A Ghost Adrift

A life of nothing but loafing was, it turned out, no fun at all.

Everyone said they wanted to idle and be fed, but idleness was only pleasant if you had someone to share it with. Loafing alone from morning till night was nothing but boredom—a desperate effort to waste time, and nothing more. You could shove at the hours and beg them to pass, and still they would not go.

Weary of it at last, Artila left her room and looked out at the pigs in the pen. The swineherd boy was asleep in the shade of a tree. Someone came up beside her. She lifted her head, and he gave her a small nod in greeting.

"Hello."

"Ilesin?"

Today he wore a pale yellow shirt and leather trousers. He looked like a stage actor in an attendant's part—maximum leading man, minimum pretty page—and yet he was, as it happened, the lord of this castle, once captain of a mercenary company. Pale, flawless skin and a splendid face notwithstanding, he was a warrior among warriors, a man who had survived battle after battle to come this far.

"You've wilted."

"I want to work."

"You want to?"

"You told me not to do anything."

"Don't like it?"

"I feel like a ghost no one can see, just drifting around. I really don't like it."

Artila let out a long sigh.

"I must have lived more than twenty years, and I'm no better than a newborn. I'm incompetent. It's miserable. I'm sad."

"You don't need to flay yourself quite that hard."

"It might even be thirty."

"Not... quite that much."

"What makes a person who they are is memory. Without it, everything I was until now is gone... don't you think? Twenty years, or thirty, or a generous forty."

"Forty is... a stretch, I'd say."

"I might just look absurdly young for my age. For all I know, it's a hundred years."

"That one's flat-out impossible."

Artila wilted, all the spirit gone out of her.

Ilesin, silent a moment, poked her.

"What."

"The price of the remedies you used on me. I still haven't paid it, have I?"

"What if we count it against the room and board for letting me loaf? Keep deducting, and I'll pay it off eventually."

"Then what about the price of a life?"

"I had to keep you alive to get out of the forest. We made it out by helping each other, so I can't charge you for a life. And I helped you on the condition that I'd be allowed to stay here. You've already paid in full."

"Then I'll pay more than the price you set. To start, I'll give you five of those pigs over there."

"Five of them?"

"Five of the young ones. You claim you were a farmer, so you ought to have an eye for a good animal."

"...I think I might..."

Artila looked the pigs over. Not one of them knew it was being bargained away. They went on loafing in perfect contentment.

"When they grow, the castle will buy them and pay a fair price. If they have piglets, I'll pay for those as well. Count that as working for the castle."

"That's the pigs doing the work, not me. The pigs have the piglets. The pigs get eaten. And someone has to look after them. That boy is paid to tend your pigs, not mine."

She pointed at the sleeping swineherd.

"He's been asleep an awfully long time, though."

Sleep that deeply, and the monsters could carry off every pig and he'd never know. Ilesin frowned as if he agreed. But he was the lord of the castle, and picking over each laborer's attendance was not a task for him to do himself.

"I'll cover the cost of keeping them, and call it a gift. Not that it amounts to much of a gift, if that boy's the one providing it. And there's something more important."

"What is it."

"Can you read?"

"Turns out I can."

"What do you... ah. I see. What you mean."

She meant that when she looked at letters, she found herself reading them. Artila had lost the memories bound up with her sense of self, but skills and knowledge—reading among them—had not left her. She had not known it at first. She had discovered it only after a few days.

"I'm a farmer. How do I know how to read?"

"If your mother or father could read, it isn't impossible. And the previous Grand Duke of Arandia sent books to every village and saw to it that people were taught their letters. If you're from the south, it isn't strange at all for farmers to know how to read."

"How do you know I'm from the south?"

"Your skin."

Artila's skin was close to a light brown. Set beside Ilesin and Hisnil, who were northerners, the color was unmistakably deeper.

"You heard it from Pamila, I expect. Choose between Hisnil's study and the cottage beside Zeldia's herb garden. I'm not telling you to go loaf there. I'm giving you work."

"I don't know the first thing about herbs. Or about magic."

"If you can read and write, you can work as their assistant. They're short of hands just now, so you'd be a help. All you need is to be able to read. Don't worry that you have no skill."

Artila's face brightened with delight. At last, she had something to do.

"Don't be that glad. It might not suit you, or it might be too hard. If you change your mind and decide loafing suits you better, say so whenever you like. I'll let you idle in comfort again."

"I'll try it, at least. It feels as if something is blooming in my chest, soft and warm."

"And what... exactly does that feel like."

"So grateful I could die...? Something like that."

"Far too much gratitude for so small a kindness. You make me feel quite abashed. Hisnil and Zeldia won't make good people to live with. I almost feel bad for recommending them."

"How bad are they, exactly?"

"They live alone for a reason. Half wild, the pair of them... Depending on your taste, what you get will sort into flaws you can endure and virtues that are no use at all."

"Between the two, which do you think is better?"

"If it were me, I'd recommend Hisnil's study. It's a tower, for one thing, so there are plenty of rooms. Zeldia's cottage has only a single bedroom, and ghosts turn up often enough that you'd feel you were sharing a small house with far too many people. Better to live in comfort, even if the place is wide and still."

Artila considered a moment, then spoke.

"I'll look at both, one after the other. First, Hisnil's wide and still tower."

"Good. Let's go fetch your things."

Artila went with Ilesin to the room where she was staying. Pamila had chosen it with care—clean, spacious, and full of light—and she was sorry to leave it. She picked up the bag set in the corner and held it out to him.

"These are the remedies I had with me. There seem to be a lot of wounded. Please, use them."

"No. Don't give me those. Right now the very existence of the remedies is a secret. We're pretending they've all run out. If word gets around, even the ones who'd heal if left alone will come clamoring for a share. Take them with you and hide them well."

"Is anyone in a serious way?"

"The people who needed them at once were given the remedies we had. The rest are on the mend, or past the point where a remedy would do any good."

Past the point meant injured too gravely for a remedy to treat. Remedies had their limits. It was said that medicines capable of raising the dead were made in the alchemy institute run by the Pope, and in the workshop of the greatest spiritualist, but as a rule they were used only to close an urgent wound cleanly, or to seal an incision after surgery.

The rest of her belongings were nothing but the two changes of clothes Pamila had given her, easily pushed into the bag. Ilesin picked it up and spoke.

"This way, then."

To reach the mage's tower they had to take the stairs beside the castle wall. Between the fine pillars flanking the steps, the castle and the country around it lay open to view.

"Oh."

The sound escaped her before she knew it. High cliffs of white stone ran along the coastline, and between them a bay cut deep inland. A harbor lay in the bay.

"It's beautiful."

"Plenty of monsters, too. Built atop a very old labyrinth."

"A labyrinth?"

"Yes. A labyrinth. There was an abandoned one beneath this ground. Whether the demon vanished or was driven out, no one can say, but a knight defeated the high-ranking monster—not a demon—that had taken the castle, and claimed it for himself. When his line died out, the castle passed to the emperor by law, but the monsters multiplied again and it was left alone. Later my predecessor distinguished himself and was granted the place. Driving the monsters out took a good long while, but once they were gone, it was passed down to me."

"It's completely safe now. There isn't a single monster."

"You can feel that for certain?"

"Yes."

Artila nodded, then spread both arms wide.

"Safe all the way past the horizon."

Ilesin's eyes narrowed. He tilted his head a little to one side and smiled. Artila studied his face.

"Why are you staring so hard, Artila."

"I was thinking I don't believe I've ever seen a man like you?"

"No. You have."

"I haven't."

"You have. Think about it."

"I don't remember a thing."

"You will, in time."

Ilesin gestured.

"Come on. Time we went to my ill-tempered mage's tower."

"Ah, Captain."

Hisnil was wearing, as he did every day, clothes roomy enough for three of him at once. His shoulders were straight and fairly broad, which at least spared him the look of a scarecrow.

"What do you need?"

"I came because there's something I need you to do. And listen properly. What kind of attitude is that."

"Aren't you the one asking a favor, Captain? The one who ought to be polite is you, not me."

"It was a favor until a moment ago. From now on, it's an order. Listen well."

Rather than mend his manner, Hisnil decided to change the kind of answer he gave.

"Yes, yes. And what is the order."

"From today, you'll live with Artila."

Artila looked around Hisnil's workroom. There was hardly room to set a foot; the place was packed with baskets, and the baskets were packed with medicine—fever reducers, treatments for inflammation, painkillers, antiseptics. Papers scrawled with compounding formulas were plastered thick across the walls.

"And what am I supposed to do while living with her?"

"Find her work she can manage."

"Whatever I assign her is up to me. Isn't it?"

"Don't mistreat her."

"And what's your standard for mistreatment."

"I'll ask Artila, then judge for myself. What counts as treating her well by her measure might not, by mine."

"So I'm to wait on her, is that it?"

"That's right."

"She's your benefactor, Captain, not mine."

"You are my mage, and Artila is my benefactor. I'm ordering you to repay, in my place, the debt I owe her."

"Damn it."

Irritated, Hisnil raked a hand through his hair until it stood in a mess, and spoke.

"Fine. I need an assistant anyway, so I'll take her. I don't know how much help she'll be, but I do need someone. Zeldia found two, and not a single person has come here."

"That cottage must already be full."

"It is. Two little girls. Little or not, a person is still a person. One lives in the castle, so she can come and go. The other's from outside the walls, so they decided she'd live there. So, Miss Artila—you'll stay here. There are plenty of rooms. Pick whichever you like."

"Thank you."

At the thanks, the stubborn set of Hisnil's face eased. For all he played at being ill-tempered and particular, he did not seem capable of real coldness.

"You said you can read?"

"Yes."

"I need to know how literate you are. Those formulas—can you read them, and understand them?"

Artila ran her eyes over every formula plastered to the wall, then laid the sense of them out, carefully and in order.

"...This is what they say, isn't it?"

Hisnil's mouth fell open.

"Ah—Miss Artila. If you're from the southern coast, then knowing how to read and write isn't strange in the least. But literacy of this order goes well beyond that. Genuinely useful."

Now the anxious one, Hisnil hurried on before she could change her mind.

"You're hired as my assistant, as of this moment. There's more work than you can imagine, so steel yourself. If it gets to be too much, though, tell me. I can't take any of it off your shoulders, but I'll find you an easier way through it."

"All right."

Artila concluded that Hisnil was a kind man doing a poor imitation of a bad temper. He could preen all he liked at the start; before long his real nature came out of him whether he wished it to or not.

Hisnil pointed at the ceiling.

"Go up to the second floor and you'll find a bright room. Best in the place, aside from my own room and the study, so that's where you'll stay. Furniture, necessities, anything you need—tell Pamila, whenever you like. I will say it again. Tell Pamila."