Wolf had spent his time until Sunday morning in a haze. Reading those letters had shaken him up enough to not care about the freeloading chaperone, nor the fact that Wayde had also invited himself for his lunch date with Anna and South.

By the time Sunday morning came Wolf actually felt glad the old chaperone had tagged along. The woman had prepared everything. She booked a coach, borrowed a Ring of Holding from the Mage Academy, pilfered the pantry for the best ingredients they had and she’d even borrowed the spare magical appliances Wolf would need.

When Wolf entered the carriage he’d found that Anna and the chaperone were sitting on one side, while Wayde was sitting across from them. Anna and the old woman sat so that, even though the bench could easily fit three, men would have to sit on their side while women sat on theirs.

“You’re late!” Anna said with fake grumpiness. Wolf was actually on time, it’s just that they’d arrived early.

Wolf looked at Wayde, who looked as miserable as a cat caught in a downpour. Wolf wondered why his roommate had rushed ahead when they lived in the same dorm.

“I’m not late, scoot over,” Wolf said, propriety being the last thing on his mind.

The minder was shocked by the scandalous declaration, but didn’t say anything. What the younths did was their own affair, and if this boy was cheeky enough to ask Lady Annabelle to make room for him only Lady Annabelle could deny him.

“You shameless rogue,” Anna exclaimed, much to the old woman’s satisfaction.

“Oh, drop the act, we’ve already slept together years ago,” Wolf said and squeezed in next to Anna, for the first time ever feeling grateful for his tiny stature.

His statement made Anna blush and stutter. Chaperone’s eyes went wide, while Wayde looked like he was about to have a seizure.

“T-t-that is not what happened!” Anna finally managed to spit out as the carriage lurched into motion.

“Yes it did, we did it on that rooftop. You remember how you cried–” Wolf started, but Anna didn’t let him finish.

“We were children, sharing a blanket! All right? We didn’t sleep together! There was no us sleeping together anywhere!” Wolf was surprised by how angry Anna had gotten, probably ashamed of her foolish past.

“Fine, we shared a blanket and we most definitely didn’t sleep together,” Wolf said while rolling his eyes, without blushing in the slightest.

Remembering how sensitive Wolf was, Wayde realized that this tiny roommate of his probably had no idea what he’d just said.

“Wolf,” Wayde started hesitantly, “look, people will usually think of something else when you say you guys slept together. It’s a euphemism, and I’ll explain it to you later. All right?”

Wolf’s statement was so shocking that it stopped the argument about him squeezing next to Anna.

In defeat, Anna scooted over to make enough room for Wolf, while the old minder took out a book and started reading. Wolf closed his eyes in meditation, but right now he didn’t dare carve the column for fear of bodily reactions as he sat next to Anna. Instead he spent his time smoothing out a patch of floor.

As for Anna and Wayde, they both felt awkward. In the end, following the old woman’s example, Anna took the textbook from the Friday lecture out of her bag and started reading it. A moment later Wayde did the same, so the party traveled in silence.

It took several hours of continuous clattering of hooves against stone for the coach to reach South’s neighborhood.

“We have arrived at the address you requested,” the coachman said formally before continuing in a different tone.

“I’ll be back in three to four hours, I have to find someplace that has something decent I can eat. You know eating all that tavern food isn’t all that good for your health, they put in a lot of lard and…” the man pitifully explained his plight of how difficult it was to find decent food in a tavern.

All four of his passengers rolled their eyes at this horrible act and the minder looked especially embarrassed.

*Sigh*

“Fine. You can come too,” Wolf said with a defeated sigh.

Cooking for five or cooking for six, there wasn’t that much of a difference, as long as the chaperone had brought enough ingredients. The problem was, the way things were going it was only a matter of time before the peaceful trash filled alley turned into a restaurant, or maybe a catering service.

Hoping that this was the end to the train of surprises and that nobody else would pop up uninvited for lunch, Wolf entered South’s alley.

As soon as he’d entered he stopped in his tracks, as did those walking behind him. Everyone stared in confusion at the odd sight before them.

South had made a makeshift battlement out of garbage, which reached up to the coachman’s chest.

Wolf stared in disbelief at the mound that was taller than he was. What happened here? he asked himself.

“Big brother are you here? Are you well?” Wolf called out loudly.

He was worried quite a bit. This was the first time he had ever seen something like this at South’s place. What could possibly drive Big brother to do something like this?

“Shhh! Quiet Little brother!” An even louder voice, bordering a shout, came from the other side of the mound. “I had this sinking feeling a couple days ago that my home would be invaded, so I’ve made preparations.”

“Um, what about our Sunday lunch?” Wolf asked, having a feeling he knew what this South’s foreboding feeling was all about. As for the identity of the person about to invade his big brother’s alley… Well… He looked at the elderly woman behind him and wondered which of the two was about to suffer.

“Lunch sounds great!” South shouted as his head popped out on the other side of the garbage mound. Apparently forgetting about the heightened state of emergency, the drunkard immediately jumped over the impromptu defensive wall.

“Hey isn’t that your little w–“ he shouted, but didn’t get to finish.

“You finish that sentence and the wineskin gets it!” Anna hissed coldly. She had expected this to happen. She even kind of missed it in a bizarre, masochistic kind of way.

“Um, right. You grew up nice and tall,” South fumbled for words for a moment, but then got back on track. “I see you brought an old one as well and a boy too! Little brother, what ever happened to your taste? I mean I could understand the little one, but these two…” South blathered and took a swing from his wineskin, fortunately not insinuating anything about the coachman.

While Wayde and the chaperone looked at him with blank faces, Anna showed a subtle look of nostalgia reminiscent of a kidnapping victim missing their captor.

“That’s Wayde, we’re roommates and could be considered brothers as well,” Wolf said.

“Greetings Big brother, I guess?” Wayde followed the conversation with some confusion.

Wolf had already told him about South, but nothing much, just that he respected him as an elder brother and that Wolf had been feeding him ever since he’d arrived at Silver city. Well, that and that the drunkard kept calling Anna a whore, while the latter threatened to kill or castrate him or take away his wine.

“Who wants you for a brother?” South grumbled at the youth, before turning towards Anna with a happy face.

“So little,” he hesitated for a moment. “…one, how has life been treating you since you’ve left us?”

“Much better than you.” Anna said sharply.

“You can say that again,” South muttered with a mirthless smile. “You’re just barely a decade old. For you going down the road, or even getting lost in this city can be considered an adventure. Why do you think I’m always drunk? I have no idea what I’d have to do to be as excited at my age…”

South grumbled his gibberish, confusing everyone. In the eyes of the Mage Academy students the unkept drunkard didn’t really look all that old. As for the middle aged coachman and the elderly minder, he looked quite young in their eyes. He was even kind of handsome under all that grime.

While the younger-looking people were chatting, the nanny grimaced as she surveyed the alley. South was definitely not the only thing grimy around here.

“The good news is that that huge garbage heap is quite a bit away from the entrance into the alley,” the woman appraised. “So, you have enough room to cook, and we can set up the eating area here as well. But first, give me half an hour to tidy this place up a bit.”

“Oi! What do you think you’re doing to my house?” South said aggressively, his voice raised.

“I’m cleaning up so that the young lady can sit and eat someplace clean,” the old woman said matter of factly, as if she wasn’t cleaning up for her own benefit.

“That young–” But before South could say another word Anna gave him a cold look. “…lady sat and ate on some of the rubbish that’s still somewhere in this alley thank you very much!”

“I was a child back then!” Anna shouted and Wolf laughed. Even Wayde covered his mouth to stifle a laugh. This was the second time today that she shouted the same thing.

“What? I really was!” Anna felt indignant at Wolf’s reaction. As for Wayde’s covert snickering, it pissed her off even more than Wolf’s open taunting.

Wolf looked at her and chuckled. “Anna, wasn’t the last time you came to eat with us less than two years ago?”

“That’s what I’m saying. I was a child back then and now I’m an adult. I turned twelve, meaning I can even start a family if I want to!” Anna declared proudly, before realizing that she’d misspoken.

Under the minder’s sharp gaze the young lady blushed, but luckily the woman didn’t say anything, other than directing the coachman on how to assist her.

“Um, if that’s what you say…” Wolf replied in a confused manner.

“Don’t you know that girls my age are getting married in noble circles?” Anna asked angrily and Wolf looked at the nanny as if asking whether that was true.

The woman just nodded calmly. That was common knowledge. Some families even married off their daughters while they were still underaged.

“Anna, how old are your mother and father?” Wolf suddenly asked, as if realizing something for the first time.

“Father is thirty-seven, mother is turning twenty-four this year,” Anna answered with some confusion.

“How about you, Wayde?” Wolf turned around and asked.

“Father would’ve been in his late twenties, mother is twenty-two.” Wayde said as if this was fairly normal and common.

My mother was almost five hundred years old and my father was around two hundred and fifty. Wolf thought with a frown. Does that make me the weird one?

Wait, so that’s why they are sacking kids! No wonder! What I think of as kids are actually grownups of marrying age around here. Humans are really weird!

The youth couldn’t help but think that people whose parent’s age wasn’t counted in centuries were weird.

Wolf thought about the hamlet of Muddy River and the settlements that they passed along the way, including Oakwood Freeland. But all the parents he saw there were able bodied and fully grown up for some reason. So why do people have children so young here in the city?

“Um, out in the country people are older when they have children?” Wolf asked gingerly, thankfully the chaperone stepped in to help explain things.

“Nobles are supported by their households and in general the more children the better, because they have a greater chance of finding a good heir. Beggars in the cities, I mean no offense when I say this, but they have nothing better to do than make children and most of their babies die before turning one year old,” the nanny said indifferently, as if this had nothing to do with her.

In fact people from lower class survived based on luck, any one of the grownups could have been the baby cast aside into a ditch. Even her, if she was born under slightly different circumstances…

However, the woman didn’t want to entertain that thought. She simply continued her explanation. “The exception to this trend is the middle layers of society. They don’t have enough money to support an arbitrary number of descendants, nor are they so poor that it doesn’t matter when they have a child. The peasants and others who live outside of the city are all like this.

“Able men and women can support children and they don’t allow their children to do stupid things and waste family resources by showing up with a child of their own as they please. Also it is not uncommon for the child and the woman to starve if something happens to the man of the house and there’s nobody left to feed them.”

I took in my sister and her three wee ones, these words echoed in Wolf’s mind.

Only now did he really understand what kind of a sacrifice Sean had made and why he did it. Now he felt even more glad that he was sending food over to the good folks of Oakwood Freeland.

Suddenly Wolf realized that there was something wrong with this story.

“Wait, if that’s the case... Why are you here?” Wolf asked the chaperone out of nowhere.

Wayde and Anna stared at the youth for a couple of moments before they realized what it was that Wolf had actually asked.

“What do you mean why am I here?” the woman snapped at Wolf. “Mages should delay having children as long as possible. Besides, noble ladies have certain obligations to their families and can’t be allowed to go alone with boys as they please.”

“What? Why?” Wolf asked again, but his question was misunderstood.

“It has to do with the wholeness of the soul. You will learn more about it in some of your classes. In short, having children slows down the rate at which a Mage advances their Order. That’s true for the father and the mother alike. So, aside from preventing disputes between families, we’re here to make sure you don’t cripple your bright future as Mages,” the woman answered the question, unaware that Wolf was a far greater expert on the subject than she was.

What he really wanted to know was why she couldn’t let him and Anna go alone and do as they pleased? It’s not like they would have sex the moment they got out of her sight. Especially with how skinny and bony and unattractive Anna was.

Even though the woman had given a general explanation, she didn’t want to delve into the matter.

“Anyway, I’m about to clean up,” she exclaimed and started cleaning next to the driver who kept quiet and scrubbed as the woman had instructed him.

South looked at them, then drew a line on the muck of the alley floor with his heel.

“If you cross this line you’re not leaving my place alive,” he said coldly, but spoiled the effect by taking a swing from the wineskin the next moment.

“Fine!” the woman agreed and then continued with her cleaning.

Once she was done, she took out the table and everything Wolf needed to prepare their late lunch. The chaperone was greatly surprised when she saw the drunken South expertly chopping the ingredients. For instance, garlic was so thinly sliced that it was almost transparent. As South chopped Wolf cooked. Soon enough everyone was seated at a fancy table, enjoying a hearty meal.

“You know Little brother, I never expected this of you,” South said with some disappointment.

“Never expected what?” Wolf really didn’t understand what was wrong now. How had he offended his big brother?

“This food tastes of gluttony. You didn’t buy it yourself, as we’d agreed, but it’s passable I guess, I can taste the care you put into preparing it. But that’s not an issue. The thing is, you brought invaders into my home just like that.” South snapped his fingers and shook his head while looking at the cobbled road their fancy chairs were on.

The stones were practically sparkling. The old woman had brought magical items for cleaning to make sure she didn’t miss anything. And the coachman was even more meticulous than she was.

Wolf heaved a sigh of relief when he realized his big brother was joking. “If that’s really the only thing bothering you, just tell me what I can do to make it up to you–”

In the middle of his sentence, Wolf felt a spike of murderous intent directed towards him.

“Duck!” South shouted.