“I think you’re an asshole,” Jasna snapped around a mouthful of her bun and Hastur laughed.

The girl was a brat, but in a good way, he decided. With pluck like that it was no wonder she’d lasted as long as she had.

“I know, but I also know you know I’m your only option at this point,” he said. The way she dropped her eyes to the bun in her hand told him all he needed to know about that.

Jasna took a bite of the bun, her fourth, then said, “Maybe, thanks to you interfering,” her tone sour. She finally looked at him again and pressed, “The real question is why you want us.”

The girl’s eyes searched his face and Hastur didn’t turn away, but let her get a good look at him when he answered, “Truth is, kid, I’m good at two things in life— fighting and organized crime. I can’t go back to the Red Guard, so that leaves the crime. Takes more than one person to make things an organization, though, hence me looking for some promising folk to get things going.”

Jasna chewed thoughtfully on her mouthful and Hastur let her alone to think. After a moment, she asked, “I heard you freaked out and left the guard years ago. What’ve you been doing all this time?” her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

“Sold books, mostly.”

“And that made you good at crime?”

“You can learn a lot of things from books.”

The suspicion in Jasna’s gaze didn’t fade in the slightest as she let her eyes rove over his muscular physique. “Uh-huh.”

Hastur huffed a laugh, unable to begrudge the girl her skepticism. “Listen, kid, you don’t like working for me you and your lot can leave anytime to find yourself something else. You might as well give me a try, though. Unlike the other guy, I won’t charge you a red cent.”

Jasna finished her bun then closed up the bag on the others to keep them fresh. “You’re a weird, irritating old man,” the girl told him bluntly, not shying away from meeting his gaze now that she seemed to have made up her mind. “But if working with you means we get to eat every day without selling ourselves into indentured servitude, I’ll take it.”

She stood abruptly and offered her hand, as if in a hurry to get it over with before she could change her mind, so Hastur got to his feet then accepted.

He gave her hand a firm shake and said, “You won’t regret it, Jasna.”

“We’ll see about that.”

~~~

Hastur watched the girl disappear into the crowd then started off in the opposite direction. He hadn’t expected to run into Jasna when he’d left the inn in pursuit of something besides Prishka’s stew to eat for a change but he was glad he had.

She’d resented his pity without realizing that it came from a place of understanding. True, he hadn’t been fighting for his life or starving in the streets when he was her age, but he’d had similar times as an adult both on the battlefield and off. Truth was he respected the girl and not only what she’d been through, but the fact she’d manage to keep her crew together through so much when they all had so little.

There was a talent there to be fostered, same as there was in Gavrail, and Hastur had opted to take on the challenge. If nothing else he viewed it as on-the-job training for new employees in his criminal enterprise. If there was one thing Hastur had learned over the years, it was the more talented individuals he had under his command, the better.

Even if they were wet behind the ears.

Hastur meandered through the market and picked up a few meat skewers for himself to eat while he walked. Before he’d felt Jasna watching him, he had been distracted by the distinct hum of magic underfoot so he wandered awhile in search of it again. When he found it, Hastur stopped dead in his tracks so another man swore and barely avoided bumping into him from behind. Hastur ignored him, though, and stared into the middle distance, absently chewing on a mouthful of roasted meat while he focused on the sensation.

Magic roared past underfoot in a torrent— a vast, crackling river of boundless potential that made Hastur’s hair stand on end when it burned through the soles of his boots.

He glanced around surreptitiously and wondered how no one else felt it, how he had never felt it before his fourteen year stint on Earth— it was like standing on the beach and not hearing the crash of the ocean waves.

Curious, he followed the flow of magic ‘downstream’ a ways, following it along the salt road until it deviated briefly into a neighborhood. Because the flow ran underground, Hastur was forced to walk around city blocks to find it again until, at last, it arrived at one building and rather than continuing straight through, went off at an angle again.

The house looked perfectly normal at a glance, but under more critical examination Hastur noticed that the shutters over the windows weren’t made to be open and the door seemed more heavily fortified than those on the houses to either side.

Like a hidden substation, Hastur thought to himself after he’d done a casual lap of the block and then kept walking, following the magic off in its new direction.

Given only his own knowledge, Hastur would have assumed Magic operated similarly to electricity as he’d experienced it on Earth, and the existence of the ‘substation’ had only confirmed it. Mikey’s more extensive knowledge, however, corrected and adjusted his understanding, though his experiences did give it new context.

In reality, magic was more like a mix of electricity and radio waves. It didn’t require wires to be moved from one place to another the way electricity did, but there were diodes that guided and kept it flowing in streams casters called ley-lines. Devices powered by magic had smaller diodes that directed the energy needed into them from nearby branching ley lines.

Like radio waves, Hastur realized, ley-lines could be intercepted or even re-directed by a more powerful ‘antenna’. Intercepting radio transmissions was something he’d first become acquainted with in the army, but he’d used it later, too, listening in on frequencies used by the police to stay one step ahead of the law.

The primary ley-line traced the length of the salt road, crossing it occasionally when the original constructors had been forced to choose a less conspicuous spot for a substation diode. It continued all the way down to the docks, but beyond lighting the lamps along the salt road, its power only branched occasionally, generally in favor of popular markets or wealthier neighborhoods. It skirted the southern edge of Ashtown then flared out, like a river delta, along the many docks that made up Vorslav’s extensive port.

Vital to the city’s, indeed, the country’s survival, the Fane duchy and royal family both had invested a significant amount of money into the port where most of the foreign trade for the entire southern half of the continent occurred. It had been Hastur’s own father that had ordered the aether-grid expanded all the way down to the docks, while also opting to ignore the most poverty stricken areas the ley-lines passed under despite how they could have benefited from so much power.

“A goddamn waste,” Hastur murmured aloud to himself as he looked down over the docks from the crest of the final hill before the sea.

The sun had begun to set in earnest and the magically generated lights glittered below him like so many stars cast down upon the shore as ships came and went. As far as Hastur knew, the ley-lines terminated at the lighthouse on the west side of the bay where it warned ships away from the rocks there.

Hastur remained there for some time, mulling over just how a man might make use of all that free power, if only he could get his hands on it somehow.

~~~

“I still can’t believe you sold us out,” Zelimir said with a bitter scowl. His words were aimed at his sister, but his venomous glare was aimed at Hastur where he lounged, back against the wall next to the front door of their squat.

“What’s done is done, just let it go,” Gavrail snapped back irritably, obviously sick of the other man’s complaints which Hastur had no doubt started well before he showed up.

Zelimir started towards Gav but was brought up short by his sister’s had on his shoulder. “Let it be, Imir,” she said, tone firm, but her gaze subtly pleading.

He seemed unwilling to hear her out, unfortunately. “If you were tired of leading, you should have just let me take your place,” he bit out angrily, then turned and stormed out of the house, shooting Hastur a nasty glare on the way.

The man didn’t move to stop him, just watched him go while he packed his pipe with a practiced hand. Zelimir slammed the door in his wake and Hastur lit his pipe then looked over the small crowd of young people gathered there.

His new crew were a shabby bunch, and there were a handful of actual children amongst their number, mostly hiding behind their siblings or parents, but they all seemed ready to listen, at least.

Zelimir’s noisy exit left a vacuum of silence in his wake that was broken when one of the inexpertly applied boards over the nearby broken window fell off with a raucous clatter. The young folk all flinched and Jasna dropped her head into her hands— whether out of embarrassment at the state of their home or her older brother’s attitude Hastur couldn’t tell at a glance.

“He going to be a problem?” he asked her steadily while a couple of the younger crew members got up and went to work reapplying the board.

Jasna looked at him, obviously tired, but not as upset as one might have expected. “No. He’ll come round. I’ll make sure of it.”

Hastur had his doubts— he’d seen the type before, but he was willing to let Jasna handle it, for now, on the off chance she was right. Zelimir was one of the biggest lads in the group, after all, and they needed every hand at this early stage.

So he nodded then looked around the room, memorizing the faces there. “Well, lets get started then, shall we?”