Level One

The next morning I was defeated by soap.

Not water. I understood water. The jug had it; the basin was clearly meant to receive it. I'd worked that much out on my own.

The grey lump in the dish was another matter.

I rubbed it between my palms. It smeared.

I added water. It became a more widely distributed smear.

By the time Aoi came in I was examining my wrists with the growing suspicion that I'd applied furniture polish to myself. She stopped by the bed.

"What are you doing?"

"Testing the quality of the accommodations."

"On your elbows?"

"The test has expanded."

She set down a bundle and came over.

"That's soap."

"A generous description."

"Hands wet first. Then a little. You've used enough to wash a horse."

"I have no immediate access to one."

She took the jug. I held my hands over the basin while she poured. At last the stuff started behaving in a manner consistent with its alleged purpose.

"You rinse with fresh water," she said. "Not by putting your hands back in everything you just washed off."

"A system designed around the availability of servants."

"Or a cup."

I looked at the shelf.

There was a cup.

Aoi followed my eyes.

"Tragic," she said.

I dried my hands.

"Your delight in small victories does you no credit."

"At least my hands are clean."

The bundle held a brown wool coat, a shirt, socks and boots.

I lifted the coat. A patch had been sewn inside one elbow. Neat stitching.

"Quartermaster," Aoi said. "I told him a visiting king couldn't leave in damaged clothes."

"And this was his assessment of suitable royal attire."

"I asked for clothes we could walk in, not an upholstered personality."

The coat was warm.

I put it on.

She held out my school shoes.

"He wanted these thrown away."

I took them fast.

Too fast.

Aoi started inspecting the boots as if she hadn't noticed.

"Thank you," I said.

She paused.

"You can do it."

"I ration the phrase to preserve its value."

"Of course you do."

The status took three tries.

The first got nothing. The second got a headache, mostly because I concentrated so hard I forgot to breathe.

"Less like taking an exam," Aoi said. "More like remembering something."

On the third, pale blue light opened over my lap.

It was the same flicker I'd seen in the throne room, only now it stayed--a pane of clean light hanging in the air with nothing holding it up, and words on it in a script I'd never learned and could read anyway.

My chest did something. I decided not to examine it.

I didn't immediately find this wonderful. A universe that handed out report cards had already shown it had bad manners.

Still. I read.

STATUS

Name: -- (my own. I skipped past it fast.)

Title: -- (and under that, a second line, greyed out and locked, that I could not focus on no matter how I tried. Like a word on the tip of the universe's tongue.)

Race: Human - Otherworlder Level: 1 Mana: 17 / 17

Strength: Below standard Dexterity: Below standard Endurance: Below standard

Skill: Insight - Rare

I read the physical assessments twice.

"Below whose standard?"

"A healthy ordinary adult, usually."

"An offensively selective sample."

"You got winded coming up the stairs yesterday."

"There were four flights."

"Yes. A devastating mountain range."

I focused on the skill. More text unfolded.

Insight People only. No beasts, no objects. The target does not feel it. Reveals surface status and the presence of concealed fields. Focused examination may distinguish deliberate falsehood from sincerely held belief. Concealed content is not disclosed. Mana expenditure increases with depth and resistance.

Aoi waited.

"Can you see this?"

"Only what you share."

"How?"

She talked me through turning a field outward. The letters shifted. Her eyes followed them.

"Rare," she said. "That's good."

"How rare?"

"No idea. It only marks the rare ones."

"What does an ordinary skill look like?"

"Mine isn't ordinary."

"A modest answer."

"A factual one. Keep up."

I opened the description for her. She read it slowly.

Then: "People only."

"I can read."

"Good. Remember that when you get ambitious around a wolf."

I looked at her.

"May I?"

Her expression sharpened slightly. Then she nodded.

I concentrated. A pale arrangement of information settled beside her shoulder.

Name: Aoi Race: Human - Otherworlder Level: 18 Mana: 140 / 140

Strength: Far above standard Dexterity: Above standard Endurance: Far above standard

Skill: Holdfast Concealed fields: 1

I set her numbers next to mine. Her strength and endurance both read far above the adult standard. Mine had failed to reach it. Her mana reserve was more than eight times mine.

I let the reading sit there a moment.

Eighteen.

Four months had become a number.

"How much of that is the level?" I asked.

"Some. And four months in the training yard. The number doesn't tell you whether I know what I'm doing with a sword."

"Do you?"

"Better than you. Look at the ratings if you want to compare muscles."

"You could break my arm," I said.

"Yes."

"How refreshing to have an assessment confirmed by multiple sources."

"What else?"

"One concealed field."

She said nothing.

The field didn't name itself. No hint whether she'd hidden an ability, a condition, a title. Nothing about it invited me in.

I dismissed the reading. Aoi's shoulders eased a little.

"What does Holdfast do?"

"I brace. It spreads force through the guard instead of letting all of it hit one place. Makes me harder to move."

"Harder."

"Not impossible. If the hit's too much, or I run out of mana, I'm still standing where the hit lands."

I thought of the bandage under her cuff.

"Seven hours at the crossing."

"Not continuously."

"How long, then?"

Her eyes met mine.

"I don't want to talk about the crossing."

"Very well."

She looked briefly surprised.

"What about the lying?" I asked.

She picked up my crown.

"Ask whether I like this."

"Do you admire the workmanship of my regalia?"

"No."

"That was unhelpfully easy."

She sighed.

"Ask normally."

"Do you like the crown?"

"Yes."

Something caught behind the word. Not a voice pronouncing judgment. A small dissonance, unpleasantly intimate, like hearing a note played wrong inside my own skull.

My mana read 14 / 17. One point for the earlier reading, two more for this.

"That is expensive."

"You spent magic finding out I don't like a foam hat."

"I am establishing a baseline."

"Establish a cheaper one."

I closed the panel.

"A person who believes a falsehood would not register."

"Apparently."

"And someone telling half the truth."

"You'd hear the half they meant."

So: an ability. Not an answer to the inconvenience of other people. Probably better for everyone's continued existence.

Still, I kept turning the half they meant over, like a line in rehearsal that might have a second reading nobody had found yet.

Aoi leaned forward.

"Now hide your private fields."

"I thought they were private."

"They are. Ordinary people can only focus on the surface--level, condition, the broad things. A trained appraiser can go deeper. Folding individual fields makes that harder."

"Not impossible."

"No."

She walked me through it. My name went first. Then the empty title, and the locked line under it that I still couldn't read.

The feeling was subtle. A door closing in a house I hadn't known I owned.

"Master Ilyen wanted an assay yesterday," I said.

"They do one for every new Hero."

"And the king stopped it."

"You refused. Ilyen was worried about the throne. The king decided not to force the examination in front of witnesses."

Aoi glanced at the window.

"That buys you time. It doesn't mean Corvane's stopped wondering."

"Would a missing title prove anything?"

"No. System titles aren't job certificates. Most village heads don't have one. Our weapons instructor was a captain for twelve years before he got a title, and it wasn't Captain."

"What was it?"

"Boar-breaker."

"His troops must have found that inspiring."

"They called him something else."

I could imagine.

"And my level?"

"Everyone arrives at one. Whatever else they think, they know that."

So I hadn't survived because the professionals forgot to check.

They'd checked what was easy. The rest had turned into an argument over what they were allowed to do to me.

Less comforting. More useful.

I looked at the crown.

"The throne," I said. "Did you see it arrive?"

Aoi nodded.

"Was it there before me?"

"No."

"The chair I was sitting on at school was plywood."

She went still.

I kept going.

"Painted silver. Unstable left arm. The one in the hall was stone. Old stone. And the carvings on it--" I stopped. "The carvings moved. When the light hit them. Just once."

Aoi looked toward the door.

"Solvane."

"I dislike how often my name precedes bad news."

"Heroes arrive standing. In the circle. Sometimes they fall over, but they arrive on their feet."

"Every time?"

"Every time anybody has told me about."

She sat back.

"I thought it had come from wherever you were. Your set. Something."

"It was not ours."

For a while neither of us spoke. At last she looked at the foam crown.

"That," she said, "explains some of the room."

"Some?"

"They weren't all convinced by you. I heard two officers arguing afterward. But the ritual masters wouldn't touch the chair, and nobody wanted to be the first person who called the thing sitting on it a liar."

I remembered the king standing.

His first order.

No one touches the stone.

I had given myself a truly remarkable amount of credit for an entrance whose most persuasive element I hadn't even understood.

Some of it had been me. I was fairly sure some of it had been me.

"Where is it now?"

"They closed the hall."

"Can it be moved?"

"I don't know."

Neither did I.

I wrapped the crown in my spare shirt. One unexplained royal object was enough for a morning.

Corvane received our request to leave with impeccable courtesy.

"How soon, my lord?"

"This morning."

"A desire to see the kingdom is entirely understandable. An escort can be arranged."

"Lady Aoi has agreed to accompany me."

Aoi didn't react to the title.

Corvane did.

Only with his eyes.

"I was not aware you had requested release from training."

"I have recovery leave," she said.

"Within the capital."

"The physician's order specifies seven days without drills."

"Travel can be strenuous."

"So can standing in the yard while an instructor decides whether watching counts."

I kept my face still. It was hard.

Corvane studied her.

Then he smiled.

"How fortunate his lordship has found a familiar companion."

He opened a drawer.

Our provisions were ready. Two packs. Blankets. A cookpot. Bread, dried peas, salt, a small hard cheese. A purse with more coins than I'd expected and fewer than I'd have liked.

A clerk brought the map. Corvane laid a sealed paper on top.

"Safe-conduct. Present it at crown posts. The local officers will provide such assistance as they can."

"And inform you where it has been provided."

"Naturally. Should further correspondence arrive for you, we would need to know where to send it."

He was getting better at saying the unpleasant part himself.

I unfolded the map.

"The eastern roads are unreliable," he added.

"I have not specified a direction."

"No. But Aoi has been asking about eastern transfers for some time."

Beside me, her hand stopped on the strap of her pack.

Corvane's face stayed gracious.

"Do take care of her, my lord. We have invested considerably in her survival."

I tried Insight. Three concealed fields. Nothing told me what was in them.

I focused on his last sentence. No dissonance.

He meant it.

I closed the reading.

"How fortunate," I said, "that we have an interest in common."

Corvane bowed.

At the outer gate, he watched us go.

The castle town was louder than the court and a lot less interested in my feelings. A woman yelled from an upstairs window. Two men pushed a cart with a wheel that complained at every turn. The air smelled of dung, hot fat, wet timber and fresh bread.

My stomach made a noise. Aoi looked at me.

"You ate supper?"

"There was a tray?"

She stopped walking.

"I was occupied."

"With what?"

"Reassessing several matters."

"Try reassessing breakfast."

She steered me to a stall under a blue awning. A boy was arranging loaves in baskets.

"Two," I said, and put a coin on the board.

He looked at it.

Then at me.

"You buying the oven?"

Aoi turned away. Her shoulders were moving.

I opened the purse. Six denominations looked back at me with the smugness of an established local custom.

One was square.

The boy leaned on his board.

"Got anything smaller, my lord?"

I picked another coin.

Aoi caught my wrist.

"Not that one either."

She picked out a copper, put it down, and took the bread.

"The round copper buys food," she told me. "That silver buys a room and supper. The one you offered buys somebody a reason to follow us."

I closed the purse.

The boy grinned.

"You always talk like that?"

"Only when inadequately fed."

He thought about it.

"Fair."

Aoi asked for the east road. He gave directions, warned us about a broken bridge, and went back to his loaves.

No bow. No stunned silence. Business as usual.

I bit through the warm crust and, for several steps, could not think of a single thing worth saying.

At the corner Aoi took out the map. Her finger landed on a relay post east of the capital, north of the main military road.

"Dunbarrow," she said. "That's where I'm going."

"Berden?"

"A laundry woman saw his company's transfer cart. The relay keeps duplicate rolls. If I get there before the next transport, I might find where they sent him."

I looked at the marks beyond her finger. Villages. Minor roads. An old watch station. Farther east, a district named the Eastern March.

The main armies were southeast, around the crossings. These settlements were behind the fighting--but outside the lines the crown could afford to hold.

"What remains here?"

"People trying to leave."

"And those who cannot?"

She looked up.

"Yes," she said. "Them too."

I kept looking at the map.

She folded it.

"Dunbarrow first. After that, we decide again."

"Agreed."

She handed me the bigger half of the loaf.

We went out through the lower gate between vegetable carts and a procession of furious geese. Beyond it, the road ran east.

Aoi checked the sun and started walking. I followed.

The arrangement was sensible. That annoyed me more than it should have.