capable of taking things forward.
“Your services will no longer be needed,” she said, dropping her file in the trash can next to her desk. “Feel free to keep the advance you were offered. The Guild was quite willing to provide the funds needed to cover that.”
“Get out,” the man added.
I leaned back in the chair, rocking on the back legs. All three were watching me, waiting for me to say something
“Nah.”
Dr. Lambros blinked. “What?”
“To be honest,” I said, “if you ’d just asked me to leave, said you’d found someone else, just keep the money and thanks for coming by, I might have taken you up on it. This is going to be a pain in the ass and I’d much rather just go back to a bar and spend a rich man’s money.” I locked eyes on the Wizard. “Buuuuuut ya didn’t. You had two of them waiting for me, waiting to put the Sorcerer in his place. Even went so far as to let them pay to make me leave.
“ Like I said already, I’ve already been hired. I don’t trust your boss as far as I could throw him, but I believed him when he said he hated the Guild.” I pointed at her. “Maybe he knows about this, maybe not, but either way, he selected me.”
I got up. “Right now, I would pay to keep this charter. Now if you will clear the doorway, I have last minute preparations to make before we head for the Walter Cloud.”
Dorne leaned forward, towering over me. He stared me down and suddenly there was a pressure right in the center of my head. It caught me by surprise, took me aback so much that for a moment it actually worked. I hadn’t realized it, but he had been looking Deeper the entire conversation, looking for a crack in my mind.
And now he was digging into it, like a man digs a crowbar under a rock.
It was an amateur move, or would have been if he knew what he was doing. Mental magic was subtle, but the very act of creating a partition and preparing the mind to use magic built up defenses. I may not have been able to use my magic, but those defenses remained.
That’s how the Guild thought. If you weren’t with them, they thought you were an uneducated moron, an ape that knew a few tricks. If they ever actually got off their high horse and paid attention, they’d realize how dangerous a person who’d had to figure out everything on their own could be. You would have thought they’d learned that lesson from the war with Ander.
I focused on an image, one of the gargoyles that lined the walls of my keep, the one that stood right over the gate. He was a big bastard, the size of a gorilla, made all from purple marble. He had leonine features, shimmering scales, and massive, shovel like talons.
It turned its head, focusing on the intrusion. Keen, glowing white eyes peered out from under a heavy brow. “Get out,” the beast said in a voice that was like two mountains rubbing together.
Then it reared back a stone fist, and socked the Wizard right in his mind.
He fell to one knee, dropping his staff as he did so. “That was rude,” I said as he searched for his staff. I kicked it aside, ignoring the obvious shock on the doctor’s face. “Next time, I’ll be rude back.”
I looked at the other Wizard, but she just shrugged. “It was rude.”
“Virgil McDane,” I said, holding out my hand. “I think we’ll get along just fine.”
She took my hand it a strong, calloused grip and smiled. “Tiffany Norwood. I think so too.” Then she moved to help Dorne up. “Come on Conrad, let’s put some ice on that thick skull of yours.”
They left, but not without one hell of a bad look from Dorne. I wouldn’t be able to do that twice.
I picked up the chair and slammed it down in front of the good doctor’s desk. I sat down and leaned forward, clasping my hands in front of me. “Now, Dr. Lambros, how about we see if we can start off on a better foot?”
To her credit, she had kept her composure quite well. The situation had obviously not played out as she wanted, but she was
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