Since this was the first Council meeting in nearly a month, it lasted deep into the evening. Even though the advisors were able to converse with the king through communication magic, not every issue could be resolved remotely. Spells required aura to cast and even expert wizards had their limits. Rather than spend hours each day on going over tiny minutia with the councilors, they would focus on delivering only the most important news.

  Now that Varre was back in the capital, there were plenty of reports to wade through. After all, he wasn’t the only one who needed to be brought up to speed. Each one of the advisors had outstanding issues that required Elvira’s input. She was the main expert on all magical matters after all. Even Benjamin’s absence was felt. As the chamberlain responsible for the monarch’s needs, the Treasurer needed to discuss the various costs and expenses with him, and both the Alderman and Chancellor fit important meetings into the king’s schedule.

  Hakon was the only one who could be excused early. As the Captain of the Royal Guard, his duties mostly concerned the security of the castle and by extension, the capital itself. Of course he still had a budget that needed to be discussed and sometimes the other councilors required his support, but most of his job consisted of controlling the guards themselves.

  While the monarch was away from home, Hakon would travel with him. He’d manage the warriors, direct them what to search or defend, and decide on the traveling formation. That was by far his most important task. However, the kingdom recently decided to increase the size of the guard force by forty people. Bringing it from sixty, all the way to one hundred.

  While all recruits came from the best knights in the entire nation, they were still far weaker than experienced veterans. Even if they had combat skills and good education, few men could afford to buy as much stat boosting elixir as the kingdom provided for the Royal Guard. It took years of good training to properly utilize their benefits and learn all of the necessary tactics.

  While the king was away, most of the fresh recruits remained in Westbridge. Of course, the castle couldn’t be defended by rookies alone, so ten veterans stayed with them. On top of providing security, they continued to teach their new comrades.

  The remaining ten recruits traveled together with their liege to Lindridge. Hakon could personally observe their training then, but now that he was back in the capital, he wanted to check up on everyone else’s progress. The captain wanted to test them to the very limits of their abilities. The groups had spent a month apart and he wanted to be sure they were both growing at a similar pace.

  Even after the Council meeting finally concluded, they continued to drill in the courtyard. Varre personally saw them through one of the windows, as he walked back to his quarters. They were going at it for hours, but they remained resolute.

  He almost shuddered. It reminded him of his own training with Kerryn, which fortunately has been put on hold while he caught up with administrative matters. I won’t be free for much longer though, the king thought to himself, soon I’ll be back in that man’s clutches.

  -*-*-*-

  The next day, Varre travelled all the way to the mages guild in the center of the city. As the monarch, he had every right to demand the archmage’s presence in the throne room, but since he was going there to negotiate, he didn’t want to start off from an arrogant position.

  Several acolytes stood outside the front entrance, bowing deeply as the king’s carriage approached. While he previously feuded with the archmage over Tobias, the situation had changed. The former Court Mage was proven to be a traitor. Not just to the kingdom, but to the guild itself. Kadmos couldn’t forgive such a personal slight. He gained a lot of respect for Varre, after the unruly wizard was delivered to him and executed.

  On top of that, the king was organizing an official visit to the guild as one of the first things on his agenda. Everyone understood that he needed to spend the first day dealing with Council, but choosing to speak with the archmage as the very next step only increased Kadmos’ prestige. The wizard was definitely going to brag about it later.

  That’s why the archmage was ready to welcome his guest with open arms.

  “Welcome, your majesty,” he said as soon as Varre crossed through the front door, “I’m glad to see you in good health!”

  “Thank you,” the king replied, “I trust everything is going well at the guild?”

  “It’s quite well, thank you very much,” Kadmos inclined his head, “now, while I am honored that you decided to grace us with your presence, may I ask for the purpose of your visit? Do you wish to inspect our training facilities? Hire more of our wizards? Perhaps provide us with additional funding?” he grinned.

  “We’ve come to discuss our future plans,” Varre replied and glanced at Elvira who followed a half step behind him.

  The archmage’s smile faltered slightly when he looked at the woman, but he hid his emotions quickly. “Of course, let’s step into my office.”

  The group walked up the stairs and through the spacious corridors of the guild. All of the students were sitting inside of lecture halls, though the doors were left wide open. Likely on purpose, in case the monarch came to inspect the guild after all. The archmage was ready to show off.

  A team of twelve Royal Guards followed the monarch, though they all remained outside the office. Out of respect. Only Elvira would accompany Varre inside. Even if the worst was to happen and the meeting turned violent, she would only need to defend her liege for a few seconds before the warriors busted down the door and rushed to the rescue. Kadmos may have been strong, but he was only human. He couldn’t take such a force in close range.

  “Now, why have you really come here?” the archmage asked, once he was comfortably seated in the chair behind his desk.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “We’ve come to discuss the plans for our future academy,” the king replied.

  “Ah yes,” Kadmos smirked, “you were going to start teaching magic to commoners, if I recall. Have you finally realized the senselessness of that idea?”

  “No, that’s not it. We’re going full speed ahead on that,” Varre gestured towards his Court Mage.

  “Yes, we’d like to start by selecting sixty candidates,” Elvira explained, with a slightly nervous expression, “we’ll train them to act as communication mages.”

  “Yes, we always need more of those,” Kadmos waved his hand dismissively, “go ahead. It’s an appropriate position for a commoner. I’m sure my wizards will be happy to make use of their services once they’re ready.”

  “We won’t just be hiring commoners,” the Court Mage grimaced, “we also want to extend the offer to students who couldn’t finish their guild education.”

  The archmage shrugged. “If you want rejects and failures, go ahead. I don’t mind. It’s not my fault if some no name noble couldn’t afford to stay here.”

  Elvira exhaled slightly. That’s the first obstacle down, she thought to herself. Yesterday, before the meeting, the Council discussed exactly what they wanted to get out of this conversation. The hardest concession was the one relating to healers, but that wasn’t the only point that the guild could have had a problem with.

  “We’d also like to hire some guild members to help me seek out appropriate candidates among the populace. We’ll pay them well of course, but we’d also like some of them to stay on as teachers,” the Court mage said.

  “As you already know, we do have a bit of a manpower problem right now,” Kadmos replied, “but I won’t bar my people from taking on additional jobs and income. Take your pick. Though I warn you, I doubt the real experts will be interested.”

  “Hopefully, this program will help us alleviate your issues,” Varre pointed out, “we could always use more wizards.”

  “We could always use more good wizards,” the archmage countered, “so I doubt your commoners will be of much use. But I’ll admit, even a bad communicator is better than having to go without one.”

  “You’re not worried about the competition?” the king asked, trying to keep an innocent expression.

  “If any cheap fool wants to take a gamble on a commoner mage, he can be my guest,” Kadmos smirked, “besides, competition’s not the end of the world. These acolytes of yours will need magical gear and equipment, they’ll need potions and alchemical supplies. And all of that brings more income for us.”

  Varre smiled politely at the archmage. Good, he fell for it, he thought to himself, I’ll make sure to repeat his words back at him later. “Now, we would like to offer your two existing communication mages a full time position at our new academy as well. I know they’re rare, but we need someone to teach the next generation.”

  “You’ve already kept them completely booked since the summer, but I suppose there’s no way around this,” the archmage sighed, “fine, but I want them to have some flexibility. If I, or any other member of the guild, want to hire them to send out some messages, we expect them to find the time.”

  The king glanced at the Court Mage. “This is how we’ve been operating so far, so I see no reason to stop, your majesty,” she explained, “while one the mages had been traveling with us, the one who stayed in Westbridge did take some odd jobs occasionally.”

  Varre raised an eyebrow. “I thought they had limited aura. That’s why we kept our council meetings brief.”

  “They do,” Elvira said, “we had to put a limit somewhere, you know? They need to keep some aura in reserve for emergencies. Besides, sending short messages is a lot easier than keeping a visual link between multiple people at once.”

  “Fair enough. Then I guess we can agree on that,” the king conceded.

  “It won’t be a problem, I assure you,” the Court Mage touched his shoulder, reassuringly, “as to our next point, we also wanted to open a second course at our academy. On top of training communication mages.”

  “Yes, the apprentice healers and alchemists, correct?” Kadmos started looking through his papers, searching for which ideas he had agreed to during his bout of good mood after Tobias’ execution.

  “We’d like another sixty students there,” Elvira grimaced, “though we’d like to expand the program a little more. We’d like them to be real professionals once they finish.”

  They’ve already discussed this ahead of time. They could have hid the truth from the archmage, changing the curriculum in secret and training the students to a higher level, but such a lie wouldn’t last for long.

  The teachers would have to be mages too. Mages from the guild. They would talk to their superiors and guildmates, so word would reach Kadmos’ ears quickly. Then, once he found out he’d been cheated, he’d react in anger.

  Even if the king could overrule the archmage’s power, that would be painful in the end. The guild could order the teachers to return, or they could ban the sale of supplies to Elvira and her new students. A relationship built on a trick wouldn’t last for long. It was best to bite the bullet now and reach the agreement before the school was ever built.

  “That’s quite the change of plans,” Kadmos said after a moment to think, “it would put me in a difficult position, if I let you go ahead with that.”

  That’s not an immediate no, Varre thought to himself, that’s better than we expected. “How come? I thought you said that competition was a good thing. More customers for equipment and supplies,” he pointed out innocently.

  The archmage chuckled. “I see where you’re going with this, but this is a little different. Sure, having a few more apprentices running around would be no problem. Hell, I genuinely do believe it would be a good thing in the end, but not when it comes to these two positions.”

  He stood up and began pacing next to the window. “You see, alchemists and healers even more so are different from war magicians. Or any other generalist researchers. We all trade with each other and share resources, but there’s only so many customers to go around.

  “Normally, this is not a problem. Keep in mind, that all of us are already wealthy before we even begin our education. We have income to fall back on and many choose to focus on their noble duties, supporting their household and only pursuing the magical arts as a hobby. If someone wanted to fully devote themselves to magic, they can always choose to become an adventurer. Hell, if there’s too many of them already in Logres, it’s easy to move to another kingdom and seek out their fortunes there.

  “But not when it comes to healers. These are very, very lucrative positions. You must imagine that people will pay anything to save the lives of their loved ones. But there’s only so many resources to go around. So we want all of our physicians to be fully devoted to their craft and hone their skills throughout their lives. The prices must be kept high, to encourage them to stick to that path, instead of returning back to their manors and family bickering,” he stopped to look out of the window, turning his back to the others.

  “Commoners won’t need mountains of gold to accept this job,” Varre countered, “they’ll happily do it for less. And before you go on spouting about the cost of supplies, we will be training alchemists too. They’ll be able to produce anything that’s needed.”

  Kadmos blew air out of his nose as soon as he heard the king’s argument. He did not turn around. “In a few years, perhaps. And perhaps we could agree to limit the commoners’ training, to make sure they would never be real competitors to my wizards. Your people could handle plagues and minor diseases in small towns, while mine focus on the lucrative healing of merchants and nobles. Hell, it might even work somewhat,,” he turned around and glared deep into the monarch’s eyes, “but tell me, why should I agree to this? Why should I risk the power of my guild and the ire of my people?”

  Varre exchanged looks with Elvira. This is it. This is our one chance to convince him. “The reason we need more healers, is because there is a war coming, Kadmos. The goblins are on the way.”

  Will the argument of a possible war in the future convince him?