Chapter 12 - New routes

Putt sat by the fire, feeling the occasional twinge of pain from his back. They had moved to a new place and had been there for a few days now. He had let his grandmother take care of his wounds, but they had hardly spoken. He knew he had been mistaken, duped, and had done a lot of things wrong, but he couldn't understand why the punishment had been so severe. He had always been taught that everyone made mistakes, and it was only natural for a child to do so. The severity of his punishment did not seem natural to him.
"If I hadn't done what I did, they would have killed you," his grandmother said, as if reading his mind.
"You've told me," he replied, feeling a mix of frustration and resignation.
He heard a sigh from across the glowing fire. A sound behind him startled him. He turned, causing pain in his back, and scanned into the darkness.
"A deer," his grandmother's voice assured him. "If you want to see approaching danger, don't stare into the fire first."
"I know," he muttered. But how could he keep his eyes from the fire or the glowing embers?
"Putt, we need to talk."
What was there to talk about? Or was there too much to talk about? He didn't know. The world had become such a strange place. Once again. Maybe it was him, an odd boy in a world that was normal to everybody else.
"Putt, I can't have you as my apprentice."
He nodded. Putt no longer wanted to be her apprentice. It was a harsh life he did not understand. He had been proud and excited, but the price was too high. He sensed the relief on the other side of the fire.
"But," she continued, "we need to find you another apprenticeship."
Putt's head popped up.
"Why?" he almost yelped in terror. "Why can't I stay with you? Even if I'm not becoming a warrior, I can still follow you and help you and be with you."
"Putt, you need to learn a profession. I'll leave this world someday, and then you must be able to support yourself. And provide for a family one day."
Grown-ups made things so complicated, he thought. On the other hand, if his parents had been alive, he would have had this issue solved. He would have been a farmer and would not think much about the choice.
"No matter where you end up, I'll need money to pay the master. So that's where we'll start. Tomorrow we leave for Posita."
Why Posita? Was there not a risk they would meet this Oon Barsate again, or her soldiers? He expressed his worry to Avia. She told him Posita was the nearest city and large enough to have options, and, which seemed the most important though she tried to mention it in passing, had their famous fightings.
"Will you bet on them?" he asked, having a vague idea that that was what you did.
"No," she grinned at him in reply. "I'll fight."
"But..." He couldn't say it. His grandmother could get killed, fighting for money to pay his education. To pay for his failure in becoming her apprentice.
"Please, don't," he whispered.
"We need money. Have some faith in me."
Faith? His grandmother was willing to risk leaving him alone in the world for money. Money she had expressed several times she did not want or need. Now they were worth risking her life for. She was risking her life to give him a future he did not ask for.
All he wanted was to be with her, to grow up with her. Since his parents died, it felt like he was tumbling down a hill without the ability to stop or control what happened to him. He desperately wanted to get a firm hold of something, anything, he passed on his way down and get a stable point in his life. His hate for the constant change that was a part of Avia's life surfaced. Not even knowing where to sleep and what to eat the next night was disturbing.
"And don't worry about Oon and her gang. They've already passed us on their way back."
That was a comfort, but compared to the risk she was willing to take, bitchy Oon seemed like a tiny problem.
What did he want to do with his life? What did he want to work with? Animals maybe. He had taken care of the animals back home, and he and the mule had gotten along just fine.
"Can I work caring for animals?" he asked. Avia considered.
"It's possible, but it's mostly lords and rulers and castles that need stable masters, and they usually have a line of people to train on their own. It's not likely they'll take on a stranger."
Putt felt his heart sink. Some doors seemed so closed and locked tight like they were only painted and not real doors at all. He was only a boy still, and yet it felt like he was born in the wrong place. To be working with animals you had to be born to someone already working for a lord. And to be a farmer, you had to be born to a farmer. Never had he seen anyone coming with a child asking someone in the village to train the kid as a farmer. He guessed those who wanted to be farmers and were born to stable masters were pretty frustrated too.





They saw the city of Posita two days later. The largest collection of houses Putt had seen before was Kaid Pah up in the mountains. Posita made Kaid Pah look like a small village, and his beloved Peragri seemed like just a cluster of houses by comparison. Putt marveled at the regularity he saw. Two wide, straight roads crossed the city, meeting in a circular area that wagons drove around but did not pass through.
Closer to the center, more buildings were made of stone, and some were at least three floors high. This gave the city a defined center not only by the roads but also in height. Further from the circular square, the buildings were lower, and at its edges, there were small wooden cottages.
"A ruler of the area, a long time ago, decided to create a great center, a hub for all human interest, and planned this city," his grandmother explained as theyzigzagged down the hillside. "Those two roads and the square came first. He invited people who were excellent in their professions to join."
"Did it work?" Putt asked.
"Sort of. It did not turn out to be the palace of human goodness as I think he intended, but you can find almost anyone or anything there. Or information that will lead you further. Aside from very dedicated and excellent masters, you can also get in touch with the most distinguished assassins, thieves, and spies."
Some complexes broke the symmetry. The buildings there were high, large, and circular.
"What's over there, in the corners?" he asked, pointing.
"Those are the fighting arenas."
The places for paid combat. The place where he could lose his grandmother. They continued downhill.
"Are you sure Oon and the others are behind us?" Putt asked anxiously.
"They passed us when we were still at the camp. They took no note of us. Our camp could not be seen from the path. Don't worry, son, they're no longer part of our lives."
The stone of fear felt a little lighter in Putt's stomach. Not only because of the non-existing threat in Posita, at least not a specific known one, but also because he heard the sympathetic tone in Avia's voice that he wanted to hear. The one that cared for him as a grandson, not as an apprentice. The one that had the patience to explain the obvious.
He felt more than ever that he did not want to leave her. How could things be so urgent when he was still a child? What was there in life that was so impossible to learn later?
"Can't we just find a house and stay in?" he asked.
"We'll stay at an inn. Why?" She had misunderstood him completely.
"I meant for us to live in," he tried to explain.
"I see," his grandmother answered, and Putt wondered if she really did. But soon, he became aware that she had more than a clue. "How do you want me to pay for the house?"
"Those fights..." He did not like it, but if she was going to battle to pay for an apprenticeship, why not for a home?
"And food? Clothes? You want me to fight every week for us to get fed? Or shall we go out on the streets and beg?"
Putt shook his head. She had won.
There would be no house in the city for them. No house for them anywhere. They would not live together, ever. Just travel together on an endless journey. He tried to think of her as too old and that she would settle down soon, but the image contradicted everything he knew about his grandmother.
She would not quit. She was a warrior and would die as one. Nevertheless, he longed for a different world. When he had still lived in Peragri with his parents, he had looked up to Avia with enormous admiration. Then he had home and stability, and she was the flavor of mystery in his life. He had not realized then that he needed the safe spot in his life more than the adventure because he had taken the boredom of everyday life for granted.
As they approached the city limits, he wished he had not said anything about living here. The houses seemed bigger than other homes he had seen. More people moved about than in Kaid Pah. It felt like his privacy disappeared in an instant. It felt like just the sheer presence of so many at once drained him of energy. His eyes darted around for something, anything, that did not move. Apart from the houses, of course. But even those almost seemed to move, with their shops on the bottom floor and curtains and people in the windows above.
He stopped by a sorcerer's wagon and watched her colorful clothes and the enchanting smoke she shaped with her hands. At least it was something more relaxing than the rest of the anthill around him. When she spotted his attention, she formed a puff of pink smoke into a curvy girl for a second or two before it was back as a cloud between her hands. His cheeks became red hot, and the sorcerer smirked. Granny pulled him away from there.