Reincarnated As A Peasant - Book 2 Chapter 23: The Price of Dirt and Mud

Landar

“This is it, hey lad?” I nodded and gestured towards the crack. “It’s a big old bastard isn’t it. Don’t know if I can fix it with what I have. I’ll need to call for some tools from home that might help.”

“How expensive?” I asked, already feeling the pain in my coin purse. My finances were hanging by a thread as much as the condemned tenement building I had asked Gragon to look at. “I don’t have much in the way of coin at the moment.”

“Aye lad, you said as much. The tool is mine, so no needed cost. Just too big to ship here on my own. I’ll have my cousins bring it when they come to town in a few weeks with the winter furs for sale. Besides, If I didn’t want to work on stone work, I’d have stayed home. Your letter was clear as deep vine crystal.”

“Glad to hear it. I consider it a personal favor. Now, about the other thing I was hoping to get done today.”

“The windows.”

“Exactly. The other tenements are using sheets or pieces of wood to cover where glass should be in the windows. It’s not very effective as you can imagine.”

“And they’re all mortals. Makes sense they’re in danger from the cold.”

That reminded me of something he had said when I was a kid. It clashed with some of my long term plans for the place. “When we were in the forest, after I rescued you. You said that there were things that the kingdom wanted kept quiet. Things that were illegal to teach peasants like I was back then.”

“S’right lad. There are. Being as you’re a noble now, and now a pissant peasant kid? I can share a little more. Surprised no one’s told you yet.”

I shrugged. “It hasn’t come up.”

He grunted. “To get to higher tiers of power, higher levels, it takes a lot of resources. Pills, medicines, cultivation sites, and the like. Opportunities that are, despite what you might think in that tower of yours, pretty rare out in the wide world.”

“So the nobility keeps it for themselves?”

Gragon shrugged. “No more than my people do. Or the Jade Empire, or the Toad Princes, or pretty much anywhere else you go. Though some places like the Jade Empire are a bit better about it then most when it comes to their citizens. Of course, those are the places slavery is encouraged.”

He shrugged again. “People will do anything to keep their power theirs. Hells bells, I’m sure there’s a million and one things my Grand Elder isn’t telling our Elder Council, and the elders aren’t telling us normal folk in the clan. I can’t imagine how many layers of secrecy there are in a place like your kingdom.”

I thought about his words as we made our way out of the building and towards the site he had chosen for his glass blower and furnace. Several dozen drudges were already hard at work clearing the broken cobbles from the site, while others worked at smoothing out the gravel Gragon had made from a few inches of stone under the cobbles with a simple spell.

If the kingdom tries to keep its secrets about its people’s power even from its own common citizens, then why the centralization of knowledge in the System?

Yes? System asked. Do you need something?

Oh, no sorry. Are you uh, are you doing something?

Yes as a matter of fact I am, thank you very much. I am calculating the probability that you’re going to be successful in overturning the Kingdom’s national restrictions on information security. And how likely you are to break them given your current conversation.

Smirking, I asked, and what did you come up with?

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

A 0.000037% chance that you’ll be successful at overturning the national restrictions through legal means. And a 27% chance that without my intervention you would inadvertently commit a securities crime by telling your friend there about the national System, and the standardized practice of providing new students with mind spirit seeds.

In and of themselves these are not executable offenses. Particularly given your new adopted bloodline. However, without my intervention had you known things such as say, the source of the mind spirit seeds, and you happened to even mention that there is a single? The king’s Inquisitors would likely disembowel you and hang you until you have died, in a process most similar to the ‘crucifixion’ of your old home world.

That . . . that sounds terrible. Were you considering not intervening?

Of course not. I’d never leave you out to dry like that. Then again, I can’t really stop you from running your mouth now can I?

System, why do I have the suspicion it was your job to tell me about these security restrictions? And why do I now feel like I’m now being spied on by Big Brother all of the sudden?

Big Brother. Hmmm. Yes, in your other worldly memories I can see what you mean by this idiom. I find it to be apt for your current predicament. As for your original query? Yes, it is 100% my responsibility to instruct you as to data security policies, rules, regulations, laws, and the consequences of breaching said policies, rules, regulations, and laws.

And why haven’t you yet?

You never asked.

I let out a long suffering breath. Bracing myself. From now on, if I need to know something tell me. Okay? Please?

Will do boss.

User settings updated.

I blinked the letters floating in front of my face away and refocused on what Gragon was doing.

“This will make a great simple furnace site. The ground is sturdy. Problem is we need clean sand. Know of anywhere we can get it?” Gragon asked as he squatted down and examined the work of the drudges.

“The shallow rivers around here have sand that runs just under their surface. Some places have pebble rock, but the shore lines are usually some kind of sand.”

“That’ll do. But we’ll have to go on our little expedition tomorrow. Night’ll fall before we go all the way to the main south gate, locate sand, and get back here.”

“Not unless we use the small gate in the district.”

Gragon chuckled. “Wasn’t it you who told me about some street roughs who would as soon stab ya as look at ya that control that wee bit oh land?”

“I’m not afraid of a few half starved gangers. Are you?”

“Not as much as I am of that walk to the southern gate and back. That’d be a right pain in the knees.”

I grinned. “Let’s go see about taking care of that then.”

***

“I really can’t thank you enough,” I said as the little kids showed me where to go. Gragon and I had both gotten lost, an embarrassingly number of times, while trying to find the small gate for the district.

The girl, who couldn’t have been older than twelve or thirteen, shrugged. “You fed me and my brothers and sisters. I owe you one. And ain’t nobody sayin Yolanda don’t pay her debt.”

“Aye, it’s a good thing regardless of the debt girl.” Gragon said, as he fussed with the workmans hammers in his belt. “Could bring bad things to your door, if the scoundrels learned you showed us the way too em.”

“What? You’re going to go fight them right?” Yolanda asked with a wicked smile that did not belong on such a young face.

“If we have too, yes.” I said as I touched the ax head on my belt. It would be available to me at a moment’s notice. “The small gate needs to be open for the whole district’s use. Not just some two bit smuggling gangsters.”

“That’d be nice. Maybe mom and dad can get home in time for supper most nights then, when it’s warm. Rather than after the pots are half cold.”

Yolanda lived in a neighboring court along the ridgeline. She was the eldest of her siblings, and was excused from work due to her left arm being largely useless from an accident. Her left arm was strong, but she bound the right one up against her body as she walked around.

When I examined her, her shoulder lit up like a Christmas tree. There were dozens of injuries, and what looked like some kind of infection, or lingering damage from one at least buried deep in the shoulder.

System, you have any idea what that might be?

Hmmm. Nope, sorry boss. Don’t have much in the way of medical information. I’d need to sync up at the school to pull more data than I have. Best guess though? Some kind of infection damaged the nerves in her shoulder and immobilized the hand.

I wonder if Roland would help her out? Or my sister.

Do you want me to add that to your to-do list?

Yeah, keep a note of it for me would you?

Will do boss.

We followed in silence for a while, passing by several groups of urchins running amok between the tenements. Most of them were filthy, but the closer we got to the wall, the cleaner and healthier the kids started looking.

“What’s with everyone being healthier closer to the wall?” I asked, and Yolanda barked a harsh laugh.

“That’s where the gangsters live, duh.”

Right, walked right into that one.

Yeah you did! Was kinda funny.