If you must call me any thing, call me water fetcher. That’s right, with lower case letters. I liked it, sorta. Much better then some names I’d been called— boy, pipsqueak, runt, all sorts of things, and, sometimes, nothing at all. There were only two names I really hated: slave and bastard. Ya know why? They were both one hundred percent true.

My master: Gren Mitrick, wizard of the first degree, and, ironically enough, he was of the water-craft. I was left, presumably by my mother, at the front steps of the Water Guild’s headquarters. They could have killed me on sight; they had the right. There’s only one reason that a baby would be abounded. That was if the child was misbegotten: a bastard in the dictionary’s definition. And bastards were illegal in the kingdom.

My master, on the benefit of the doubt, took me in as his servant. He noticed the stability of my hands and made me his water fetcher, hence the name. He was a father to me. He kept we away from volatile bullies who liked deriding slaves, implored his colleagues to treat me good, let me sleep when I enervated my energy supply, and hit me almost never while rebuking me for being so not docile and not acquiescing to his will.

I loved that guy, with his corpulent body and surfeited tall stature, yet I was bereft of I do not know. I often pondered that, up until the day it happened. The day my false family ripped apart.

The clangs and shouts of a fracas turned riot slightly echoed through the room from outside. My master looked up and grimaced when he first heard the noise, but soon enough his work memorized him. He read a book for must of the time, sometimes scribbling a note on a parchment. His writing was small and expeditious. I sat by his feet and held a cup of water for him to drink.

“Do you know that ploy of magicians where they make themselves disappear?” he said, murmured really.

“Reiterate that again, master. I did not quite hear, master.”

“I said that allowed? Think nothing of that.” He reached down and scooped the cup I held up. Before drinking it, he muttered something, the old tongue with a dulcet melody in it.

The door swung open and a dark shadow stepped in.

“You’re making a erroneous mistake,” said my master. The shadow stalked up to my master and grabbed him by the neck, lifting him like he was daisy. Blood flew to my master’s neck, but not past it. He looked a ghost with a red collar over a black turtleneck.

“I enjoin you to let me go.” The shadow’s answer was to tighten his grip. “So be it.” With a flash the shadow turned into dust. And master, he wasn’t anymore, or so it looked.

I left my only home, to wander and wander and wander…

+_+_+_+_+_+

Gen sighed and sat his pen down. The feather top lightly brushed the still wet ink, not enough to smear the ink. His wife scampered over and read over his shoulder.

“That’s not how I remember you telling it to me,” she murmured into his eye.

“The counsel is as strict as my old kingdom was. They do not like bastards. They would freak if they knew the truth. A bastard on the thrown!”

His wife nuzzled her head against his cheek. “Truth. You are done. Now get to bed mister. And show me that mysteries power of yours, my little slave.”