Things lost in the Labyrinth usually came with their owner's regrets still attached.
A single boot. A crushed water flask. A glove stiff with blood. Every one of them was something someone had been forced to let go of, down here in the dark.
The Great Labyrinth of Verda, fourth floor.
Luca followed a passage that smelled of wet earth and moss until it opened onto the eastern watering hole.
"...Oh, wow."
It was a mess. Claw marks scored the ground in every direction, and the blood had dried black. Jerky spilled from a torn pack, crawling with insects. What a waste of good jerky, Luca thought, but even he wasn't hungry enough for that.
He set down his back-basket and got to work.
A cracked flask. A lone bracer. A snapped bowstring. He picked them up one at a time and dropped them into the basket.
Pick it up in the Labyrinth, wash it, fix it, sell it. If you could find the owner, give it back and collect a reward. That was a scavenger's job.
Delvers called scavengers hyenas. But Boss Grun liked to say that without hyenas, the Labyrinth would have been buried in junk years ago, and Luca agreed with him.
The salvage tag hanging from his neck let him go as deep as the fifth floor. Anything below that belonged to the delvers.
Three years he'd been doing this, and he didn't mind the work at all. Today, though, his hands kept going still.
Memories of objects, huh.
He looked down at his palm and thought back to that morning.
* * *
"Gift: Recall."
The priest's voice rang off the temple's high ceiling.
Once a year, everyone who had turned fifteen gathered for the Bestowal. Luca stood with his hand still resting on the crystal on the altar and tilted his head.
"Recall?"
"'Lets the bearer see the memories of objects they touch,'" the priest read from his parchment. "So it says."
Behind Luca, the line of boys started snickering.
"Memories of objects? What's that supposed to be?"
"Guess he's going to be a fortune teller."
"Hey, isn't that the scavenger kid? He can see what the garbage remembers!"
The laughter got louder.
Luca thought about it for a moment, then decided it was fine. He'd never expected to get something like Sword Saint or Archmage anyway. A Gift that stopped him from getting hungry would have been better, but apparently no such Gift existed.
When he got back to the shop and told him, Grun frowned around the stem of his pipe.
"Recall? Never heard of it. Well? Is it any good?"
"I haven't tried it yet."
"Huh."
That was all he said. Then he took a wooden job tag off the wall and tossed it over.
"Fourth floor, the eastern watering hole. Word is a pack of fang wolves came through yesterday. The delvers might've dropped something."
"By myself today?"
"Call it a present for getting your Gift. Go on."
Luca couldn't quite tell if that counted as a present.
* * *
Seeing what dropped things remember. What good would that do?
It wouldn't fill anyone's stomach. Luca gave a small laugh and kept collecting.
At the back of the watering hole, in the shadow of a rock, something glinted dully.
"A sword."
A one-handed sword lay on the ground, snapped halfway up the blade.
It wasn't a cheap one. The leather on the grip had been carefully rewrapped, and every nick in the edge had been worked out with a whetstone, again and again. A rookie's sword, Luca thought. Someone who really took care of it.
Lets the bearer see the memories of objects they touch. The priest's words drifted back to him.
He crouched and closed his hand around the grip.
That was when it happened.
The world flipped inside out.
◆ ◆ ◆
—Fangs. Coming.
One from the left. Two from the right.
It's hard to breathe. His arms are heavy. But his legs still move. He can still make them move.
Right foot, half a step, deep. Drop the hips. Drive off the heel. Thrust.
Contact. The first fang wolf goes down with the blade through its throat.
"Wait! Wait, there's more of them!"
He shouts. He turns.
Down the passage, he can see backs. Several of them. Golden cloaks. On each one, an embroidered crest: a roaring lion.
"Don't leave me here!"
The backs don't turn around.
Instead, something rolls to a stop at his feet. A small pouch. A sweet, cloying smell, thick enough to choke on.
The wolves' eyes change.
He resets his grip. Lunges. Lunges. Lunges—
With an ugly crack, the blade snaps.
◆ ◆ ◆
"—Hah!"
Luca was sitting on the ground in the shadow of the rock.
His heart was pounding. His palms were slick with sweat. In his hand was the broken sword.
"What was that...?"
Deep in his head, a quiet voice spoke.
Echo inherited: [Lunge].
"Echo?"
Before he could start to think about what that meant, his stomach growled.
Not a grumble. A long, rolling roar, like a cart going over cobblestones. He'd never heard his own body make a noise like that.
"I'm... so hungry..."
He'd eaten a proper breakfast. And yet he was starving, as if he hadn't eaten in three days. There should be some dried sweet potato in the basket. Luca reached for it—
A low growl.
Across the water, on a mossy rock, stood a fang wolf.
A straggler from the pack, maybe. It was thin, and its eyes burned.
This is bad, Luca thought.
Scavengers didn't fight. If you ran into a monster, you ran. That was the iron rule.
But fang wolves were much faster than people.
The wolf leaped.
His body moved before he could think.
Right foot, half a step, deep. Drop the hips. Drive off the heel.
He thrust out the broken sword.
He felt it go in.
The wolf tumbled past him with the broken sword buried in its throat. It twitched for a while, and then it was still.
"...Huh?"
Luca looked down at his right foot.
That lunge hadn't been his. It was the swordsman's lunge. The one he'd just seen.
"So that's what an Echo is...?"
Nothing answered him. Instead, his stomach let out another enormous growl.
Luca chewed on dried sweet potato and stared at the broken sword. Behind the blood caked on the blade, the scene was still burned into his eyes.
A swordsman, left behind.
Backs that never turned around.
And the crest embroidered on those golden cloaks: a roaring lion.
Nobody who lived in Verda could fail to recognize it.
The Rank Five party, the Golden Lions.
The Guild couldn't stop praising them for how well they looked after rookies. They were the most popular delvers in the city.
* * *
"You killed a fang wolf? By yourself?"
It was evening. When Luca got back to the shop and held out the fangs he'd pulled from the wolf, Grun took the pipe out of his mouth.
"With that broken sword."
"Yes."
"You. A scavenger kid."
"Yes."
Grun picked up one of the fangs and held it to the lamplight. Then he looked at Luca's face for a long moment.
"One thrust, straight through the throat. ...That's not the kind of wound you get from running around and getting lucky."
"Um, Boss."
Luca hesitated, then decided to tell him everything. How he'd touched the sword and watched a stranger's fight. How that stranger's lunge had stayed behind in his own body. The voice that had spoken in his head.
He hesitated a little longer before he told him about the Golden Lions.
Grun listened without a word. When Luca was done, he let out a long stream of smoke.
"...Let's test it."
"Huh?"
"Follow me."
* * *
At the back of the shop stood a set of shelves that reached all the way to the ceiling.
This was where things ended up when they'd been salvaged but no owner ever came for them and no buyer ever wanted them. Everyone called it the leftovers shelf.
"Touch whatever."
"Whatever?"
"Whatever."
Luca looked the shelves over. A rusty pot. A spear with a snapped shaft. A single glove. He grabbed the nearest thing to hand, which turned out to be a wooden ladle.
The world flipped inside out.
◆ ◆ ◆
—It's burning, it's burning!
A campfire. Stew bubbling away in a big pot.
Run the ladle along the bottom of the pot, then turn the wrist. Once, twice, three times. The bits that were about to scorch float free.
"Oi, Emma, is it ready yet?"
"Shut up and wait!"
◆ ◆ ◆
Echo inherited: [Ladle Work].
"..."
"Well?"
"I can keep stew from burning now."
Grun burst out laughing. He slapped his false leg and held his stomach and kept laughing for a good while.
"Ha—hahaha! Stew! Of course!"
"Boss, you're laughing way too hard."
"Sorry, sorry. But now I get it. That Gift of yours gives you whatever skill the thing was last used for."
Luca nodded. The ladle's owner had been cooking at the end, so a cooking skill was what stayed with him. The sword's owner had been fighting at the end, so a sword skill was what stayed.
"Hungry?"
"Yes. Very."
"Figured. It's written all over your face."
Grun tossed him three loaves of black bread from the shop's kitchen. The first one was gone in an instant.
* * *
After that, Luca worked his way through the leftovers shelf until the sun went down. He learned a few things.
First, each item gave him only one recall. When he touched the same ladle a second time, nothing happened.
Second, some items wouldn't give him a recall at all. The rusty pot was a dud. Grun guessed it had been too long since anyone last used it, and the memory had worn away.
And third, every recall left him ravenously hungry.
"That's your eighth loaf."
"Sorry."
"Don't apologize. Eat."
There were real finds, too. One was a dagger in a leather sheath. It felt at home in his fingers the moment he picked it up.
◆ ◆ ◆
—A back alley. Rain is falling.
The man in front of him raises a blade.
Meet the man's edge with the dagger's spine. Knock it aside. Let the momentum carry through and spin the hilt between the fingers, from a forward grip to a reverse grip.
An instant later, the tip of the dagger rests against the inside of the man's wrist.
"...Tch. You'll regret this."
The man runs off. In the puddle at his feet, his own face looks back at him. A worn-out face.
He's done with this line of work.
He tosses the dagger, sheath and all, into a rubbish basket by the river.
◆ ◆ ◆
Echo inherited: [Reverse Grip].
"...He seemed like a thief. But at the end, I think he went straight."
"So he threw the dagger away when he quit. Then somebody picked it up, and it went around and around until it landed on our shelf."
Grun picked up a broom that was leaning against the wall.
"I'm swinging."
"What?"
The broom handle came down at him from above.
Before he could think, Luca had drawn the dagger from its sheath and met it. Clack—he knocked the handle aside with the spine. The hilt spun between his fingers. The next thing he knew, he was holding the dagger in a reverse grip, and its tip had stopped dead against the inside of Grun's wrist.
"..."
"..."
"Sorry, Boss."
"No. It's fine."
Grun lowered the broom and rubbed his wrist.
"Your body really does remember."
The next thing Luca picked up was an old pair of boots, worn down at the heels.
◆ ◆ ◆
—A dark passage. Hold your breath.
Toes first, and set the foot down softly. Weight on the outside edge. The heel comes last, like a feather drifting down.
Around the corner, three goblins are asleep. She slips past them without waking a single one.
On the far side, her friends are waving.
"Nice work, Mia. That finishes the map."
It's been a long expedition. The soles of her boots are worn through.
When she gets home, she'll buy a new pair.
◆ ◆ ◆
Echo inherited: [Silent Step].
"They were a scout's boots. She was going to buy new ones when she got home."
"Well, sure. Worn down that far."
"Try getting behind me."
At Grun's word, Luca used [Silent Step] to circle around behind him. Grun didn't turn around. When Luca tapped him on the shoulder, Grun's shoulders gave the smallest jump.
"...I could barely even feel you there."
Grun was quiet for a while, thinking something over. Then he knocked the ash out of his pipe and spoke in a low voice.
"Luca. Don't tell anyone about this."
"Why not?"
"That Gift of yours lets you pick up skills from lost things. Which means the more you pick up, the stronger you get."
Luca blinked. He hadn't thought that far ahead.
"Something that handy, the wrong sort of people come crawling once they hear about it. And besides..."
Grun jerked his chin at the broken sword lying on the counter.
"If what you saw is true, this gets a lot messier."
The Golden Lions. The city's favorites, who had left a rookie behind and run. Apart from Luca's recall, there was nothing at all to show it had happened.
"...I want to give this sword back to its owner."
Luca picked up the broken sword. When he peeled back the leather on the grip, he found a small letter T carved near the base.
"If he's still alive, I mean."
"No body's been brought up. Nothing in the salvage records either," Grun said. "So there's a fair chance he's alive. Go ask at the Guild tomorrow."
"I will."
That night, up in the attic over the shop, Luca dreamed about bread.
In the dream, he was stirring a pot of stew. Not one bit of it burned.