The Maid Is Not Dead

Two skewed blocks of houses south and towards the mountains, going from the main market square of Faulsen, was a blacksmith's workshop. It was the only legitimate smithy left within the town, though a couple of less dignified tinkerers operated further outside the wall. This shop was not managed by a dwarf, but a human male who was the very opposite of a dwarf, a man named Adrian.

Master Adrian was a good six feet and a half tall. He did sport a handsome, ginger beard, as blacksmiths could be expected to have, but it seemed he had traded his hair for that beard; his scalp was clean bald all around, though he was not old, not even twenty-four.

Master Adrian had been inducted into the craft by his father, but the father had deceased before his time and the son had had to grow up early. A common story in these parts, it seemed. Left in charge of the smithery, alone responsible for his own and his mother's survival, Master Adrian had hammered such hardness into his spirit that I found him rather uncomfortable to deal with. There was this perpetual look in the man's pale blue eyes, as if he stared into a fire even when he was looking at you, and nobody not made of fire could appreciate being beheld so bluntly.

However, seeing as there was no other proper blacksmith left in Faulsen, he was the only one I could offer my excess steel to, since the Guild wouldn't have it.

My haul had somewhat shrunk over the trip. My hand forced by an embarrassing shortage of stamina, I had to leave the shield and a sallet along the way, and go back for them another time. I wouldn't say grass was always greener on the other side, but at times like this, I could only rue having been born a woman. The finite carrying capacity imposed strict limits on how much coin I could make through the back-breaking work.

Master Adrian examined my loot with that thousand-yard stare of his, one by one, not making a sound, tossing the pieces on the table like a baker his flatbread, and then finally made an offer.

"I'll give you eighty coppers for the lot."

I could only frown at the man.

"With all due respect, Master Adrian, I am not entirely unfamiliar with armor markets. Those pauldrons alone would cost at least eight marks silver new. Then would you not say it's unreasonable to take such a pile for a pittance?"

"But new they're not," he retorted. "Rust has bitten all the pieces hard. They'd need more than a quick polish to put for sale. And I'm not taking another smith's scraps in my shop. These designs are no good. I'll have to make horseshoes out of them. And that's more work for me than they're worth."

"Even if not usable precisely as they are, the metal alone should be worth more than your starting offer, no?"

"No," Master Adrian declared outright. "Don't know where you took your market class, Miss, but we're not so short of iron in Argento. There's a mine not forty miles west in Grosmer. Most of the iron in the Kingdom comes from there. Prices are low. I have a buddy up there, who ships me top quality ingots once every six months, more than enough for a small town's needs, and it doesn't take half the hammer work. You can't expect me to pay you the same as him for scraps you stripped off some old corpse."

It was like he was looking for an argument on purpose, but I swallowed it down.

Giving it more thought, I could recognize he wasn't making a low offer out of idle malice, but that this was his style of kindness, the best he could give, when he would rather not have bothered at all. I was only undermining what little sympathy the smith had for me by stubbornly bartering. In the worst case, he would withdraw from the deal and I would be left with a mound of useless junk for my troubles. Even a little was still better than nothing. After all, the loot cost me only sweat to bring over, if we didn't assign the effort itself a value.

"...Very well. You may have them for eighty coppers," I conceded, trying not to sound too eager to part with the lot.

Yet, Master Adrian's stare seemed to see straight through my pretenses and he remarked only,

"Thought so."

The man took a large box, swept the scraps into the box, and took the box into a stack of similar boxes towering by the wall of the forge.

"Do you think you could use more," I asked. "If I happened to find any."

The crafter gave me one last look before returning to the anvil.

"If it's better than what you brought today."

No more needed be said of that deal. I took my leave of the workshop with the unpleasant feeling of being only a clueless city girl and a fish out of water, and then moved to racking my brain over what could be learned from this class.

When a new face entered the workforce, heedless of field, they were guaranteed to experience setbacks of a thousand kinds. Many lost heart when things didn't immediately go their way and assumed the fault lay in themselves, because they were born flawed and talentless, but that was very rarely the case. Nobody could achieve perfection on the first attempt, nor were even expected to, and the real essence of professionalism lay in discerning what had to be changed in the process to bring about a better result.

Developing the eye to discern problem points without special instructions decided whether you could keep your job, or couldn't; whether you became a master at your craft, or remained a perpetual novice; whether you perished in battle, or triumphed; and whether you could brew a good cup of tea, or couldn't.

This was the central message I had tried to convey to Ray too, at the time we were cutting up goblins under the mountains. But I was hardly a master myself, nor fit to teach heroes. As a person utterly devoid of special talents, I could only take my own lecture to heart and make sure I reflected properly on my failures.

There was real money to be made with looted materials, more so than in undead fingers, that was a fact.

The main issues were those of quantity and quality.

I couldn't turn rust into shine, but was there no way I could make up for it by bringing out more merchandise per trip?

Much of a burden couldn't be piled on my thin frame and going back and forth multiple times a day was not possible for the shortage of mortal endurance. Were there no tools then that could have made the task easier? Were not logistics a common issue every culture had wrestled with since the dawn of organized life? There ought to have been a premade solution.

A cart would come gently downhill, to be sure, but it had to go uphill too. No plain mule, or a horse, could drag a very large cart up such a cumbersome ascent, nor could I. It would take a hardy bull, or two. All of such were needed on farms and they would not willingly enter the presence of the dead.

Hiring a sturdier helper would have been appropriate, perhaps. In my company, even a lower-ranked adventurer could enter Baloria and carriers were often wanted. But—as implied by the verb "hire"—this helper would naturally expect payment for his troubles. A large share of the meager income would then go to other pockets, which sort of defeated the point.

A servant hiring a servant? This was getting too nutty.

If only I could have myself a soulless golem, or some such creature, an obedient servant, who could tirelessly carry my burdens for me, free of charge…Or a magic that could move heavy loads easily from place to place, perhaps? Did such a Sigil exist? If only there were a sorcerer I could consult on this. We truly were missing a great many things in this town.

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Before I knew it, my mind had left the roads of reality and entered the realm of the fantastical.

Recognizing this, I saw it wisest to call it a day and go home. This head was no good for honest work anymore today.

The dinner that night was a surprise number. Vera had brought out a deep earthenware pot, which she kept on low heat for several hours and then carried to the table with a sunny smile on her face. In the pot was baked what looked like black bread, but the aroma rising alongside the steam was mysteriously greasy and savory, suggesting meaty fillings. I had never seen such a dish before.

In the corner seat, Norn's face lit up with delight.

"Wow, we're having patah today? Heck yeah!"

The androgynous young Miss gripped her fork and knife like a soldier would a spade and shield, impatiently awaiting battle.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Oh-ho, we have something the maid doesn't know?" Vera jeered as she plunged a knife into the bread crust. "Guess it's a special day in many ways. This is an old Gaulean specialty: fish patah. Mom used to make it on holidays. Basically, it's cuts of bass and pork baked in black bread with vegetables. Sealed under the dough cover, they slowly simmer together into a soft, greasy, juicy goodness!"

"So...it's a pasty? Hot pot?"

"Nothing so fancy-pancy! This is honest food for honest people!"

Did she just casually dismiss the staples of continental cuisine as "dishonest"? No, I knew better than to throw fuel into that fire.

"Then, what makes this day special, beside my boundless ignorance?" I asked instead.

Vera puffed her chest with pride and brushed her nose.

"Oh, I'm so glad you asked! You'd like to hear it, wouldn't you! Aren't you just itching to know? Oh, gee! Guess I'll have to tell you then!"

"You found yourself a guy?" Norn interjected from the side. "Finally. Grats. Get married and get out, so I can have the house."

"Wow, look at the mouth on this kid! Who're you calling an old maid!?"

"More like 'old ogre'. Nobody in this town would mistake you for a mai—"

Vera proceeded to take her little brother (female) into a tight chokehold and squeezed her into a quick submission. I waited for the domestic violence to run its course, wondering if we would actually get to eat tonight. Thankfully, after asserting her total dominance over a thirteen-year-old, the landlady finally returned to the topic.

"All right," she bashfully confessed. "The thing is—I got a raise at work today!"

"Raise?"

"Yeah! As of this day, I'm making a whole of sixteen coppers per day! Can you believe that? Hear me, Nornie? Your big sis is going to places. Meanwhile, where the heck are you?"

"Yeah, yeah," Norn replied, visibly envious. "Uncle Kynes gave me my own pair of shears. Eat that."

I wasn't so sure if a raise of two coppers was worth a banquet. Counting the walkers, the tags, and the loot sales, I'd made one silver and eighty-two coppers today, and I didn't think that was anything to write a song about either. The share I'd given the landlady was four times her daily salary, including the raise. Shouldn't she have celebrated the real breadwinner of this family instead? No, excuse me, that came out all wrong. She was sending my mind on strange tracks again.

"What brought about this sudden rise in rank?" I asked. "You're not telling me the Guildmaster suddenly recognized your talents, are you? I was told money mattered to the man more than anything else under the sun."

"Why, that's what he did!" Vera declared, subverting expectations. "You know, I've been going through the Guild archives in my spare time, as an anonymous tip said I should, selflessly, and at the cost of my personal time. Frankly, I had no idea why I was doing it, but then—by pure coincidence—I came across this interview penned almost two hundred years in the past! Can you believe that? The Guild had recorded testimonies from a bunch of dwarves that came out of Baloria when they were leaving it. Not all of them were willing to talk, but a few came forward on their own, saying they wanted to warn us about the monsters in the dungeon and help spread the word. It took me a while to go through the transcript—the handwriting was godawful back in the day—but they had the most outlandish story I've ever seen put on pages. Those dwarves were seriously arguing there's a fiend down there with the power to raise the dead and control them at will!"

"Oh?" I remarked, to be polite. "How exotic."

"...What's with the super lame reaction? Yep. An honest-to-goodness necromancer, I tell you. The dwarves called it Mithora, the Dreadweaver. But then it occurred to me, hey, didn't the King and his folks have trouble with the dead people only the other week? Maybe it was all thanks to this guy that they were sent running? So I put two and two together and took the papers to the Guildmaster, who took them to the Jarl, and the rest was history. You should've seen old Fossler's face then. He said he'd deliver the documents to the King personally, ordered the boss to reward me, and took off in a hot haste. Then I got a raise, and a bottle of cognac too! Yahoo! This is surely the most successful day professionally I've had since the day I was born."

"…"

If this was the very height of it, then could you call such a life fortunate at all?

More importantly, information worth pure gold, signed away with a two-copper raise and a bottle of liquor? I was speechless.

"I was also named the Lead Archivist in the bureau," Vera proudly continued. "Effectively promoted! My Saturday shift from hereon is fully dedicated to browsing the records in the cellar! Which means, I don't need to tardwrangle the meatheads in the hall that day! Oh joy! And that's the real reason we're having patah today."

Was there really not one other civilized adventurer in town, beside myself? Wait, I was not included in the "meathead" count, was I?

We were going to have to discuss this later.

"Sure wish I got paid for nothing but ruffling papers all day," Norn commented sourly.

"You're a dummy, so enjoy your shears," the older sister said.

Finally, shaking out of the daze that the multi-way hoodwinkery had cast me into, I put closer attention to what was actually said.

"You only told them about Mithora…?"

"Huh?" Vera blinked at me. "What do you mean, 'only'? Wasn't that what you wanted me to find? Or was there something else?"

It appeared she had yet to read testimonies related to the other named monsters and had come across the story of Mithora first by pure coincidence. Alas, the Dreadweaver was perhaps the least threatening of the lot individually, hiding behind its ghouls, seemingly bent to avoid personal combat.

Should I tell Vera the rest now? But if the King were to learn the full extent of the enemy force he was up against, while unable to dispatch even the weakest of their number, certainly he would pack up the camp and go home the very same day.

Was that well?

True, I could breathe easier without so many VIPs around—but royalty had its uses too. For one, they gave the locals other things to think about, preventing the Jarl, or the Guildmaster, from paying closer attention to my activities. They also demonstrated the traps and pitfalls of the dungeon, indirectly making navigation safer for me and other adventurers. Once we got past the ghouls, the soldiers could help cull the non-reviving monster population too.

Also, the King's presence served as an effective advertisement.

The more willing clearers gathered from around the country and farther, the sooner the dungeon was conquered, and the sooner I could go home.

In the end, that was what mattered most.

It was the only thing that mattered at all.

Every action chosen, every word spoken, every step taken, every plot hatched, should be for that purpose and no other. My personal safety and infamy were a secondary concern next to my duty. Being found out would ruin my plans and force me to leave the town, but it was a risk I had to accept for the sake of progression. Sooner or later, the truth about the monsters would come out on its own, but it was better not to accelerate the natural developments.

Weighing the pros and cons, I finally told Vera,

"…No. Please carry on as you have."

In other words, I told her nothing at all.

"That was one long pause there…"

Vera made a puzzled frown at me, but soon dismissed the topic with a shrug, by now well-accustomed to gaining only non-answers with a foggy reasoning behind them. But then she would again remind herself that she didn't even want to know.

"Oh well. Let's eat now."