Gillie was on the dairy step when he came back from the castle round. She had the lantern beside her and a churn between her knees, and she was scrubbing it.
"You're going out," she said.
"East."
"East's the gate."
"Past the gate."
She stopped scrubbing. "Tam, it's evening."
"I know." He looked at the sky. The sun was already low behind the castle, and the river had gone the colour of tea. "I'll be back tonight. Late."
"How?"
It was a good question. He didn't have a good answer. By teleporting into the Duke's courtyard, he thought, like I've done a dozen times this month, and you'll hear the loft hatch at midnight and pretend you didn't.
"Quickly," he said.
Gillie looked at him. Then she went back to scrubbing the churn, harder than it needed.
"Mind the gate men," she said. "Dad says they'd charge the wind to blow through."
* * *
The farm's east fields ran out at a hedge. Past the hedge were the woods, where his clearing was, and past the woods was country he had never seen.
In the game, there had been almost nothing between Lumbridge and the toll gate: one field of cows, a fence, and some goblins. You could run it in half a minute.
Here it took him the rest of the light.
There were farms first, small ones, with low houses and dogs that barked at him from the ends of their chains. Then the farms got poorer and further apart. The grass turned thin and yellow. The soil under it went pale, then sandy. The air changed too. It got drier, and it smelled of dust and something sharp, like a herb he didn't know the name of.
He walked fast, with twenty-one hides heavy on his shoulders. Jory's sand was everywhere now, at his feet, in drifts against the fence posts. He didn't stop for any. That could wait.
The sun went down behind him. The sky ahead turned a deep, clear blue, and the first stars came out over the desert.
And then there was the fence.
* * *
It ran straight across the land from north to south, as far as he could see in both directions: a tall fence of black iron bars. The road ran up to it and under an arch of pale stone, where an iron gate stood shut. On each side of the arch a lamp burned on a post.
Two men stood in front of the gate, one on each side. They wore orange tunics, purple trousers and plain round steel helmets. Each held a steel halberd, a long pole with an axe blade on top and a spike above it. Through the bars behind them, Tam could see two more, on the far side.
The toll gate, he thought. In the game it had been a small grey gate in a fence. The guards asked for ten coins every time, until you did the quest that made you the Emir's friend. Players had complained about those ten coins.
The nearer guard looked him up and down as he came into the lamplight: the full helm, the chainbody, the kiteshield, the scimitar. The bare, sandy feet.
"Ten coins," said the guard. "Or you can walk around by the north, if you've a day to spare."
"Ten coins," said Tam.
He turned away a little, as if feeling in his shirt, and took ten coins out of his inventory. The guard counted them twice. Then he bit one.
"Business in Al Kharid?"
"Leather."
"At this hour?"
"It's cooler," said Tam.
The guard thought about that. Then he laughed and swung the gate open.
"Mind the scorpions," he said. "They come out at night."
"Thanks," said Tam, and walked through into the desert.
The gate shut behind him with a clang. The two guards on the far side watched him go past without a word.
* * *
Al Kharid woke up after dark.
He hadn't expected that. He came over a low rise in the starlight. The city lay below him, lit up. There were lamps in the windows and torches along the streets. Under them were crowds, more people than he'd seen in Lumbridge at midday. They were walking, talking, buying and selling. Somewhere a man was singing.
Naturally, he thought. It's the desert. Nobody does anything at noon.
In the game, Al Kharid had been a dozen buildings in the sand: a bank, a palace, a furnace, some shops. A handful of people stood in it doing nothing. Here it was a city. There were flat-roofed houses of pale stone and mud, and narrow lanes with cloth stretched over them for shade. Wide doorways stood open, with cushions on the floors. People sat in them drinking something hot out of small cups. Children ran under people's legs. It smelled of spice, smoke and hot bread.
People looked at him as he came down into the streets: a boy in bronze armour from head to knee, with bare feet, walking out of the dark. One old woman made a sign with her fingers at him.
He found the furnace because it was where the game had put it, near the bank. The tanner's was just north of it, a low building with a big wooden door standing open. Inside there were vats along the walls, and the smell hit him in the doorway. It was sour and rank, a smell of rotting things.
A thin man in a stained leather apron came out from between the vats, wiping his hands. His hands and forearms were stained dark brown up to the elbows.
"You've come to the right man," he said, before Tam could open his mouth. "Ellis. Manufacturer of fine leathers. What have you got?"
"Cowhides," said Tam. "Twenty-one."
Ellis looked at Tam's empty hands, then at Tam's face, and waited.
"They're outside," said Tam. "I'll bring them in."
He went out into the lane. In a dark corner by the wall, where nobody was looking, he took the hides out of his inventory five at a time and carried them in, never leaving any on the ground. They were stiff and heavy, and smelled of the island. By the last armful Ellis had stopped wiping his hands and was just watching.
"Where'd a lad get twenty-one cowhides?"
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"From twenty-one cows."
"Fair," said Ellis, after a moment. "A coin each for soft leather. Three for hard."
"Soft, please."
Tam paid twenty-one coins, counted out on the end of a vat. Ellis took the hides into the back. He came out again, much too soon, with a pile of soft brown leather over his arm. In the game, tanning had been instant, and Tam had assumed that was just the game. Apparently Ellis kept a back room full of leather already tanned, and swapped it for your hides.
He held out the pile. Tam hesitated with his hands half up.
The leather was Ellis's work, and Ellis was handing it over. But Tam had paid for the work with his own coins, and the hides had been his to start with.
He took the pile. Twenty-one sheets of leather, soft and warm, smelling of whatever Ellis did in the back room.
Paid work's mine, he thought. Same as wages.
Outside, in the dark corner, with his back to the door, the leather went into his inventory, one sheet to a square.
"You all right?" Ellis called from the doorway.
"Fine," said Tam. "Very fine. Thank you."
* * *
Dommik's shop was in the north-east of the city, two lanes away. It was a little room full of moulds and tools hanging on hooks. A cheerful man with a sandy beard and a brown apron sat behind the counter, sorting needles into a tray by lamplight.
If crafting's your thing, Tam remembered from the game, he's your man.
"A needle, please," said Tam. "And thread."
"How much thread?"
Tam did the sums. One spool sewed five things, if the game was right. Twenty-one pairs meant four spools and a bit.
"Five spools."
"A coin each," said Dommik. "Making something?"
"Gloves. Twenty-one pairs."
Dommik smiled. "That's a lot of hands."
Then Tam ran into the oldest problem in the game.
He had twenty-eight squares. Twenty-one were leather. The rest were coins, a knife, the steel axe, a tinderbox, his spade, the arrow shafts and the clue. A needle needed a square. Thread needed another. He had none.
Every time, he thought. All those years of this game, and I still walk into a shop full.
In the game, you could drop something cheap and buy it again later. Or you juggled, putting things down and picking them up before they vanished, but that tied you to one spot, and tonight he had half a city to cross: the general store, and a skirt shop in the south-east with a clue to chase.
The tinderbox is a coin, he thought. The knife's seven. Leather doesn't need a knife.
"One moment," he said.
He went out into the lane. In the dark by the wall he took out the knife and the tinderbox and laid them on a ledge. Eight coins of tools. In three minutes they'd be gone.
Then he went back in, paid six coins, and took the needle and the five spools.
"Good luck with the gloves," said Dommik.
* * *
He sat down on a stone bench under an awning outside, in the lamplight. He laid one sheet of leather on his lap.
His hands folded it and pinched it into the shape of a hand. They threaded the needle on the first try. Then they sewed. Tight, even stitches went around the fingers and the thumb. The needle went in and out faster than he could follow. It was like watching someone else's hands. A pair of plain brown gloves lay on his knee, almost before he'd noticed he'd started.
A small number rose at the edge of his sight and faded.
+13.8 Crafting.
He grinned. Then he did it again, and again.
The first pair went straight onto his hands, stiff and new. When he thought of his equipment panel, there they were, a small picture of brown gloves in the slot for his hands. That freed a square.
He went on sewing. People walked past and stared at a boy in armour making gloves faster than anyone should.
He sewed all twenty-one pairs without stopping. On the sixth pair, warmth ran down his arms, and the words came for Crafting 4. On the fourteenth they came again.
Congratulations, you just advanced a Crafting level. Your Crafting level is now 5.
Boots at Crafting 7, he thought, flexing his new gloves. One more load of hides and I'm there.
* * *
He sold eight pairs at the general store, which was open, because everything in Al Kharid was open. The shopkeeper was a cheerful man who didn't ask what a boy wanted with twenty-one pairs of gloves. He paid two coins each for the first three and a coin each for the next five. Tam spent one of the coins on a tinderbox from his shelf.
"I'll take another," said the shopkeeper, when Tam laid down the ninth, "but I won't pay for it."
"I'll keep it, thanks."
Outside, he looked at the twelve pairs still in his inventory. There was no shop that wanted them. He walked to the end of a dark lane and laid eleven pairs on a ledge in a broken wall. They would be gone soon enough.
The last pair he kept back. On the way out of the lane he crouched by a drift of sand. He picked a scrap of old sacking off the ground, filled it with sand, tied it off and pushed it into his pocket. The gloves went into a square.
Sand, he thought. Quest complete.
* * *
Ranael's Super Skirt Store was in the south-east of the city. It was a narrow shop with skirts of metal plates hanging on the walls, bronze, iron and steel, glinting in the lamplight. Behind the counter stood a strong-looking woman with dark hair held back by a pale headband. She was wearing one of her own skirts, a grey one, and it clanked when she moved.
She looked at him, and at his chainbody, and smiled like a shopkeeper. "A plateskirt to go with that?"
Tam felt slightly ridiculous.
"An earl," he said.
The smile went right off Ranael's face.
She stared at him. Then she bent down behind her counter and came up with a small wooden box. She set it between them.
"It was behind the counter," she said. "Three days ago. I didn't put it there. Nobody put it there. I keep that shelf for my takings." She pushed it an inch toward him with one finger. "And there was this with it."
She held out a scrap of paper. Tam read it without taking it.
If a man says AN EARL to you, give him what is in the box.
It was in a neat, spidery hand. It was the same hand as the clue in his inventory.
"I thought it was Louie," said Ranael. "Next door. He sells legs. He thinks he's funny. But Louie can't write that neatly, and he swore on his mother he never." She looked at the box. "Then I thought, perhaps it's a sign. From the gods of the sands. They do send signs, the old women say. I just never thought they'd send one to a skirt shop."
"What's in it?" said Tam.
"I didn't open it." She looked offended. "It wasn't for me."
He opened it. Inside was a little roll of paper tied with a scrap of string, exactly like the one the cow had dropped.
He stopped with his hand over it.
It was meant for him. Somebody, somewhere, had put this in a box for him to have. That was a gift, if anything was.
But it's a clue, he thought. In the game, ironmen did clues. Nobody gave them the scroll. The game did.
He picked it up. He felt the old clue go out of his inventory and the new one take its square.
He unrolled it.
Always walking around the castle grounds and somehow knows everyone's age.
Tam laughed out loud, in the middle of a skirt shop at night in the desert, and couldn't stop.
"What?" said Ranael. "What's funny?"
"I know who it is," said Tam, wiping his eyes. "I know exactly who it is."
Ranael looked at him, and then at the empty box, and then at the ceiling, where the gods of the sands presumably were.
"Well," she said. "I hope he's expecting you."
* * *
Zeke's Superior Scimitars was just north-east of the bank. Tam told himself he was only going to look.
The walls were covered in curved swords, row after row, from dull bronze up to one of a blue-grey metal that seemed to drink the lamplight. Zeke was a quick man in a red robe and a steel helmet, with a dark beard and a smile that showed most of his teeth. He saw Tam's eyes go straight to the blue-grey one.
"Mithril," said Zeke. "Light as a feather and sharp as gossip. One thousand and forty coins."
Tam had one thousand, one hundred and forty-three coins in his inventory. He'd counted them on the way here.
"Can I see it?"
Zeke took it down from the wall and held it out to him across the counter, handle first. Tam saw it coming a second too late.
The scimitar went straight through his fingers. It hit the counter with a clang and slid off onto the floor. The old message came up in front of his eyes, the one with his old username in it.
Zeke stared at the scimitar on the floor. Then at Tam.
"Butterfingers," said Zeke, slowly.
"Sorry. Long day."
Zeke picked it up himself and laid it on the counter between them. He kept a hand near it.
It was beautiful. In the game, a mithril scimitar was the best sword a new account could buy, and ironmen bought one the minute they could, from this exact shop. But it needed Attack 20 to wield. He had Attack 10. Two good evenings on the cows, maybe.
I've got the coins, he thought. I just haven't got the arm.
"I'll come back," he said. "When I can use it."
Zeke looked at him, and at the bronze scimitar at his side, which was dented and had been wrapped in sacking the night before. His smile stopped being a shopkeeper's smile.
"Bronze," said Zeke. "Did you make that?"
"Yes."
"It's not bad," said Zeke. "Come back when you can lift mine. I'll still be here."
* * *
He cast Home Teleport from the dark end of a lane, with the desert stars overhead. Fourteen seconds. Then the lane, the lamps and the singing all went away.
The courtyard was dark and quiet. The fountains splashed. The big sleepy guard on the night gate looked over from his stool and saw him.
"Sleepwalker," said the guard. He sniffed. "You smell of... what is that?"
"A tannery."
"Course you do," said the guard, and settled his chin back on his chest.
* * *
Osric's lamp was still lit when he came over the bridge. This time the door didn't move.
In the loft, the brothers were snoring. Tam sat on the edge of his bed. Nineteen squares were empty. After two days of carrying twenty-one hides, it felt like being able to breathe.
He looked at his hands in the new gloves. They were nothing much. Plain brown leather, a little stiff, among the cheapest things in the game. Players threw them away by the hundred.
They were the first thing he'd made that wasn't for fighting.