5

After dinner, you go to your tiny plaster room with its dirt floor and straw mattress. You sit at your table thinking about the day, and then you take out El Cano's letter from where you've stuffed it under your shirt and try to smooth out the ever-increasing wrinkles. You hope El Cano doesn't mind a little wear and tear.

All you need to do is write down the details of your first assignment. You find it easy to do so—in fact, your quill is barely able to keep up as you recall the exciting results of your first spell.

Finally, you drop in your payment for the next week, fold up the letter, and melt some wax to close it with your crude seal. Someday, you won't have a cheap seal you had to carve yourself—you'll have one professionally made. One fitting of a famous knight. Or perhaps a powerful battlemage, or both. You go out and slip the letter into the mailbox so the pigeons can carry it in the morning, and then you return to your room to lay there thinking about what the next assignment will bring. It isn't long before your thoughts meld into dreams, and you fall asleep.