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Giving the Two-Headed Pig and its temptations a wistful sigh, Valon headed towards the building the "awful children" identified as the town hall. As he walked, the tip of his hat dribbled out the last of its trapped rain. His boots' squelches reminded his legs just how tired they were. "Maybe I could just go for an hour or two?" he wondered, his head turning back towards the inn. "On the other hand, yeah, it's probably best to get settled in. The sooner that happens, the sooner I can come back." Thinking about it curled up the corners of his mouth. "Hopefully I can be done by the time those guards come off duty. They'll be thirsty by then, and by the look of this place, probably poor." His smile grew. "Who knows? Maybe they'll even be a little frisky too."

The thick wooden doors of the town hall were closed. Valon wondered if they were ever guarded; guards posted outside important buildings were common in the city, but he supposed they probably didn't have the man-power here. "A shame," he thought; he usually based where he went on how attractive he found the guards outside, as he would inevitably run into them when he got into trouble. "The four I met might be the only militia this place has," he thought. "I suppose you don't have to worry about that so much when you've got a local wizard to solve your problems."

Valon gently prodded the sturdy door; it swung open and he entered. The main hall was large, empty and darker than he was expecting. The torches in the sconces had gone out, and the fire burning in the fireplace looked like it hadn't been fed for hours. Only a few flickers of flame came off the embers in the cradle of ash. Given a shiver, he looked at a nearby log, giving a gesture to coax it into the fire. "Place is about ready to fall apart." Skins and horns hung from the walls, with a glorious preserved stag's head mounted above the Valgravian standards and the empty chair that Valon presumed the mayor used to hear cases and dispense local justice. "At least there's someone competent here now. This place is probably going to get fairly lively now that I'm here."

With the room empty, Valon decided to head through the open smaller side door at the back of the chamber. As he walked, he noticed an unusual pair of parallel grooves in the dirt. His brow creased. "Maybe some kind of trolley or cart for the wood?" It wouldn't surprise him; they looked a lot like the marks left by carts and carriages when they travelled over wet roads.

Exiting the main hall, and entering what looked to be the mayor's private chamber, Valon discovered chaos. If there was any hidden order to the ad-hoc piles of papers, some in crates and boxes resting on the wooden floor - and Valon had been in several offices to assume there probably was - it was a logic that was lost on him. The myriad of papers were piled everywhere, except for a drying muddy ring that ran around the room, with more of the wheel tracks. The top of the heavy wooden desk was lost amidst a pile of drying parchment, as a seated figure behind it frowned and squinted at each paper, sometimes comparing the two of them before assigning them to one of the vaguely-defined piles on the desk.

The figure was almost the opposite of what Valon was expecting. Instead of a fussy old man who probably knew the village like the back of his hand, the seated man was young. Not as pretty or as strong as two of the guards he had met earlier, he still had a rugged handsomeness about his dusty, puzzled face: a thick, square jaw partially hidden by a shorter version of the short black hair that covered his head. His robe hung open, and his ill-fitting shirt hung over his body, showing off a thick mat of black chest hair. It was hard to see how defined the chest was, but the pectorals appeared very ample and the bulging shapes under the robe's long sleeves seemed fairly contoured as well.

Valon coughed quietly to get his attention, but he was so caught in staring at what Valon thought were probably faded grain counts from well before anyone in this village had been born that he didn't take the hint. Although he was tired and wet, the pleasant sight of the young, confused man helped to warm Valon up a little, and he allowed his mind to indulge itself in a moment of fantasy before speaking up. "Excuse me, are you Oulders?"

The young man looked up, blinking sad brown eyes in shock at being interrupted. "Oh, sorry, I didn't hear you come in." Valon could see a light suddenly switch on in his head: and he blushed. "Sorry, yes, I'm Oulders; and you are...?"

"Valon." Looking at the papers everywhere, he decided that immediately adding to the mess with the copies of his contract would probably not be what Oulders wanted. Instead, he pointed to his hat. "I'm the new hedge wizard."

"Oh yes!" Oulders smiled. "The mayor said you'd be by to get your keys. He's, uh..." Valon could see Oulders doing his best, but was clearly struggling to give an excuse to cover the mayor's absence.

"At the Two-Headed Pig?" Valon grinned, which brought a relieved look to Oulders's face. "I was thinking about stopping in there myself to dry off and say hi, actually, but that might be better to do later. He's the type of guy who probably spends a lot of time there, isn't he?"

"Well, I probably shouldn't say so," Oulders said, "but he is out a lot."

Valon nodded; he imagined that explained a lot of why Oulders looked so frazzled. "Sounds like my kind of man, actually, but I guess I'm not really too picky on that account." He glossed over the implications by summoning a sealed parcel from his pack. Valon made mystical passes with his hands - they held no magical purpose, but they just helped him focus his mind - and he felt the jolt of power as he teleported his contract from his pack right in front of Oulders.

Oulders stared at it, his square jaw hanging open for a few moments. "That's amazing!" He blushed again. "Oh, yes, let me get you the keys..."

Valon watched, hiding his own surprise when Oulders grabbed at the sides of his chair, which started to move as metal whined. Wheels had been added to the sides, he noticed, holding Oulders and the chair off the ground and allowing him to move around. Sturdy legs flopped against a wood rest on the front of the chair, sprawling out of his robes. He wheeled himself over to a cabinet; reaching down the front of his shirt, Oulders pulled up a string with a large key attached. The key went into the cabinet's lock; inside the cabinet were even more keys, some of them duplicated. Oulders's eyes scanned the shelves. His arms reached up, grabbing one key each from two pairs that hung on adjacent hooks.

Wanting to fill the silence, Valon asked. "Sorry about your accident."

Oulders's friendly, slightly embarrassed demeanour was swallowed by a wall of ice. He grunted. "Thanks. Here's the key to the tower, and to your office in the next room."

"I have an office here?" Valon asked, briefly distracted from worrying about putting his foot into a sensitive issue: at the very least, it would probably be worthwhile staying friendly with the people in the mayor's office, especially if he was going to start getting up to mischief with the locals.

"Yes. It's not been used for a while though. Neither has the tower." Oulders explained, handing over the keys. "I'll stamp the contract later, and send one of them back to the college."

"Thank you," Valon answered. "I'm sorry if I upset you. Just that I've seen a few people who can't walk, and your body seems a lot more developed in the muscle department than they usually do, so I assumed it was an accident."

Oulders shrugged. "My father's the blacksmith here. I was helping him out a few months ago, unloading stuff from the back of a cart when the horse took off and a crate of ore slid off and crushed me." He smiled, but Valon had seen enough liars in his life to know it wasn't genuine. "It's fine, he built this chair for me, and he helped me get a job working in the mayor's office so I'm not completely useless."

"It's an impressive piece of technology," Valon complimented, his mouth working to give his head time to think more about it. "I've seen litters before, but never one you could propel yourself. It's almost genius in its simplicity." The idea that had been percolating in his head bubbled over, like an overheated cauldron. "It's a shame, really."

"What is?" Oulders wondered.

"That he can't sell them; I imagine there would be quite a few people or institutions in some of the bigger cities that would love to have something like this." Valon paused, his lips trying to betray him, as he baited his trap. "And of course, once you're walking again, I suppose he'll just have to melt it down for scrap."

"The doctor said that I won't walk again."

Valon snorted. "Trust me, I've met plenty of doctors. They're good if you want someone to sew up a deep cut, cauterize a wound or chop off a gangrenous leg." He snickered, resting his hands on Oulders's arms as he squatted down in front of him. "I prefer to rebuild things to make them work as good, if not better, than before." He tapped the side of his nose with his finger. "I can do a fair bit more than parlour tricks. I won't promise you'll be the same as you were, and I'll need some time to study the problem, but I'm fairly sure I can get you walking again."

Watching unwanted hope creeping into Oulders's eyes made Valon feel a little uncomfortable; he didn't mind being dishonest, especially when it concerned his interests, but this felt as close to kicking a puppy as Valon wanted to get. "Could... could you fix my back?"

"Well, 'fix' is probably the wrong word," Valon explained. "I'd need to know what it looked like before to be able to fix it, and backs are surprisingly tricky things. However, I could change some of your body. It wouldn't be the back you had before, but it would work. You'd be able to walk, and go back to helping your father out instead of wheeling yourself around here." He grinned and winked. "I bet there's a few other things a young guy like you would want to get up to if he had a fully-functional body." Watching Oulders blush sent a crackle of excitement through Valon; there was no way Oulders wouldn't want to turn down his help now.

The creeping sense of joy in Oulders's face suddenly drooped. "The mayor doesn't pay me very much. I'm not saying I won't or can't pay you, but maybe I could do any work you want for free, or..."

"Let's worry about how you pay me later," Valon suggested. "I've got a few favours that you could do for me in mind for when you're back on your feet, and until then it doesn't hurt to have a friend in the mayor's office." He gave Oulders a cheeky grin, which he was pleased to see was returned: it seemed that the ice wall was fully melted. "And, of course, if you're going back to being your father's apprentice, we'll have to work things out with him."

Oulders's smile slowly faded. "Oh, well, uh, nobody thought I could get better, so my brother's his apprentice now."

"Maybe I could help you with that problem too," Valon suggested. "Give me a few days to settle in, and start getting to know everyone else and think about your problems a little. Right now, I need to get warm, dry and fucking drunk, then get some proper sleep."

"Sure," Oulders agreed, sighing the way people do when their fantasies are postponed. "Let me show you to your office." Valon stepped out of the way as Oulders wheeled himself past and out into the main hall. "It's not big; from what I've heard from the old timers, the wizard only ever met people there. Everything else is in the tower."

Valon's eyes shot towards the young man in the chair. Something was stirring in his head; something that sounded immensely relieving if true. "Have you been in there recently?"

"No, I mean I opened it up to make sure the key still worked, but I didn't go in."

"Did you happen to see if there were any papers in there, or if there was any writing on the wall?"

Oulders frowned, thinking. "I think so. It didn't mean anything to me if it was. I can read, but I'm not good at it." He froze. "Oh, I forgot: when the mayor announced you were coming, some people came to him to ask for your help. He's got a list of it... somewhere..."

"Let's not worry about that now," Valon thought, turning his office's key in the lock. It ground and whined, but it unlocked, and he pushed it open. He grinned, staring at the wall: the runes looked intact! "Oulders, I could kiss you!" He couldn't stop the relieved smile from spreading wide.

"Is... is that a thing they do in the city?" Oulders asked.

Valon laughed. "It's just a figure of speech," he explained, resting his arm on the wall. "I'm just so relieved to see that everything is all set up here." He pointed at the runes. "That, Oulders, is a portal that I'll bet takes me right to my new tower!" Walking into the room, which he could see was indeed very small, with only a couple of old, decaying chairs for furniture, Valon ran his fingers over the runed wall. Turning to Oulders, he asked, "Want to come with me and see what's on the other side?"