"The worst that can happen to you," Whimsy told him, "is that he’ll force you into being a [Farmer], and Da’s life isn’t all that bad. He’s going to marry me off to an old man—"
"They’re not always old men," he argued, though his heart wasn’t in it. Maybe they weren't all, but that just meant the old men would be more desperate, willing to take the slightly dearer deals when Da offered a chance at joining their holdings in the oldest way. Maybe she had it worse than he did, but a little empathy wouldn’t kill her.
“All this fretting is a waste of time. Da got Probity his [Farmer] class and he’ll get you yours.”
But Da wasn’t the only one with ideas about the future.
"He can try,” said Dalliance, voice strident and hating it, "They’re my points, and it’s my class. Heck, it’s your marriage.”
He took his scoffing sister by the arm and pulled her out of the wet, which, though he appreciated the feel of it, threatened their thin-spun cotton and was sure to ruin her hair. It was already starting to frizz up as he watched, but he at least made the effort.
The hand-carved boards of his shack were rough under his feet as he kicked off muddy shoes and hung up his dusty jacket. A quick rinse of his hands and face in the basin, and he was nearly presentable. With his sister in the room, that would be as good as it got. He sat down, dust and plant matter pattering onto the formerly clean floor, and picked up a book.
The rain was falling harder now, drumming on the thin wooden shingles, but his brother had done his work well; there were no leaks.
His sister screwed up her face with ten-year-old petulance. "You could’ve just let me go to my room," she said, watching him search through the thin volume.
"I could have, but I wanted to ask before leaving you here all day while I’m at school. Are you . . . okay?"
She snorted.
He’d wondered, earlier, at an off-the-cuff comment at dinner, the one which had sparked all this: the Mason’s wife had taken ill. Perhaps, in time, he’d be ready to re-wed. Da had always had an issue with the way the plots had been divided, and by the gleam in his eyes, discussing it, he’d been excited at the idea of potential renegotiation in the future. She’d excused herself early from dinner and gone out into the damp, and he’d followed shortly after.
And now she was rolling her eyes at him. "Not everyone wants to be a [Wizard]," she told him. "I’m sorry that I complained to you. I’m trying to stop fighting it, but . . . I was remembering what Ma said. 'You can’t fight what you can’t change.' If it’s real, if that’s just how the world works, then it’s how the world works."
"Okay," he said, and they sat in silence for a moment, as he paged through the book, looking for something half-remembered. "Of course," he added idly, "you know that’s how the world works, because that’s how they make it work."
"Shut up," she said, genuine irritation in her voice now.
“No. Here’s what I wanted to read you: ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’. What do you think about that?”
“You’re dreaming. And I’m leaving.” And she was as good as her word, gone into the rain.
He watched her go, then closed the chapbook with the delusory sound of cheap cardstock, dropping it onto the rough-hewn table with a sigh. The sound echoed off the bare clapboard walls of his depressing little room, the cheery illustrations of men of derring-do brandishing their feathered caps and muskets doing little to uplift his falling spirits. If that hadn’t gone like he’d hoped it would, he wasn’t sure what he’d thought would go better, but he’d hoped for something.
Francois D’Louis L’Argentine’s line, recited rappelling down a Rogécourt prison tower. Dalliance had thought it was wonderfully pithy, but’d had nobody to tell about it but Earnest, who had not shared his excitement.
Sometimes he worried that he was, in fact, just dreaming of a better future than guiding the plow and staring at the artifacts of his betters. Toiling in the fields all day with the Imperial Reservoir looming over the landscape, buttressed and columnated? The gap between who he was today and who he dreamed of being seemed insurmountable.
You can’t live in a chapbook.
But it was fine that she’d left. He’d needed to get out anyway, rain or no rain. He couldn’t change everything, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t change anything. Righting a minor wrong was better than leaving everything wrong.
His first step towards making his personal world a better place was the theft of a broad bread basket, the kind used for cooling loaves. It was bereft of the linen that usually covered its contents; the thin willow sheaves it was made of seemed no more sturdy than cardboard. Next, the clothesline to pull it. He’d already done the math, already paced off the interior dimensions of the one-room schoolhouse.
A thought occurred: he hadn’t befriended the dogs. It was raining, so they would probably be inside. It would probably be okay, he comforted himself.
Running out into the twilight rain was a calculated risk. He would have much rather waited for the velvety blankness of full night, or at the very least for layered shadows to creep over the Verity farm and then his own, and on down to the Knotts such that Da, if looking out the window, couldn’t see him scuttling across the hayfield to the tree line of the windbreak, then past, through it, to the road and following on up the familiar path he took every morning—though then with the carriage, not unaccompanied like tonight—to the Best homestead and schoolhouse. But if he waited, he might not get the opportunity tonight at all.
As he crossed their fence, he gave a quick prayer to whoever might be watching. Keep Da’s eyes off the fields. Keep the rain coming. He won’t bother to go out, and I’ll be gone and back before it stops.
He crossed the field, which was just as wet as he thought it would be. The thin-walled schoolhouse stood as it ever was, with three steps going up from ground level and posts holding up the building. The shadows beneath it were deep, behind a trellis set up to keep dogs out from under it, a trellis which stood broken again. A fact he knew because he’d already checked.
All he had to do was throw the weighted rope underneath the schoolhouse, wind it around the building in the shape of a U, and tie the basket at the other end. He positioned it so it sat just beneath the windowsill, then hid the protruding rope and basket with handfuls of wet grass, tying the rock in place on the rail. In case of dogs, it would probably work.
A light was on in the Best house. He saw a little pale face at the window. She probably didn’t see me, he told himself, as he ran for home, just another shadow in the dark.
He’d soon have the opportunity to find out. The next day was a school day. He’d only known it was also Firthsday because he’d memorized the week; he didn't recognize any of the gods in the sky.
That’s okay, he told himself, ruthless, as he ironed his best starched sleeves, to make the ‘best’ impression possible (Mister Best thought that one was a hoot). Nobody expects you to know everything anyway. Most people wouldn’t have expected him to be well-dressed either, and he’d have preferred it that way.
But Mister Best insisted that in a proper society, in the real world, if they left this small town, they would thank him for expecting them to dress like [Gentlemen]. He was probably right, despite Dalliance's questioning the worth of it. Which was also normal, he reminded himself again, if he already knew the right ways of doing things, there’d be no call for schooling. At least he wouldn’t look like a rube.
Not that he’d complain about that in any case: Topaz had been very strict on that topic. He was not to compare himself on any account with grown-ups, his older brothers, or the younger but formidable Morality Best on any deficiencies in know-how or apparel, because he didn't have their advantages. "They don't have fairie godmothers either," he'd cheekily pointed out. Her mica wings might have moved in a self-satisfied flutter, but her agate eyes narrowed. "You're lucky I like you."
He knew he was.
Her blessing had given him System access at an early age, and five years’ head start, not that he felt like he’d been able to do much with it. But, the Advantages Talk wasn’t about that—it was about how he wasn’t as advantaged as he thought he was. Just because you're smart doesn't mean you won't make stupid mistakes, same as any other seven-, eight-, or ten-year-old. You lack experience. That comes with time, and sometimes pain: can’t think yourself into being an adult.
Outside, the wind whistled, clearing away the last of the storm's detritus to make way for something new. Today, he was twelve years old, and if that didn't mean quite the same thing for him as it did for others, it still meant a hell of a lot. New year, clean slate.
He heard the insect-like whirring of her wings by his ear. "You’re wool-gathering. Do you remember what I told you?" she demanded.
"Twelve years does not a man make," he said, his voice mimicking her melodic, if shrill, tonality.
She buzzed down and looked at him more closely: "It doesn’t. You're not old enough to stake a claim on land, wed, or drink. We will endure this year's barbarism because it's necessary to remain a citizen, not because you're chasing glory: Souls are meant to live, not to die in the dust trying to be something they're not."
A common refrain from the ageless pixie.
"I'll be watching over you," she said. "So mind your manners."
He shook his head. "It's not even going to be that dangerous," he told her, the false promise heavy on his tongue.
"You've been keeping both ears open around that Earnest, haven't you? You've almost got his quality about your lies. But I can still see your tell, in your eyes." The fairy buzzed by the window. "And that's your mother, finished with the cornmeal. Time you were about it."
He gave a grateful salute to the ceiling. She was up there somewhere—though, as he got older, he found his eyes having just a bit more trouble focusing on his very first friend. "I'll get you candy-floss at the Games, I guess!"
If she responded, he couldn't hear it.
The route from last night was now populated by jostling students in freshly ironed sleeves, occasional ties, and heavy wool dresses, their hems guarded with one hand from the dirt, streaming in a rough column behind Miss Thicket Wimple’s cart as it made its way up to the schoolhouse.
Earnest’s cheerful, freckled face parted in a broad smile at the look of confidence on his friend’s face.
They didn't need words. It was on.
Of course, over the two miles of meandering country road, silence couldn’t last forever. Significant glances and the occasional muttered ‘hush, children’ from the schoolmarm couldn’t do more than stem the incipient flood of pre-teen curiosity and newly-wakened mental acuity begging to be spent on any passing distraction rather than the coming day’s maths or rhetoric.
Earnest was no exception, save than that he carefully moderated his words, not risking the most oblique commentary on the day’s objective. He was always careful, though.
“It’s your birthday,” he said to Dalliance Rather, after some consideration. Common knowledge, this. “Told Dad it were, and he said what he’d’ve liked when he was my age woulda been the perfect slingshot.”
“Please no,” said the voice of Thicket Wimple.
“So, I got my knife out and he told me he liked the number of thumbs I have, and did you know you can hold a knife backwards?”
A lie. Meant for Miss Wimple’s ears, that one. The game was on. Better than spending the whole walk silently stressing about the Plan.
“I cut my thumb almost off, once,” said Dalliance agreeably. “Most of the tip, the littlest bone, here, see? But the nail line creases it so you can’t see the scar very well.”
“Probably hurts when it rains,” suggested the bluff boy walking alongside and behind them, slightly. Civility Matters, workmanlike in the way of a brace of oxen, man-tall despite his lacking years. “Put a knife into my leg once, and it hurts when it rains.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Something terrible,” agreed Earnest. The lies had been passed around and found unassailable. It was time for a new round. A quick glance elected the next liar: Dalliance again.
“It’s okay that you couldn’t make me a slingshot,” he started generously. “I expect we’ll have much better stuff coming our way soon anyway.”
“‘In the hunt, for use of’?” That was Miss Wimple again. “I'm sorry to disappoint you boys, but the standard equipment is a cudgel.”
Shot down. Bummer. “It’s okay,” said Earnest, pivoting adroitly. “You can do lots of damage with a stick. Once, when my dad was just yea tall, he fell on a walking stick and almost lost his eye.”
The boys savored the frisson of violence together for a beat. “Anyway, they got it back in there, but he says it’s still gritty when he blinks.”
“Wood chips,” Dalliance suggested.
“Oh yeah, definitely, that would do it. My sister dated a sawyer once, said he’d got the wood worked into his fingers like sandpaper.”
“Masonry does that to you,” bragged Steadfastly, who’d recently joined them from his home on the Pants freehold. His father, notable for his upkeep of the dressed stone on the reservoir, was a source of pride to the boy. Dalliance had tried wrapping his mind around what that would feel like a few times before giving himself credit for an honest try and moving on to more productive matters, like counting sheep. “Hands like stone, almost, and you can break spoons on accident.”
“I did that once,” Earnest nodded. “With my bum. Boy, was Ma started.”
There was a round of approving chuckles. “Yours at least uses a spoon,” confided the unexpected, a feminine voice. Zenith. “Mine just grabs whatever hose is handy.”
The mute contemplation had a vaguely different tonality about it now, not that Dalliance could have put his finger on why. He stepped into the breach: he’d liked the Dawn girl since she’d introduced herself with an exaggerated ‘I know, let’s get it out of the way: top of the morning’. “Bet they’ve got those for masons, right? Working on the reservoir, it stands to reason they’d have lots of high-pressure stuff.”
He’d had to help Da patch leaky irrigation equipment and had been very impressed with the great difficulties involved in keeping water inside a hose when it didn’t want to be.
“With braided steel wires,” confirmed the young Pants. He clapped hands like marble blocks together and rubbed them briskly. “If I’d got a whupping with one of those, I’d break a hip.”
Confirmed: hoses are bad, and Zenith was in the game with a successful round to her name. It had almost taken his mind off his impending performance, too.
The farmhouse was nigh, and Earnest flashed everybody a quick ‘good game, lads’ look, even Zenith, who smiled back uncertainly. For the best: she’d have been up next, or Steadfastly, and he was Pants at everything, including lies.
He checked the clothesline surreptitiously as he climbed the schoolhouse steps: still looped there. The smallest of nods, and Earnest gathered a three-foot ruler from the desk as he went to his own, near the window with the basket under it.
All was in place.
Now, all there was to do was wait. With a thought, he brought up his status, not that there was going to be anything new.It was a nervous habit. Something to read when bored.
Scamp (Wit)
Adept at minor mischiefs and clean escapes. Earn bonus experience via misdirection and petty villainy.
Allows advancement to any Wit class with prerequisites. ? Class Bonus: Wit +1
Skills & Spells
[F, Wit]
Introspection: 23%
(Acuity 1, 10m)
[F, Wit]
Prediction: 20%
(Acuity 2, 10m)
[F, Wit]
Deflection: 21%
(Composure 2, 10m)
Legend (terms & definitions)
Tiers: F → S, where F is least.
Limit: maximum unspent points held. Intake: maximum points absorbed at once.
Attributes:
Grit = fortitude of body and will to endure. Constitution = resistance to death.
Wit = quickness of thought, depth of knowledge. Acuity = ability to focus.
Might = speed and power to act. Stamina = resistance to weariness.
Charm = slyness of tongue and public perception. Composure = deliberate social control.
Agility = speed, attention, and reaction processing. Balance = facility to react quickly.
Spirit = depth of passion, wellspring of magic. Mana = fuel for skills and spells.
Skills:
Bracket tag like [F, Wit] = tier and primary attribute.
% = likelihood/efficiency of use. Parentheses = cost + duration.
Experience:
Banked XP = unspent points available for stat increases.
Tier-up = When lowest stat reaches 2, all stats -2 and tier increases (better multiplier).
Overflow XP beyond Limit is randomly allocated to stats.
Other voices, those of students whose parents did not send them walking, intruded on his thoughts.
He dismissed the screen, a scant showing for five years’ dedicated effort, but still progress. Five experience points, each hard-won. His first wolf, driven off with a sling. Foolishness with his brothers. And Earnest.
He'd earned up to three Wit, out of ten. That was the number Topaz had burned into his brain. Ten Wit on Tier Advancement, and the classes offered would include [Wizard]. Like he suspected of most people, he couldn't think of anything better.
‘At your age, that you made an effort at all should be something to be proud of,’ he’d been told. Topaz, perched on his finger, glittering like a rough-cut gem.
At least someone believed in him.
Earnest readied the ruler against the side of his desk facing away from the teacher’s with a quickly stifled scraping sound. Make that two someones. Earnest was good people.
“I don’t get why we’re still here,” grunted the tall, imperial-looking youth who shouldered through the door next, genuine sword on his belt. Behind him came Circuitous Mallow, deep in apparent conversation with the girl beside him, the lanky Effluvia Early, who tugged on his arm at his comment and shot a glance loaded with subtext in Dalliance’s direction, but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before.
Sterling stepped away from his desk as he passed Dalliance, perhaps just to avoid catching his sword on it. Dalliance ignored him, focusing instead on the small clock on the wall. It was nearly seven.
“Classes will proceed as per usual, daily, hunts or no hunts,” assured the calm and self-contained voice of Mister Best, entering the schoolhouse from the back door. Dalliance cringed—could he have seen the basket? But if he had, there was no sign of it on his face. “Take your seats, if you would, Sterling, Miss Early.”
Behind them was a pair of coal-black eyes set in a pale face much like her mother’s: Morality Best. Her jet-black hair was neatly braided in twain, her clothing crisply starched or flowing lace: The lady of the Best estate, in prequel. The young girl sat opposite Dalliance and Earnest, next to the window, but her eyes, thoughtful eyes, stayed on his face.
She’d seen him. Piss.
He waved a little, hoping to discourage her or introduce some doubt, and found himself caught by Mister Best’s own eye contact, eyes like jet. “Mister Dalliance, I’d rather you didn’t,” he said primly.
Hand falling sharply, Dalliance made an effort to look anywhere else, and found he was looking at a bodice instead. Flushing, he looked away from Charity Troubles’ suddenly blank expression and studied his hands on his desk.
“Ahem,” Earnest’s voice. He looked up. Contact.
On the thin wood of the schoolhouse window pane sat two high-heeled boiled leather shoes, with brass buckles and stamped flower patterns, drying in the sun. The heels, thin enough to punch through the dried upper crust of the road and get to the sticky ochre underneath at the best of times, were a horror in red today.
The evidence of massacre continued from the floor nearest the sill to the front of the room, then around the milling students, where it spread with every careless tread, and out the front door, where they ought to have been removed per the schoolhouse rules for students.
Missus Best, barefoot but far too stern to be scandalous, was handing out textbooks and roughhewn linen paper with nary a sign that she was aware of the work she’d made for everyone. Once she was done, one of the boys, usually Earnest, though he’d be staying put today for obvious reasons, would distribute quills and wells. At day’s end, they’d each gather up their materials, and someone—generally the youngest, generally Dalliance—would mop before they all went home.
And it was all because of those damn shoes.
“Why can’t we go to the race already?” whined Woebegone, staring at the page of sums in his hands.
“Ahem,” warned Missus Best.
“Just seems like a lot of trouble to go through for one [Farmer]’s son,” he insisted, doubling down, from a few seats behind Dalliance and to the right. “I mean, we’ve been waiting all month.”
“That’s not quite how it works, Mister Lackey,” commented Mister Best, fastidiously sweeping off the chalkboard with a damp cloth. “What they really do is choose which boy will be the cutoff for the years’ crop versus next years’. It had to be someone, did it not?”
Dalliance felt the intemperate urge to stick out his tongue, but held his peace.
“When were you born?” Effluvia asked, from the next desk, as if asking about the weather. The witchblooded girl was toying with a small spark, just an inch-or-so long, dancing between her paired forefingers, and didn’t even look at him.
“Something like seven-ten, Ma said,” he mumbled, his voice shaking despite himself. His heart hammered against his ribs.
The moment was coming. He needed an excuse, a way to be alone when 'it' happened. He couldn't quite remember the real moment, possibly due to having been so young, but the chapbooks all said it was overwhelming the first time. He had to play the part perfectly.
He raised a trembling hand. "Mister Best! I need to use the . . . that is . . . ." He glanced at Charity involuntarily, eyes trailing over Morality's alert expression as well, on the way back to her father.
“Answer the call of nature,” said Mister Best with a gesture to the door, and a pointed side-eye toward his daughter, Morality. “Out of sight of the house, please.”
She was still looking at him. That would make this harder.
Dalliance practically bolted from the room, feeling Morality’s dark gaze following him. He hot-footed it to the treeline.
“Much longer,” said Topaz from his shoulder, having arrived with her customary discretion, “and you’d have been performing in the schoolhouse.”
“I know, I'm sorry," he said. "I feel sick."
“That’s stage fright,” she told him. “It’ll pass.”
“When?”
“Long after you’ve suffered enough that it won’t even feel like relief.” A tiny hand patted his shoulder. “Now, get down there and do it. You’re capable. Tell some lies so you can stop lying.”
“Never,” he grinned. It was their little joke.
He walked steadily back across the field. Reaching the schoolhouse, he didn't just open the door; he threw his weight into it.
The door banged open, the sound cracking through the quiet room. Every head turned his way.
That was the signal.
Across the room, Earnest's ruler flicked out in a precise jab, nudging the two high-heeled shoes off the open windowsill. They disappeared soundlessly into the basket waiting below.
“—I think I’ll be able to race now,” Dalliance said lamely. At first, he’d tried to think of a clever phrase to say, like out of a book, but practicing in the silence and privacy of his room had earned merciless mockery from Topaz until he gave up on the idea.
He felt a surge of nausea and clapped his teeth shut. Mister Best made a gesture, and Dalliance turned for the door again. This was much better than the original plan.
Off the side of the porch, he retched. Even as he did, his free hand found the clothesline. He gave it a hard tug, and the hated shoes withdrew into the darkness below the schoolhouse. With luck, they would go unnoticed until he could retrieve them and toss them into the cow pond where they belonged. A final, stiff yank broke the thin willow weave of the basket, and he coiled the clothesline up, jamming it into his pocket as he performatively spat to clear his mouth. That had hurt.
He walked back inside.
“Yours may have been a bit harsher than the baseline,” commented Mister Best. “However, congratulations on your Awakening. We will begin System studies next week. Suffice it to say, your community wishes you every success in your progression. After all, that’s why you’re here.” He scratched his beard thoughtfully. “I had expected your birth to have been later, but a midwife's memories may be faulty after all these years. Perfectly understandable.”
Dalliance had not known the exact time, but Mister Best had apparently checked. He didn't seem suspicious, thankfully, but Morality looked perplexed. This wasn't what she expected. The very real vomit had probably provided enough verisimilitude to make her doubt her suspicions. Hopefully, he thought.
“In that case,” said Mister Best, “Once we have tidied up the schoolhouse, I will entreat the good Miss Wimple to safeguard you all to the Green, where we shall amuse ourselves until the Races begin around noon, in prelude for the Games.”
The children made the noises of general approval, and there were the sounds of standing and the squeal of moving desk-chairs on wood.
This was broken by a horrified gasp. Missus Best darted for the windowsill and stuck her head out the window. No shoes. Her face was a mask of fury when she pulled her head inside, her eyes darting around accusingly.
“What have you done with my shoes?” she demanded. “Who took them?”
“It was a bird,” said Earnest, casually. “Big one.” Then, despite this being cattle country, “You know, I saw an eagle take a lamb once.”
Dalliance dipped his head to hide a smile.
[The Theft of Shoes. One (1) experience point awarded. If questioning your methods, the gods at the least laud your spirit.]
One point to go.
version is available for viewing as well.