Return of the Runebound Professor

“I could get some Catchpaper, yes. I’m not doing it for free, though,” Karina said.

“Is stealing my room and potentially bringing assassins to my doorstep not enough?” Noah asked. “You said you’ve got enemies. That means there’s a chance we have to fight against other parts of the Linwick family and potentially involve ourselves in your issues.”

“That’s just protecting your self-interests,” Karina pointed out. “If I’m dead, I can’t get you into any auctions and you get nothing useful out of me.”

Noah scrunched his nose. Karina wasn’t wrong, but he didn’t like her. No matter what she said, the woman was manipulative and had tried to kill him twice already. The only person that was allowed to kill him was himself.

“What do you want?” Noah asked. “And choose carefully. If I need to, I can just gather the money and buy Catchpaper myself.”

“I want you to promise to break our courtship,” Karina said. “And I want you to do it soon. Your previous promise was basically just that you’d let me live and that you might look into it – I want you to swear that you’ll actually break the courtship – and in a way that doesn’t end with me dead.”

Noah tapped his fingers on the side of his leg. Getting something from Father was risky. The farther away he was from Father, the safer things felt. Waltzing straight up to him and asking to annul whatever deal had been struck to marry Vermil to Karina was likely a fast track to getting himself wrapped up in another one of Father’s schemes.

I’ve already got too much on my plate. I need to finalize the modifications to Natural Disaster, figure out who was screwing with the exam, discover who controlled Evergreen’s construct and determine what their goals were, learn Formations, replace Lee’s Runes, and deal with the damn demon in my head. And on top of that, I need to help Moxie get out from under the Torrin’s thumbs and make sure Todd and Isabel keep learning and growing.

With any luck, I can knock out a lot of those things over what looks to be Arbitage’s summer break – but adding another confrontation with Father to the list is the last thing I want to do right now.

“I don’t think I can promise that,” Noah said, shaking his head. “I’m not in a position where I want to butt heads with Father again. There are too many drawbacks for a reward that isn’t worth more than a few hundred gold.”

“But–”

“Don’t get the wrong idea. It isn’t that I enjoy torturing you by keeping you stuck like this, but there is way too much I need to do. Approaching Father means that I’ll almost certainly end up getting pulled into a plot that I want nothing to do with. I’d imagine he knew I’d react like this, which is why he passed the problem onto you.”

Karina gritted her teeth and nodded. “He did. I can’t just leave things as they are, though. As long as we’re betrothed, Father has power over me. The moment I make any moves, he can step in and claim that I was acting on his behest, since I’m part of his family branch in all but name. My hands are tied until everything is broken off.”

“Have you considered just relaxing and letting up on the politics? You could focus on getting stronger and improving your Runes until the time eventually came that I could get around to dealing with this. It’s not like I want to be betrothed to you.”

“I’ve already wasted a year because of you,” Karina snapped. “I don’t want to lose even more time. My rivals are all pulling ahead, and where I should have emerged to join Father, he instead betrayed me and now my only avenue is to find a way to get out of this whole mess.”

Noah held his hands out helplessly. “I’m sorry, but I won’t risk things as they are.”

“What if I increased the reward?” Karina asked desperately. She swallowed, as if regretting her words.

“How?” Noah asked.

“You need powerful Catchpaper, right?”

Noah nodded.

“I read about the artifacts in my family’s catacombs while I was in seclusion. One of them is a powerful grimoire that used to belong to a Rank 7 mage. I did some research and I found records of it. All the Runes were removed and taken to study, but the grimoire is still there. From what I read, nobody has actually figured out exactly how many pages it has. There’s some sort of strange Imbuement on it. It’s basically infinite Catchpaper and, as far as we can tell, it’s completely indestructible.”

Noah’s eyebrows rose. “Okay. That does catch my attention – but I see two pretty obvious issues with this. First, how are we going to get into your family catacombs without bringing them all down on us? And second, if this grimoire was that powerful, why is it just sitting around? I’d imagine someone would be using it.”

Karina adjusted her position and grimaced. “It’s apparently a bit finnicky. I had difficulty finding exact information about it, but there’s something off. But, still. Even if the grimoire is strange, it’s an infinite source of Catchpaper. That’s invaluable, right?”

“You didn’t answer how we’d actually get it,” Moxie observed. “It does nobody any good if we all end up dead in the process.”

“My parents are both main branch,” Karina said, pressing a hand to her chest. “They basically abandoned the rest of our family when they got the opportunity to join it. That means I’ve got a lot of leeway with what I can do. It shouldn’t be too hard for me to get us in, and considering how old the records were, I don’t think anybody cares about the grimoire anymore.”

“That’s definitely not suspicious,” Noah said dryly. “An old grimoire that has infinite Catchpaper, but is somehow odd? If that’s the only problem with it then I’d imagine someone would have taken it already. Catchpaper is too expensive. You’re missing something.”

“To a noble family, it’s possible its value would be lower,” Moxie said after a moment. She pursed her lips in thought, then shrugged. “Catchpaper isn’t usually a big problem for anyone with a powerful family. Gold comes easily when you’re already rich. There’s a chance that this might be useful.”

“Of course it is,” Karina snapped. “So? Is that enough for you?”

Noah grunted. “How about this. If it is what you say, then yes – I’m very interested. But, at the same time, I’ve still got work to do. How about this: give me a month to handle what I’m already working on. After that, I’ll meet back up with you and we can go find your grimoire. If it is what you say, then I’ll immediately go deal with Father.”

Relief flashed in Karina’s eyes and she nodded quickly, her shoulders relaxing as weight seemed to lift from her back. “A month. Yes, I can work with that.”

“In the meantime, you should figure out if there are any of those noble auctions coming up,” Noah said. “I think we’re going to have quite a bit of money after we gather things from all the monsters we’re about to kill.”

“Fine. Rune Oath?” Karina asked, but Noah was already shaking his head.

“No. I won’t do those for everything. You hold your end of the bargain up and I’ll hold mine. If you don’t trust me, then find a different way to solve your problems.”

Karina chewed the inside of her cheek, then sighed. She rose to her feet and brushed her pants off. “Fine. One month. Where will I find you?”

“No clue,” Noah admitted. “Where are your family catacombs? The Linwick Estate?”

“No. They’re about three days of travel to the north. They’re at the base of a small mountain called Whiterock. There’s a small village its base that’s easy to find.”

“Then I’ll meet you there in a month,” Noah said.

Karina nodded. She paused and, for a moment, it looked like she was about to ask a question. Then she thought better of it and strode out the door, slamming it shut behind her. Lee let out a huff.

“She doesn’t seem very happy.”

“You don’t say,” Noah said wryly. “All things considered, I think that about as well as it could have. Breaking the engagement is the best thing that both of us can do, though. If it was easier, I’d just do it now.”

“Just be careful dealing with Father,” Moxie warned. “Although I suppose I don’t have to tell you that.”

“I’ll keep my guard up. We’ve gotten really sidetracked, though. What do we want to do during the break? There’s a pretty big laundry list of stuff to accomplish.”

“We should start by getting Lee’s Runes fixed, which means we need money. After that…” Moxie shrugged, then gestured vaguely around herself. “I don’t know. Maybe we can just work on getting stronger until we meet Karina.”

“That works for me, although I’d also like to try to figure out what the hell was happening during the exam,” Noah said, chewing his lower lip. His brow furrowed and he shook his head. “Honestly, it just doesn’t make sense. When Edward and Allen were trying to sabotage the kids, it made sense. But it didn’t feel like they had anything to do with this one.”

“They’ve been avoiding just about everyone, from what I’ve heard. You never know, but I agree. I don’t think they were responsible for this. I don’t even know where to start on finding out who was, though.”

Several silent seconds passed as the three all pondered the exam, all trying to figure out if they could spot any connections. The only ones that came to Noah were Evergreen’s imposter and the Rank 6 mages that had started fighting in the middle of the exam, but neither of them had any link to Isabel and Todd.

Worrying about the Rank 6s is probably a lost cause. Tenfort didn’t know who the bald guy was, so I suspect nobody does. Whatever they were doing, it didn’t seem like it was related to the kids. Damn. I’ve got absolutely no leads.

And, as the three of them sat there in deep concentration, there was a firm knock on the door. Noah nearly jumped at the sound, and he exchanged a glance with Moxie. Lee rose to her feet and stretched her arms over her head.

“You think that’s Karina?” Lee asked. “Maybe she found something.”

“Didn’t sound like her,” Noah said, rubbing his eyes and walking over to the door. He put a hand on the handle, pausing for a moment and raising his voice. “Who is it?”

“Just an old man,” a vaguely familiar voice replied. Noah couldn’t place quite who it was. “Could we have a brief chat?”

Noah thought for a moment, but there wasn’t any reason why he wouldn’t open the door, especially with how poorly things were going at the moment. He pulled the door open and a salt-and-pepper haired man stepped into view, his red coat draped over his shoulders. The smile lines on his expression wrinkled as his right leg, made of a brilliant silver and covered with intricate Imbuements, hit the ground.

“We meet again, Magus Vermil,” Silvertide said. “I was hoping you might be able to answer some questions for me.”

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