Chapter 37: A Mauve Moving Day

"She's quite the character." I paused and made a wild guess, "Lady Janice is ninety now ... that would make her your great-grandmother, wouldn't it?" I asked Chandra once we cleared the property.

"Ninety-two, Milord." She replied in that quiet respectful tone that she used with her great grandmother.

"Thank you, Chandra." I left it at that and returned to Miss Lori's.

When we got back I informed Miss Lori that I would be moving tomorrow, I praised her hospitality and thanked her profusely. I was comfortable here and didn't want to go, but staying felt wrong.

Since I didn't have much to pack and neither did Chandra, I took her out back and put her through her paces until dinner was ready. With Chandra, I was harder on her than anyone that I had ever taught, mostly because she had much more potential than any of them did. The training of Kassandra's apprentices needed to be more stringent than anyone from my world could have endured. Chandra expected me to be exacting and I was, it was nice to be able to go all out for her. I knew that one day her skill level would equal or surpass mine. It would just take a lot of time and effort from the both of us.

After dinner I dispatched a message through Miss Lori to Allard. I wanted to know if he passed my message through to the king or queen. There wasn't a response but I did not expect one right away.

Our evening exercises were interrupted by an unexpected visit from a Daughter of Julius. They called themselves Daughters; she brought a contract that was shorter than I expected. The contract stated that for one gold, Lady Janice of Red Run was released from ownership of 1556 Third Circle and that I assumed ownership as of the 245^th day of the 19^th year of King Jonas' reign of the Kingdom of Roses.

Heh, at least now I know the date.

The Daughter and Chandra were both surprised that I did not have my signet ring. I was told that my signature would be acceptable until I replaced mine. Once it was replaced I would need to update my contract.

A trip to Miss Theresa's would be necessary and soon.

While she was here, I asked if I could make contract of ownership in case something happened to me. She replied that she was without the proper materials for that.

"This one should be easy." I countered. "All of my goods that I have on this continent are to go to Postulant Chandra unless I am married. If I am married, then Chandra gets three gold and the rest belongs to my wife. Everything from my homeland belongs to my mother."

The Priestess wasted little time in writing the contract, efficiency was probably their watchword. Since I had no property here and few personal belongings, my will was easy to create. I asked Miss Lori to witness my will and my purchase, which she did gladly. The cost of both was just a gold for the townhouse and a silver each for the transactions. There was also a five silver tax on the title transfer, which I paid.

I liked the one time tax, at least on my end. I still would need a source of income eventually. I knew that I was being way too liberal with my money, and needed an income of some sort.

Buying furniture for the place would be time consuming and pricey. I wasn't looking forward to it. Hopefully Lady Janice would leave us something to sleep on. If not, the floor would just have to do.

Hell, I'll send Chandra out to get some blankets.

Sparring with Chandra kept us busy for the remainder of the evening. I told her to stay on the defensive and not come out of it. As incentive, I would make her do a lap every time I got through her defenses. Even with me doing the first few laps with her it ended up being a long night. The next thing on my agenda for her, was to start working together as a team. That would have to wait until we settled in the new place before I started on that. I knew that we would both need to work hard on that particular skill.

Morning promised rain, and neither one of us wanted to move our clothes while it was raining, so we rushed our packing - not hard as neither of us actually had much in the way of clothing and hurried to the townhouse.

Yesterday Chandra found a nearby stable at a reasonable price, and I would let her deal with them later. After a quick walk to our new house, I used the strange skeleton key that the Daughter had left with me. Both of us were surprised to find all the furniture still there.

I asked Chandra if we were early. She didn't know what was going on, so I sent her next door to find out. While she went to see her great grandmother, I looked around. The place was larger than I thought. There was a reading room with a fireplace, a dining room, a small kitchen and a washroom on the first level. All the furnishings were beautiful antiques that were covered with an old ivory linen cloth. I peeked under all of the cloths to see the furniture, and, as I expected, it was all custom made for this place.