Of Caverns and Casters ✓ [TLRQ #1]

Chapter 36 - Sean

Sliding my bag onto my back, I push open my bedroom window and sit backwards on the sill. I might not be the most athletic person, but being able to work up on the roof where I don't have to deal with the chatter and clatter of the other house inhabitants is worth the effort.

I pull myself up, landing flopped over like a fish unceremoniously dropped onto dry land. After squirming onto the tiles, I clear away a spot to work, pull my things out of my backpack, and begin.

As I type, I wonder what Leavi's doing. She was quiet all the way home. She's been quiet around me for the last week, so that's no shocker. But she hurried straight up to her room—didn't even stop to talk to her new best friend. She seemed impatient, impassioned, the way she used to be when we got handed a new assignment at Trifexer's.

But it doesn't matter. I don't even know why I care.

Actually, I don't. We don't have anything to do with each other, and we don't need to. She gets her company with Jacin, and I don't need company. My papers, my equipment, my study. That's all I need.

Well, that and food, water, and shelter, which I also have. So, I'm good.

An incredulous voice calls up from my bedroom. "Are you on the roof?"

Surprised, I lean over on one elbow, looking over the edge, just in time to see Riveirre's head poke from the window. "Nope," I answer.

She cranes her neck to look at me. "Why?"

"Because I don't particularly care to deal with lots of avoidable noise while I work. Do you?"

"Hold on." She disappears back into the room. "I'm coming up there."

"Why?" My voice drops to a mutter. "I just said I liked working in the quiet."

"You know I can hear you," she says, climbing her way up.

"So?"

Somehow she gets up here much more gracefully than I did, ending crouched with one knee on the tiles.

"What do you want?" I ask.

She stands. Her hair hangs in long, loose waves around her shoulders, and she pulls the midnight mess to one side. "I need your help."

I raise an eyebrow at her. "Oh? And what, exactly, can the great and magnificent Mastera Eleaviara Riveirre not do that she needs my help with?"

She frowns. "Carry a man."

A startled "What?" escapes me before I can give a better response.

The tiles creak under her feet as she closes the distance between us. Kneeling beside me, she pulls some papers from her pocket and spreads them out in my cleared area. "Look at these."

I glance down. "Incredible," I remark dryly. "It's a map." An incomplete one, at that. It sort of looks like it could be the manor, if the manor went through a major earthquake and lost random chunks to the abyss.