Chapter Three #5
He stood very still for a long time, the only movement the heaving of his chest, the flaring of his nostrils, the twitching of his eye.
I was reminded uncomfortably of how old Master Pentsable would stare at me with cold fury when I blotted my copybook.
But Pentsable’s threats had been mostly empty.
The minotaur could shatter my skull with ease, and he certainly seemed to be contemplating exactly that.
His lips quivered, and a river of bloody drool cascaded down the side of his bestial face.
“You were master of this hell pit?” he snarled at last. “You know its secrets? How to stay alive here?”
“Yes. Some of them. And no but also yes.”
“You were a man of learning?”
“I was.”
“You know the king’s letters?”
“More than just the king’s letters. I know the runes and sigils of many different tongues.”
“History? Rhetoric? Theology?”
“I dabble.”
“Needlework? Weaving?”
“More theory than practice.”
“Moral philosophy?” growled the monster.
“Again, more theory than practice.”
He sighed, very heavily, then put me down gently on a rock.
He nodded his massive head towards the Trapsmiths’ Arcade.
“She is old enough,” he said, “to need a tutor.”
Even though the kobolds had fled our level, it was clear that Bait could no longer live comfortably in the goblins’ Arcade.
Every inch of height she added to her frame made it that much harder for her to fit into the narrow crawlspaces and tunnels – and increased the risk that she would trigger one of the innumerable traps that guarded the Arcade.
It seemed only a matter of time before Bait was chopped in two by a hidden scythe, or poisoned by a hail of needles.
I pointed this danger out to Clickglee, but goblins don’t judge risk as humans do.
What changed his mind was not the danger; it was the decline in her utility as bait.
She was too heavy now for Clickglee to dangle a squalling human infant in the path of some wandering monster.
Indeed, she squalled a lot less as she grew.
So where could she go? The Chasm Hall had plenty of room, and Sir Peledon had amply demonstrated through kobold-slaughter that he was willing to protect the child. But he growled when Clickglee suggested it.
“I told you to keep her away from me.”
He still shadowed Bait, watching over her from a distance, avoiding direct contact.
The transformation spell continued to eat away at what humanity remained in him.
His rages grew more frequent, his bellows echoing down the corridors, the Dungeon shaking with his spasms of anger.
He always flung himself away from Bait when these moods struck him, but these bouts of fury were as dangerous as any goblin trap.
No, Bait could not live in the Chasm Hall with him.
So, my old tomb became a boarding school.
It was not the first time I had been a tutor.
In my wandering days with Orphir – after we’d robbed Old Pentsable, before the death sentence if you’re keeping track – we’d occasionally found work teaching noble brats their letters, or showing some high-born girl from the provinces how to curtsey like they do in the palace.
It was easy money with a captive audience.
If the pupil lifts their nose from the book, a quick crack of the cane refocuses nose and mind.
These techniques would not work with Bait.
It wasn’t just that I had no arms to wield a switch, but I’m not sure if it would have made an impact on her.
Life in the Dungeon had made her a maze of scars, and even the cruellest schoolmaster is less terrifying than the glaring Squinter.
Bait’s wayward nature did not help. Lessons were neglected in favour of playing with goblins, or wandering the Dungeon, or her collection of sharp things and teeth.
I would begin my lecture on, say, the history of the kings, and she’d yawn and walk out, ignoring all exhortations to return to her seat on top of my old sarcophagus.
Technically, Bait was not my only pupil.
The corridor slime was relocated to my tomb, as it still formed a key part of her atrocious diet.
By now, the slime was quite domesticated, and happily trailed after her in hopes of kobold snacks.
Its preferred resting place was inside my sarcophagus – slimes consume virtually anything organic, from meat and skin to insect carapaces or leaves, but do not eat bone.
The slime was convinced that there must still be some marrow left in my skeleton, and would spend hours suckling on my thigh bones.
In the early days of our enforced cohabitation, it sometimes performed the same indignity on my skull.
Curiously, as soon as I began my lessons, it would spit me out and give the impression of attending to my words, its pseudopods quivering eagerly.
Teaching a blob was not my priority. My priority was not being pounded into bone meal by a spell-warped minotaur who expected me to give a Dungeon urchin a first-class education.
It was Bait’s curiosity that gave me an opening. One day, she returned from her wanderings draped in spider webs. She sat down on the edge of my sarcophagus and began peeling the strands off, one by one, and dropping the bits into the slime.
“Good Gloop,” she said. She called the thing Gloop. Had I hands, I would have drawn the line there.
“You’ve been over in the Western Halls. The spiders are dangerous.”
“The mintyoar can’t follow there.”
“That makes it more dangerous, not less.”
“And I said the words.”
The Levelling had made her an honorary Denizen, and as long as she asked for permission to enter the spiders’ lair, they were bound by custom not to attack her.
“Very good. Can you say them in the human tongue?”
“No,” said the brat. In the human tongue, of course.
“Repeat after me: I pray thee, Denizen of—”
“No.” She peeled more spider web from her hair. “There’s a pretty thing there. Like a pillar with moss growing on top. In a room with a hole in the ceiling.”
She sketched the shape of the thing in the slime.
“That’s called a tree, Bait.”