Chương 51: [The Small Hand at Five]

The doors opened one by one along the terrace. Sam came out first from the house two doors down, hands in his pockets, and stopped on the pavement to wait. Behind him a tall deer-kin had to turn sideways to clear the frame, his antlers brushing the top of it anyway. He straightened up on the pavement and looked at the street without comment. Luka appeared from the next house along, a fox-kin a step behind him. She came out, looked both ways along the street, then moved as Growlie jumped the step into Luka's arms.

Parmo's door opened and an otter-kin leaned against the frame with her arms folded, looking at the sky.

"There's a bath inside the house," she said.

"Every house has one of those?"

"And a shower," Parmo said. She looked at the sky for another moment.

"Amazing." Phil was still waiting for his group to leave. He grinned as two guards from his group filed out with strange looks on their faces.

"Good tour?" Luka asked.

"Eventful," Phil said.

"Whoever owned that house was living a very interesting life."

"What do you mean?" Rika asked immediately. Phil looked at her. Then at Parmo. He thought about the gilf question. He thought about what had followed. He thought about the fifteen minutes after that.

"Nothing," he said.

"Just some stuff left behind. Anyway." He clapped his hands together.

"Pub. Lauren's probably wondering where we are." The two guards from Phil's group exchanged a look. Said nothing.

"PHIL! Why won't you tell me?"

"Pub," Phil said again, already moving. They hadn't made it to the end of the street before Rika was back at it.

"Was it something embarrassing?"

"Drop it Rika."

"I bet it was."

"We're nearly there." Parmo fell back slightly to walk beside Phil, a grin on his face. Phil looked at him.

"Don't," Phil said.

"I'm not saying anything."

"You've got a stupid grin." The grin widened. Rika looked between them both, then back at Phil, then gave up. She dropped back through the group until she reached the two guards from Phil's tour. One of them was a squirrel-kin, small, quick eyed, tail flicking behind her. Rika fell into step beside her.

"Lily, what did he find?" The squirrel-kin glanced at Phil's back, then leaned in and started talking. She stopped, quickly made a pushing motion then went back to talking. Rika's expression moved from curious to blank to something that wasn't quite either. The colour came up in her face fast, ears going back, wings pressing flat. She looked at Phil. Phil was already watching over his shoulder. He grinned.

"PHIL."

"Pub," he said, turning back around.

"That's a thing people actually use?"

"Pub."

"How does it even—""Rika." Shai's voice, flat and final, from somewhere ahead. Rika closed her mouth. Her face was still red. The squirrel-kin was looking very carefully at the pavement. Parmo caught up with Phil.

"How does it feel being on the other side of that?"

"I mean, I avoided having to explain so... Fantastic," Phil laughed. The King John's front door opened onto the bar. Lauren was behind it, already looking up when they came in, like she'd been listening for the door. She took in the group filing through behind the boys. Her eyes moved along the line, Shai, Rika, Torren ducking the frame, then the rest, one by one. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Right," she said.

"Corner's ready. Tables are pulled together, should fit everyone if you don't mind being cosy." She nodded toward the far corner where four tables had been pushed into a rough square, chairs arranged around the outside. A few other people were scattered across the pub, heads turning as the group moved through. A few nodded their heads at the group, the rest went back to eating and their conversations. Torren straightened up once he'd cleared the doorframe and looked around the room. He smiled at Lauren.

"It's good to see you again."

"You too," Lauren said.

"I'll come round for orders once you're settled." Mars had stopped just inside the door. Growlie had spotted the bar and was already nosing along the bottom of it, claws clicking on the flagstone floor.

"I hope you don't mind him, he's curious but he won't cause trouble," Mars said quickly. Lauren looked down at Growlie, then back at Mars.

"Is that a dragon?"

"He is, he's a juvenile. You can think of him as more of a pet dragon than one of the big ones your people seem to think of." Leo looked over.

"You know the movie, how to train your dragon?"

"Of course." She waited for a few seconds before it clicked.

"You mean he's like Toothless?"

"That's what he reminds me of at least, he acts more like a house pet than anything." Lauren looked down at the dragon.

"Well, aren't you just the cutest little killing machine?" Mars didn't know what to say to that, so he didn't say anything at all. She was already moving to pet Growlie. The group settled into the corner, chairs scraping, people finding spots. The pub noise picked back up around them. Orders went round the table in a loose wave, Lauren moving between them answering questions as they came. Drinks followed, a mix of whatever was left in the cellar and water for those who wanted it.

Growlie accepted a piece of bread from Lauren's hand and then sat at Mars's feet and went to sleep. The corner filled with noise. The village group talked amongst themselves, comparing notes on the houses, the television coming up more than once. Across the table the boys fielded questions where they could and let conversations run where they couldn't. A woman two tables over kept glancing across, caught Leo's eye once, looked away. A man near the door hadn't touched his food in five minutes.

Nobody came over or caused a fuss. The pub did what pubs do. Shai watched the room from her seat. After a moment she leaned toward Leo slightly.

"Were they told not to approach us?" she said.

"Mike asked people to give you space to settle."

"It's working." A pause.

"Mostly." The woman two tables over was looking again.

"I don't know if this is true for Stonehall but older people love to gossip. That woman who keeps looking over, you best believe her friends will know about this as soon as she leaves." Shai grinned.

"Yeah, some things must be true regardless of location." The door opened and Mike came in, Janet a step behind him. He scanned the room, found the corner, and made his way over. Someone shifted along to make room. He dropped into the seat, looked around the table at the assembled group, and nodded once.

"Good," he said.

"You all made it." He looked at Lauren.

"Whatever's going." Mike looked around the table, then out at the room. The woman two tables over was on her third look. The man near the door had given up pretending to eat.

"Right," Mike said, loud enough to carry.

"Anyone who's curious is welcome to listen. You're going to find out anyway." A few heads turned properly this time. Nobody moved closer but nobody looked away either. He turned back to the group.

"Wall and planting start today. Southern plains, both happening at the same time, construction on the edges while the crops go in the middle. The greenhouses are already up inside town, first things are in the ground." He paused.

"That's the immediate priority alongside training. Both need to move fast." He looked at Shai.

"My thinking was to split your group three ways. Some covering the southern plains while the building's going on, some watching the northern areas closer to the Wilds, and the rest starting training with our people. Does that work for you?" Shai nodded.

"I had the same thought on the way here."

"Good. For the training ground, we don't have anything suitable inside town. Too close to buildings, too many people around. I was thinking just outside the northern barricade." He leaned forward slightly.

"The guards watching the north can rotate in and out of training easily from there. If anything comes out of the trees the trainees come back inside while the bigger group deals with it."

"We wanted to confirm it with you before we started clearing the space properly," Janet added.

"We have equipment in town that might help set it up but no weapons or training gear." Shai shook her head.

"We brought everything. Training swords, dummies, the usual." Mike nodded.

"Then we start tomorrow morning."

"One more thing," Shai said.

"Magic." Mike looked at her.

"A few of the group have experience with human magic. Those of us from the Beast-kin race have a kind of innate magic that boosts our strength, reflexes, stuff like that. There are people from our race that can cast magic similarly to humans but it's rarer. Either way the magic we can teach is not the same as what your people have through the UI, but the fundamentals are the same. Mana, how it seeps into everything, how we have less ambient mana on the border than near the core." She paused.

"Anything we can teach will end up in your Codex."

"Good. That's what we were hoping. We didn't expect it to be as easy as you telling us how stuff works and all of a sudden we have a town full of archmages or anything like that." Sam said.

"For weapons it will be easier for us to train. We brought people with different specialities. Sword, bow, close quarters. Each trainer takes a group depending on what people want to learn." She glanced at the boys.

"You five will need to make a choice as well. We can work around whatever you've already been doing but it's better to have a focus early."

"We've had that conversation already," Phil said.

"Good. Then we start tomorrow, north of the barricade, first light." Mike looked around the table.

"Anyone have anything else?" Parmo leaned towards Shai.

"You still have Leo's watch. Mind giving us an actual time to meet? Oh fearless leader." Shai laughed.

"It's my watch, it was a gift. Right Leo?" Leo nodded, a smile on his face.

"And before you start giving me grief, how does when the small hand is here work for you?"She pointed to the 5 on the watch. Parmo's face, along with the rest of the lads at the table went blank.

"Man, this is going to kill me..." Grumbled Parmo.

"Anyone else?" Asked Mike. He got headshakes in response. He nodded once and reached for his drink. Around the table conversations started back up, quieter now. Across the pub the woman two tables over had finally gone back to her food. The man near the door was talking to someone beside him, gesturing toward the corner. Rika leaned across to Parmo.

"You going to be okay getting up in time?" she said.

"That's pretty early."

"It is but I'll be fine."

"Sure you don't want me to wake you up? I can fly up to your window and knock on the glass."

"Please, never do that." She looked at her drink then tutted.

"You're no fun at all."