Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"That’s great," Zorian said flatly. "I was wondering when Ilsa would find someone."

If his lack of enthusiasm bothered the man any, he didn’t show it. He turned and walked away, gesturing Zorian to follow after him.

"Come on, kid, let’s go find a tavern to sit in," he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

Oh yes, a tavern – the perfect learning environment. Gods, not only was the man a detective, he was unprofessional as well. His unkempt appearance sort of suggested it right from the start, but Zorian always tried to not judge too harshly on appearances alone – too many people did it to him, and he always found it very annoying.

His thoughts must have been more visible in his demeanor than he thought they were, because the man quickly started to justify himself.

"Come now, don’t look at me like that," the man said. "It’s not like we’ll be doing anything too serious today. It’s been a long day for both of us, I think – you’re tired, I’m tired, we don’t know each other, and we’ll accomplish nothing if we just jump straight into lessons right away. Hell, maybe we’ll decide we don’t like each other and call this whole thing off. So today, we’re just going to share a drink and talk."

Okay, so maybe Haslush was smarter and more capable than Zorian gave him credit for. He had to stop judging people so quickly. Though…

"I don’t drink alcohol," Zorian warned.

Haslush gave him a curious look. "Religious taboo?"

Zorian shook his head. He was never very religious – the gods had been silent for centuries, and as far as Zorian was concerned that meant they either killed each other off or abandoned their creations to fend for themselves. Hell, listening to some of the stories from the age of gods, he couldn’t help but think humanity was better off without them – they had a disturbing tendency to throw around plagues and curse entire cities on the flimsiest of pretexts. He didn’t think it was a coincidence that humanity only started to advance, both socially and technologically, after the gods had fallen silent.

"Bad experiences," he simply said, not wanting to discuss that topic any further.

"Ah," Haslush said, content with his answer. "That’s okay, you can order some fruit juice or something. Hell, I can even show you a spell I use when I’m on duty but don’t want to offend people by refusing an offered drink."

Now that sounded useful! Zorian looked at Haslush and the man correctly interpreted that as permission to go on.

"It’s a neat little alteration spell that converts alcohol into sugar," Haslush said, raising his right hand to show a plain metal ring on his middle finger. "I have it imprinted into this ring so I don’t have to visibly cast it – visibly casting a spell on your drink is often resented even more than outright refusing it, believe it or not. The moment I touch the glass the deed is done."

"Convenient," Zorian said appreciatively. That spell would have saved him so much trouble over the years. "But I thought organic matter cannot be restructured through alteration spells?"

"Usually not, but that’s because most of them are impossibly complex and poorly understood, not because organic compounds are somehow impossible to replicate," Haslush said, studying various tavern signs as they walked. Apparently he wasn’t merely looking for the closest one. "Both ethanol and glucose are fairly simple molecules, and quite well understood, so there is no difficulty in converting one into the other." He suddenly stopped in front of a nearby sign, studying it for a moment before turning to face Zorian again. "I think this is a nice place. What do you think?"

Zorian’s experiences with taverns were very limited and generally unpleasant, so he simply gestured Haslush to go in before following after him.

It wasn’t as bad as Zorian had feared: the insides of the tavern were dark and the air was a bit stale, but the tables were clean and the noise was manageable. Haslush picked an out of the way table in the corner and cast a long, complicated spell on it after they both ordered a drink. Probably a privacy ward of some kind.

Zorian expected the man to start interrogating him the moment the spell snapped into place, but it didn’t play out like that. If Haslush was interrogating him, he was doing it too subtly for Zorian to notice. Hell, the man didn’t even ask him about Daimen, which was always nice. Gradually, Zorian began to relax and started asking questions of his own. Questions like how come a detective has time and inclination to tutor a third year student in divination magic ?

"Hah," snorted Haslush. "A good question. Usually something like this would be the last thing on my mind, but yesterday my commander dumped a really silly case on my lap. Apparently there is a rumor circulating around the city about mentalist spiders lurking in the sewers, and I’m supposed to check it out." He rolled his eyes with a sigh. "Mentalist spiders, honestly…" he mumbled.

Zorian struggled not to let his surprise show and somehow succeeded – largely because Haslush was paying more attention to his drink than to him at the moment. He started a rumor without even realizing it? He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised, since he had told Taiven about the spiders right in front of Imaya and his sister – between Taiven and those two, they probably blathered about it to a dozen people at least .

"Anyway, after work I went to meet with my good friend Ilsa so we could complain about our problems to each other over a drink or two, when she told me she was having problems finding a divination tutor for you. And at that point I realized I have a perfect solution for my problem. I could pawn off the case to some other poor schmuck, help a friend in need, and settle a long-standing argument between me and my commander in one fell swoop. See, a couple of years ago the bureaucrats in Eldemar decided to launch an initiative for getting more mages interested in a career in law enforcement. Only, instead of doing something concrete to attract new talent they asked mages already working inside the police force to go introduce the profession to mages in training on their own initiative."

"Ah," said Zorian. "So you’re supposed to do things like this anyway?"

"Yeah, but I’ve been kind of slacking off in that regard, so my commander is constantly nagging me about missing my quota. Can you blame me though? We get paid extra for doing it, but it’s a pittance considering the hassle."

"You know better than I do," Zorian shrugged. "How does, err, introducing me to the profession get you off the spider case, though?"

"I don’t have time to do both," Haslush said. He frowned for a second and then shook his head, as if to clear it. "Yup. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it."

The discussion petered out after that, and Haslush promised to meet him again at Monday. Zorian was lost in thought as he went back to Imaya’s house, wondering whether anything would come out of the whole spider investigation. Probably not, considering how seriously it was taken by Haslush, but still. He’d have to prod the man for additional details after a week or so.

Zorian tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for Imaya to open the door. He had the key to the front door, but that was no help – Imaya had an annoying habit of leaving the key in the lock, and today was no exception. He couldn’t enter without her help.

She probably liked it that way.

The sound of unlocking brought his attention back to the door itself, which flung open to reveal a concerned-looking Imaya staring at him.

"Umm… did something happen?" he asked. Did Kirielle do something stupid while he was gone?