Legend of Ransera

"Well, I hope he doesn't raise his children to be entitled gits, anyway," he said, not unkindly. "I suppose Uncle Reiner can keep their feet on the ground." He offered a crooked smile with his crooked compliment, and he didn't even say anything to cheapen the honest things Reiner was sharing.

"To Solunarium? A friend was stuck there and I had to check on him." He paused, wondering if it was common knowledge that Solunarium had been looking for allies in Karnor at one point and Zaichaer had been on the list. Aurin thought he could probably break Reiner's brain a little, threaten his heartfelt beliefs, but that wasn't really his aim. "I brought some intel back to the Minister, so they made sure I wasn't contaminated, I guess. And I did bring protection with me. I'm not an idiot."

Aurin nodded thoughtfully about the covens. "Seems they're going to be tolerated and utilized as long as they toe the Order's line. You probably have a line on the head of the Order, though, so you know more than I do. I guess if they're all licensed now, at least you won't have to be surprised by the next girl who catches your fancy. What'd she look like? What's your type?"

As Reiner passed the halfway mark on his second pint, Aurin gave the bartender another nod. He wasn't going to force intoxicants down his gullet, but if he kept drinking and kept talking, all the better. Aurin wasn't going to leave him passed out in public, either; he was a bad man but sometimes it paid to do good--self-interested good.

The vagabond laughed at that. He supposed he would have to find Torin a wife at some point, and he figured Arry's mother would tell him who to marry other than his bard boy. If children came from any of those marriages, he supposed he would have to be Uncle Aurin, but he planned to teach them fancy bladework at too young an age so they were kept out of his periphery most of the time.

"Me too," he said of Arry's head. He sort of wished the lad had begged him to stay, begged him to help. Aurin was glad for his good fortune, but the dragons weren't the only ones with their claws in him now. He wanted Arry to be the power, to have his agency unimpeded, but he seemed content if not happy, and Aurin wasn't sure a man could be happy if they were above a certain level of wit. Regardless, things weren't so bad that he would risk his hide to abscond with His Exalted Highness.

And, for the most part, he fell into conversation where they could commiserate about the bad and chuckle at the good. Even his smirks didn't seem to be at Reiner's expense, even the smirk about the redheaded witch. Well, Aurin was one of those too, technically, though he still considered himself as a man with tricks up his sleeve more than he was a mage. The Order didn't see things his way, so he kept things out of the Order's line of sight.

Aurin took the cut off with good grace. At the tapster's questioning glance, Aurin smiled apologetically and shook his head. Without taking out a pouch or wallet or anything, he dropped the appropriate payment as well as a healthy tip on the table so Reiner could leave at will knowing he wasn't cheating an upstanding Zaichaeri citizen, and the proprietor wouldn't feel the need to come collect or shoo them out before the conversation had run its course.

"Well, I hope the perfect girl has survived all this so she can lock you down." He threw back the dregs of his drink. "Thanks for putting up with me. Wasn't so bad, was it?"