“How?” Pomm pushed out with his paw, nudging Corbin. “You are real. How did you hide from me?”


    “That’s a good question,” Neppo said. “He shouldn’t have been able to hide from us, but definitely not Pomm.”


    “I guess I have my answer about whether or not you all read my preparation documents,” Jaiko said. “The boy is very good. Perhaps not the best, but it’s at least debatable. Now, Corbin, I’m going to ask you to leave. This is someone else’s business. I promise you yours will be handled soon.”


    “You can’t just tell me part of it!” Corbin said. “And then stop before you finish! It’s not fair.”


    “We didn’t tell you any part of it yet, Corbin,” Skal said. “Do you want us to pay closer attention to why you know about anything or to just leave before we think real hard about it?”


    “Fine.” Corbin’s shoulders drooped. “When?”


    “When we call you. We’ve been trying, you know.” Stygge smiled. “Maybe stay visible for a bit this evening. Our couriers are pretty good but they can’t reliably work miracles.”


    Corbin nodded and turned to leave. Arthur waited for what he knew was going to happen. Like clockwork, Corbin went back into stealth. Pomm stood and turned into a blur, stopping motion with a wriggling, uncomfortable Corbin held up by his collar.


    “Sorry! Sorry!” Corbin said. “Force of habit. I didn’t mean to.”


    “He’s telling the truth,” Skal said. “It’s just how he is.”


    —


    A minute or so later, things were calmed down again. Jaiko stood, brushing off her clothes and walking over to Arthur’s couch.


    “May I?” Jaiko said. “I don’t want to deliver this talk to Arthur from all the way over there in a corner.”


    “Sure.” Lily stood and went over to Jaiko’s old seat. “Be nice to him.”


    “I’ll try.” Jaiko sat across from Arthur, turning almost entirely to her left to face him. “Now, Arthur. The options we have aren’t exact and there are a lot of variables that could be added to them one way or another. But broadly, we came up with three things. Neppo, yours was the first we decided on, correct?”


    “Correct.” Neppo nodded. “The way I see it, the most need for your product is right here in the capital. Your tea can help people in ways almost nobody we have can help them, especially if we give you the majicka support you need. We talked to Eito and he isn’t thrilled about getting you some extra levels, but even he admitted a few wouldn’t hurt. Pomm here could get you them fast.”


    Pomm nodded in assent, even though for the first time Arthur thought he could sense some actual displeasure from the bear. Maybe he didn’t like acting as a level-bus, or maybe it was something else entirely. Arthur couldn’t guess from as little as the bear gave out.


    “You’d have unlimited pills, unlimited work, and nearly unlimited support. You’d get stronger, and a lot of people would be helped. When you make that portable tea, we’d have the best transporters in the world to take it where it needed to go. It would do for your class what a fulcrum does for a lever, Arthur. No exaggeration. You’d go from shifting rocks to flipping boulders overnight,” Jaiko said.


    “But I’d be here.”


    “Most of the time, yes. You wouldn’t be a prisoner, by any means. You’d be able to travel, to visit people, to take time off. Working you to death is out of the question, in any scenario. But when you were working, you’d be working here, from a workshop the capital provided you, or with patients at our hospitals.” Jaiko gestured around.


    “No shop?”


    “There wouldn’t be much time for one.” Neppo looked a bit guilty about that, which Arthur took to mean he understood crafting classes at least a little. The fact that Arthur had ended up in a small town running a small shop meant he wasn’t a chef in the system-class sense, someone who cooked for the joy of technique. He was a cook. The very existence of his shop meant he was the kind of person who got into cooking to feed people. And in a lot of ways, this would be the end of that.


    Skal was looking at Arthur pretty hard. They knew each other well. There wasn’t much chance the old man thought Arthur was thrilled with the idea of leaving the Coldbrook for a busier locale.


    “There are other options, Arthur. Actually, the second one was my suggestion,” Skal said. “You split the difference. You spend most of your time in one of the hub towns and work from there.”If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    “Hub towns?”


    “Commerce towns. Shipping villages,” Skal said. “Settlements that were founded, didn’t find much in the way of resources, but were such convenient hubs for mail and cargo they never fully disappeared. Imagine a small town filled with postmasters and transporters and not a whole lot else, and you have it.”


    “Weird that Talca never mentioned anything like that,” Arthur said. “You’d think he’d know about them.”


    “Oh, he does. He just despises them. It’s cookie-cutter work, by the standards of that class. Talca’s more like Corbin than you’d think. An all-or-nothing class from the get-go. The man acts like easy is painful,” Skal said.


    Jaiko threw a cracker at Skal’s head. “Says the man who spent a year hooking the mystery of the razor reef, which wasn’t even supposed to be real.”


    “Shh. This is about Arthur.” Skal’s correction was just right enough to quiet Jaiko down. “The point is, you’d be in a small town. A town with plenty of big eaters and drinkers. It would be easy to get what help we could to you, and easy to get your tea out to places that needed it. And you’d be a lot closer to Coldbrook, if you felt like visiting.”


    “Visiting,” Arthur said. The word felt as dry as the fifth saltine in his mouth. It almost stuck on his beard-stubble. “When I felt like it.”


    “It’s not ideal. But it’s the middle thing, Arthur. And for a middle option, it’s a pretty big compromise. Nobody here is looking to get you to do this out of guilt, but Neppo wasn’t lying when he said there are a lot of people right here in the capital that could use your help right now.” Skal frowned apologetically. “It’s not that I don’t understand how you feel about that town. I do, I think. But there are stakes on the table.”


    “And who decides about those stakes?” Lily said, eyebrows raised. “Arthur, still?”


    “Of course,” Stygge said, soothingly. “After talking to him today, we’ll give our official recommendation in the next meeting. And after that, it’s up to him.”


    Arthur looked at his shoes. It wasn’t like anyone was wrong. He would have probably thought like they did too, if he wasn''t him. And when it came down to it, he didn’t think he’d say no even if they came to the conclusion that he should live in the capital most of the time. If there were lives at stake, he couldn’t imagine a way around doing his best.


    “Third recommendation. Quick, if you want him to hear it,” Lily said. “He’s already upset, and I’m taking him out of here in the next five minutes, whether you like it or not.”


    “It won’t take that long,” Jaiko said. “Pomm, your suggestion?”


    “He goes home,” Pomm said, looking almost offended that he even had to say it. “To his town. He’s not supposed to be here.”


    Arthur waited for the rest, but apparently that was it. Lily, gods bless her, pushed harder.


    “And?” Lily puffed herself up to a full owl-size in a way clearly directed at the bear’s unacceptable lack of wordiness. “He’s not supposed to be here, and?”


    “And nothing.” Pomm shrugged. “He’s just not.”


    —


    “Fat lot of help Skal was. The only good suggestion had to come from the one that doesn’t talk.”


    Lily was perma-puffed. The entire meeting had rubbed her the wrong way, and Arthur half-wanted to get out of the range of any feathers that might shoot out from the pressure buildup if she got any more angry.


    Whatever new information the council wanted to get out of his reaction, Arthur was afraid he hadn’t given them much. The conflict he felt wasn’t faked at all. It was a legitimately hard decision, one that pitted what he wanted and the greater good against each other in a death match.


    “Be nice to Skal. He’s been very nice to you,” Arthur said. “I think I sort of like Pomm. He’s like Mizu, a bit.”


    “A bit. I like him too, but it’s not the same thing. Pomm’s quiet because he doesn’t like to spend the energy. Mizu’s quiet because she’s watching.”


    “Still. No reason not to be nice to him,” Arthur said. “I sort of want to make him tea now. Just him. I wonder what my tea-targeting skill would tell me he wanted.”


    “I’m just frustrated, Arthur. You heard them. They are having a full meeting just to argue about this, and the one guy who is really on your side is the one that doesn’t talk. And Skal!” Lily waved her arms around, helplessly angry. “Skal! Saying you should leave! Whose side is he on?”


    “Mine, I think,” Arthur said. “And everyone’s. He’s on the council, remember? He has responsibilities. He’s not just my friend when he’s there.”


    “Maybe. So what are you going to do?”


    “I don’t know.” He wanted to give a better answer, but Arthur simply didn’t have one. He was riding the fence right down the middle.


    And poor Lily. She’s just settled, too. It’s not like she hasn’t worked hard. As bad as Arthur felt about his own situation, he felt worse about Lily’s. Coldbrook without him was something he could imagine if he tried. The same wasn’t true for her. The whole idea just felt dead.


    “You know…” Arthur began. Lily knew Arthur enough to know some kind of curveball was coming and she puffed down. “It’s not like you are a kid anymore. Not in the same way. You’ve been living in your own house and making your own money for a while now. If I were to leave, it’s not like you couldn’t stay.”


    As much as she seemed to wish she had it, Lily simply didn’t possess the body mass to tackle most people. This time, though, it worked. By virtue of her low center of gravity, she managed to hit Arthur firmly at his own knee-height, and just as he was cutting tight around the brick border of decorative raised bed of grass and trees that broke up the center of the main street they were walking down. He tumbled over it, then had to immediately correct so he didn’t roll right back down onto the pavers.


    “We’re trying something different this time,” Lily yelled. “Without me telling you, explain to me why what you just said was wrong.”


    “I have… no idea. You don’t want that, I guess?”


    “I don’t want it, you can’t have it. Arthur, understand that wherever you go, you won’t be alone.”


    And with just that, it was okay.


    “Because you’ll be there. There will be two of us,” Arthur said.


    “Two?” Lily punched him in the sternum, softly. “Arthur, one of these days you are going to get smart about how things work. I know it’s coming. Eventually, you’ll get there.”


    “What do you mean?”


    “If you don’t know, I’m not telling you,” Lily said. “You’ll figure it out when she tells you, I’m sure.”