HBWnovel Chapter 6: Unplanned Paths and Limits
Chapter 6: Unplanned Paths and Limits
Chapter 6: Unplanned Paths and Limits
Chapter 6 Unplanned Paths and Limits
Butt naked and lying face down, I was awoken by a pounding on the small door to my room. I moaned a little. My head, shoulder, thigh, back, feet, and chest hurt. The aether core heartburn was working full time as well. I was going to get back at those city bastards. The knocking continued, and I rolled over to see Gareth in my doorway, pounding on the open door. “You look like a sow after the breeding season,” he said with real concern in his voice. I stood, and the bruises were evident, and Gareth’s expression turned to anger. “Who did this?” he demanded.
“Gareth, my friend, it was my fault for being careless,” I confessed. “We will get revenge, but in the future. It was one of the groups of kids from the city, and I got their names with my assessment ability. I couldn’t find you last night, so I did the soap run to the city myself,” he nodded slowly, putting the pieces together in his mind.
“They tried to shake me down on the road back to town. I created a short sword,” I paused. “I must have dropped it when I got the rock to the head. The group took off after throwing some fist-sized rocks at me. The only real damage is the one that glanced up to my head.” I rubbed the massive bump above my right ear. The dried blood wasn’t evident to Gareth with my dark black hair until I pointed it out.
I pulled on some cleaner clothes while Gareth fumed, probably planning some type of revenge. “We have bigger fish to fry,” I said, now dressed and trying to downplay the situation. Gareth had gotten himself into trouble a few times defending me. I noticed the food I had picked up last night, and my stomach reminded me I hadn’t addressed its needs. The olive paste bread wasn’t so good after sitting so long. The carrots were now mushy. Gareth took one of the jerky sticks and quickly chewed it down.
“I’m going to the bathhouse this morning. You can grab some coins from my stash for the sheaths and handles. I gave Master Aldrich a deposit.” I was still a little fuzzy and could not remember how much. “Get us some new matching belts to go with the sheaths,” I added. I started reaching for the remaining jerky, but Gareth swiped it before my hand got halfway. While munching on the jerky, he walked to the wallboard where I stashed my coins, popped it off with a solid strike, and took out two rolls of coins.
“I will see you at the bathhouse after I stop by Master Aldrich. I could use a hot soak myself,” he said as he smelled his armpits. I had just planned on getting a cold shower, but a warm bath might be good for these aches. “I will also stop by the apothecary for a salve for your bruises.” He paused and grabbed a few silver I had in my stash before replacing the wood panel cover. We had worked hard to save some coins, and Gareth was already acting like we were nobles with unlimited coins.
“Spend frugally, Gareth, and barter, for goodness’ sake! Master Aldrich is already suspicious. I devised a plan for laundering our coins in the city. While I was at Wigand’s bookshop yesterday, I spun a tale I was getting a book for a benefactor from the lowlands who was visiting Skyholme. He seemed to buy it, and I think it should be a good cover for us in the city,” Gareth nodded, swallowing the last of the jerky.
“Laundering. I thought we were going to age the coins, get them dirty?” My past life idioms kept entering my speech, and Gareth could usually puzzle them out, but when he didn’t, I had to explain. So I had to take a moment to explain the concept to Gareth.
“Laundering means obfuscating the origins of the coins. We are going to make people think our new fictional patron is supplying us with coins to buy her things. Oh yeah, the patron is a woman from the lowlands,” I struggled to remember what I told Wigand yesterday, but my head was throbbing. “I think I said she was not a dungeon diver or adventurer, just a merchant visiting Skyholme. We can flesh out her background together later.” At least that idiom Gareth was familiar with.
“Yeah, my best idea was saying we found a cache of buried treasure,” Gareth responded, “but that might be limited. How many times can you say ‘we found buried treasure’ before people start following you every minute of the day?” Gareth turned and paused in his movement, obviously thinking. “I will bring you some breakfast from the pub as well,” he said, probably feeling guilty about eating my jerky well after the fact. “Go get cleaned up.” He left, and I heard the front door close, and shortly another door opened in the house.
Was it Pascal or Freya? Based on the time, my mother and father would be off to work by now. I had given Freya the larger bedroom. Well, Pascal got the biggest bedroom after my parents. We only had three sleeping rooms in the house, and my bedroom had actually been a writing and reading room. It had been big enough for a desk, chest, and one wall of shelves. It also had a large window that Freya’s did not. Most importantly, it was on the other side of the house from the three bedrooms. I had snuck out numerous times to rendezvous with Gareth.
In the room, I had been able to squeeze a long wide bench after removing the desk. My mother got me a great new mattress to reward me for giving the larger room to Freya. The shelves had various books, clothing that wasn’t stored in the chest, two pairs of shoes, six hats, a collection of skipping stones, six roles of twine, a roll of fishing line, a box of fishing hooks and lures, four silk handkerchiefs of varying colors, a checkers board game with pieces, three decks of cards, three sets of throwing dice, one of which was dragon bone, three flutes, one of which was an expensive mahogany from a dungeon reward...or so said the man I bought it from, three empty glass flasks, twenty-eight carved figurines of various beasts and a wooden box with an assortment of steel and copper coins. My real horde was in the secret compartment in the wall.
The mahogany flute was worth at least a full gold and was the one I practiced on. I was terrible at playing it, but I could get a rhythm going for a song. I hated singing, so supplying the tune was much preferred. Almost everything was trophies from work Gareth and I had done for the townspeople. I loved the dragon bone dice as they had been lucky for me when Gareth and I diced against each other. I also had made a GO board, but that was at Gareth’s house. I also commissioned a chessboard but ended up selling it for 30 silver after Gareth didn’t like playing because I beat him so soundly every time. Getting six times my investment back had made the sale worth it.
After soaking for a bit, I spoke, “We are going to fish the river today.” Even with my eyes closed, I could mentally see Gareth arch his brow in question, so I answered the unasked question. “Yes, we will stick to our normal routine today. I will not make coins until tonight after I am sure my core is topped off.” It took an entire day cycle to replenish an empty core, exactly 23 hours for an untrained core. There were ways to accelerate the core’s recovery, but I hadn’t learned any of those skills yet. The books I had read on magic were general in their knowledge.
I continued, “But tomorrow, instead of instruction with your mom, we are going with Pascal and my father to Captain Callem’s for sword instruction.” I smirked, anticipating Gareth’s reaction. His tub water splashed as he sat up hastily.
Excitement laced in his voice, “You are not pulling my leg, Stormy. That would be a cruel joke if you were.” Gareth had always wanted to play with swords but followed my lead instead. He would make a fantastic warrior, but I had always pushed our path toward commerce. Fighting only increased your chances of getting injured or killed, but I had been naïve. Trouble would find me...find us. It was best to prepare to defend our interests.
“Yes, Gareth, we are going.” I looked over to see his fist pump, splashing hot water everywhere. He would be wired all day and probably not sleep tonight. When we finished scrubbing and rose from the tubs, I saw Gareth catch a glimpse of my manhood. His eyes flashed to his own. He did another back-and-forth.
I grabbed a towel and started dressing before Gareth joined me. Edel must have dropped the laundered clothes off, scented of vanilla again, my favorite. “Why don’t you take the larger dagger,” I said, handing his that belt and sheath. “I think you need to compensate.” My face was twisted in a silly grin. It took him a minute to catch on to my innuendo.
“Well, Storme, we will just have to see who needs to compensate tomorrow in sword practice,” a little force in his voice laced the dark humor in his tone. Oh shit. Yeah, Gareth was going to beat me silly tomorrow. Maybe I should save some of the lemon-scented salve. After dressing, I used the lemon-scented balm, and it immediately had a positive effect. Together we left, stopped to get some packed meals for lunch, and headed to the barn.
Freya was there, and the three of us went to the river. No one was swimming. The fishing went well—fourteen harvestable fish between us. While we fished, Freya kept asking for us to take her to the city and reminded me at least five times her birthday was approaching. But we had evolving plans, and I wouldn’t commit.
Gareth kept talking about swords. He was trying to puzzle out what specific sword he should focus on. In the end, he was torn between the saber and the scimitar. Our island produced many of the city guards throughout Skyholme, so we were all versed in melee weapons growing up, and our first year of the academy would focus on the craft.
It was a pleasant day, and the misty clouds let the sunshine through for most of the day. I napped and fished, speaking little but focusing inwards on my core. I didn’t have mage sight, but from my readings, I knew a mage’s core was like another limb. You just needed to learn how to control it. I didn’t actually make progress as I kept falling into brief naps in the grass. What I needed was a spell. Innate abilities that drew on my aether core were fine, but imprinting a spell could train me on using my core and manipulating aether.
Using our new daggers, we gutted the fish and made fillets to carry back. Gareth carried our load home in the fish bag, and we chatted about other kids in town. All of us contributed to the small gossip wheel of our tiny town.
Back home, we split the fillets, and I went to cook for my family. I made a simple garlic butter to cook the fish and had a side of saffron rice with diced sweet peppers. I had been a good cook in my last life. Recipes seemed the easiest thing for me to recall from my past life. I think this was because I took so much joy in cooking in my past life. I was able to find most of the ingredients I was familiar with in the Sphere. My family gushed over the meal, and Pascal couldn’t shut up about the trip to learn from Captain Callem tomorrow. My focus was not on the family. It was on what I would be doing in a few hours, testing my limits.
With the family asleep and certain a full day had passed since I had last drawn on my aether core, I was ready. I decided to go for it, completely draining my core and making as much gold as possible. I hadn’t made any silver yet, but I felt confident I could make gold. I focused on the manifestation and soon felt my core draining. It was like vertigo, no, fainting without actually fainting. When I knew I was tapped out, I looked at the product. A good-sized ball of gold was in my hands. I had done it!
How much gold, though? I needed a little aether to use my shaping ability, so I waited an hour while laying in bed playing with the lump. Then focusing on my shaping skill, I started to make one coin at a time. Thirteen small coins with almost enough for a fourteenth! And I knew a mage’s core would grow 10 to 20 times over puberty, according to the books I had read! I placed three of the coins in my common coin pouch and the remaining ten coins into the secret wall vault. Sleep came easy after that.