Another day was upon us. For a time, this had begun to seem such an incredibly unlikely event, yet it had come to be, nonetheless. But while the lay of the world was superficially indistinguishable from the old, many things had changed over the span of one Monday. I viewed the world with new eyes, so to say. But not all changes were for the better. When I made my entrance downstairs in the morning, Ms Vera burst into an uncontrollable guffaw at the mere sight of my face, in a faithful sequel to last night. She laughed so hard her chair nearly tipped over, but that didn’t hinder the merriness.

“How could you not notice…!?” she gasped in those sparse moments when she could breathe. “Hahahaha! You thought—even after living a whole month under the same roof, you thought…! Hahahaha! How can anyone be so dense? Damn it, woman! Oh, I’m dying…! Hahaha!”

I didn’t think what another person hid under their clothes was so important to start with, hardly worth daily consideration, or prying into. But Ms Vera’s treatment of the subject still rubbed my pride wrong, as if my intellect were somehow faulty, instead of it being a point of honest, wholehearted indifference. Which was why my response as I took my seat at the table was somewhat cold.

“Why such a charade?”

“It wasn't to trick you specifically,” Ms Vera answered, wiping the corners of her eyes. “It’s just the arrangement we have, for practical reasons.”

“Practical reasons?”

Ms Vera nodded piously.

“That’s right. You find no work in this town for a twelve-year-old girl. But, mysteriously, there's always something for boys to do. Folks have confused Norn for a male since she was old enough to walk. Acting so blunt, having her hair short, only ever playing boys' games. So when our parents passed away, I thought maybe it was better to keep that misunderstanding alive. I couldn’t have him sit indoors alone all day or get into any mischief, when I couldn’t put him to school either. Clothes for males are a lot cheaper too. We’ve all got to do our part for our livelihood here. So what choice did I have?”

“I see…”

“Also, I didn’t want the Jarl to get any funny ideas…But never mind that. Norn went along with it willingly too. I didn’t push him into it only for my own amusement, if that’s what you think.”

“Suppose I must take your word for it.”

“Yep. Here I thought you saw through it on day one and were only acting clueless. But this whole time, you actually thought he was…”

Ms Vera began to giggle again, repeatedly slamming the table with her hand.

“Certainly,” I said, a little sourly, “I thought she had an exceptionally fair face for a boy when I first saw her—but who says boys cannot be cute? A maid wouldn't be a maid for long if she pointlessly questioned every little thing and demanded explanations. And you always refer to the child as ‘him’ at home too. What else could I but think it was my mistake?”

“Don’t get upset!” She made an effort to soothe me. “I made it a habit to treat the kid as a boy at home too. Less risk of slipping up that way. If you’re going to tell lies, the least you can do is keep the story consistent. The cat’s gonna come out of the bag when she grows older, anyway. But hopefully she’ll be tough enough to take care of herself by then.”

Growing a level more somber, she added,

“So, do me a favor and treat Norn the same as you have until now. In and outside the house. I’m sure he'd feel better about that too. The kid's not used to any sweet-talk.”

A pity of its own.

As much as I wanted to question the necessity of the roleplay, or the sensibility of it, I couldn’t come up with a solid counterargument. True enough, had I known Norn was a girl from the start, I wouldn’t ever have given her the crossbow and such a dangerous role in yesterday’s adventure. In which case I could be dead now. In the end, I had to admit I wasn’t half as open-minded as I had wanted to believe, but confined by preconceptions of my own.

I gave up on this unwieldy subject and moved on to the other matters I had wished to question, now that we got started with crossing the boundaries.

“So it’s for the debt your parents left you that you both must work so hard?”

Ms Vera’s expression darkened.

“So you found out about that too…? Guess there was no way to keep that secret forever either. Damn it all.”

“Your father was an adventurer who lost his life in Baloria. Your mother passed away not long after of prolonged illness and overwork. Do I have the facts right?”

The landlady looked stunned. “When did that kid turn into such a tattle-tale? He doesn’t normally open up to strangers like that!”

“I should think we are hardly strangers anymore,” I argued, “after, as you said, more than a month under the same roof. We can’t well act like this has nothing to do with myself either, seeing as a sizable cut of my income goes to paying your debts. What I haven’t been told is how your father came to owe the Jarl in the first place? What could a local chieftain want with an adventurer?”

Ms Vera rolled her eyes and groaned. “It’s such a dumb story.”

“I’d still like to know, if possible.”

“Why? What's it to you? You're going to pay for me, or what?”

“You should know the feat beyond me,” I answered. “But though it is not a maid's role to question things, I personally detest being surrounded by so many unknowns.”

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“What a reason.” The woman shrugged her shoulders with a deep sigh and then said, “Fine. Simply put, our guy fell for a scam.”

“Beg your pardon?”

Ms Vera elaborated,

“It was about eight years ago now, I think. Close enough. Old Fossler cooked up this plot with the Guild head. The bureau began to promote what they called a ‘raid starter pack’ for fresh adventurers and had the word go around. The Jarl lent fledgling adventurers a lump sum of a hundred silver as sponsor money, to 'nurture new heroes'. Not his own money, of course, taxpayer money, though nobody knew that at the time. You could use the coin however you liked, buy supplies, weapons, maybe a room, and then go explore the dungeon at your leisure. You could pay back in suitably small chunks over time and when the whole sum was repaid—plus a measly forty percent interest—everything after that was clean profit.”

“I see.”

“The basic repayment plan was only five silver marks per month. Only five hundred coppers. No biggie, right? Even a diligent gatherer can make between a hundred, a hundred and forty coppers a week. A skilled raider who could take extermination quests in the dungeon would have no trouble making more than that, surely. What if you came across a hoard of dwarven gold on the side? As long as you had what it took to get started, you could be rich in a day! For sure.”

It didn’t seem like such a nefarious plan to me. Wasn’t it quite close to what I’d had in mind, sans the loan part?

But Ms Vera continued,

“But if you missed your monthly payment—for whatever reason—a twenty-five percent penalty would be added, due next month. A hundred and twenty-five coppers more to pay. And if you couldn’t pay that either, it was twenty-five percent more—twenty-five percent of the downpayment and the penalty summed up, which came to six hundred and twenty-five marks altogether. So a hundred and fifty-six coppers more to pay. And then another twenty-five percent more, and more and more, and so on…The more payments you missed, the harder it got to repay the loan, until the numbers had slipped your grasp for life.”

“Oh.”

Her tone easy but laced with such thick irony it almost tasted of metal, she carried on,

“A right dream come true, huh? A cut to the Guild, a cut to the Jarl, food, rent, clothes, replacement tools, weapon repairs, armor repairs, potions, medicine, soap, sick days…Had those idiots known basic arithmetic, they could've realized they never had any hope of paying back the money from the start. As the Jarl and Guildmaster well knew. It was plain fraud. But a lot of poor, dumb people with unreal ideas about their own prowess thought it was the answer to their wishes. Like our dad. A big bag of silver, for only your name on paper. It's fine if you work hard, right? Everyone thinks they're a hard worker, until reality show them otherwise. And they’d tell you Baloria was a gold mine waiting to be picked clean. Nobody pointed out it was also a death trap that would inevitably kill you—and already picked clean, as far as a newbie could reach. ”

Almost painfully, morbidly lightly, she recounted,

“Dad struggled for four years. Longer than even the Jarl expected, I bet. Each time we thought we were finished for sure, he'd find something nice that barely got us through another winter. But it was a dog's life all the way, honestly. Just waiting for the worst, day by day. He got tired and reckless, and the wounds piled up. Nobody was truly surprised when he finally vanished for good.”

“How would the Jarl benefit from sending adventurers to their deaths?” I asked. “They couldn't pay him then.”

Ms Vera shrugged. “Getting rid of them only worked in his favor. He didn't want to deal with the wretches after they were pumped dry. When they eventually went missing and were declared dead, the Jarl could use the terms of the contract to repossess the victims’ property. Any leftover money, equipment, houses—he would keep them, or auction them off. The math stopped being so precise at that point. The scribes were in the Jarl’s pocket and downvalued everything. There was always debt left over, and who could say the Hold officials had counted wrong? Many fools brought their families along for the ride and then it fell on those families to pay off the bills of their kin, by forced labor if need be. And here we are.”

I looked down at the table.

Somehow, there were no fit words to be found.

“Legally, it’s not slavery,” Ms Vera continued. “You work regular hours and get paid. No threats or violence. Nobody’s forcing you but you. All the same, the Jarl owns you. By now, he owns the whole town, all the lands and the farms and the shops, and the Guild’s in bed with him. As long as we make money for him, we're allowed to live in peace. Refuse to pay, or try to run, and you'll be a homeless outlaw. Contract is still a contract. Well, isn’t that the way it works everywhere?”

“I should think not,” I said. “Does the King know of what goes on here?”

Ms Vera snorted. “Of course he knows. He’s the King. But as long as the Jarl stays in his Hold, pays his dues and doesn’t get uppity, what reason does his high-and-mightiness have to care? This Kingdom is almost as poor as we are. The King needs shrewd people with big pockets, like old Fossler, to keep the country afloat. When you start to shake the established pecking order, whether you're a ruler or a peasant, it’s only going to make an even bigger mess of things.”

I never thought the northern kingdoms were a merry wonderland, but it seemed things were even grimmer than I had imagined. In retrospect, King Pellegryn’s eagerness for war now made a sketchy sort of sense to me. As did his rush to restore the trade route. What a fine mess it was indeed, in all ways, for everyone involved.

“And the Guild has nothing to say?” I asked. “Being exploited like that? Whatever the local director is like, the main branch should take issue.”

“Oh, they’re not doing the starter pack anymore. The jig was done by the time I signed up. Apparently, some big shot went and died in the dungeon, which indirectly brought attention to the fishy bookkeeping. The Guildmaster had been embezzling the bureau’s money even before the latest stunt. But that guy’s got a brain for numbers, if nothing else. He fixed the ledgers to keep the story clean. He blamed the sponsor program fully on the Jarl, saying he was fooled too, and they’d be more careful in the future. An investigator came, slapped the bureau a lukewarm warning, and went home. And the ones responsible got away with everything. Sucks for the idiots, eh. And now I'm working for the Guild that ruined my family, having inherited their mistakes, stuck serving you suicidal morons, each of whom reminds me of my dumb, dead father. Though not one part of it was my own fault. Isn't that cheery?”

It was not very.

“So why work for the Guild, with such baggage attached?” I asked.

“Because the work is damn easy, why else?” Ms Vera answered without batting an eye. “I’m not about to kill myself forking it over like my folks. Aunt Mimosa was close with both my parents and helped us a bunch back in the day. So after mom died, I took advantage of her pity to get the job. Damn having principles. If others can cheat, why couldn't I? Only a pure fool does anything more than the bare minimum to survive.”

Some philosophy. Though unfortunately common, high and low.

“Then, may I ask how much you currently owe the Jarl?”

She shrugged again in answer. “It sat somewhere past six thousand silver the last I looked. No point losing sleep over the numbers. I can’t pay even one full installment at this point, and neither do they expect me to. I hand over half my salary every month, keep my mouth shut, and that’s that. I’ve got a house. I’ve got routine. I know my place in the universe. This is as good as it gets for any of us, I'm sure.”

Having shared this fatalistic line with me, Ms Vera stood to return to the pot of porridge quietly shimmering on the stove top in the corner.

Then she paused and turned back.

“By the way, what’s that stinking in the backyard?”