Chapter 102: Clothes Make the Man

“The Sorcerer’s Temple’s Apprentice Emblem, this is my ring, and I am the Sorcerer’s Temple’s Apprentice!” Jace immediately said, “Ask Master Eden Marin of the Mage District, he’s my teacher, and Master Andromas, they can all testify for me!”

The shopkeeper looked a little sheepish as he watched Jace say so many names at once.

“He …… he’s making things up here, Lord Morse.”

Morse said, “I do know about Master Andromas, but I don’t have the means to immediately invite the High Mage Leader here specifically just to corroborate you. So if you want to get out of suspicion faster cooperate, and let me ask you, what do the two letters on this ring mean?”

“Jace Sesso.” Jace said, “Those are my initials.”

“You’re Jace Sesso?!” Morse’s eyes rounded.

The shopkeeper, more vain now, leaned closer to Morse and asked quietly, “Do you know this man?”

“Jace Sesso was the hero who fought off the Jackals at Stone Castle.” Morse said, “I heard from the brothers in Lakeside Town that Jace Sesso was a strong man, a man who could single-handedly take on seven or eight jackals at once, and still persisted in fighting even when his hand was cut off, and for this reason King Varian even received him in person …… The lad is quite sturdy, though not as strong as I thought he would be. But your hand is still there. Say, when did you steal from our hero?”

Jace was shocked, what’s this all about, what’s single-handedly taking on seven or eight people at once, what’s a broken hand “You don’t believe me do you, let me see the king!”

“Is the king something you can see just because you want to?” Morse snapped, “Tell you what, as long as you can prove that you’re a Wizard Sanctuary ……”

Before Morse could finish, Jace struggled to move his bound wrists, held out his fingers, and recited, “Liyusa!”

A sudden burst of arcane light illuminated the faces of the two men in front of him as white as a sheet, and Morse squinted unexpectedly while the shopkeeper took several steps backward in shock.

“Does this prove I’m a mage?!”

Jace yelled, while the arcane glow grew brighter still!

“Come on …… stop it.” Morse said blocking his eyes.

“Can you prove it?”

“Can! You put the spell away first and we’ll talk.”

By the time the light had faded, the shopkeeper was leaning motionless against the back wall, and the prison doorway was filled with soldiers attracted by the light, coming together to keep a close eye on what was going on inside.

Morse rubbed his eyes and told the soldier next to him, “Find someone to go to the mage area, find that mage from Marin and ask him to come and look at this man.”

“Understood.” The soldier left the cell, and the shopkeeper approached before asking, “My lord, may I go?”

“Don’t you go.” Morse’s attitude in talking to the shopkeeper was obviously much colder than earlier. After an indeterminate amount of time, Jace kept staring at the shopkeeper so closely and viciously just like that that the shopkeeper went from being worried at the beginning to being even a little bit scared now.

Finally, there was a footstep outside the cell door, and it wasn’t Marin who came, but his daughter.

“Huh? Jess, how did you get caught as a thief?”

“And you are, ma’am?” Morse asked.

“I’m Amy Marin, daughter of Archmage Marin.”

“He was a student of your father’s.”

“Of course.” Amy said, “He’s been working for my father since a month ago and we know each other.”

“He’s the same Sesso who killed the Jackal at Stoneforge?”

“Yes, he met the king at Stonehenge.”

Hearing that the boy in front of them was the gladiator who had single-handedly fought six or seven jackals on top of the stone fortress sentry tower, the soldiers next to him were a bit surprised, and there was a murmur of voices outside.

Jace had a feeling this might be getting more and more rumored.

“It doesn’t look like it …… Is there a problem with what they’re saying.” Morse muttered.

“It’s not like you’ve seen me before!” Jace said irritably, “Cut me loose, I didn’t steal anything!”

“It seems to be a misunderstanding.” Morse looked at Jace’s hand and then at the shopkeeper, “There’s no doubt about anything now, sir. You can’t tell just by what someone is wearing that he can’t own something valuable, so shouldn’t you apologize?”

“I ……” the shopkeeper stammered, “I’m sorry, Mr. Sesso.”

The two soldiers helped set Jace down, and Jace touched his strangled, numb wrist and said, “Apologize and that’s it? You let me get knocked out and dragged here with one word, and I still have a headache.”

The shopkeeper dug into his pocket and pulled out two silver coins, handing them to Jace and saying, “That’s all I had on me, and I sincerely apologize for judging a book by its cover, sir.”

Two silver coins for a punch is rather the same price as an already slaughtered lamb recruiting a living target.

It wasn’t much, but Jace’s temper subsided a bit when he took that amount of money.

Led by the guards, he and Amy walked up the stairs to the door, and sure enough this was the Storm City Prison, next to the canal, not too far from the Mage District.

Amy sized up Jace and asked, “How the hell did you get that?”

Jess said helplessly, “The way they look at me they think I’m a thief, I was really surprised to actually stumble upon something like this.”

Amy asked, “Jace, didn’t Master Andromas arrange for you to go to Larson’s house to have a mage outfit made?”

“It’s not time yet, I’ve only been meeting with Master Andromas for a few days.” Jace said.

He hadn’t had much incentive to go, and after being tossed around like that, he realized that it was kinda important to order a set of clothes that fit his current status.

“When I first entered the Sorcerer’s Sanctuary, I met Master Andromas in the morning and rushed to see the dresses at noon.” Amy said, “O little brother, I don’t know how it is in Lordaeron, but the people in Stormwind are not as simple as you are, and they all judge others by the way they dress. If you are wearing such a simple outfit and carrying something that only mages in robes have, you will definitely think that you have a problem, either you have stolen something from a mage or you are planning to use magic to do bad things.”

Jace was concerned about Amy’s judgment of himself as “simple”, but then he thought about how much of his time since arriving in Azeroth had been spent running around with a bunch of kids, stealing fruit, stealing horses, and having fun all day long.

Slowly, personalities and perceptions and whatnot were infected a bit in the process of blending in with the group of these brats.

It wasn’t until I left Lordaeron on my own that I was able to live as an adult again, and probably did look like a rash person bumbling around.

Amy continued, “I hear you want to make a trip to Dalaran? When the time comes, you’ll have to let people know that you’re from the Sorcerer’s Temple, so you can’t still go in this outfit, can you?”

“Okay, I’ll go over to Larson’s then.” Jess said, “Hey, thanks for fishing me out.”

“Fish?” Amy froze for a moment, then smiled and said, “That’s kinda apt. By the way, what were you carrying that made that merchant think you’d been a thief?” Jace opened the package Morse had returned to him, pulled the string of beads and the broken pocket watch out of it, and said, “That’s what I showed him.”

Amy first looked at the string of beads, and then took a look at the pocket watch and said, “This string of beads is quite pretty, but this pocket watch, how come it’s broken like this, and there’s so much sand.”

“It was broken when I picked it up.” Jess said, “I picked it up in an abandoned town in the wild west, do you think it can be fixed?”

Amy said, “You can give it to me, I know a gnome mage who is particularly fond of tinkering with these gadgets, I’ll take it to him.”

As soon as Jace heard that he could fix it for free, he immediately got excited, “Really?”

“No guarantee of a fix though.”

“Just be able to fix it!”