The dagger was gone.
He saw it the moment he opened his eyes. Jory's wooden sword lay on the floorboards beside his bed, where it had lain for a week, with TAM cut into the blade. Last night the bronze dagger had lain next to it. Now there was only the sword, and a bare patch of floor.
He sat up. He looked under the bed and shook out his blanket. Then he crawled along the boards to the top of the ladder. Nothing.
The farm hands were still snoring, and the loft floor creaked if you breathed on it. Nobody had crept past them in the dark to steal one small dagger.
Then he remembered the game. In the game, anything you dropped vanished a few minutes later, as if the world had tidied it away. He had used it a thousand times to get rid of junk. He had never thought it could happen on a real floor.
But it couldn't be that simple. If the world cleared away everything left lying, Lozar would have been gone too. Two nights ago she had lain in the corner of the barn all night, wrapped in her blanket. He had found her there in the morning, exactly where he'd left her.
He climbed down the ladder in his bare feet and went out into the grey yard. He picked up a pebble, a small brown one, nobody's. Now it was his. He climbed back up and set it on the floorboard beside Jory's sword. Then he sat on the edge of his bed and counted to three hundred, one second at a time. The pebble was still there at the end, looking smug.
Okay, he thought. So it's not everything I own.
What was different about the dagger? He had made it. He had carried it. And last night, after Wren wouldn't take it, he had put it away in his inventory, and then taken it out again at bedtime to look at it.
Lozar had never been in his inventory. He hadn't been able to make himself do it.
He picked up the pebble and tried to put it away. The inventory wouldn't take it. It stayed in his hand, a small brown stone, nothing the game had ever had.
So he took out his last cooked shrimp, still hot, and set it on the floorboard with one finger resting on top. He counted to three hundred like that. It stayed.
He lifted his finger and counted again. At a hundred, the shrimp was there. Somewhere short of two hundred, he blinked, and the floorboard was bare beside the pebble. There was no sound and no message. It was simply gone, like the dagger.
There it is, he thought. Anything of the game's that's mine goes, about three minutes after I let go. Holding it keeps it. The bars had lain on the anvil as long as he liked while he hammered them. Working on it keeps it. Walking off doesn't.
Every night before, he had slept with the dagger in his fist. Last night, tired out, he had fallen asleep with his hand only resting on it. Some time in the dark, his hand must have slipped off. In the game, things on a table had lasted a little longer. He wasn't going to test that with anything he cared about.
He sat there and looked at the place where the dagger had been.
Keep it, Wren had said, by the river. You'll want it when you're old, to show people.
He had kept it for one night.
Anything that had been in his inventory had to stay in it or in his hands. He could keep no stash under the bed.
Jory's sword was still there. Jory had meant it for him, but the gift had slipped, so it had never been his, and it had never been in his inventory. The rule didn't touch it. He left it where it lay.
Then, because the morning had gone wrong already, he opened his skills and looked at them properly for the first time in days.
Attack 2. Hitpoints 10. Fishing 4. Cooking 6. Mining 3. Construction 2. Prayer 1, and a sliver. Everything else was level 1, even Smithing, after five bars and a whole dagger.
He had been here eight days, and he hadn't swung an axe once.
The farm had his days, and that was fair. The evenings and rest days were his, and a man could do a lot in an evening with an axe, a knife and a tinderbox. Logs gave Woodcutting, fires gave Firemaking, and at Fletching 5 he could whittle bows, which should sell. After that, leather, from the tanner past the toll gate in Al Kharid.
He took out Lozar's dagger and equipped it. It settled at his waist, through the cord of his trousers, and its square went empty. He should have done that days ago.
Four of his squares held bronze bars, made on his fourth day and never touched since. In the game, he'd have laughed at anybody who carried bars around for a week.
An axe, he thought. And three daggers, to sell.
He went down to breakfast.
* * *
"A bucket of milk," said Tam, "an egg, and a pot of flour."
He said it at breakfast, to the whole table. He had been saying it in his head since he woke up, and it was starting to sound like a spell.
Seth looked up from his porridge. Gillie looked up from hers. The two big farm hands, the brothers who only talked to each other, looked at each other. The old man at the end of the table went on talking quietly to his bowl.
Jory was hammering a nail into a bit of plank beside his plate. He had been hammering things since yesterday afternoon. Nothing on the farm was safe.
"For the Cook," said Tam. "Up at the castle. It's the Duke's birthday, and the Cook forgot to order anything for the cake. He asked me to find it all."
"He asked you?" said Gillie.
"I was standing there. I looked capable."
"You were holding a churn."
"I held it capably."
Seth put down his spoon. "Jory. Hammer."
Jory put the hammer down. He kept one hand on it, in case it went anywhere.
"The milk's spoken for," said Seth. "Every drop. The castle has its share in the evening, the market has the rest in the morning, and the cheese gets what's left. I've no spare bucket of milk in this house, lad, not for the Duke or anyone."
"I know," said Tam. "The Cook said."
Seth rubbed his beard. Tam could see him thinking. Seth thought with his whole face.
"There's the leftovers," Seth said at last.
Gillie made a noise. "Dad."
"Well, there is. Gillie's quick, but she never gets the last of it out of them. Nobody does, with twelve cows and one pair of hands. There's always a drop left in each, and it's the best of it. The cream's in the last drop." He pointed his spoon at Tam. "Whatever's left in my cows after Gillie's done, if you can get it out of them, it's yours."
Tam had a spoonful of porridge halfway to his mouth. It stopped there.
Yours.
He thought about Seth's coat, sliding off his shoulders on the riverbank. He thought about the jar of coins under the loft floor, and the pitchfork, and forty-eight coins pouring across this very table. Every one of them had been somebody being kind. Every one of them had slipped.
Was milk inside a cow a gift? Would it go straight through the bottom of the bucket in front of the Cook?
In the game, he thought, this was one click. You used a bucket on a cow. That was the entire quest step.
"Tam?" said Seth. "You've gone a funny colour."
"I'm fine." He ate the porridge. "Thank you. That's really kind. I'll need a bucket."
"There's buckets in the dairy."
"A bucket of my own," said Tam. "Trust me."
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Seth looked at him. Then he nodded and went back to his breakfast.
Jory picked up his hammer again.
* * *
The month of mucking out was on its second day. Tam spent the morning on it.
He had his own spade. The cows had been busy all night. He shovelled and carried, and shovelled again. The smell got into his hair and stayed there.
No number rose. He had checked on the first day. Mucking out had never been in the game.
At midday Seth let him stretch his dinner hour for the Cook's business. He washed his hands at the pump, put his spade away in his inventory, and walked to Lumbridge.
The general store was busy. A woman was arguing with the bald shopkeeper about the price of a knife, and losing. Tam waited. Then he turned his back, took the spear and the net out of his inventory, and laid them on the counter one after another.
The shopkeeper looked at the spear.
"Selling," said Tam.
"Ten for the spear," said the shopkeeper at last. "Two for the net, and I'm being kind."
It was the game's price to the coin. Tam didn't argue. He put two coins on the counter and pointed at the stack of buckets.
"Shrimp boy," said the shopkeeper. "Buying a bucket. Branching out."
"I'm going into dairy."
"Mm." The shopkeeper set a bucket on the counter. It was a plain wooden one, bound with iron, with a rope handle. "Two coins."
Tam picked it up himself. He felt better than a man with a bucket had any right to feel. He bought a tinderbox for a coin as well, a little brass box with a flint and steel inside. The shopkeeper raised his eyebrows at that too.
"Bucket, tinderbox," said the shopkeeper. "Going camping?"
"Something like that. I'll be back in a bit with some daggers."
"Course you will," said the shopkeeper.
* * *
The smiths' building was around the corner. Feoras was at the furnace, heating a hinge, and he grinned when he saw who it was.
"Butter knife!"
"Hello, Feoras."
Tam went to the rusted anvil in the corner and took out his hammer and his first bar. He thought about an axe, and his hands knew what to do. The bar went into the fire and came out. The hammer came down in its rhythm. The bronze spread and thickened into a wedge with a hole through the thick end, in about the time it took Feoras to get his hinge hot.
+12.5 Smithing.
Then he thought about a dagger, three times over, and his hands made three. On the third, the words came.
Congratulations, you just advanced a Smithing level. Your Smithing level is now 2.
The warmth went down his arms. He put the daggers away and looked at the axe head. It was a good head, sharp and heavy. It had no handle.
In the game, an axe came off the anvil whole, handle and all. He had never wondered where the handle came from.
"You'll want a haft for that," said Feoras, who had come over to watch.
There was ash in the offcut pile by the door. Offcuts by a forge were anybody's, for the fire. Tam picked out a straight pole himself, and it stayed. He sat down on an upturned bucket and tried to fit the axe head to it.
His hands didn't know this part. The game had never asked anyone to put a handle on anything. He whittled the end until it was too thin, and had to start again further up. He drove it in, and it wobbled. He tapped a wedge of offcut into the end, and it wobbled less.
Feoras watched the whole thing with his arms folded.
"You make a head like my master," Feoras said, "and you hang it like a farmer."
"I am a farmer."
"You're something." Feoras shook his head. "Go on, then. Where are you off to now?"
"General store. I've got daggers to sell," said Tam, and went.
The shopkeeper took the three daggers for four coins, then three, then three. The price fell as the shop had more of them. Then Tam laid down his hammer and his pickaxe, and the shopkeeper looked at them and said, "Nothing. I'll give you nothing for those."
"That's fine," said Tam. A coin each to buy again, whenever he needed them. Until then they were two squares.
He walked home with thirty-five coins, a bucket, a tinderbox, an axe that would probably last, and half the squares he'd woken up with. On the way he decided to pay Seth for the milk, whatever Seth said. If the milk was bought, it couldn't be a gift. He wasn't going to find out the hard way in front of the Cook.
* * *
Gillie milked in the evening in the big field by the river. The cows came to her by themselves and stood in a loose line by the fence, steaming in the cold. Gillie went down the line on her three-legged stool, plaits tied back. She was fast. Squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt. The bucket rang, then hummed, then was full. Then she was on to the next cow.
Tam followed her with his own bucket.
"You do the last of them," she said. "After me. That's the strippings. Right up at the top and squeeze down, and it comes slow. Gentle, mind. As far as they're concerned, they're done."
"Got it," said Tam.
"You don't," said Gillie. "But you will."
The first cow was a big brown one with a white face. Tam sat down on the spare stool, put his bucket under her and took hold. Gillie had shown him how on the morning after the river.
Nothing happened.
He squeezed harder. The cow turned her head and looked at him. Then she looked away again, as if she had decided he wasn't worth it.
"From the top," said Gillie, from the next cow.
He moved his hands up. "Please," he told the cow, and squeezed from the top, down, slowly. A tiny thread of milk came out. It missed the bucket and went on his foot.
"There," said Gillie. "Again. Aim."
He did it again. This time a little squirt went into the bucket, with a sound like a single raindrop on a roof.
Tam watched the edge of his sight.
Nothing rose.
Oh, come on, he thought. That was a squirt. That was an honest squirt.
He did it again, and again. The thread got thicker. He tried to feel whatever he'd felt at the anvil at midday, when his hands had made an axe head without being taught. It wasn't there. His hands were just his hands, Tam's big chapped farm hands, and they didn't know a thing.
He thought about it while he squeezed. The net, the pick, the furnace and the anvil: his hands had known every one of them, and every one gave experience. The axe handle gave none, and his hands hadn't known it. Milking had never given any. You clicked and got milk.
So my hands only know work that gives XP, he thought. Everything else, I'm on my own.
It was only a theory. But he had twelve cows, and a whole evening.
"You've stopped," said Gillie.
"I'm thinking."
"Think with your hands."
In the game, if you examined Gillie, it said: Gillie the Milkmaid milks cows. She's udderly fantastic at it.
* * *
By the fifth cow, he had it, more or less. Squeeze from the top, roll the fingers down, let go, again. The cows still didn't like it. One of them stepped sideways onto his foot and stood there, calmly, while he made noises. Gillie laughed so much she had to stop milking.
"You've been milking these cows for ten years," she said, wiping her eyes. "Since you were eight. I taught you. Do you know that? I was six, and I taught you, and you cried because Bluebell sat on you."
"I don't remember."
"No." Gillie went quiet. She milked for a while. The milk rang into her bucket. Then she started to hum.
It was a tune Tam didn't know. A slow one, up and down, the sort of tune you'd sing to make a baby go to sleep. The cows seemed to know it. The big brown one with the white face sighed and leaned toward the sound.
Gillie stopped in the middle of a line and waited.
Tam waited too. Then he understood that he was supposed to finish it.
He hummed something. It went up when it should probably have gone down. It was not even a tune.
Gillie didn't laugh.
"That's your mum's," she said. "Annis used to sing it in her own dairy. You sang it to Daisy every morning. Every single morning, for ten years. Dad used to say Daisy wouldn't let down for anybody else."
Tam's hands had stopped. He made them start again.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't..."
"I know. The river." She went back to her cow. After a while she said, without looking at him, "You've forgotten a lot, since the river."
"Yeah."
"Funny what you kept, though."
He was afraid to ask. He asked. "What did I keep?"
"Manners," said Gillie. "You said please to that cow just now. Tam never said please to a cow in his life."
She picked up her bucket and moved down the line. Tam sat on the stool with his hands on a cow he didn't know the name of, and felt the back of his neck go hot.
She knows something's wrong, he thought. She just doesn't know what.
He didn't know what to do about that. So he squeezed from the top and rolled his fingers down. Then he let go and did it again.
* * *
It was nearly dark when he finished the twelfth cow. Gillie had gone in long ago with the last of the proper buckets. The cows had wandered off across the field to stand in the dark and think about grass.
Tam looked into his bucket.
It was full. Gillie's buckets were quick and frothy. This one was twelve cows' worth of the last of it, thick and yellowish, with the cream already rising. It smelled warm and sweet, nothing like milk out of a carton.
He carried the bucket up to the farmhouse with both hands. He didn't put it in his inventory. He wanted to carry it. He wanted somebody to see it.
Seth was sitting outside the kitchen door in the last of the light, smoking his pipe. He looked at the bucket, then at Tam, and his eyebrows went up into his hair.
"Well, I'm blessed," said Seth. "That's strippings. That's all strippings. You stripped the whole herd."
"Gillie taught me."
"Nobody strips the whole herd, lad. Nobody's got the patience." Seth took the pipe out of his mouth. "Well done, lad. Well done. Go on, then. Take it up to the castle with the rest."
"In a minute." Tam set the bucket down on the step and kept one hand on the handle. He'd learned that much this morning. "How much is it? At the market. A bucket of milk."
"What?" said Seth.
"A bucket of milk. What does it fetch?"
"Six coins, at market, a good one. Why?"
Tam turned away for a moment and took six coins out of his inventory. He counted them into Seth's big, rough palm. Seth stared at them.
"Let me get this right," Seth said slowly. "You want to buy my milk. Out of my cows. That you milked. In your own bucket. On my farm. On my say-so. To give away to the Duke's cook for nothing."
"Yes," said Tam. "Exactly that."
"Is this the same as the wages?" Seth said. "The coins that went through your hands. Is it that?"
"I think so. I think if it's a gift, it falls. And I don't know if 'it's yours' counts as a gift. So I'd rather pay."
Seth closed his hand around the six coins. He put them in his pocket. He didn't argue. Tam could have hugged him.
"You're a strange boy since the river, Tam Fallow," said Seth.
"I know."
"Strange, but you've stripped my whole herd." Seth put his pipe back in his mouth. "Go on. Get that milk up to the castle before it turns."
"It won't turn," said Tam, before he could stop himself.
Seth gave him a look.
"I'll walk fast," said Tam.
* * *
Gillie had set the churn and the egg basket on the dairy step, so that he could pick them up himself. She hadn't said a word about it.
He picked them up, let the inventory take his own bucket, and set off down the bank toward the bridge.
In the castle kitchen, the Cook spun around with flour on his moustache. "Lad! Any luck?"
Tam set down the churn and the basket for the steward to count. Then he turned his back, took out his own bucket, and held it up. "One down."
The Cook reached for it. Tam said he'd keep it till he had all three, somewhere cold. The Cook looked at his face and let him. "You're a careful one. Good. The egg tomorrow?"
"The egg tomorrow."
He walked home across the bridge in the dark, with the river talking to itself underneath. His whole back ached from leaning under twelve cows.
He opened the quest list on the way. One line.
Cook's Assistant. It had turned yellow since last night, the game's colour for a quest in progress.
Chat, he thought, twelve cows for one click.
Chat didn't answer. Somewhere behind him, on the castle wall, a guard was singing to himself, badly.