second room.

  “Is that your son?” Ed asked Jeremy. “Let’s go see the little tyke and let the women negotiate.” Jeremy was easy to convince. He led Ed through the connecting doorway, to the second room in the apartment.

  The apartment was almost completely empty. A handful of woodworking tools were carefully laid out on the top of a storage box. The box looked like it was crafted not found. A single larger tool stood between a small pile of wood planks and a stack of arrows. The arrows were fletched with feathers and were equipped with rat claw arrow heads. That made them a fairly high tier arrow. Grandmother was pleased.

  “Have you heard of the school?” Grandmother asked Tessa. “The Speedwell Academy?”

  “Who hasn’t?” Tessa replied.

  “My brother is the dean,” Grandmother explained. “They find themselves short of an instructor for woodworking. I told him I’d see if I could find someone.”

  “I’m only a journeyman,” Tessa replied. “Not even a craftsman.”

  “That doesn’t matter. The students are almost all novices. The school has a large library of spell books. If you find yourself stumped with a student, I am sure the library will be opened to you.”

  “I can’t leave my baby here,” Tessa said with a worried glance at the doorway to the other room. “I talked to the recruiter, even the child minder position required the employee to travel alone.”

  “Things are more stressed now. The introductory classes are over. The crafting classes are starting tomorrow. That means they are now willing to be more flexible. You can take your baby along. I warn you ‘the sickness’ is not tolerated there.”

  “I understand,” Tessa said.

  “The pay is forty silver for the winter session, it includes housing and meals for one. The pay will be reduced six silver per non-working family member to pay for their meals. As long as the non-working family members stay in the housing unit provided for the worker there is no additional charge for that,” Grandmother explained. “Are you interested?”

  “Can I think about it?” Tessa asked.

  “I’d like to have your answer now,” Grandmother said. “As I said, classes start tomorrow. If you don’t want the position I need to find someone else. If you accept, you’ll only have a couple hours to pack. You can only take what you can carry.”

  “Can I take my tools?” Tessa asked.

  “Yes,” Grandmother looked at the box. “If the box is integrated you can bring that too, but anything not integrated has to come out of it.”

  Tessa fidgeted. She picked up a wood hatchet that was sitting on the box top and turned it over in her hands.

  “No,” she said finally, “I can’t leave Jeremy. I love him.”

  That response, after the long tortured consideration, told Grandmother what she wanted to know. Jeremy was basically a good person. Ed’s testimonial won Jeremy this chance, but Ed himself was an addict not long ago. Everyone had a story about how they got the sickness that made it sound like it wasn’t their fault, but none of those stories were the whole truth. Bad things happened to good people, but they also happened to bad people. It was very hard to tell what the person underneath was really like once the addiction had them. If Tessa walked away from Jeremy without a glance back, Grandmother would have left the young warrior here. It would have been kinder, because she told the truth about not tolerating the sickness at the academy.

  “He can come with you,” Grandmother said. “I thought I explained. Your pay will be reduced by six silver for each non-working family member, so if you go with your partner and your child you’ll only get paid twenty eight silver for the term. If that is not enough pay for you, I’d encourage Jeremy to find work nearby.”

  “You said the sickness is not tolerated,” Tessa said.

  “It’s not,” Grandmother responded. “I will heal Jeremy of the sickness here, before we leave, but if he relapses and buys blue heals at the academy all of you will be ejected.” Tessa stumbled back, the ax grasped in her hands. Grandmother was a little worried the woman might hurt herself with it.

  “You can fix him?” Tessa asked. “He tries so hard, but he always goes back in the end.”

  “I can take away the physical craving, but there are habits that still have to be resisted,” Grandmother said. “If he goes back to it I don’t know if I could fix him again and I don’t want to find out.”

  “I’ll take the job,” Tessa said.

  “Ed,” she called in a louder voice, “can you bring Jeremy in here?” Ed emerged carrying a toddler, pushing a slow thinking Jeremy infront of him. Jeremy was saying something about taking the child.

  “No, my boy,” Ed said following the warrior. “I’d better hold on to the little tyke for a moment more. Actually I think you might want to sit down for a moment.”

  “Sit?” Jeremy asked.

  “Yes,” Ed responded. “I have a vague memory of a nasty fall.”

  Tessa took her spouse's hand and sat down with him against a side wall of the apartment. She talked quietly with him for a moment or two.

  “I am afraid this is going to hurt,” Grandmother warned as she stepped forward to cast the heal.

  “What?” Jeremy managed to say just before the spell hit. His body stiffened up and he passed out.

  “Jeremy?” Tessa asked uncertainty.

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  “That wasn’t bad,” Todd commented. “He’ll be fine in a minute or two.”

  “Are you sure?” Tessa asked.

  “It was much worse for Ed,” Todd said with a nod to the old warrior, who was tossing the toddler in the air. The child was giggling happily.

  “What happened?” Jeremy asked as he came around.

  “I healed you of the sickness,” Grandmother told him. “From here on out you can’t get heals from a blue healer. Do you understand? I won’t fix you again.” Jeremy was still a little dazed. He held out his hand in front of him. It was steady.

  “When are we leaving?” Tessa asked.

  “Three or four hours,” Grandmother said. “I want to pick up a few things. Don’t worry about food and water for the trip. The school will provide materials for your demonstrations and the student projects. I’ll carry your tools and the box, if it’s integrated.”

  “It is,” Tessa responded.

  “We’ll be back to pick you up,” Grandmother said. Ed handed the toddler back to his father and followed Grandmother out of the apartment.

  “What are we doing now?” Ed asked as the three of them headed down the stairs.

  “We’re heading to the shop,” Todd replied. “Then we’ll probably end up clearing the library again, if it’s still there. I know we’ll be picking up another copy of the chair you found.”

  “Can I borrow your shield?” Ed asked.

  After getting the request list from Eric, they headed straight out to the library. Todd loaned his shield to Ed before they made entry. They did a fast entry again, Grandmother threw the door open. Todd wedged it and stood ready, Ed stepped into the room and put his back against the wall on the opposite side of the doorway, bracing himself for the attack.

  A swarm of small gray bodies streamed down the shelves and across the floor. They ran through their legs and disappeared into the hall. They were earthen squirrels.

  Grandmother laughed.

  A latecomer ran right up Grandmother’s cloth armor. It circled around her body three times, searching each of her pockets. It sat on her shoulder and chittered angrily at her.

  “It’s your squirrel,” Todd exclaimed.

  “It can’t be,” Grandmother argued. “That was years ago and months of travel from here.” She freed her gathering bag from her belt and pulled her pack out of it. The squirrel kept running around on Grandmother the entire time. She fished a travel bar out of the pack and broke off a piece of it, giving it to the squirrel. The little animal accepted the food and ran off. It didn’t run out of the room like the others. Instead it ran over to a nearby ruined desk with a wooden top. Sitting on its haunches, it held the food in its front paws and started eating it.

  “Oh, that’s it,” Todd said. “You know the selkie call them nuisances.”

  “I’ve never seen them before,” Ed said.

  “We ran into them far to the south. They are kind of like the bats, they really shouldn’t be in this area.” Grandmother slipped the rest of the bar into a pocket on her armor. She swung her pack onto her back and hung the empty gathering bag from her belt, before retrieving her staff from where she left it just outside the room. “Let’s concentrate on getting the wheels and building a cart. I’m going to do a quick check to see if the spell ribbon is the same.”

  Ed kept watch while Todd started disassembling the first ladder. Grandmother flicked the light panel on and off and stared at the ceiling. She fed two more pieces of travel bar to the nuisance.

  “The spell ribbon is gone,” Grandmother said. “It might mean that there is something else in this room now.”

  “Should we do a complete search?” Todd asked.

  “I don’t know if we have the time for that,” Grandmother admitted, she paced twice, looking around the room. “I’m taking the books,” she stated.

  “Ed, help me with the desks,” Todd said, walking away from the half disassembled ladder. Grandmother might want to use it to gather the upper books. “It will be faster that way. We’ll have to be careful stepping in and out of the room. Maybe the nuisance will give us some warning if something else approaches.”

  They stripped the room. The nuisance liked it when restore ruffled its fur. It was sitting on one of the high shelves watching them. They didn’t find anything. Grandmother called it quits and put together a cart.

  “We need to hurry,” Grandmother said. “Tessa will think I forgot about her.” Todd pulled the wedge from the door and stepped into the hallway. A cry rose up from the nuisance. It ran down the bookshelves like they were the floor. Then it ran across the floor. It cleared the slowly closing door with plenty of time to spare and ran up Grandmother’s staff, across her arm and straight into the pocket that once held the travel bar.

  It didn’t come back out.

  The look on Grandmother's face was priceless. She pulled the pocket open and looked down at the little animal. It curled itself into a ball, with its fluffy tail wrapped around its body. Very gently she picked the ball of fur out of her pocket and set it down next to the discards from the room. Todd noticed that the discard pile was smaller than the last time he saw it, Grandmother must have picked a few things up when he wasn’t looking.

  The nuisance stretched, like it had been sleeping for an hour. It straightened the fur on its tail. Grandmother was slowly backing away. The animal stood upright on its hind feet, holding its hands tucked up on its belly. It ran up Grandmother’s leg and disappeared back into her pocket.

  Todd lost it. He was laughing so hard he was afraid a cougar was going to jump him, since he couldn’t keep his guard up. Ed must have experienced a similar thought because he was nervously checking in every direction.

  “I don’t want to hurt it,” Grandmother said, looking down at the bundle of gray fur.

  “I think it’s adopted you,” Todd said, when he finally got himself under control again. “Maybe it’s a gift from Control.”

  “Do you think it’s some kind of reward?” Grandmother asked. “Could we have completed a quest? We cleared the room, found the spell, learned it and returned to the room?”

  “If that was so, why didn’t I get one?” Todd asked.

  “True,” Grandmother responded. “Well it will get tired of me eventually. Let's gather the furniture and get back to the square.”

  They rolled into the square with a large load. Among other pieces they picked up another ‘copy’ of the plant. Grandmother added it into the shop inventory at the same high price as the first one. They still didn’t know what kind of plant it was and Grandmother didn’t really want to sell it. They dropped off a load of components, tools and a second large empty planter in the apartment, although Grandmother kept the wheels and books with her.

  Finally they returned to Tessa and Jeremy’s apartment.

  The door opened at Todd’s knock. The three of them, Todd, Ed and Grandmother, were in their entry configuration. Todd carefully scouted the young couple's apartment, before stepping aside for Grandmother.

  The apartment was empty now, except for the storage box and one large tool. Jeremy was carrying a large pack, while Tessa held their son.

  “What’s in the box?” Grandmother asked.

  “Tools,” Tessa replied. Grandmother pulled a large mouthed bag out of her backpack. She opened the mouth of the bag and casually pushed the box in. She followed up that impossible action, by pushing the large tool into the bag afterward. She rolled the top down and tied it off. She secured the small bag to her backpack and turned to find Jeremy and Tessa staring at her in astonishment.

  “It’s a perk,” she said in explanation. It was obvious the couple didn’t know what a perk was.

  They headed down to the courtyard. It was late in the afternoon. The market was closing up. There was still a large amount of guards at both ends of the hallway and milling along the length of it. This time Lucas was one of them.

  “Lucas,” Todd said in greeting to his cousin.

  “Todd,” Lucas responded. “I didn’t expect to see you until spring.”

  “Ben came up short on instructors,” Todd explained.

  “There are no craftsmen in Home Square?” Lucas asked.

  “Oh there are,” Todd said, “but none of them are interested in working for such low pay.” Lucas' eyebrows raised at that.

  “There’s been a lot of traffic through the backdoor lately,” Lucas commented.

  “I can see that,” Todd responded. “We ran into our butcher outside the market. I believe she was looking to buy a stuffed chair.”

  “She is organizing a caravan to take bulky items back to Home Square,” Grandmother inserted into the conversation. “I’m thinking about asking them to take Muriel’s plant back, but I’m worried about the stairs. Someone should come up with a solution for moving heavy, bulky loads up and down a stairwell.” Lucas decided not to comment on that development for now. Although he would have to go warn the regent later that a trading caravan was coming from Home Square.

  “How are my children doing?” Lucas asked.

  “Very good. Phil chose his magic color. It wasn’t blue,” Todd commented.

  “I’ll pass that on to his mother. She will be pleased,” Lucas said.

  “We need to get going,” Grandmother observed. “Tessa needs to get through orientation so she can start teaching in the morning.”

  “Of course,” Lucas said, with a wave of his hand at the blank wall.

  “Actually it’s over there,” Grandmother said, indicating the other wall of the hall and closer to the wildspace exit. “No, I don’t know why it moved.”

  “They move?” Lucas said, “I don’t remember that in the User Manual.”

  “Isn’t it?” Grandmother said. “They move, multiply and can have separate ones for different species. Although if guided through, any species can use any one.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Lucas replied.