Chương 37: Letter

"Here you are, Mister Secretary," Arien said, handing the man a satchel stuffed with parchment scrolls.

"I left a summary on the first page." Terlis's office looked expensive enough to fund a small village. Leather couches stood among dark oak furniture, while a glass cabinet displayed bottles whose labels meant nothing to Arien but certainly looked costly. Mounted heads of beasts and Monsters covered the walls. Arien doubted Terlis had hunted any of them himself.

With the enormous bulk of his body spilling over both sides of the chair, the City Secretary hardly looked like someone who spent much time chasing Monsters through forests.

"Good boy," Terlis said, skimming the report as he reached for Arien's head with his thick fingers. Arien smoothly leaned out of reach. Once had been enough. The man's hand weighed a ton, and the last time he had nearly knocked Arien to his knees. Terlis groped after him for another moment before giving up and plunging the same hand into a bowl of sausage links on the desk, never looking away from the parchment.

He skimmed the entire report in mere minutes, though Arien was never sure whether the Secretary actually read everything or merely pretended to.

"Excellent. The results have almost returned to pre-incident levels. Hmm. You'll need to adjust a few numbers before we send this to the Crown, but you can do that later."

"Adjust them, Mister Secretary? But everything should be correct. I checked it twice."

"We cannot show the Crown results this good. That unfortunate incident hit us very hard. So many villages lost. So many trade taxes left uncollected."

"But the Crown granted us a five-year tax exemption. What difference does it make if we report lower income? Ribenne doesn't have to pay taxes on it anyway," he dared to point out.

"Gods above, why have you cursed me with such foolish staff?" Terlis sighed theatrically, raising his hands toward the heavens.

"If we show we're doing well, they'll revoke our exemption. If we appear barely able to survive and keep sending requests for aid, they may extend it just to get rid of us. Boy, if you want to work for me at Town Hall someday, you need to start using that brain of yours." Arien wisely kept quiet about the fact that he was not the Secretary's employee, nor did he have the slightest intention of becoming one.

Inwardly, Arien cursed the day a Town Hall clerk had wandered into The Piglet and found him preparing Vylda's financial reports. The man had offered him a few bronzes for some simple paperwork, and Arien, delighted by the extra income, had made the fatal mistake of doing the job well. Worse, he had suggested improvements. What an idiot.

He should have remembered the most basic rule of working for any organization, whether on Earth or in Erador: do more once, and sooner or later someone would expect it for the same pay. Before long, his work attracted Terlis's attention, and the Secretary began sending assignments directly to him. For lower pay, naturally. Arien never discovered whether it was due to some Skill or simply the man's authority, but Terlis had given him a very, very long speech full of promises and thinly veiled threats.

By the end, Arien had somehow found himself agreeing to work for him.

"Yes, Mister Secretary. My apologies, Mister Secretary," he answered dully.

"Well then, off you go," the man said, suddenly becoming very interested in the papers on his desk. Arien waited patiently until Terlis finally looked up.

"You're still here? I've got a Council meeting soon, boy. Important matters."

"That leaves the matter of payment, Mister Secretary," Arien said quietly. Every single time…

"Ah yes, yes, payment. What did we agree on? Two silvers?"

"Four silvers, plus one for the last-minute work."

"Yes, yes, now I remember. Gods, so much money, while I slave away for this city on such a miserable salary," the official muttered while rummaging through his coin pouch.

"Here you are, boy." Arien held out his hand, and Terlis dropped into it the most worn silver coins he had ever seen.

"One is missing," he pointed out flatly.

"Oh yes, that's my fee for the lesson I taught you today. Now off with you, boy. I'm late for my meeting," the fat man announced, staring him directly in the eyes while reaching for another sausage.

"Thank you for the lesson, Mister Secretary," Arien replied before leaving the office. He knew arguing with the official would accomplish nothing. At least he'd managed nearly three hours of sleep already. If he hurried home, he could squeeze in a few more before his shift at the Infirmary. By early afternoon, Arien was standing beside an operating table, holding metal retractors apart while Ythrel worked.

"Forceps. Good. Scissors. Gauze. Good. Now hold the hooks." Arien mechanically handed over the requested tools while keeping the wound open for the Healer. Stolen novel; please report. Hog, as the farmer was apparently called, had been brought to the Infirmary by his sons, who left him in Ythrel's care before continuing to the market with a cartload of radishes. He had slipped on the ice while drunk and landed badly on his arm while walking home. A common enough story.

The problem was that he had ignored the pain for two days, insisting it would pass. Only when the arm failed to improve and even alcohol stopped helping did he finally agree to visit town.

"But don't forget the radishes!" he'd apparently insisted. The fracture wasn't beyond Ythrel's skill, but the bone had splintered. They first needed to open the arm, remove the loose fragments, and set it properly before magic could do the rest. Fortunately, Hog slept soundly after drinking a potion prepared by Arien, so there was no need to rush.

"Good. Now we close the arm and he'll be as good as new. How much are they paying?"

"Twenty silvers, Master," Arien replied, since he also served as cashier and secretary.

"Five for the elixir, ten for the procedure, leaves five. Well then. Want to do the stitching?"

"Gladly, Master." After choosing Mage as his Profession, magic had stopped seeming quite so impossibly complicated. It was almost as though he had gained a new pair of eyes, which was exactly why becoming a Healer's assistant had seemed like such a good idea. He had expected to receive patients, clean rooms, and run errands while getting plenty of chances to watch healing spells up close. He did all of those things, and considerably more, but there was far less magic involved than he had hoped.

Healers in Ribenne could magically treat open wounds, bruises, and broken bones. Beyond that, medicine was much less impressive. Most other problems still required ordinary surgery, with regeneration magic helping the body recover afterward. Even so, after several months, Arien decided the job had been worth it. Once he grew accustomed to the smells and the sight of human insides, he began learning far more about anatomy and medicine than he had ever expected.

That knowledge, in turn, gave him new ideas for using Life Magic. Whenever he was certain Ythrel wasn't nearby, Arien sometimes tested those ideas on unconscious patients. Instead of simply pouring mana into damaged tissue, he tried guiding it according to what he understood about the injury and how the body was supposed to heal. Occasionally, it even worked. The pay wasn't impressive. Ribenne followed the standard apprenticeship system, so proper apprentices received nothing until becoming journeymen.

Arien, however, was technically only an assistant and earned a few bronze coins for several hours of work, sometimes even a silver. Combined with his occasional reports for Terlis and whatever he earned helping at the tavern, it was good money for a child his age. Most went toward extra food, especially meat, because he had no intention of ending up stunted. The rest he saved for the future.

"Not bad. At least for the amount they paid," Ythrel commented while inspecting the stitches." Adina Paes." Life mana flowed from his hands into the farmer's arm.

"There. In a few weeks he won't even remember which arm it was. You'll clean up, boy?"

"Yes, Master."

"I'm getting lazy because of you. Shame you don't possess mana. I could use an apprentice."

"They supposedly found someone with mana in Deer's Horns a few weeks ago, Master."

"Yes. A nine-year-old girl. Her parents agreed to send her to Jakar." Ythrel shook his head.

"She probably won't come back. Most gifted children from this region don't."

"Why not?"

"Because once they reach Jakar, Ribenne doesn't have much to offer them anymore. There's more work for mages there, and most end up staying." Arien glanced at him. Ythrel talked about Jakar often enough that Arien knew half the stories from his youth by heart, but there was one thing he had never explained.

"Did Master study there too?"

"Study there? I was born there." Ythrel smiled nostalgically.

"Ah, those days running through the narrow streets... Once I even snuck into the women's bathhouse. Gods, what chaos that caused! Have I told you that story?"

"You may have mentioned it once or twice," Arien replied quickly. He already knew exactly how that story ended.

"But you never told me why you left Jakara." Ythrel's smile faded.

"There was a girl. Unfortunately, she chose someone else." Sari called Ythrel an old fossil, but to her, anyone with a single silver hair counted as ancient. The broad-shouldered Healer was still in his prime, and a Mage besides. It was difficult to believe he had never found anyone else.

"Besides," Ythrel added, "in Jakar you're just one rat among many. Here, I don't have to fight anyone for my position." Night had already fallen by the time Arien returned home. Every second streetlamp was lit, giving him just enough light to follow the wooden planks laid across the slushy streets. According to the city budget, of course, every lamp should have been burning, and hired workers should have cleared the snow three times that day. Arien glanced at another dark lamp as he passed.

The list of things Terlis and the City Council stole from Ribenne seemed endless. He sometimes wondered what level Terlis's Corruption Skill had reached. His own had somehow climbed to ten merely from "adjusting" reports, despite never being assigned. His useful Skills were having the opposite problem. Three had stalled at level twenty-four, refusing to progress no matter what he tried, while several others seemed to be slowing as well.

As far as his progression was concerned, Ribenne was beginning to feel like a dead end. By the time Arien reached their floor, the smell of stew was drifting through the hallway. With any luck, that meant dinner rather than another serious conversation with Alia. He knocked lightly and stepped inside.

"Arien, is that you?" came his sister's voice.

"No, it's Santa Claus."

"Who?" Alia asked, opening the door to their room.

"Who's Santa Claus?"

"Oh, one of the heroes from another pantheon," he replied before realizing what he'd said.

"Arien, you shouldn't make things up! You'll bring the gods' wrath upon us!"

"Relax, Alia. It's just something Ythrel told me about. Santa Claus was an old man who sneaked into strangers' homes and stole bread, leaving sweet pastries behind instead, the kind that made children's teeth fall out. Luckily, we're protected by the goddess."

"But we shouldn't take her protection for granted. Priestess Uwa says—""What's that in your hand?" he interrupted, only now noticing the sealed parchment she carried.

"Oh, it's a letter for you. I had to pay the boy who delivered it five bronzes. He got it from a merchant arriving from Jakar, who bought it from an Explorer, who in turn acquired it in Torben from a sailor. And the sailor got it from Will."

"A letter from Will?" Arien stared at her. Couldn't she have led with that? He took the parchment.

"That's strange. Why didn't he send it through Korlis? Maybe his brother is sick?"

"Maybe Will wrote that in the letter. Want dinner? There's stew. With extra meat. Priestess Uwa says men should be fed plenty of meat so they stay satisfied and don't break divine commandments." Arien barely heard the rest. He had already broken the seal.