Magnar had not planned on leaving the building.
Adrian knocked on his door before the morning shift would have started, already dressed, jacket loose. "Café's closed today. Come have breakfast with me. My treat."
Magnar looked at him for a moment. He thought of the crystal, the notes he had been meaning to organize. Then he thought of the roof over his head and the meals that had never once required negotiation.
"As you wish, boss," he said.
Adrian blinked. Then smiled. "Was that a joke?"
"Marginally."
The place Adrian chose sat open to the water, salt in the air, the kind of establishment where the chairs were slightly mismatched and nobody minded. Adrian ordered for both of them without consulting the menu and pushed the bread basket across the table like it was a given.
Outside, the beach moved at its own pace. A man threw something into the water for a dog that had no interest in retrieving it. Two children argued at the shoreline, then forgot about it. An older couple walked close together without speaking.
Magnar watched them and ate.
"Good to get out of that room once in a while," Adrian said, pulling apart a piece of bread. "You live like a monk up there."
"I find it sufficient."
"Yeah, that's the problem."
He said it without edge, leaning back with his coffee, entirely comfortable. The morning settled on him without weight, the kind of ease that had never needed to be learned.
Magnar found, without particularly intending to, that it was a pleasant thing to sit across from.
Adrian's phone rang midway through the meal. He answered, listened, and set it face down with a slow smile that suggested he had already decided something.
"There's an event tonight. Charity thing, good crowd. Care to socialize a bit?"
"It wouldn't hurt."
Adrian looked him over once, unhurried, from top to bottom. Then he laughed. "You can't go like that though. Come on. Let's get you some proper attire."
They walked from the waterfront into the city proper, the morning loosening into early afternoon around them. The streets widened as the neighborhood changed, older stone giving way to newer glass and polished surfaces, the kind of district that announced its own prices through architecture alone.
Adrian walked without hurrying, hands in his pockets, unhurried and entirely at home in streets he had clearly known his whole life. He glanced at Magnar sideways after a while.
"You ever been somewhere like this before? Nice places, I mean."
Magnar looked at the storefronts as they passed. "In a different context."
"What context?"
"A different life."
Adrian accepted this with a small nod. They passed a window displaying watches on velvet stands, another with suits on faceless forms lit from below. Adrian stopped at one and looked at the display for a moment, then looked at Magnar beside him, seemingly comparing something.
"Can I ask you something without you going cryptic on me?"
"You can ask."
"Do you actually like how you look? The whole rough around the edges thing. Is that a choice or just circumstance?"
Magnar considered the question with more seriousness than Adrian had probably intended. "Circumstance, currently. It was not always."
"I figured." Adrian tilted his head slightly, studying him with the frank curiosity he rarely bothered to conceal. "Because you don't move like someone who doesn't care. You just move like someone who's been somewhere else for a while." He paused. "Shorter hair would probably help. Those eyes of yours do enough work on their own without the rest competing."
Magnar looked at him.
"That's just an observation," Adrian said, already moving toward the entrance. "Come on."
The store did not display prices. Magnar moved through it without hesitation, reading what was available quickly and without sentiment. A dark suit, clean in its lines. He held it up briefly, decided, and was done before Adrian had committed to anything.
In the mirror he looked like someone else entirely. Or rather, like himself as he had once been. It was not comfortable. It was accurate.
Adrian appeared at his shoulder and went quiet for a moment.
"You sure know how to clean up."
"Did you expect otherwise?"
"Honestly? A little bit, yeah." He studied the reflection for a moment longer. "We're getting your hair cut before this thing. Non-negotiable."
Magnar did not argue.
The barber Adrian chose was two streets over, a narrow shop that smelled of warm towels and something citrus. The work was quick and without ceremony. When it was done Magnar looked at the result in the offered mirror, shorter on the sides, kept at a clean length on top, the kind of cut that required nothing from the person wearing it.
Adrian leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed, looking at Magnar the way someone looked at a before and after they had personally arranged.
"See," he said. "I told you those eyes do the work."
Magnar set the mirror down. "You seem invested in this."
"I live with you. It reflects on me."
Magnar stood. "That is a reasonable position."
Adrian laughed and held the door.
They arrived as the evening had fully settled, the building lit warmly against the dark sky, a slow current of people moving through its entrance. Inside, warm light pooled across clean surfaces and the room carried the low hum of people performing ease for one another. Magnar took it in from the threshold and felt something he had not felt since arriving in this world, a faint physical recognition, like hearing a language he had not spoken in a long time.
He knew this kind of room. He had attended similar settings.
Adrian pulled him into the younger circle first, introductions made loosely and lightly. A young man with gold-framed glasses considerably more theatrical than his face required asked where Magnar was from.
"Depends on the year," Magnar said.
The young man blinked once, then grinned. "Oh, we've got one of those." He lifted his glass slightly. "Keep your mysteries, cool guy."
Magnar inclined his head a fraction. "I intend to."
The conversation moved without friction from there. A woman in a green dress was mid-account of a sailing trip that had gone badly, and the table had leaned in as she built toward the worst of it with the careful pacing of someone who knew exactly where the story was going. The sea had been rougher than forecast. The boat had listed badly to one side. She had been at the wheel, she explained, demonstrating the angle of it with her arms out, redistributing her weight to show the difficulty of maintaining balance, and then she stepped sideways to commit to the impression fully and walked directly off the low platform she had been standing on without noticing it was there.
She hit the floor with a sound that was both undignified and complete.
The circle around her erupted. Someone covered their mouth. Someone else did not bother. Magnar laughed, clean and unguarded, before he had decided to.
The woman pulled herself upright from the floor with the composure of someone who had decided this was simply the new ending to the story, which it clearly was, and raised her glass. The circle raised theirs back.
Adrian materialized beside Magnar. "First genuine reaction I've seen from you all night."
"It was well executed."
"She didn't plan that part."
"I know," Magnar said. "That's what made it well executed."
Adrian looked at him for a moment, then smiled and handed him a glass. Magnar took it and let his gaze move to the far end of the room, where a different kind of gathering had formed. Four men, settled into themselves, well dressed, the conversation between them moving with deliberate weight.
"You're doing the math again," Adrian said.
"Different math this time."
He set his glass down and moved.
The older circle had gathered near the far end of the room. Four men, straight-backed and unhurried, the conversation between them running on long familiarity with its own importance. Magnar arrived without announcing himself and waited for a natural pause.
"The eastern coastal approach has interesting historical precedent. The old trade routes favored the same three access points regardless of era."
The silver-haired man looked at him properly for the first time.
"You know the region?"
"I've read about it."
"More than most people in this room have," the man said. He extended his hand. "Harrington."
"Magnar."
"You've been looking at the eastern sites," Magnar said.
"Considering it," Harrington said. "There's talk of infrastructure expansion near the old shoreline. If the excavation proves promising."
"Promising how?"
Harrington's mouth curved faintly. "Commercially viable."
"History rarely is," Magnar said. "Unless one knows precisely what one is looking for."
"And what would that be?"
"Patterns. Ports form where trade is easy. Trade is easy where terrain permits it. Terrain does not change quickly. If the ancients built there once, they had reason."
Harrington studied him without appearing to. "You speak as though you expect them to have built something worth finding."
"They always do."
A pause. Measured.
Harrington adjusted his cuff. "You're not in logistics."
"No."
"Academia?"
"Not formally."
"Consulting, perhaps."
Magnar allowed the smallest hint of a smile. "I advise selectively."
"Selective clients?"
"Selective questions."
Harrington's expression sharpened almost imperceptibly. "And what questions would you ask of the eastern coast?"
"Who financed the original settlements. Trade follows resources. Resources follow influence."
"You think the excavations will uncover more than pottery?"
"I think," Magnar said, "that people invest in dirt only when they suspect something beneath it."
A pause. Slightly longer than the last.
Harrington nodded once. "You have an interesting perspective, Magnar."
Magnar looked at him evenly. "Most people who say that mean they haven't decided yet whether it's useful to them."
Harrington held his gaze for a moment. Then he laughed, short and genuine, the kind that meant something had landed that he hadn't expected. He reached into his jacket, produced a card, and held it out. "Join us when we review the preliminary site reports. Informally. I'd value another mind that sees patterns."
Magnar took it. "Perhaps. If the questions are worth asking."
"They usually are."
By the time Adrian drifted back, the conversation had widened and Harrington had shifted it, almost casually, toward a newer interest. A consortium. Private investors. Sites from the pre-seal era along the eastern coast, excavation planned within the year.
Adrian caught Magnar's eye from the edge of the circle and raised an eyebrow.
Magnar gave the slightest shake of his head.
"Fascinating era," another man offered. "Something about a civilization that sophisticated simply vanishing."
"It didn't simply vanish," Magnar said, then paused as two people turned toward him. He adjusted. "From what I've read, the decline was gradual. Centuries, not an event."
"Still," Harrington said. "Something ended it."
Adrian, who had been listening from the edge of the group with a glass halfway to his mouth, lowered it. "It's interesting as history, but magic's been gone for thousands of years. Whatever it was, it ran its course. I'm not sure spending money digging it up changes that."
He said it the way someone states something obvious. The conversation moved on.
Magnar kept his eyes on Harrington and thought about the eastern region. The access points. The excavation date.
Outside the air had cooled. Adrian loosened his tie as they walked, exhaling like he was setting something down. The city was quieter at its edges, the water visible at the end of one street, catching the last of the light.
"Those older guys were practically handing you business cards," Adrian said.
"People give things to people who listen to them."
"It was more than that." He paused, finding the right words. "You moved through that room like someone who had been doing it their whole life. Not performing. Just at ease in a way most people never are." He glanced sideways. "That kind of thing doesn't come from nowhere."
Magnar considered the room he had just left and the rooms before it, across a lifetime and two worlds. "No," he said. "It doesn't."
They walked half a block in silence.
"You aren't someone important, are you," Adrian said. Not quite a question. "Like a hidden royal or something."
Magnar looked straight ahead.
"What if I was?"
Adrian stopped walking and stared at him. Then he laughed, short and genuine, not entirely sure it was a joke. "Okay. Sure." He shook his head. "Did you at least have a good time tonight?"
Magnar thought about it. The woman on the floor. The older men and the quiet current running beneath every exchange. The glass placed in his hand without being asked.
"Yes," he said. "I did."
"Good. You needed it."
They walked the rest of the way without speaking. Magnar thought about the excavation site, the crystal resting against his chest, and somewhere further back than both of them, a trail through a forest he had not yet finished following.
Then, briefly, he thought about the evening itself.
Even if Adrian understood nothing about magic, he wasn't so bad.