The hero's party (2)

They weren't heading to the red light district, but the place they were going to wasn't that much safer. It was a good thing James had taken the time to make precautions.

He looked at his pocket watch again. They still had a good hour to study the house. They lounged on the roof of a building across from the street, staring down at the target James had only learned about the day before.

He didn't want to have to take care of this whole business personally, although they'd sent an assassin after him. He wanted someone else to take credit for the whole thing. It was about time he thought of hid safety and those closest to him. It was an entirely selfish reason, getting the hero's party together.

And so, after he had seen enough of the signs to know this was the place that they were looking for, he left.

The building was nondescript, a small house, even, in the crowded streets of the lower city. It would have been easy to assume they were hiding in the slums, so James wasn't surprised that person was frequenting that area.

The thugs never entered through the front door. And they were good at sneaking. There were high level magic barriers there too. James thought he'd seen the last of clever criminals like these at his old job. There was the slight chance the city guard was on their side as well.

"Who are they?" Hansworth asked as they started their journey into the slums.

James only dispelled his invisibility once he was sure there were no eyes to see them. Now they looked like two teenage boys with extremely ordinary appearances and a slightly younger girl cradling a kitten. Only the young girl wore a hood.

"The lady told us she wasn't sure who they were and what they were doing."

"But you have an idea?"

"Of course I do. And you do too, and I'm positive she knew exactly who they were."

"She doesn't trust us yet?" Hans asked.

"Its part of the kind of work she does."

"What are you thugs doing to that woman?!" a female voice called from a ways down the road.

Both Hans and James turned to the cry. Hansworth tried to bolt into action, but James stopped him with a hand on his arm. He told him they should go together.

James recognized her of course. One would think she'd missed the whole point of disguising herself. Her light blue hair screamed even where it was bounded below her hood.

"Maybe today is a two nighter," said one of the thugs, in a very cliche voice.

"I'd like to see you try," the lady seemed proud of herself. "I just raised the alarm. Pretty soon people will—"

She looked to her right. James's sight followed hers, and he was as dismayed as she must have been. An old man looked back, wearing a kind of guilty look, but then he was facing forward and rushing away from the scene.

There were busted mage lights, stood on poles unlike other parts of the city, so it was easy to blame the not so bright night for the negligence of the rest of the slum dwellers. They didn't even look back. Some looked to even move leisurely.

"You're not from around here, are you sweet heart?" one of the men asked.

But then the girl's eyes met James's, and she saw him and Hansworth rushing over to help. James had been hoping to arrive at the same time, but he'd abused his muscles that day. He was still miles away from running as fast as Hansworth anyway.

The thugs saw them too. They looked like a bunch of kids though, and no matter that James's clothes were not all tacky and whatever, they still looked good compared to those of a commoner.

"What's this? Noble babes still on the breast come to rescue the pretty little princess?"

James was too tired to retort, let alone fight anyone. He gestured to Hans to proceed with the dispatching. He hadn't let him come with a sword, but a few low level grants in a back alley couldn't have—

He dived in with only seconds to spare, grabbing an armed man's arm just as he'd aimed to stub Hans with a concealed weapon.

"This is no time to show off Hans. Just finish the battle as quickly and efficiently as you can."

He hadn't been planning on joining in, but now the armed thug was coming after him in relentless pursuit. His precautions hadn't made it in time, so it was all he could do to evade the knife thrusts, hoping Hans would be by in a few seconds to...James tripped.

The thug gave a cry of delight, his cry meshed with his companion's grunts of pain, and the girl's cry of dismay. James bent all his will power into watching the descending blade, preparing to deflect it to at least a less lethal area. The pain would be hell, but at least he'd be alive.

Then the thug's eyes widened, but not before James's own. A swathe of liquid night deflected the blow. And even though he'd seen it waving and pulsing like some kind of liquid, the knife had impacted it with a cracking sound.

The thug prepared to strike a second time, and got lifted from his feet by a blue bolt of energy. James looked towards the source. A familiar figure was striding forward from behind the girl who now had her hands thrust forward as if she'd been casting a spell. But it wasn't her spell that had taken the thug. James knew this new spell well. His precautions had made it in time after all.

Hansworth was standing a little behind the thug, expression shifting from concerned to depressed in nearly dizzying speeds. His hands clenched, unclenched, clenched again, all the while his jaw worked as well. His eyes seemed to rave every part of the fallen noble, looking for the wound that his negligence might have caused.

He turned around and helped the girl who had been about to be assaulted. Nino helped James to his feet.

"Are you from around here?" Hans asked the girl in a concerned voice.

"No she isn't," Jason Kon, regular looking guy who was technically the hero of this tale, said.

"How do you know?" the blue haired mage asked.

"They don't attack their own, here in the slums," James said as he got to his feet. "I hope you didn't kill him, by the way."

Jason stopped uncomfortably close to James, studying him from head to toe for any injuries.

"I'm glad you seem mostly uninjured, though I thought that was it at the end there."

James didn't comment. So it hadn't been Jason to use what, if it wasn't dark magic, was probably nothing good. He'd never heard of a dark magic shield though, and he hadn't used his own mana for that, and Nino's power didn't look like that.

"I think we should escort her out of here," Hansworth was saying, though he looked anywhere but at James's eyes. "That is, unless you have some other business here," he finished in a rush.

James was staring at the blue haired girl. He had a feeling if he hadn't been watching her so carefully, she might have escaped already.

"Why didn't you fight them yourself?" he questioned.

Her eye brows shot up, and she seemed to take a step back without conscious thought. James's eyes narrowed at her.

"You don't have much confidence in your power, do you?" he asked with a frown.

"You... you don't even know anything about me!"

"On the contrary, I came here looking for you. I'd heard there was someone in the slums asking about a kidnapping ring or something," James said with a casual flick of the shoulder.

"Tell me what you know," a hint of steel entered her voice, and her face lost its uncertainty.

James needed the hero's party, or at least those elements of it that he could more or less trust, to start banding together.

The princess was a good mage, but she'd lacked confidence in her abilities in the first two books. Having lost a political dispute and sent to exile in the Mareth kingdom, she'd been training hard in the hopes of returning home one day as a sage.

But the Mareth kingdom didn't have strong people. Her being as strong as some court mages didn't boost her confidence at all. Then she'd met Jason, who even though he used lower tier spells, was much stronger than her.

It had caused her to lose confidence for a while, but then she'd gained it back after years of trying to be better than him at the academy.

"How about you put your arms down first. That's kind of scary when a mage points like that."

"What?" It was like her body had been acting on its own.

Jason stepped in front of her, folded his arms across his slightly elevated chest, and James was sure he would have seen him grinning if he'd been facing him.

"If you want to fight, I can indulge you. The young master seems to think you're strong."

"And what would he know?!"

"A lot of things, princess," James said.

He stepped around Jason. Only to find the white as a sheet girl staring wide eyed at him.

"Join us, won't you? We need to escort this innocent woman out of the slums. Besides, it wouldn't do to have our conversation out in the open like this."