What concerned me most at the moment, however, was the traffic. Walking down the street on Perv was a little like trying to swim upstream through a logjam. I was constantly having to dodge and slide around citizens who seemed intent on walking through the space I was already occupying. Not that they seemed to be trying to hit me deliberately, mind you. It’s just that nobody except me seemed to be looking where they were going. In fact, just making eye contact was apparently a rare occurence.
“This friend of yours must really be something for you to put up with this,” Kalvin commented drily. He was hovering in the vicinity of my shoulder, so I had no difficulty hearing him over the din. I had worried about how it would look having a Djin tagging along with me, but it seems that while they’re under control Djins can only be seen and heard by their owner. It occurred to me that this was fairly magikal and therefore in direct contrast to the line Kalvin was selling me about how powerless he was. He in turn assured me that it was really nothing, simply part of a Djin’s working tools that would be no help to me at all. I wasn’t assured. Somehow I had the feeling he wasn’t telling me everything about his abilities or lack thereof, but having no way to force additional information out of him, I magnanimously decided to let it ride.
“He’s more than a friend,” I said, not realizing I was slipping into the explanation I had decided earlier not to give. “He was my teacher, and then my business partner as well. I probably owe him more than any other person in my life.”