Notes: All right, friends, let's clean a house! And by clean, I mean lean on an unfair advantage...but is it magic if you don't do it yourself?

Title: Quaint Escapes for Traitorous Bastards: Chapter Two, Part Two

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A Whirlwind Job

“Youcan’t be serious.”

 “It’s cleaning ahouse,” Hiram said, turning in a full circle as he looked around the sittingroom. “How hard can it be?”

“Youhaven’t scrubbed a floor in your entire life,” Phlox replied, theirvoice full of disdain. “Andwe can’t even see this floor to scrub it underneath so much grime.Scavengers, indeed. It looks like they tracked half a forest throughthis place.”

“It’s a little worse for wear,” Hiram acknowledged, “but Ithink it’ll shape up very nicely. We just have to get through the initial bumpyphase, and then living here will be as sweet and simple a life as we could everhave asked for.”

“Inever asked for a sweet or simple life,” Phlox pointed out huffily. “You never asked for asweet and simple life either, I’d like to note. You’re only doing this because—”

Hiram snapped his fingers twice. “Don’t go there. I don’twant to hear it.”

“Younever do,” Phlox grumbled.

Hiram wasn’t listening anymore. He headed back over to thefront door where he’d left several of the bags and boxes he’d unpacked from thewagon. One piece of luggage was a nondescript burlap satchel, the sort of thingyou might expect to see full of dried beans at a farmer’s market. Hiram openedthe drawstring on the top of it and plunged his hand inside.

“You’regoing to lose a finger one day if you keep reaching into that bag like that,”Phlox said.

“I beg to differ,” Hiram replied. “Everything in here isvery well trained and—ow!” He pulled his hand back out and sucked on a scrapethat had appeared on his index finger. “Cheeky bastard,” he muttered.

“I didtell you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hiram reentered the bag with a bit morecaution and moments later found the thing he was looking for. “Aha!” He pulledout a small, round silver box. It had a hinge on one side of its lid and aclasp on the other that was held shut with a slender silver needle. “There weare.”

Phlox’s voice quivered as they asked, “Is that the…?”

“It is,” Hiram replied, his voice full of satisfaction athaving found it.

“Youdon’t mean to…”

“I do.”

“Itcould blow this whole house over!” Phlox said frantically.

Hiram chuckled. “Don’t be so dramatic. We’re just going toopen it...” he eased the silver needle out of the latch. “…a tiny little pinch.Hiram cupped the box between his hands, then cracked open the lid.

Whoosh!

Out came a surge of wind so fierce that it blew him backagainst the front door, which almost gave under the impact. Every window in thehouse shattered.

“Closeit! Close it!” Phlox shouted.

Hiram, using all his strength, managed to snap the lid downafter a few more seconds. The pair of them stared around the sitting room atwhat his little trick had just wrought. Shards of glass glittered along theedges of the floor, and several of the shutters were broken, but the thicklayer of grime that had crunched beneath his soles with every step he took hadall been pushed back to the far side of the house. He could see the actual floornow, make out the grain of the wood beneath his feet. It was rather nice onceyou got a look at it.

“Itold you so,” said Phlox.

Hiram laughed a bit breathlessly. “So you did,” he agreed.“So you did. But, you know, the walls are still standing at least, and now Iknow just how careful I need to be.”

“You’regoing to do it again?” Phlox sounded aghast.

“With caution,” Hiram said, ever so gently closing hisfingers around the latch once more. “With a great deal of caution.”

Say what you would about Hiram, but even when he’d been oneof the most powerful men in the Empire, he had been capable of exercising agreat deal of caution. He didn’t always, but he was very capable of it.

Now that his mind and hands had regained their equilibriumwith his box of winds, Hiram was very quickly able to direct the flow of airwhere he wanted it to go. From the upstairs to the downstairs, he gathered allthe refuse, all the dust, the grime, the pieces of rotten or stolen furniture,and an enormous number of spiders downstairs into a heap right in front of thegaping back door.

When he finally put the box of wind away, he was tired butsatisfied with the work. “There now,” he said to Phlox, “wasn’t that fasterthan sweeping and mopping for half the day?”

“Consideringyou still have a home, I suppose I must concede the point,” Phlox saidsourly. “But what are yougoing to do with it now, blow it all out onto the garden? That’ll be filthy.”

“I was actually going to ask you about that.” Hiram felt abit sheepish. “Perhaps the best way to deal with this, before I set up a goodplace for a refuse pile, of course, would be a little bit of…targetedincineration.”

“Youwant me to handle it, in other words.”

“If you would be so kind.”

“With mymagic.”

“If,” Hiram said through gritted teeth, “you would be sokind.”

“Magiccoming to your rescue yet again,” Phlox said haughtily. “When are you just going toadmit that I’m right?”

“On the fifth day of never,” Hiram replied genially. “Now,if you don’t want to use your magic—and I completely understand why you mightnot, being as out of practice as you are—I’ll just fetch a broom and—”

“Shutup.” The pile flared brightly, the heat of it washing over Hiram’schilled hands. It felt like being eased into a warm bath, and a second laterthere was nothing to be seen on the floor, not even a scorch mark.

“Beautifully done,” he said. Hiram was capable of admittingwhen other people did good work, even when those people were bloodthirsty fireelementals.

“Naturally,”Phlox replied. “Now thatyou’ve thoroughly aerated this charming little cottage of yours, what do youplan to do next?”

“Well.” Hiram looked around the room and his eyes caught onhis bags once more. “I suppose I should set the place up to be livable, or aslivable as it can be before we add to our belongings.” He reached into theburlap sack again and brought out a smaller leather bag.

“Oh,you’re not planning on using the furnishings from the travel tent,” Phloxobjected. “Nothing inthere matches, you know. You won’t be able to have a soul over because they’llspend so much time laughing at your abysmal taste, they won’t have the breathto talk.”

“My taste isn’t abysmal,” Hiram protested as he opened upthe bag. “It’s eclectic.”

“It’sabsurd.”

“It’s interesting.” He pulled a rug that he’d been gifted inthe Elasgus Mountains by the chief of a Deyrian tribe and laid it out on thefloor. It was made from thick wool, hand-knotted, and was wonderfullycomfortable under the feet. That the pattern they’d chosen for it was anup-close portrait of their three-headed skeletal crone goddess depicted in luridshades of red, green, and yellow was perhaps a bit unfortunate. But who lookedthat closely at the things they stepped on, huh?

“Absurd,”Phlox repeated.

Hiram ignored them as he went on decorating the sittingroom. To the side of the rug, he put an ornate, three-legged table that wastopped with an actual toenail from one of the stone giants that had beenbedeviling the Deyrians. No one would never know it was a toenail just to lookat it, of course. It was beautifully flat, perfectly oblong, and rather a nice mauvecolor.

Beside it Hiram set out two chairs. The first was a squashy,comfortable red armchair where he’d whiled away many delightful hours readingspellbooks and musing about potions. The constant contact with magic had, infact, imbued the chair with a bit of a snarky personality over the years, butit hadn’t kicked anyone out of it in months now. It would be fine.

On the other side of the table went a low stool with a  crescent moon-shaped seat and a broad wooden Xfor legs that, upon reflection, Hiram decided would do better upstairs. Up wentthe stool, plus the desk he’d brought from his own workshop back at VordurePalace, all of his potion-making equipment, another rug—this one a delightfulshade of blue that only occasionally transfigured into clouds and began to rain—andhis bed. There was actually room for the entire bed up in this loft instead ofthe shrunken-down version he’d been using for weeks now.

Hiram sat on the edge of the bed and bounced a little bit. Softlysprung, it still carried the scent of ambergris at the edges of it. Hiraminhaled deeply, letting the earthy sweetness of the scent fill his senses. Itwas a smell he would always associate with Andy. Shows of affection betweenthem had been rare by the end, and yet there had been a time when they’d spentso many nights together that his smell had permanently worn into thefurnishings.

Hiram laid back on the comforter, closed his eyes, and lethis heart hurt for a moment. That moment stretched into two, then three, andbefore he was fully aware of it, Hiram had almost fallen asleep.

“Youdidn’t do the cellar,” Phlox reminded him.

“‘Mm,’” he mumbled, not bothering to open his eyes.

“Thecellar, Hiram.”

“Mmm.” Hiram crawled further up into the bed. “I’ll get ittomorrow.” For now, he would take what comfort he could in sleep.