Orestis slept.

  Not heavily, not deeply—but long enough for his body to stop protesting the previous day’s decisions. The fact that an hour or two of walking had been enough to provoke complaint only reaffirmed his intention to train properly.

  Centuries of immortality, and I let myself get winded by a stroll. Embarrassing.

  When he woke, the city outside his window was already in motion. Shutters opened. Carts rolled past. Voices carried upward—not hurried, not hushed. Simply present.

  He stayed in his room for the rest of the morning. Partly because he could afford to, and partly because arriving somewhere and immediately doing things drew attention. Rushed behaviour formed patterns, and patterns invited scrutiny.

  A weary traveller resting after arrival, on the other hand, did not.

  So he rested, and let the rejuvenation enchantment on his tunic do what it was designed to do. He briefly considered strengthening it, then dismissed the thought. He’d made it understated for a reason.

  By midday, he was ready to move.

  ***

  The first errand was reconnaissance.

  Long-distance communication existed in Orthessa, but not casually. He confirmed that within the hour. Devices were rare, expensive, and specialized—usually fixed installations maintained by licensed enchanters or embedded in institutional infrastructure.

  Portable versions did exist, but their range was unimpressive, their reliability questionable, and their cost prohibitive for private households. Which neatly explained why there were none in Theramon.

  It was also why he didn’t build anything blindly. Even the oldest communication device he remembered operated on principles hundreds of years ahead of what was currently available.

  A humbling reminder of how much changes in a thousand years. Or a depressing one, depending on the mood.

  He let shopkeepers talk and enchanters complain, took mental notes while nodding in the appropriate places, then left without purchasing anything—at least from those shops. A few quieter visits followed, to places with fewer opinions and less curiosity, where he bought raw materials instead.

  Unremarkable components. Useful in a dozen trades. Suspicious in none.

  That afternoon, back in his room, he laid everything out on the table in neat rows. He stared at it for several seconds—then stopped.

  Right. Orthessa.

  With a sigh, he packed everything back into the satchel. Communication devices required magic during construction, and his personal mana reserves were so pitiful that using them at all would drain him almost instantly. Which left only one viable option: divine power.

  Using divine power inside the city was… inadvisable.

  He would likely trigger half a dozen wards within the first second—each helpfully noting his exact location, and politely identifying which god the power belonged to. Mage enforcers would follow shortly after.

  If he was lucky, they would knock. If he wasn’t, they would wrap the entire inn in an imprisonment field and ask questions later. The latter was far more efficient, and Orthessa prized efficiency.

  So he left the city.

  The nearby forest suited his purposes well enough—quiet, undisturbed, and mercifully unwarded. Once he was certain he was alone, Orestis set to work.

  The design was conservative: narrow function, nothing unnecessary, nothing that would inspire curiosity in anyone who took it apart later. It wouldn’t look impressive. It would merely look expensive.

  When he finished, two identical objects rested on the ground: palm-sized hemispheres, smooth and unadorned. They functioned via sympathetic magical resonance, transmitting auditory signals between each other—and only each other.

  The call-nodes—as the Consortium had named them—fit neatly in his palm. Simple, reliable, and difficult to intercept without already knowing exactly what to look for. However, unlike the ones available in the market, these did not have a range limitation.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  And all of that achieved while following the magical principles of this age.

  Perfect.

  He wrapped one carefully and attached a short note: polite, vague, entirely defensible. If anyone asked, his parents could say it was a gift from a business associate.

  Which, in a sufficiently broad sense, it was.

  He opened a small gate directly to his room at home, placed the package through, and closed it. His mother had been very clear about wanting it as soon as possible.

  He slipped the remaining device into his satchel, erased any sign of his work, and took one last look around the forest before heading back toward the city.

  One for me. One for them. Simple, symmetrical, and entirely untraceable. As the best tools should be.

  ***

  The next few days were for business.

  Petros’s business.

  Orestis made sure he was seen doing it.

  He attended meetings that lasted too long and accomplished very little. He reviewed contracts for Consortium-backed infrastructure projects—storage agreements, release schedules, verification clauses—and visited warehouses where non-magical components waited patiently for their turn to become indispensable.

  He confirmed delivery timelines across three jurisdictions: Kallistrate, Orthessa, and Nomyra. He asked clarifying questions about tariffs and handoffs, took notes, and signed where required.

  He noticed inefficiencies. He said nothing about them. That was the hard part; not the work—the restraint.

  Soon, clerks came to recognize him, and factors remembered his name—not because he impressed them, but because he didn’t complicate things.

  By the end of the week, his presence had a shape: purposeful, unremarkable, and most importantly—documented.

  Now, when the Temple of Demerius began asking questions, his absence from Kallistrate would look like coincidence, not evasion.

  That would hold—for a while.

  Unfortunately, a while was not long enough. Assignments ended. Deliveries concluded. Contracts resolved themselves—or they didn’t. Either way, the work had an end date, and it wouldn’t justify an absence long enough to skip the war Kallistrate was planning.

  At some point, coincidence would curdle into intent. Temporary work did not protect people; dependency did.

  He considered alternatives. Joining a guild would provide paperwork and protection—but also oversight, obligations, and questions that wouldn’t stop once answered. Mercenary work would justify absence at the cost of visibility and an enthusiasm for violence he did not possess.

  Independent consultancy was worse. It invited scrutiny from everyone and shelter from no one.

  None of them solved the problem. They merely replaced it. He needed a reason to stay that no one would bother questioning.

  Preferably one that did not require enthusiasm.

  ***

  Orestis went to the one place that experience suggested solved an unreasonable number of minor problems: a tavern.

  The one he chose was unremarkable, which was precisely the point. Busy without being crowded, loud without being chaotic. The clientele was a familiar mix—merchants unwinding after the day’s margins, clerks complaining about forms that existed solely to justify other forms, and a few mages with enough seniority to grumble publicly and not be taken seriously for it.

  It was the sort of place that didn’t intend to share information, but did so anyway.

  He took a seat at the counter, ordered something cheap and forgettable, and listened.

  Taverns were, in his extensive experience, the most reliable intelligence networks in any civilization. No clearance required. Just alcohol and proximity.

  Conversation overlapped without cohesion. Complaints drifted from table to table, unowned and unresolved. Most of it was background noise—until one voice, edged with sustained irritation, began to repeat itself.

  It belonged to a mage. By the cut of his robes, a junior member of the Orthessa Mage Consortium’s technical staff. Mid-career, overworked, nursing a drink with the air of someone who had exhausted every sensible option.

  He was describing a system that refused to behave. It worked—mostly. It failed under load or degraded unpredictably. Everyone agreed the answer was more mana; everyone had already tried that. Repeatedly.

  Orestis resisted the urge to sigh. He recognized the problem.

  More importantly though, he recognised the shape of the solution—and the leverage it implied.

  Temples argued with rulers. Rulers negotiated with guilds. But no one enjoyed antagonizing the Consortium—especially over someone inconsequential.

  The Orthessa Mage Consortium did not govern or command armies. What it did was maintain the magical infrastructure Orthessa and its neighbours quietly relied upon to function: wards, relays, stabilisation frameworks—unseen, uncelebrated, and intolerant of disruption.

  In other words, the only institution that could tell a temple to wait its turn and actually be obeyed.

  Orestis waited until the mage paused to breathe.

  Then, quietly—as if thinking aloud rather than addressing anyone in particular—he said, “Your third binding is likely backwards.”

  He didn’t elaborate or wait to see if the comment registered. He finished his drink, left a coin on the counter, and stepped back out into the street.

  The mage would dismiss it at first. But mages in that field didn’t ignore ideas entirely—especially not once everything else had failed. Eventually, frustration would do what curiosity could not.

  The binding would be reversed, if only to prove it wrong. And when the system stabilized, the mage would remember the comment—not because it had been convincing, but because it had been specific.

  Orestis didn’t plan to hover. That would be noticeable. He would return to the tavern occasionally, at irregular intervals—long enough to be remembered as a habit rather than a fixture. If approached, he would respond. If not, he would reassess.

  And if nothing came of it at all, he had thought of some contingencies. The Consortium was the cleanest solution, but he had never been foolish enough to rely on a single path.

  He sat on the edge of his bed and listened as Orthessa settled around him—wards humming softly, routines reasserting themselves, nothing reacting to his presence in any meaningful way. Which was, for now, exactly what he wanted.

  There was no urgency; he still had time. At least, that was the assumption.