“Damien St. Cloud.” They shook and he left Maria to her rest.
After yet another rejection he didn’t feel like working on the sword anymore. In fact he didn’t feel like staying in the tower. He needed to get out. Damien went to the stairwell and flew down to the sixth floor to see if Ann had finished her training for the day.
He knocked on her closed door and it opened a few seconds later. Ann smiled and leaned against the door frame. “Everything all right, Damien?”
“I need a change of scenery. Have you had dinner yet?”
“No, I just finished my lessons a little while ago. What did you have in mind?”
“Dinner at the Dancing Pony, my treat.”
She beamed. “A date with my favorite student, how lovely. Let me get my cloak.”
Damien started to say it wasn’t a date, but she had disappeared back into her apartment. She returned a moment later wrapped in a midnight-blue cloak. They left the tower and Damien flew them to the little town just down the road.
The founders, creative souls that they were, named the place Tower Town. Most of the commerce revolved around supplying the tower with everything it needed to function, mainly food and other mundane supplies. Several inns and taverns catered to the visitors that had business with the masters, along with sorcerers that got sick of the food in the dining hall.
When they landed in the packed dirt street just outside the Dancing Pony, the finest inn the village had to offer, no one spared them so much as a second glance. It spoke to how often sorcerers visited Tower Town that two people landing in the middle of the street didn’t rate so much as a pause in stride.
The Dancing Pony was a two-story inn with a dining room on the first floor and rooms for rent on the second. You could find a similar building in every town in the kingdom just about. Damien held the door for Ann then closed it behind them. Half a dozen people sat in the common room. They had beaten the dinner rush which suited Damien fine. He wasn’t much in the mood for noise or crowds.
A fire blazed in the fireplace taking the chill off the cool night. They found a table near the hearth and Damien helped Ann take her cloak off. The waitress came over to take their order then left them alone.
“So what’s the matter? You never want to go out.”
Damien slumped in his chair. “I’m sick of being turned down. Every sorcerer I talk to is unwilling to take a chance on me. What are they afraid of?”
“Some are afraid you’ll show them up, and others honestly don’t know how best to help you. You just have to be patient. Eventually you’ll find the right mentor.”
“I guess. Has anyone ever quit before? Just given up on the whole damn thing?”
Ann’s normally cheerful face went dark as she frowned. “A few quit every decade, moving on to work for merchants traveling through rough country, or going off to explore some distant corner of the kingdom, but most sorcerers consider it an honor to serve on the front lines, protecting the people. The ones that choose to leave the crown’s service still keep in touch with The Tower to remain in good standing with the government.”
“Yeah, I know about the ones that go into private service. I mean has anyone left it all behind, just vanished and made a new life having nothing to do with sorcery?”
“It’s not something we advertise, but it happens. Since the school’s founding less than ten sorcerers have vanished. Most left the kingdom, but there are a handful we’ve lost track of entirely. Those are the ones we fear the most. If they’re hiding it’s probably because they’re up to no good. The most recent was sixteen years ago, a young man named Connor Blackman fled ahead of a group of sorcerers coming to arrest him on charges of trafficking with demons. No one knows where he went after that. It’s like he just disappeared.”
They finished their meal in silence. Damien couldn’t stop wondering what would happen if he decided to run away. Would they send a group of sorcerers to kill him rather than let him go? It wasn’t the sort of thing he liked to think about. He understood the masters’ point of view. It would be horrible for all sorcerers to have a rogue running around doing whatever he liked.
After dinner they flew back to the tower and Damien walked Ann to her apartment. They stopped outside her door. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t very good company tonight.”
She smiled and patted his cheek. “That’s okay. Are you feeling better?”
“I’m not planning on running away if that’s what you’re asking. I’ll finish Jen’s sword and if I still haven’t found someone willing to take a chance on me, I’ll try to convince the high sorcerers to assign someone.”
Chapter 26
Damien focused on the edge of his sister’s sword. It was already sharp enough to shave with, but he wanted to get the edge a little finer, make it a little harder so it lasted longer. He’d been working on it almost nonstop for the last two months. The balance was flawless, the blade strong and flexible. It wasn’t as polished as Lizzy, but Damien didn’t think you’d find a better weapon anywhere in the kingdom. Even the fire drake talon he’d set in the pommel looked like it was meant to be there.
Fine grains of iron fell to the tabletop as he ran his soul force along the edge. He made ten more passes before he felt certain he couldn’t get it any sharper. He lifted the sword and wiped a cloth along the blade to remove any remaining iron filings. The hilt felt warm in his hand. According to the book that
