Chapter 435: Who Authorized You?

The first official summons arrived four days after Sage’s tour of the Capital’s merchant quarter, delivered by three men wearing the dark blue coats of the Capital Administration.

Sage was standing near the Grand Guild Hall’s registration counters when a clerk brought the sealed parchment to him. The hall was crowded as usual. Knights and Mages waited to register, Adventurers studied mission boards, and a second line had formed for Warriors seeking their first Rank assessment.

None of that appeared unusual to Sage anymore, but the senior official who had delivered the letter spent several moments staring across the hall before introducing himself as Magistrate Othmar Pell.

He informed Sage, with stiff courtesy, that several offices responsible for maintaining order within the Royal Capital required clarification regarding the Adventurer Guild’s activities. The summons requested Sage’s presence that afternoon.

Pax, who had joined them after noticing the visitors, watched Magistrate Pell and his companions leave through the main doors. He told Sage that the summons itself appeared genuine and that Pell had served the Capital Administration for years without attracting any remarkable rumors.

What interested Pax was the timing. Questions about the Guild had been circulating among officials for more than a week, but somebody had finally pushed those questions far enough that several offices wanted answers at once. Sage told him to find out who had been asking most loudly, then returned to the registration hall.

There was little point inventing an enemy before he knew whether the officials had legitimate concerns.

The Capital Administration occupied a sprawling stone building closer to the central districts, nowhere near the royal grounds and far less magnificent than the palaces Sage had seen from a distance.

Its importance came from the endless stream of petitioners, messengers, tax collectors, landholders and scribes moving through its doors.

Sage was escorted into a council chamber where five officials waited behind a curved table covered with documents. Magistrate Pell sat among them.

The eldest introduced himself as Alderman Corvin Hale, one of the men responsible for matters concerning public order, roads, large gatherings and organizations operating within the Capital.

Corvin began without hostility. "Guildmaster Alistair, your organization has expanded considerably since acquiring the Old Western Garrison. We have received questions from several quarters, and frankly, some of those questions are ones we should have asked sooner."

Sage took the offered chair. "Ask them now."

Corvin rested one hand upon a report and asked, "Who authorized you to gather thousands of armed Warriors inside the Royal Capital?"

Sage stared at him for a moment. "Nobody."

Before anyone could interpret the answer as defiance, Sage continued. He explained that the Guild hadn’t summoned an army. Knights and Mages entered voluntarily, registered individually and remained free to leave.

The Guild neither housed most of them permanently nor commanded them as soldiers. Some belonged to mercenary companies, some served noble Houses, some traveled independently, and others belonged to existing Knight Orders. Registration did not transfer those loyalties to Sage.

A thin official seated beside Corvin adjusted the papers before him and asked whether registered Adventurers obeyed Sage’s orders.

Sage answered carefully. "They obey Guild rules while using Guild halls, and if they accept a mission, they’re expected to complete what they agreed to do or properly withdraw when circumstances allow. I cannot point at a thousand registered Adventurers and order them to march against someone. They aren’t my soldiers."

The official looked down at the report. "Then what is an Adventurer?"

Sage almost smiled.

He had answered that question hundreds of times since arriving in the Capital, but never in a chamber where the definition might eventually become law.

He explained that an Adventurer was a Warrior or other qualified individual registered with the Guild who could accept missions, build a record through completed work, rise through Adventurer Ranks and gain access to Guild services.

Adventurer Rank did not replace Warrior Rank. A powerful Knight might enter the Guild as a Bronze Adventurer because one Rank measured personal strength while the other recorded achievement within the Guild.

Another official interrupted, though not rudely. "That sounds like a mercenary."

"Sometimes an Adventurer can accept work a mercenary would also accept," Sage acknowledged. "That doesn’t make the Guild a mercenary company."

He explained the distinction. A mercenary company gathered people beneath its own banner, negotiated work for them and commonly retained a portion of their earnings.

The Guild provided a meeting place between those offering missions and those willing to complete them, while also maintaining records, assessing danger, verifying rewards and providing services.

An Adventurer could belong to a mercenary company and remain registered with the Guild. That fact caused the officials to exchange another series of looks.

Corvin tapped his finger against the table. "Then perhaps you’re a merchant association."

Sage shook his head and explained that merchants could trade through the Exchange, purchase materials and bring missions, but they did not govern the Guild merely because they did business there.

The Guild bought and sold certain goods, yet trade wasn’t its sole purpose. When another official suggested that the Guild resembled a training hall because of the Mana Cultivation Tower and practice grounds, Sage had to deny that description as well. Warriors trained there, but training was only one service among many.

The questions continued.

Was the Grand Guild Hall an employment hall? Partly, but not exactly.

Was the Exchange a market? Yes, but the Guild itself wasn’t simply a market.

Was the Guild responsible for crimes committed by registered Adventurers outside its grounds? Not automatically, although Guild standing could be affected by proven serious misconduct.

Could a noble register? Yes.

Could a foreign Warrior register? Sage saw no reason why not, provided that person obeyed the Kingdom’s laws.

Could the Guild refuse registration? Yes.

Could it expel someone? Yes.

Could expelled Adventurers still work as mercenaries? Of course. The Guild had no authority to forbid a person from earning a living outside Guild affairs.

The longer the questioning continued, the stranger the problem became. Sage had built the Guild piece by piece according to needs that had seemed obvious in Greyvale. Missions needed trustworthy rewards.

Warriors needed records. Dungeons needed information. Monster materials needed appraisal. Injured Adventurers needed healers. Travelers needed rooms. Growing branches needed shared rules. None of those things had seemed revolutionary when handled individually.

Together, however, they formed something the Kingdom had no proper name for.

One official finally opened a thick volume of Capital ordinances and began listing the closest possibilities.

Mercenary companies required recognition and were responsible for maintaining records of their contracted Warriors. Merchant associations followed separate rules governing trade.

Knight Orders were governed by older laws concerning armed brotherhoods, noble service and recognized martial bodies. Mage circles had their own customs and restrictions. Training halls operated under yet another set of rules. Caravan companies, monster hunters and private guards each fell somewhere else.

The Adventurer Guild touched all of them without fitting neatly into any.

Corvin leaned back in his chair and studied Sage for several seconds before saying, "Do you understand our concern now? You purchased land legally. Your construction was inspected. Your businesses can be taxed according to what they sell. None of that answers what the Guild itself is."

Sage did understand.

More importantly, he understood how dangerous the uncertainty could become.

If one official decided the Guild was a mercenary company, someone could demand that every Adventurer be treated as Sage’s hired Warrior.

If another decided it was a merchant association, different restrictions could be applied to the Exchange and every transaction connected to it.

Calling it a Knight Order would be even more absurd because Mages and ordinary workers were part of Guild life as well. Treating the entire organization as a collection of separate businesses ignored the Rank system, missions and branches connecting everything together.

Sage rested his arms on the chair and told Corvin, "Then don’t force it into something that already exists."

The thin official beside him frowned. "Laws cannot simply ignore an organization because its founder invented a new name."

"I’m not asking you to ignore it," Sage replied. "I’m asking you to judge what it actually does before deciding what it must be. If the Exchange trades goods, apply the laws governing trade to the Exchange. If the hotel provides rooms, apply the rules that govern inns. If the restaurants sell food, inspect them as places that sell food. But calling every registered Adventurer my mercenary because the Guild also posts paid missions would be false."

Corvin didn’t answer immediately. Unlike some of the others, he didn’t appear offended. He looked thoughtful.

One of the officials then raised the question Sage had expected eventually. If thousands of Warriors gathered inside Guild grounds and violence erupted, who was responsible for keeping order?

Sage explained that the Guild maintained its own guards inside the Grand Complex but recognized the authority of the Capital within the city.

Guild rules weren’t a replacement for Kingdom law. If an Adventurer committed theft, murder or another crime, being registered offered no protection from the King’s law.

That answer eased some tension.

The meeting lasted nearly three hours.

No one ordered the Guild closed. No one revoked Sage’s title to the Old Western Garrison. No royal decree appeared, and nobody accused him of raising a rebellion.

Instead, Sage left with a stack of requests for records concerning Guild membership, mission procedures, trade, security and the difference between Adventurer Rank and Warrior Rank.

Corvin also warned him that other offices would likely send questions of their own because the Guild’s rapid growth had made continued uncertainty impossible.

Outside, Sage found Pax waiting beside the carriage.

Pax took one look at the documents under Sage’s arm and asked, "How bad?"

Sage handed him half the stack. "They don’t know what we are."

Sage considered the question as they climbed into the carriage. The officials hadn’t treated him like an enemy, and many of their concerns were reasonable.

Thousands of armed Warriors gathering under a new banner would make any city cautious. The problem was that uncertainty created room for interpretation, and interpretation could be influenced.

On the return journey, Sage thought about Greyvale. There, nobody had cared what category the Guild belonged to because the Guild had solved problems faster than anyone could question its shape.

The Capital was different. Every privilege, toll, charter and authority had generations of interests built around it. By growing large enough to matter, Sage had reached the point where definitions carried power.

"Both," Sage finally answered. "Right now, nobody has a law written for an Adventurer Guild."

Pax understood immediately. "Which means someone will try to find one that hurts."

Sage looked through the carriage window toward the distant Mana Cultivation Tower rising above the western Capital. The Guild had grown faster than the laws surrounding it could understand. Until today, Sage had considered that proof of success.

Now he saw the other side.

If the Kingdom had never seen an Adventurer Guild before, then nobody had decided what an Adventurer Guild was allowed to become.