“Andyou told them where they came from?”
“Well… yes, of course.”
Suddenly, he had the feeling of having made a terrible mistake, which puzzled him. The orderkeepers were the guardians of order and justice, and things like that were their jobs.
Calder took a deep breath, looking at the door.
“Fuck. You dense green idiot!”
Calder’s harsh words took Kraghtol completely off guard, and he felt the need to defend himself. He knew his employer was a coarse man, but he had never been that rude to Kraghtol.
“What’s wrong? They are drunk. And the orderkeepers will get them home safely. Isn’t that a good thing?”
Calder breathed heavily now, barely controlled anger simmering in his eyes.
“No! Fuck, how can you be so stupid?”
Kraghtol was getting agitated now, too.
“If you don’t tell me what I did wrong, you can’t expect me to do it better next time, and —”
Suddenly, Calder slammed the bottle in his hand onto the counter, and it shattered. Shards of glass flew everywhere, and Kraghtol saw some red drops on the counter where blood was running down from a few cuts in Calder’s hand. The tavern owner was shaking with anger now, and he spat,
“Next time? You really think I will keep you here after you ratted out my patrons to the orderkeepers? Patrons who will gladly tell them about everything they have heard and seen here? Get your shit and get out! Now!”
The words hit Kraghtol like a slap to the face. For a moment, he was speechless. Then his mind started racing.
“But… but… I… I didn’t know. And…”
“I don’t care. I really don’t. I have to clean up this whole mess now before the fucking bloodjackets decide to come knocking, and it’s all because of you. What do you think the men you handed over to them are going to tell them? Everything and anything about my business, if it gets their heads out of the gallows. Or just out of pure spite. Get out already, and never come back!”
The tavern owner gesticulated wildly with the broken bottle, and drops of blood as red as the orderkeepers’ coats flew everywhere.
It was hard for Kraghtol to think. His brain was still trying to process the situation and his surroundings. He just wanted to help and hadn’t wanted to make anyone’s life more difficult. He had just done what he thought was the right thing. And now…
One look into Calder’s face was enough to tell him he didn’t have a choice. The other man was furious, and the half-orc didn’t want to make closer acquaintance with the broken bottle in his hand. With his head hung low, he gathered the few belongings from his room and looked back at the tavern owner one last time before stepping out into the night.
“You should clean and bandage the cuts. It’s going to be nasty if they get infected.”
Calder just answered with a rude gesture, and Kraghtol stepped outside, closing the door behind him. He was surprised to feel tears swell in his eyes and fought them back down. He certainly had notexpected to be back on the streets so quickly again. Where should he go now?
He ended up mostly wandering around the narrow and stinking streets of Oldport for hours, kept awake by the ever-turning wheel of his thoughts. Staying in the worst part of the city was risky, but at least here he didn’t have to worry about running into an orderkeeper patrol at night.
It was pure coincidence that he ran into the alchemist’s guild’s messenger on his way back into the central part of the city in the early morning, who handed him the letter penned on fine white paper; the answer of the guild. As his eyes scanned the few lines, his heart sank to his stomach, heavy as a ball of lead. It was a rejection without proper reason, coated in official-sounding words and signed by the local guild master. There was no place at the alchemists’ school for him.
Chapter 4
In Darkness
“Dear Mr. Wulfspar,
We have received your application and regret to inform you that we have to reject your request to join our prestigious institution. The Alchemists’ Guild is bound by ancient laws and traditions, and we cannot make exceptions to those rules. We are certain that a person of your intellect understands the importance of upholding this framework, and we wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
Yours sincerely,
Local Winterstone Guild Master Thalen Virex”
Kraghtol had read the brief message at least a hundred times now, and it still felt like the paper was on fire and burned his hands. The letter didn’t mention his ancestry or any other good reason at all, but he was reasonably sure that there could be no other reason. Mrs. Urdson didn’t even know much more about him than that. This was just unfair.
