Reborn As The Beggar Lord

006 Cost of a Life

Kingsley was still standing over Mara's body when the shouting started in the square.

The entire village crowded around the well. Someone hauled the bucket up, and it was full of grey mud. Women were crying, and children clung to their skirts and wailed.

"There's no water left!" a man shouted.

"Mara is dead, and the well went with her. This village is cursed."

"The headman knew! He loaded his cart in the dark and ran off before any of us woke up."

"The river's two miles out!" a woman screamed.

"We're all going to die of thirst!" a man shouted.

Kingsley walked into the square. One by one, the voices stopped. The people nearest the well backed away with their eyes down.

They looked like men and women expecting to be punished for the state of the well. A woman sank to her knees with a cry, and panic started to boil up again.

"Quiet!" Kingsley shouted.

The whole square fell still.

He leaned over the well's edge and looked down. Forty feet below, the stone walls had caved in and packed the bottom with mud.

Mara's spells are no longer holding the well up. There is no time for grief. I have to act now.

He had one reclamation tool, the system reward for his day of duties. He had been saving it for the fields. There was no point in planting crops if the village died thirsty first.

Kingsley held his hand out over the well and called up the reclamation tool. Golden light gathered on his palm and took shape. This time, it was a wooden bucket, banded with iron.

A man at the front stumbled backward and gasped. "What kind of magic is this?"

"And how is that going to put water back in the ground?"

Kingsley felt the familiar warmth in his hands and dropped the bucket into the shaft.

It flashed white halfway down and crumbled into golden dust that kept falling.

[Used: Reclamation tool x1]

The village square trembled under their feet. Deep below, the broken stones ground together and locked back into place, all the way up.

"Look!" someone screamed. "The well is filling up!"

The water rose muddy, then turned clear as it climbed. It stopped six feet below the mouth, clean enough to reflect the sky.

For one breath, nobody in the square moved. Then the villagers erupted. Every bucket they hauled up carried cool, clean water.

A woman drank straight from one and laughed and wept at the same time.

"It's sweet as the spring!"

"Is this the same well that gave us mud this morning?"

An old man raised his voice first. "Lord Kingsley saved us! As expected from the Carmine family heir!"

Two more joined him, then a dozen. "Lord Kingsley! Lord Kingsley!"

[Citizen Rating] [Loyalty: 8%, Trust: 10%, Morale: 14%]

He raised one hand, and the square quieted for him. This time it was not out of fear but respect.

"Mara Finch carried this village on her back for forty years," he said. "Tomorrow at sunrise, we will bury her with the honor she earned. As Baron of Thornmere, I order every soul in this village to attend her funeral."

The villagers bowed their heads.

Kingsley left them hauling buckets and walked to the west end of Thornmere, the part of the village that had already died.

Roofs had fallen in whole, and grass grew out of the doorways. Half my village is already a ruin, he thought.

The prison was a hole in the hillside. It had been a mine once, and it still had the iron gate and the stone steps going down into the dark.

Kingsley saw torchlight moving at the bottom of them. He went down.

A jailer stood near the farthest cell of the prison. The door was open.

Two big men waited beside him. Their riding coats were too expensive for Thornmere, and their boots were too clean.

Inside the cell, a small figure sat against the wall under the shadows. It had a sack hood over its face and heavy manacles on its wrists and ankles.

Kingsley called down the steps before he reached the bottom. "What is going on here? Who are these men? They're not from my village."

The jailer spun around, and the two men turned with him.

"My lord!" Relief spread over the old man's face. "Thank the heavens you are here. These gentlemen are from Appleby."

Appleby was the neighboring barony, a fat green land on the far side of the hills. Its lord was Baron Grubb, a greedy, cruel man. He sold grain to starving Thornmere at three times its price and called it charity.

"What are Grubb's men doing in my prison?"

The jailer looked at the floor. "Before the headman ran away, my lord, he sold off everything in this village he could put a price on."

"He sold this prisoner to Baron Grubb for fifty silver. These men have come to collect the slave they purchased."

Kingsley's jaw set hard. The headman had seen the royal collector, understood what was coming, and fled in the night. On his way out, he sold a caged villager for travel money.

Fifty silver was what a life cost on his own land.

"Who is the prisoner?" Kingsley asked. He already knew the answer.

The jailer's voice dropped. "She is Mara's granddaughter, my lord. Ginny Finch."