55. The Charter #2
"Standard Guild rate to break the Core of a B-rank," Hale said, "is twenty to thirty gold for a party of four.
The lower end is for a clean low-floor dungeon with predictable monster spawns.
The upper end is for a dungeon with an irregular layout or higher-rank pulls than the dungeon's primary type. "
Sam took a receipt off the spike on the wall and wrote on the back of it. The pencil worked across the receipt without rushing. Sam set the pencil down.
"Twenty gold," Sam said, "is the trade Tillamore moves in two years. Thirty is the trade Tillamore moves in three. The village doesn't hold that kind of coin between the counter at this store and the bottom of every chest at every farm."
"The Guild offers a standing subsidy for B-rank dungeons in DAM-classed villages," Hale said. "The subsidy is twenty percent of the standard rate. The remainder is on the village."
Sam wrote on the receipt. Set the pencil down again. "Twenty percent off twenty gold leaves us sixteen. Sixteen gold is a year and the better part of a second year. Even with the subsidy, the village holds the better part of two years' trade in the coin to be paid."
"That is the rate. The Guild does not set the rate by what a village can pay. The Guild sets the rate by what a party of four asks to walk into a B-rank dungeon and come out the other side. The party doesn't come out of every dungeon. The rate is what it takes to get a party in the door."
"I take that," Sam said. He folded the receipt and put it in his pocket. The receipt was the math the village would be working through for a stretch.
Hale took a fresh page off the working stack.
"Tillamore stays on the Greyhaven board as a Dungeon-Adjacent Municipality, with the maturation date set at six months from this morning's reading.
The board will draw the trade the board draws.
You will see riders. You will see parties forming up at the rail outside this store.
You will see contracts posted on the board you keep at the door.
The inn at the Kettle will run full on the weeks the parties are running through.
The smith will run short on iron. The store will run short on flour.
The shape of a small village under a dungeon-board posting is not the shape of the village before the posting. "
"The shape changes," Sam said.
"The shape changes. Most villages in this position see the standard of living rise with the trade. The trade brings coin the village wouldn't see otherwise. Most villages take to the trade in a few seasons. Some villages don't. Most do."
Kain shook his head. "A village that takes to it is not the village it was."
"That," Hale said, "is the price of the trade."
Hale gathered the papers and tucked the working stack into her bag.
"Sam. The forms after these come on the wagon from Greyhaven within the month.
Set the contract board up at the door with the dungeon entry on it.
Write to the regional office if a party comes through that doesn't check in at this store. "
"I will."
Hale turned to Kain.
"You could clear that first floor on your own," she said.
"The first floor of a young Natural is a man and a wolf and a knife and a stretch of time.
Stone-crawlers are slow. Beetles fall apart at a good downstroke.
You wouldn't come out of every clearing without a graze, but you'd come out.
You might handle the second floor on the same trip when the second comes in. The third would ask for a party."
"I'm a farmer."
"You know better than that."
Hale set both hands on the crate.
"I'm the Guild contact at Greyhaven. The gryphon notice came across my desk.
I'm the one who wrote Sam back that the village was on its own for it.
I wrote those words by Guild rule. I had every intention of putting a party in the field by the end of the month and coming down here to take the bird off your fence.
I was three days into the writing of the contract when the dispatch came up the road that a local farmer had solo'd a gryphon at the edge of his property.
I read the dispatch twice. I read it three times.
There are A-rank adventurers who don't solo a gryphon.
There are A-rank adventurers who don't take the contract when the contract is brought to them. The dispatch had your name on it."
Kain didn't say a thing.
"The Guild knows your name. The file at Greyhaven has your name on it. The Guild has marked you under a classification we use for skilled folk who are not registered in the trade. The classification is Untapped Potential."
"I'm not registered. I was a mercenary, not an adventurer. The two trades don't use the same ledger."
"They don't. The Guild marks the man, not the ledger. The file says what the file says."
Hale waited a beat.
"There are other villages in the country with the same problem Tillamore has. Some of them have no one. None of them have a man who solo'd a gryphon at the edge of his property and went home to grow potatoes. Quit hiding, Kain Asheld. The country could use you."
"This is where I belong."
"You're a warrior."
Hale watched him a beat.
Kain didn't move.
The anchors he had set down in Tillamore since the road south held against the pitch, and the pitch was a pitch a man could outwait.
Sasha was at the counter of the Kettle a hundred paces down the road, with a boy on her hip whose chin was a chin Kain had seen on a face in a wagon on a road south of Greyhaven.
Matthew had stretched out a hand a stretch back and asked Kain to walk to him, and Kain had walked.
Carol was at her father's on a road Kain had walked her down on a morning he hadn't set out to walk her down on.
Carol had stood at Kain's elbow at the toasts the village had asked Kain to take, and Carol had said she would be at his elbow at the next worse thing too.
The flask was in the ground at the corner of the property.
Mark was on the road south of Greyhaven in Kain's memory, drawing a cold frame in the dust with a stick.
The farm was the one Mark had meant to live on. The work on it was the work Mark hadn't lived to do. The man who would do it sat at the crate in Sam's back room.
The man at the crate at Sam's back room wasn't leaving.
Hale read the not-leaving.
"The Guild's offer stands," Hale said. "I'm at the Greyhaven Hall. The Guildmaster of the local chapter is at this store. Either of us is a letter away. If a year goes by and you want to put your hand to the work, the door is open."
"Appreciated."
Hale paused at the curtain a beat. "Don't waste it."
"I won't."
Hale tipped her head at Sam and went through the curtain and out the front of the store. The two younger men were already at the rail. The three of them swung up and turned west toward Bellpass and the Greyhaven road past it. The horses took the road at the working pace and didn't look back.
Sam and Kain stood at the window and watched them go. A plume of dust rose at the bridge and held a beat and settled.
"Untapped Potential," Sam said.
"Some piece of Guild paperwork."
"She wasn't wrong about you."
"She wasn't wrong. She also wasn't right. The two things sit together."
Sam took that in.
"I'll set the notice for tonight at the green. The math of it. The six months. The trade."
"I'll be at the back of the crowd."
"You'll be on the boards if I call you up."
"I'll be on the boards if you call me up."
Kain went out the front and untied Roan and stood with a hand on the horse's neck a beat before he swung up. Down the road past the Kettle, Carol's mare was hitched at the side rail. Carol had come into town some piece of the morning.
Kain rode the length of the boardwalk and pulled Roan up beside the mare. Carol came out the front door of the Kettle with a basket on her arm and her father's coat folded over the basket.
"They went west."
"They did."
"Six months."
"Six months."
"You staying on the farm."
"I'm staying on the farm."
Carol set the basket on the post and put her hand on Roan's neck and didn't say a thing for a beat. Roan blew through his lips.
"Good," Carol said. "I didn't want to ride out and find an empty kitchen."
"You won't."
Kain rode home along the lane with the smell of late autumn on the wind and the sound of Roan's walk on the packed dirt of the lane and Ghost ahead at the bend waiting on Kain.
The Guild had its file and its label and its open door at Greyhaven. Kain had a farm and a flask in the ground at the corner and a boy who walked to him when Kain stretched out a hand and a woman at the rail who didn't want to ride out to an empty kitchen.
He turned Roan up the lane to the barn.
◇ ◆ ◇
Word in Tillamore moved at the speed of a boy on a pony.
Kain hadn't finished unsaddling Roan at the rail when Oren came down the lane on the brown pony at a pace the pony hadn't been trained for. The boy pulled up at the rail with his hair gone the wrong way at the part and his shirt half-out of his trousers.
"Meeting at the Kettle tonight. Six sharp. Sam said come."
"I'll come."
"Folks are saying you're leaving for the Guild."
"Not leaving for the Guild."
"I told them. They didn't much believe me."
"They'll believe me when I'm at the meeting."
"Six sharp."
Oren wheeled the pony and went back up the lane the way he had come. Kain finished pulling the saddle off Roan and turned the horse out into the paddock and went into the house and stood at the kitchen table a beat without sitting down.
The day had a meeting on the back of it. The day had a Guild label on the back of him. Hale's parting line was at the door of his head and wasn't going to be at the door tomorrow, because he had set it back from the door already.