The thing about being a slave, Soren discovered over the next three days, was that nobody accounted for your time.
They accounted for your work.
Marda had a list and the list had to be finished. But the gap between finishing the list and being noticed not doing anything was enormous, and the previous Soren had spent three years standing very still in that gap trying not to exist.
Soren spent it cultivating.
He got to 2nd level Apprentice on the Tuesday, sitting on an upturned bucket behind the feed store with mana pouring into him eight times faster than it had any right to.
He got to close to third on the Thursday night, in the dark, while Aldric Callowmere's carriage sat in the front court and the whole house pretended to be busy.
<<Loraine: Almost two levels in four days.>>
Is that fast?
<<Loraine: A talented noble child with a tutor, a method, and a cabinet full of pills does a level in two months.>>
So that's a yes.
<<Loraine: That is a yes with an asterisk. You have no method. You are pouring water into a bucket and letting it find its own shape, and the shape it is finding is bad. You will hit the Adept bottleneck like a cart hitting a wall.>>
Can I buy a method?
<<Loraine: A Refined grade cultivation method is 900 FP. You have 1,150.>>
Seems I'll be buying one soon...
<<Loraine: Yes. You will.>>
...
He sold the salt on the Wednesday.
Two pounds of preserved coarse salt, which the system had given him as a joke, and which turned out to be worth six crowns in a house where the kitchen bought salt by the sack and Marda had been complaining about the last delivery for a month.
He gave it to Marda for nothing and told her it had come off a spoiled load at the labour estate.
<<AWARD: 1 UNCOMMON TICKET.>>
<<Qualifying: a kind act performed for a strategic reason. Loraine wishes it noted that this is the first time you have been paid for kindness and that it is because you finally did it cynically.>>
You're a nightmare.
<<Loraine: I am a bookkeeper.>>
...
Nessa found him on the Wednesday night while the house was still full of Aldric's people.
He was behind the feed store on his bucket. She came around the corner with a lamp hooded in one hand, saw him sitting cross legged in the dark with his eyes shut, and stopped.
"What are you doing?"
"Sitting."
"You've been sitting for two hours."
"It's been a long week."
Nessa put the lamp down on a barrel and looked at him with her arms folded, and Soren opened one eye and looked back, and neither of them said anything for a moment.
"Her brother brought four of his own guards," she said eventually. "They're in the yard. Two of them asked Marda which of us were purchasable."
Soren went still.
"What did Marda say?"
"That we're house and not stock and they'd have to ask her ladyship." Nessa shrugged, and the shrug was too casual by half. "Her ladyship's drunk so..."
Ah.
He stood up.
"Where are the others?"
"In the quarters. Sera's on the stair by Vesper's floor, so she's no use to anyone." Nessa's chin came up.
"It's fine. It's happened before. You put your back to the wall and you get through it and in the morning they're gone."
"That's not fine."
"No," Nessa agreed, "it isn't."
Lilith. Shop. Refined grade. Anything that makes four armed men decide to go to bed.
<<Lilith: Ooh, that's not really my department, sweetheart, I do—>>
Lilith.
<<Lilith: ...200 LP for a Refined charm effect and you have 4 LP...>>
Loraine?
<<Loraine: 400 FP buys you a Mortal grade sleeping draught sufficient for five Mortal adult. There are four of them but...>>
But?
<<Loraine: But, you are 3rd level Apprentice. They are guards of a noble son, which puts them at Adept, minimum. If you go into that yard you will die in it while enough sleeping draught effective for four Adepts is far more than the 1,150 you have.>>
Soren sat very still in the dark.
I know.
<<Loraine: Do you?>>
Yeah. He picked up Nessa's lamp and handed it back to her. That's why I'm not going into the yard.
Nessa frowned. "What?"
"Go and get everyone up. All of them, Ottilie too, and tell them to bring their blankets."
He was already walking. "And then all of you come to the grain loft over the east store and be quiet."
"The grain loft? Soren, we can't just—"
"Marda's got the key on the ring by the scullery door and she's been in bed since ten. I'll have it open in four minutes." He looked back at her.
"There's one ladder and it pulls up. Four drunk Adepts are not going to climb a wall in the dark for a maid they haven't seen, they're going to try the quarters, find it empty, and go and drink some more. And in the morning they'll leave."
Nessa stared at him.
"That's it? That's the whole plan?"
"That's the whole plan. Not much but it's better than the yard."
She was still staring.
"Nessa. Go."
She went.
It took him six minutes, not four, because the key ring was not where the previous Soren remembered it.
By the time he got the loft door open there were eleven women coming across the dark yard in a line with their blankets bundled against their chests, and Ottilie Vann was at the back of them.
He got them up. He pulled the ladder.
Then he sat down against the loft wall in the dark with eleven people breathing around him and listened to four men move through the empty slave quarters below, and shout something no women tonight, laugh, and go away.
<<AWARD: 1 Epic Ticket, 300 FP.>>
<<Qualifying: Unexpected, achieved without violence, against a threat at least 8 levels above you. Loraine notes that the odds were not good and that you did not gamble.>>
<<FP: 1,450>>
<<Lilith: ...Soren.>>
Don't.
<<Lilith: I'm just saying you could have—>>
I know what I could have done. Don't.
Nessa's shoulder was against his in the dark. After a while her hand found his wrist, the one with the mark on it, and stayed there.
"You're going to get yourself killed," she whispered.
"Probably."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
<<+2 LP>>
She was quiet for a moment. Somewhere in the loft, somebody had started to cry very softly and somebody else had started shushing them.
She looked around and when no one was looking, gave him a quick, deep kiss.
"That's your first thank you," She said softly.
Making good on the moment, Soren kissed her back, and deeply, his hand gliding over her body for a brief moment in the darkness.
<<+10 LP>>
"Mmm...no...not now," Nessa said after pulling away, looking around and sighing in relief that no one noticed.
"You're different now..." Nessa said as she looked at him after a long moment.
Before he could say anything she shook her head and spoke again, her tone different.
"When Aldric's men are gone..." Nessa said, in a completely different voice, a slight whisper like tone leaving her voice, "come and find me."
Lilith.
<<Lilith: You have 16 LP. Mortal grade. There's a technique called Ninefold Touch costs 15.>>
What does it do?
<<Lilith: Nothing you couldn't work out on your own in about six years.>>
Buy it.
<<Purchased. 1 Lp Remaining. Applying.>>
<<Lilith: Ohhh, this is going to be a good week.>>
...
They came down at dawn when the guards were busy setting up for their departure. Aldric's carriage left at nine.
Nessa found him in the linen store at half past ten, and shut the door behind her, and put her back against it.
"Everyone's at breakfast," she said. "Marda's counting sheets in the west wing. That's roughly twenty minutes."
Soren set down the basket he was holding.
"Twenty minutes," he said.
"Twenty, think you can get something out of that?" Nessa asked with a teasing smile.
"Try me," Soren fired back before coming close and taking her lips into his.