The School of the Clever Monkeys is the premier sorcerer’s academy in the city of Spajve, if you’re a mammal. The name was forced on the school by the city’s reptilian overlords; among the snakes, “clever monkey” is a deadly insult, implying social and intellectual inferiority, bad hygience, and poor taste. In the larger world, “Clever Monkeys” is regarded as a third-rate school with a first-rate library, which was fine with me. Also, it was where it needed to be when I needed it to be there. I had agreed to provide the school with two years of miscellaneous service in exchange for a journeyman’s credential, room and board, and access to the library. I did not suspect that “miscellaneous service” would consist of roaming the city’s sewers and catacombs in search of rat-goblins to kill.
I had 26 days to go on my contract when my tally reached 1000 rats, and I decided that enough was enough and stopped hunting. I made the most of my library privileges during those last few days, and also said my goodbyes to Grezhakh’s books. There weren’t that many of them, but a fifty pound library was still far too large for a single impoverished person on foot. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to sell then, and left the ones I didn’t keep as a long term loan to the Clever Monkeys.
I held onto the Draconic Grammar that had been my companion through a decade of magic study, as well as an horrific necromancy text that happened to have more information on anatomy, disease, and poison than any other single volume I had seen. And then there was “Flight”, which I simply couldn’t leave behind, even though it I never expected to get any use from it. Fortunately, it was a fairly small book.
The day came, and I met with the head monkeys: The head master of the school, and the two lead instructors. They thanked me for my “exemplary efforts” as a rat catcher, and then started to argue amongst themselves as to whether or not I actually deserved the credential they had promised me, the credential I had earned before I had ever set foot in their school. It took me a moment to realize what they were up to, which saved me from reacting in any obvious way. I listened attentively to the discussion in front of me, and played absently with the focusing bracelet on my left wrist; the burn scar under it itched occasionally.
They were planning to try to hold onto me for another year or two. They liked my service, or had made enough money from it, that they didn’t want to let me go, now that I had acquired so much skill at the job. I considered reacting in anger, but thought better of it; each of them was far out of my class, magically.
I looked up and watched them babble, and realized that, before me, rat catching had always been a punishment detail. These three had been good students; they probably had less tunnel time among them than I had logged in the first month. They thought of me as their pet monster; maybe I needed to convince them that I wasn’t domesticated. I kept my eyes on them, and worked the bracelet off my wrist, then set my arm on the table in front of me so that the scar was clearly visible.
The discussion stopped as each of them in turn noticed the scar. “That’s quite a burn,” the headmaster said.
“It’s a focus burn.”
“From a duel?”
I shook my head. “Rat fight.”
“And you made your way back to the school after that?”
I shrugged. “First I dealt with one more rat, and THEN I came back here.” I put the bracelet back on.
He nodded. “It has been our pleasure to have you as a student here. If you will give me your token, I will update it.”
I nodded back, and gave him the token. “The pleasure has been mine.”
PDH
5/18/2017