The City of Losers
He walked thirty paces, and nothing dangerous happened.
"Whew."
He let the breath out long and slow, and the tension drained with it. The path had widened, which was a relief in itself. Coming down off the mountain, he found an arrow sign planted at the roadside, pointing right. He checked it against his map. The road looked correct. He followed it another twenty minutes before a milestone came into view.
700 Paces to Stratton Village
So the village was called Stratton.
Bored, he counted his steps as he went. After about two hundred, the village began to show itself. He had pictured a small settlement of a hundred households or so, but it was larger than he expected. As the distance closed and the true scale of the place settled in, Chris let out a quiet breath of awe.
Stratton was no village. It was big enough to be called a city without embarrassment. Three-story buildings stood in crowds, and the streets were paved with brick.
Chris greeted the guard at the entrance, then followed Stratton's Central Boulevard, craning his neck and staring like a country boy seeing a city for the first time.
"They even have a fountain."
He walked over and watched water spout from the jar in a mermaid's arms. An old man sunning himself on the fountain's rim whistled at him.
"Hey, boy. Don't know that face."
Chris looked at him. Wrinkles covered the whole of his face, and age spots had bloomed here and there across it.
"Because it's my first time here."
The answer was indifferent. The old man hopped down from the fountain and came right up under his nose. Uneasy, Chris took a step back.
"You're from the magic tower," the old man said.
"How did you know?"
"Heard a new student went in."
"I might not be a new student."
The old man looked him up and down.
"No belt, so you haven't reached Spirit Awakening. No robe, so you're no mage either. Of course you're a new student. It's written all over your face that you're a greenhorn. You going to keep insisting you aren't?"
Chris rubbed at his face, then shrugged.
"I wasn't going to argue."
"Bit early to be giving up, isn't it?"
"Giving up? What are you talking about?"
"Didn't you quit on becoming a mage and come down to the village?"
Chris's expression went flat.
"No."
Then he lowered his voice.
"If you give up, you come down to the village?"
"Plenty of them end up here. You didn't know?"
"Know what?"
"The name of this village."
"It's Stratton."
"That's the official name. The real one's something else."
"Isn't the official name the real name?"
"Usually. Not here."
"Then what is the real name?"
"The City of Losers."
"Losers?"
"What do you think happens to the apprentices in the dormitories who never manage to sense mana, right to the end?"
Chris frowned at the word. The old man didn't seem to notice he'd struck a nerve. He pressed on, growing animated.
"Commoners can't afford the fare home. Go back, and there's no one to welcome them anyway. They'd only be something to disappoint and laugh at. The ones who'd have to return to slavery if they went back—those don't even bear mentioning. Even some of the nobles stay, tears and all, because there's no one who'd welcome them either. And!"
He cut himself off with a meaningful look. Chris disliked being led along, but curiosity won.
"And what?"
Somehow it stung his pride.
"The ones with regrets left. The ones who could never give up, clutching their last hope on the way to this City of Losers. And the ones who cleared the wall of sensing mana, then got stuck at the next stage and never became mages—they gather here in their later years, too."
"You mean Spirit Awakening mages?"
"Hoh. A new student who knows a lot."
"You said Spirit Awakening yourself a moment ago, elder."
"Did I? Getting old. I mix up what I've said."
Chris looked around.
"If this city was built by the tower's losers gathering together, it's far too big. New students only come in once every ten or twenty years. How many losers could there even be?"
"What are you talking about? They come every two years at the shortest. Three or four, at the longest."
"Our village only got a visit after twenty years."
The old man dismissed him outright.
"Hinterland stock, I see."
"Hinterland?"
"The podunk villages they skip once the recruitment numbers are filled."
Chris understood.
So they only came as far as our village because they were short on people.
He didn't care for the Javier Barony. Even so, hearing a man he'd just met belittle his home set his teeth on edge.
"Even if losers come down every two or three years, a city couldn't get this big."
"You really are an idiot."
Been a while since anyone called me that.
"Watch your tongue, old man."
"Kid, losers are people too."
"Who said they weren't?"
"Losers fall in love, get married, and have children. And do you have any idea how old the magic tower is? Their children have children, and their children's children have children, and their children's children's children have children, and their children's children's children's children..."
He ran out of breath and had to stop.
Chris was tired of the conversation.
"Fine. Let's say that's how it is."
The old man licked his lips, as if his mouth had gone dry.
"It isn't only descendants."
"Who else is there?"
"This is the village under the magic tower. People come from all over the kingdom to buy the magical goods that come out of it. Mages buy their resources here plenty, too."
"Mages buy resources?"
"Climbing the realms swallows an absurd amount of resources. A mage is a hippo that eats money."
"So the village lives as a middleman."
"That's right. Sells training resources to the tower, supplies consumables like food and clothing, provides hands for the menial work. Over there."
Chris looked where he pointed and saw Juan stepping into a shop with a black signboard.
"Even the servants for the apprentice dormitories get picked out of the village."
The old man studied Chris as he went on.
"You look like you know Juan. You from the Lion Pavilion?"
"Yes."
"Rotten luck."
"Is it rotten luck if Juan's the servant?"
"He doesn't do his work."
"That rumor made it all the way to the village?"
"Hardly a matter of a day or two. People who come down to get something done, like you, curse him plenty."
"And yet he's somehow kept the job."
"The mage in charge of the Lion Pavilion... what was the name. David?"
"You know a great deal."
"David's from our village. The boy's a bit soft."
Call up the David who had traveled with that cruel Randal—the man who burned Jack alive—and soft was the last word that came to mind. Call up David as he was these days, though, and soft almost...
Chris turned the thought over, then shook his head. He certainly wasn't as cold as before. But soft was the wrong word. David was a long way from soft.
Not tormenting people doesn't make him soft.
"Are there many mages from Stratton Village in the tower?"
"The dropouts had the Wind Cauldron's help, sure, but they did move mana. Their affinity for it runs higher than an ordinary person's. A child born among people like that having a talent for magic is only natural, when you think about it."
"I see."
The old man suddenly clicked his tongue.
"Juan. High time that one gave up."
"So Juan is my senior."
"He is. Lion Pavilion. The most stagnant water in a stagnant pond."
The old man's gaze went distant. He counted on his fingers and muttered.
"Let's see. Thirty years, for certain... thirty-five, or was it thirty-six..."
"He hasn't given up in all that time?"
"That's right. Still dreaming of becoming a mage. A man who can't even sense mana. Foolishness."
Chris felt a chill at the thought that he might end up the same way. He shoved Juan out of his head at once.
"It was a pleasant talk."
He gave a small nod and walked past, but the old man came after him.
"Leave it to me."
With that, he held out a business card. Chris peered at it, eyes narrowing.
"S... St..."
The old man shook his head.
"You can't read?"
Chris's face went red.
"I'm learning."
The old man tapped the letters one by one.
"Stan. General. Store. That's what it says."
"Right."
"Usually, after six or seven months, some of them half give up. Decide they haven't got the talent to sense mana. Then the supervisors quietly let slip that the village exists. Noble apprentices start sending the commoners and former slaves who've quit on magic out on errands, and those kids begin turning up in the village one by one..."
Chris fiddled with the card.
"So that's why you said I'd given up early."
"A Lion Pavilion apprentice showing up early makes sense. Juan isn't doing his work, so you came. Right? What do you need done?"
Stan thumped his own chest.
"Apprentice dormitories are my specialty. Just hand it over. I'll cut through the whole job clean."
Chris tucked the card away.
"Since we've crossed paths, fine. Is there a place that specializes in laundering fine clothes?"
"Of course there is. Come along."
Chris followed him. Stan pointed at the fountain.
"See the mermaid statue?"
"Yes."
"We call this the Mermaid Fountain. And the ground around it, Mermaid Square."
"The names are straightforward."
"Refined words, for a slave."
"Does it show?"
"Your clothes are shabby."
"I could just be a poor commoner."
"A lot of the errand-runners come out of slavery. The ones who show up early, especially—nine in ten are slaves. Slave habits soaked into the bone, I suppose. They give up fast."
"You've got a real gift for putting a customer in a foul mood, elder."
"You flatter me."
"It wasn't a compliment. I think I'll find another shop."
"Come all the way to the door and slip off somewhere else, and I'll be hurt."
"We're already there?"
"Right here."
Stan General Store sat on the south side of the square. A square often occupied the center of a city, and land like that could only be expensive, yet the shop was considerable in size.
"Richer than I expected, elder."
Stan put on a prim look better suited to a girl.
"Expected? Now that's a hurtful thing to say. The widow next door says I have a noble air."
He opened the door.
"Come in."
Chris wasn't truly angry, so he stepped inside. The air was cooler than the square, and it felt crisp.
"Customer."
A hulking middle-aged man who had been nodding off behind the counter got to his feet.
"Hello, valued customer."
A bright, bouncing greeting that didn't match the bulk. Chris swallowed the nausea rising in his throat and smiled awkwardly.
Built like he could drop an ox with his bare hands, and he greets people the way a girl would.
"You weren't a bandit, by any chance?"
"Whatever do you mean, valued customer?"
Blue veins writhed along the forearm laid on the counter.
"Haha. Nothing."
True to the name of a general store, the place was heaped with every kind of goods. Chris clicked his tongue.
"Elder Stan, the shop has a certain style to it, like an antique shop. It doesn't look like a place that does laundry, though."
"Of course I don't do the washing myself. I've got somewhere to send it."
"Then introduce me to that place."
"Aigo. Young friend, you do say hurtful things."
The hulk came around the counter. Up close he looked even bigger, massive as a brown bear fattened for hibernation.
Chris clutched his spatial bag to his chest.
"In a village that lives by clinging to the magic tower, you mean to kill a member of that tower?"
Stan jumped, startled.
"Who's harming you! Don't say things that'll start a disaster."
"Then step back."
The hulk held out a hand. Chris flinched, sure he was about to be hit. The man only offered his palm and waited.
"I'm Scott. From now on, if you've got business in the village, come to Stan General Store and ask for Scott. Whatever you want will get done."
Chris caught the meaning a beat late and put his hand out. He hadn't finished growing, so his hand was small. Wrapped around a palm the size of a cauldron lid, it looked smaller still.
Scott shook it hard.
"I get misunderstood a lot, looking like this."
Then he winked. At the wink, Chris's stomach turned. He thought he might be sick.
Scott's hand shot in and plucked the bag out of his arms.
"The laundry?"
Chris was thrown.
"It is, but—"
"Heavier than it looks. A spatial bag."
Identifying it at a glance—he wasn't a fraud, at least.
"Yes."
"Come back in five days. I'll have it finished clean."
"I never said I was leaving it with you..."
Stan cut in.
"If they botch the job, tell David. Soft as he is, David's firm when one of our own tries to cheat an apprentice."