Borrowed Levels

Chapter 3: Rustwing

Finding work as an Unrated adventurer was harder than finding it as a porter, because the Guild had a form for porters.

There was no form for what Ren was now. He walked into the Guild hall with a level six that his own sheet refused to show, and the clerk at the desk squinted at his card and said, "This says you're not eligible."

"I know."

"So you can't take quests."

"Then I'll join a party that can."

The clerk gave him a long look, then pointed with her pen at a bulletin board in the corner. Most of the notices were old. One was freshly pinned, in cramped handwriting that leaned left.

RUSTWING COMPANY. Low-rank. Desperate. Hiring anyone who can swing a stick. No f*e, split the loot. Ask for Dara.

Rustwing turned out to be four people sharing a table in the back of a tavern whose name had faded off the sign.

Dara Quill, the leader, was twenty-six, sharp-faced, with ink stains on her fingers that never quite washed out. She was a level nine, bought on a loan she was still paying. Bram was a stooped old healer with a hacking cough and kind eyes. Pip, the archer, looked about fourteen and talked about two hundred words a minute. The fourth was a big silent woman named Hesk who just nodded.

"You're Unrated," Dara said, after reading his card. "And you've got a level."

"Long story."

"I like long stories, as long as they don't involve debt collectors."

Ren kept his face very still. "Not at all."

Their first job together was clearing a tunnel under Glassmoor, a nest of lizards the size of dogs. It was the kind of thing a level four could do, except that the lizards came in dozens.

Ren went in with a rusted short sword he'd borrowed from Bram, and discovered, to his enormous relief, that the Ledger worked the way he'd hoped.

Every lizard he killed dropped a small bright flake of light into the corner of his vision.

[ INTEREST REPAID: 0.02 YEARS ]

It was tiny. But it was real. By the end of the first tunnel, he had paid down nearly a month.

He also noticed something else. When he stood over a defeated monster, a second window opened.

[ COLLATERAL AVAILABLE: GLASSMOOR LIZARD ] [ BORROW: SPEED +2 (COST: 0.1 YEARS) ]

He took it, grimly, and felt his feet lighten.

By the third nest, he understood the pattern. Kill a monster, repay a little. Borrow from it, owe a little more. The Ledger didn't care which. It only wrote everything down.

Pip watched him work with undisguised awe. "You fight like you're doing arithmetic," she said.

"I am."

"Is that a joke?"

"Not really."

They finished the tunnel in four hours. Dara counted the loot twice and then sat down on a rock with the face of a woman who had just been handed a bag of gold by a stranger.

"That was the cleanest run we've ever had," she said. "Ren, how are you doing this?"

"Good footwork," said Ren.

She did not believe him either. But she split the loot into five equal shares, and nobody had ever done that for him before.

They were celebrating back at the tavern when the door banged open and Kessin Aldous strolled in.

Everyone in Veyra knew Kessin. He was the son of a shipping magnate, twenty years old, and he had bought level twenty-one outright, in cash, at sixteen. He wore a coat trimmed with silver thread and carried a sword with a jeweled hilt that had never seen real use.

"Rustwing," he said, drawing out the word. "I heard you'd cleared Glassmoor. I didn't believe it."

"We did," said Pip.

"Impressive. Truly." His eyes slid over the table and landed on Ren. "And this must be your Unrated."

Ren did not stand. "Something I can help you with?"

"Just curious." Kessin leaned on the table with both hands. "They say you have a level. That you got one from nowhere. I find that very interesting. The Bank does not like it when people get levels they didn't buy."

There it was. The first threat. Ren kept his hands flat on the table.

"They say a lot of things," he said.

Kessin smiled. It did not reach his eyes. "I'll see you at the Guild duels on Friday, then. Let's see what a level you didn't pay for is worth."

He left.

The tavern was very quiet.

"Well," said Dara faintly. "That went badly."

Ren looked at the corner of his vision, where a single line glowed.

[ DEBT: 0.8 YEARS. 21 DAYS REMAINING. ]

He had a duel in three days. And he had a feeling that what he borrowed for it would not be small.