The words took a moment to fully register — and then they did, all at once, with the particular mortification of someone hearing themselves say something they cannot explain.
My hand was still on his wrist.
I released it and stepped back quickly, aware that my constructed face was doing something warm and unwanted that I had no immediate way to control.
"That came out wrong," I said, with more urgency than was dignified. "What I meant was — if you leave me here alone with all of this, what happens if someone tries to rob the place? You said the guild deals mostly in jewellery. That's exactly the kind of thing people steal." I pressed on through my own stammering. "That was all I was asking."
He looked at me for a moment with an expression that contained equal parts puzzlement and something that might, in better lighting, have been amusement.
"Ah," he said. "That's what you meant."
He reached into his key ring and produced a key, holding it out to me.
"It's easier to show you than explain it. Close the door with that."
I took the key, still slightly flustered, and did as he said. The lock engaged with a clean click. I turned back to him, key in hand.
"Now open it again."
He had crossed his arms across his chest, studying me with the unhurried attention of someone watching an experiment proceed. It was, in the mild way of things that shouldn't be and slightly were, intimidating.
I turned back to the door and unlocked it. The hinges gave their familiar groan as it swung open.
I stared at what was inside.
Nothing. An empty room. Bare walls, bare floor, the particular blankness of a space that has never held anything.
The crates had been stacked to the ceiling moments ago.
"What—" I turned to look at him.
"Engraving magic," he said, with the tone of someone delivering a straightforward explanation rather than a demonstration of something remarkable. "The key and the door frame both carry extensive enchantments. I am the only person who can open the door to the actual storage space. Anyone else — any key, any hand that isn't mine — opens the door to a subspace instead. An identical room, as you've just seen, but empty." He paused. "There is also a secondary mechanism. If someone enters the subspace, the door closes behind them automatically and they remain trapped inside until we choose to involve the authorities." He looked at the door frame with the mild satisfaction of a craftsman contemplating finished work. "And if someone attempts to force the door without a key at all, the enchantment redirects the entrance to a teleportation portal. The room appears full — identical to the real storage space — but the moment they step inside, they are transported to—" a brief pause — "somewhere from which they will not be returning."
He looked at me and produced a small, unhurried smile.
"So. In the unlikely event that someone attempts to steal from this room while you're standing outside it — close the door, knock on it once to confirm the lock has engaged, and walk away. They cannot get in. You cannot be harmed by simply being nearby. All you have to do is not be present when things become unpleasant."
I looked at the door frame with new attention, studying the overlapping symbols carved into the wood — concentric circles, interlocking lines, notation I didn't recognise but could appreciate the density of. Layer upon layer of it, each enchantment sitting inside the next like nested structures, the whole thing a piece of work that would have taken considerable time and considerable talent to construct.
"It's remarkable," I said, meaning it completely. "Is this your work, Mister Zaren?"
His expression shifted.
"Reichert," he said, with the flat precision of someone correcting something they do not intend to correct twice. "When the sun is up, it's Reichert. Zaren is for after dark." He held my gaze in a way that turned the instruction into something closer to a warning. "Don't mix them up again."
The distinction clearly meant something specific, and I found that I very much wanted to know what.
"Why—" I began.
"Too many questions." His voice cooled by a perceptible degree, not rudely but decisively. "Curiosity is admirable. Curiosity about things that don't concern you is simply inefficient. I am your employer for one week and two days. After that, we leave Selon and you go wherever you were going before this. There is no reason, within that window, for you to know my biography."
He held the line with the ease of someone who has drawn it before and found that it holds.
I swallowed my frustration, arranged my expression into something appropriately chastened, and said, "I apologise. I didn't intend any offence."
*Tsk,* I said, internally and with feeling.
"I'll bring the cart around," he said, and left.
---
I was alone for a few minutes, and I used them.
I moved slowly around the door frame, examining the engraving work up close — tracing the layered symbols with my eyes, following the logic of the circles where I could find it, losing the thread where the complexity exceeded my understanding of the system. Which was most of it, if I was being honest. I had read about engraving magic, knew its history and its general principles, but reading about something and standing in front of a masterwork of it were very different experiences.
It made a specific kind of sense that he was proficient in this. A sorcerer generated his own magic rather than drawing on ambient sources — which meant his reserves were limited, finite, replenished at cost. He could not afford to spend power the way a mage might. Engraving magic offered a solution: invest the power once, carefully and precisely, into an object, and the enchantment continues to work independently until the magic runs out. A force multiplier for a resource that couldn't be casually replenished.
Efficient. Intelligent. The approach of someone who had understood his own constraints and built around them rather than against them.
The thought produced a smile I hadn't intended.
I was studying a particularly dense section of the door frame notation when the sound of wheels on gravel announced company.
"Thought you'd done a runner, lad."
Benedict rounded the corner, pushing a flat cart with the unhurried ease of someone for whom physical labour is simply the texture of ordinary life. He had, clearly, made good use of the time Reichert had given us both. His hair and beard were still slightly damp from washing, his previous beer-soaked state thoroughly addressed. He had changed into two layers — a lighter inner shirt beneath a heavier outer one — dark trousers tucked into boots, and had tied the cuffs of his sleeves back with a length of vermilion thread. He looked entirely prepared to spend the next several hours doing whatever needed doing and finding it unremarkable.
"Mister Benedict," I said, "won't you overheat in that many layers? It's already warm and the day is just beginning."
He waved this off with the dismissive economy of a man who has heard this kind of concern before and found it wanting.
"Worked at a forge for the better part of a decade," he said. "Smith, on and off. Ten times hotter than anything this city's going to throw at me today, and I managed that just fine." He looked me over with the same blunt assessment. "What about you? You're not exactly dressed for a southern summer either."
"I'll manage," I said, keeping my tone easy and final.
He gave me a brief look that suggested he wasn't entirely convinced, and then the cart came to a stop in front of the storage door and the matter became academic, because there was work to do and Benedict Ferenriarth was evidently a man who did not linger when there was work to do.