Chapter 15: Old Mag

The Quarry Hound died with one clean cut through the neck, and Aren knelt in the moonlight and pulled out its core.

It was the size of a walnut, warm and faintly red, exactly like the ones he had absorbed a week ago. Back then, three of these had lifted him two whole levels. He pressed it against his chest, felt it melt into his skin like ice into warm water, and waited for the rush of heat.

It never really came. There was only a small, thin warmth, like a sip of tea on a cold morning.

[Experience gained: 1% of current level.][Note: Cores below the Host’s rank provide greatly reduced experience.]

’One percent? One?’

A hundred Quarry Hounds for one level. And Crane had warned them in class, in his bored voice, that every level cost more than the last. A hundred for Level 2, maybe two hundred for Level 3, and by Level 10, he would need to kill every hound in the Old Quarry a thousand times over.

He had been an F-rank boy eating F-rank cores, and they had been a feast. Now he was Rank E, and the whole first floor of the world had turned into crumbs.

He sat back on his heels on the cold stone and laughed ruefully at himself.

’Fine. Lesson learned. Cheap food stops working the moment you grow.’

He needed Rank E cores. Rank E cores came from Rank E monsters. And Rank E monsters were the kind of thing that had sent a whole team of noble students running away screaming.

He found one two hours later, deeper in the canyons than he had ever gone.

[Quarry Brute. Rank E: Level 4.]

It looked like a gorilla made of broken bricks, twice his height, with fists like millstones and a red glow leaking from the cracks in its chest. It was eating something in the corner of a dead-end canyon.

Aren watched it patiently from the shadows of a high ledge and made his list.

’It’s stronger than me. It’s bigger than me. It’s higher level than me. But it’s got no brain.’

That last line was the only one that mattered.

He spent twenty minutes preparing. He found a narrow crack in the canyon wall, just wide enough for a person and much too narrow for the Brute. He loosened three big stones on the ledge above it so they would fall with a single push. Then he practiced the movement he had gotten from the System two days ago, over and over, on the flat ground in the moonlight.

Moonlit Step. The Ashgrave family technique, the one the Duke had given his daughter after she was cleared. It had settled into Aren’s body like a new language his legs already knew. He didn’t fully understand it yet. He only knew that when he shifted his weight a certain way and breathed out a certain way, he moved half a step farther than his body should allow, and his feet made no sound at all.

Then he threw a stone at the Brute’s head.

It turned, roaring, and charged. Aren ran for the crack. The ground shook under its fists, and it was much faster than he had expected, and for one terrible second he knew he had gotten it badly wrong.

’Oh no, no, no!’

Then his feet found the Moonlit Step without asking him. He slid forward through the air a half-step farther than he should have and threw himself sideways into the crack.

The Brute’s fist hit the stone where his head had been. The whole wall shook violently, and dust poured down. The creature shoved its arm in after him, fingers like broken bricks scraping at his chest, and Aren pressed himself flat against the back wall, reached up, and pushed the loose stones off the ledge.

They fell on the Brute’s head and shoulders, three heavy stones, one after another. It staggered, completely stunned, and its arm went slack in the crack.

He didn’t waste the chance. He came out with his knife and the Moonlit Step and the crescent he had been practicing every night for two weeks. This time it came off his blade the size of his hand, small and controlled and brilliantly silver, and it went straight into the cracks of the Brute’s chest where the red glow was brightest.

The creature fell, and it took a long time to stop moving.

Afterward, Aren sat against the canyon wall, shaking uncontrollably. His left arm was numb where the creature’s fingers had scraped him. There was blood in his mouth. He had used every single thing he had, and if there had been two of them, he would certainly be dead.

He cut out the core. It was the size of an egg, deep red, and much warmer than the hounds’ had been.

[Experience gained: 34% of current level.]

’A third of a level, for a fight I nearly lost.’

He looked at the eight small F-rank cores in his pocket, the ones he had collected from hounds on the way down, now almost worthless to him. Then he looked up at the huge moon over the endless canyons.

’All right. If I can’t eat them, I’ll sell them.’

Old Mag’s shop was behind a fishmonger’s stall in the lowest part of the lower city, near the docks, where the streets smelled of salt and old nets and the river.

You didn’t find it unless someone told you where it was. Aren had known about it since he was ten, because every child in the lower city knew about Old Mag. She bought things nobody else would buy and sold things nobody else would admit to selling. The city guard walked past her door every day without seeing it.

The shop was one small room with no windows, lit by three oil lamps. Every wall was covered with shelves, and every shelf was covered with things: knives, jars of powder, bundles of herbs, monster teeth, broken swords, old books with no covers. Behind the counter, a glass case held a row of monster cores glowing like sleepy jewels.

Old Mag perched comfortably behind the counter on a tall stool. She was tiny and very old, with a face like a dried apple and one eye covered by a leather patch. The other eye was black and bright and missed nothing.

"Well," she said, when Aren came in. "If it isn’t the little stone-seller."

"You heard about that?"

"Child, I hear about everything." She looked him up and down, slowly, from his torn sleeve to the dried blood at the corner of his mouth. "Polished quartz from Elric the stone cutter, sold to frightened noble brats as lucky river stones. Two gold and four silver profit in two days. I was very impressed." She smiled. Most of her teeth were still there. "So? What are you selling me tonight?"

He set the eight cores on the counter in a row.

Mag picked one up and held it near the lamp, turning it slowly between two fingers. "Quarry Hounds. Fresh. Clean cuts." She put it down. "Two silver each."

"Five."

"Three, and only because I like your face."

"They sell for a gold crown each in the student shop at the Academy," Aren said. "First-years buy them before every exam. They’re all F-rank, and most of them can’t hunt."

"The student shop doesn’t buy from boys who walk in at midnight with blood on their clothes."

"No. But you sell to the student shop."

Mag’s one eye narrowed suspiciously, and Aren kept his face pleasant.

"Four," Mag said finally.

"Four and a half, and you throw in a sword."

She laughed loudly, a cracked, wheezing sound like an old door. "Where did a gutter boy learn to bargain like a moneylender?"

"Selling rocks."

"Hm." Still smiling, she reached under the counter and pulled out a short sword in a plain leather sheath. It was old, with a worn grip and a few nicks in the blade, but the steel was good. A soldier’s sword, one that had been to a few wars and come home. "This belonged to a deserter. He doesn’t need it anymore. Four and a half silver per core, plus the sword, and from now on you bring me everything you hunt. Not anyone else. Me."

"Done."

She counted the coins out on the counter, thirty-six silver, and slid the sword across. While he was putting the coins away, she pulled out a roll of grey cloth bandages and tossed it to him.

"For the arm. Wrap it before it goes bad. And wash your face before you walk home. You look like a corpse that forgot to lie down."

He caught the bandages. "How much?"

"Free. Call it an investment." Her eye glittered. "I’ve got a feeling about you, little stone-seller."

’Everyone’s an investor tonight.’

He paid the healer house before going back to the Academy, even though it was past midnight and he had to wake the tired nurse to do it. Thirty silver, enough for another week of Nell’s medicine, and a little more. The nurse looked at the coins, then at his face, and didn’t ask.

He climbed the stairs and stood in the doorway of Nell’s room. She was asleep by the window, curled up small under two blankets, the farmer’s book with no cover open on her chest. Her breathing was slow and even. The grey shadows under her skin were lighter than last week.

He didn’t wake her. He closed the door very quietly and went back down.

On the way out, he passed the fishmonger’s stall again and stopped. Old Mag was standing in her doorway in the dark, smoking a thin pipe. She definitely hadn’t been there a minute ago.

"One more thing, stone-seller," she said. "Free advice, since I’m feeling generous."

He waited.

"Those lucky stones of yours. Every year before the ceremony, the frightened brats of the Academy buy blessed charms. A gold crown each. It’s been going on for ten years." She blew out a thin line of smoke. "This year, they didn’t buy them. This year, they bought polished river rocks from a commoner for half the price."

"Whose charms were they?"

"A man named Rook. He runs the docks now. Used to be a noble, before his family threw him out. Rank C. A grade A class, they say, though I’ve never seen him use it, and I hope I never do." Mag fixed him with her one bright eye. "He lost a lot of money this year, and a lot of face. He’s been asking around for weeks about the stone-seller. Nobody’s told him your name yet." She paused. "Yet."

’Rook. Seventy-two percent. So that’s the name on my Board.’

"Thank you," he said.

"Don’t thank me. Walk home a different way." Mag tapped her pipe against the doorframe. "And keep that arm wrapped."

She went back inside and closed the door, and it vanished into the wall as if it had never been there.

He took a different way home, just as she had said. He went up through the dark, twisting alleys behind the old rope-makers’ sheds.

He was halfway through the third alley when he heard footsteps behind him.

He didn’t turn around. He kept walking at exactly the same pace, listening carefully. Two sets of footsteps, heavy boots on wet stone, keeping exactly the same distance. He turned left at the next corner.

They turned left too.

At the far end, where the alley opened onto the street by the canal, a third man was waiting. He was big, with a shaved head and a short club hanging from one hand, leaning against the wall as if he had all night.

Aren stopped walking.

The big man pushed himself off the wall and smiled.

"Evening," he said. "You the stone-seller?"

’Well. That was quick.’