Small-Town Crafter: The Artificer's Apprentice (A low-stakes LitRPG series) (Small Town Crafter Book 1), page 60
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 1
The manor belonged to my stepfather, though he begrudgingly accepted that my mother and I came as a package. He already had three children and had no desire for a fourth, but by that point, he’d already fallen under my mother’s spell. She had that effect, I’m told. Whether actual magic was involved, I’m not sure, and lacking any living biological relatives that I know about, I’m not sure I’ll ever find out.
She was an actress who spent four months of each year traveling throughout Easterly with a troupe called The Five Fiends, where they’d perform crowd-pleasing plays designed not just to entertain but to titillate. “Better to offend than mollify,” she told me once. “Offended people talk about you way more than anyone else.”
Those four months of work paid for eight months in the bottle, as she soberly described her favorite pastime. She was never mean to me, not even at the very bottom of her deepest bottle, though she became more reckless, spending more and more time in taverns that even the roughest of street folk would recommend that you avoid.
This reached its lowest when a man held a knife to her throat over a game of Six Dice, demanding that she give him back his winnings and more besides. The man was dealt with in…let’s say a not-so-pleasant way by the other folk in the tavern, but the feeling of the blade tip against her skin was not one my mother wanted to experience again. Thus, she started her slow climb out of the bottle.
This change in her might have made me feel better and more secure, but it came at the expense of her stage presence. When she next joined the Five Fiends during troupe season and walked the stage in a city called Reaching Grange, her performance was met with the measured critique that it was, according to one newspaper, “Absolutely, stinking, shit.”
The leader of the troupe - a fifty-year-old man named Toby who specialized in playing villainous characters who dressed brilliantly and thus made sure such a character was written into every play – told my mother: “Something’s missing from you, love. I don’t know what it is.”
My mother and I knew, of course, though she never said it, and there wasn’t a priest’s chance in hell that I’d recommend my mother climb back into her bottle.
So, she practiced her lines in front of me. She spent hours before a dressing mirror, making one expression after another, trying her lines one way, then delivering them differently. I would sit in her dressing room reading some book or other, but it was hard not to watch her. She was so beautiful, and she said her lines with such grace. I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t translating to the stage.
After weeks of such practice, the troupe performed in a village south of Red River’s Pass, a place called Little Broken.
“Wish me luck,” my mother told me, for she never subscribed to the superstition that such expressions of luck were bad for an actress.
“Luck,” I told her.
The play went terribly. So badly, in fact, that the performers were pelted with wilted cabbage and soft tomatoes as they bowed. When they left the stage, the tomato juice made it look like a massacre had taken place. I suppose it had, really, when you consider what it did to my mother’s career.
As much as it pained me to admit, my mother had been the problem with the play. Her charisma seemed to leave her the second she took to the stage. She delivered her lines like an undertaker reading a court summons, and the crowds, who used to be putty in her delicate hands, seemed to scare her.
“We can’t carry on like this,” Toby told her.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Well,” said Toby. “You do. I suppose we all do, don’t we?”
He glanced then to a bottle of wine, unopened, that was standing next to a card with the words, ‘Good Luck’ written on the front.
“No,” said my mother.
“Moderation, love. That’s the key. Just a tipple. Get your old self back.”
Mother looked across the room at me. The actors had long ago gotten used to my presence in their dressing room and always talked like I wasn’t there. I wanted to tell my mother not to go back to that place where strange men held knives against her throat. But I equally didn’t want to be the reason both her passion and her income were taken away from her. So, I said nothing.
Finally, she said, “If that’s the way it is, I suppose you had better find a new Magdalene for your next performance.”
Much later, after saying our goodbyes to the troupe, I asked my mother what we were going to do. She clutched my hand tightly. “Let’s find a room tonight. Difficult decisions are easier to read by the light of the sun.”
The next morning, we’d decided to make the journey back to Reaching Grange, where the stage scene was busiest. Mother hoped she could audition and secure a place in another troupe, perhaps using her connections in the actors’ guild.
I had my doubts, but I didn’t express them. In my mind, though, she’d fail to secure work, our low funds would dwindle, and soon we’d be on the streets, tins held out in front of us, hoping a passerby might take pity and drop a coin or two in.
Just as we were going to board a carriage bound for Reaching Grange, a voice said, “Excuse me, miss?”
A man was standing there. Sharply dressed, his posture impeccable. That man was my future stepfather. He told my mother that although her performance could use improvement, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. After a brief meal in a tavern, whose name I can’t remember, I somehow knew we wouldn’t be heading to Reaching Grange.
It’s no exaggeration to say that my stepfather resented my presence at the manor, built and paid for by generations’ worth of gold earned by a family business that he inherited. His love for my mother meant that he pretended he liked me, but I think a person can tell when someone else’s smile is genuine or not, especially when that fakery is paraded in front of them daily.
We lived in the manor for four years. Then, shortly after my fifteenth birthday, my mother died suddenly when a panicked horse broke loose from a trader’s carriage, trampling her into the ground. My stepfather summoned the best healer he could buy, but there was no chance she’d make it.
Things changed for me almost instantly. Though the state appointed my stepfather as my guardian, he told me that things were going to be different. From now on, I was to sleep on the servants’ wing in a cramped, windowless room where a little camp bed had been set up.
“You’ll eat your meals with the cooks before they serve us,” he told me. “And don’t make a nuisance of yourself around my children. They have their studies.”
I noted that the two boys and girl were no longer my step siblings but ‘his children’. That was fine by me, I decided. I had never warmed to this place, either. The only one of them I was ever friendly with was Anthony, the eldest of the three, but he joined the state’s army and had left the manor seven months earlier.
As the seasons turned and the ground warmed, then chilled, then froze, then began to thaw again, I had spent enough time in my little room dwelling on my future that I had both a premonition and came to a decision at the same time.
My stepfather would kick me out of the manor on my sixteenth birthday, I realized. That was when his state-appointed guardianship would end. That was ten days away, and I was powerless to prevent him from doing so. But the one thing I could do was to beat him to it.
So, after announcing my plan to Fred and Hilda, the married couple who cooked all the meals in the manor and who I’d become friendly with, I accepted their parting gift of dried fruit and preserves, and I left the home that was never my own.
Chapter 2
I hitched rides on all kinds of carriages, traveling far across Easterly on very little coin. Hitching was the most common way of traveling for folks who didn’t own a carriage or horse, though many merchants charged at least fifty silvers for a journey. This meant I had to be patient whenever I needed a ride, and I’d ask every trader I saw if they had the space, hoping one of them would be charitable and give me passage for free.
Mile by mile, I headed south, crossing through all kinds of places in Easterly that I’d never seen before. New to me though this landscape was, I wasn’t swallowed up by it. A life traveling with the Five Fiends had taught me much about the kinds of places and kinds of folks of Easterly, and it had given me an inner sense about who to avoid.
Eventually, I reached my destination – a small village called Sunhampton, where an apprentice fair was being held in the village plaza. The other travelers heading into town were mostly people like me, young men or women seeking to gain apprenticeships from tradesmen or crafters looking for new recruits. There were also plenty of families with children making their way there, hoping to secure future apprenticeships for their sons or daughters. All of those children, of course, were prodigies and 'very smart for their age.'
I wasn't so much interested in my employment future as I was in getting a roof I could sleep under. Apprenticeships came with not just tuition but lodgings and food too, and some masters even paid their apprentices a wage. I didn’t know what I wanted to do in the long term, but for now, some stability would be nice.
All kinds of traders, crafters, and folks of other professions had set out their stalls, hoping to attract suitable children and teenagers for tutelage. There were merchants recruiting any child who might have a knack for salesmanship, potion makers displaying jars of herbs and salves and asking loudly, "Would you like to learn how to make things like this?", smiths showing off their talents on portable forges. The air was thick with spice and herb scents. It echoed with the clang of hammers on metal.
I didn’t know where to start or what I’d be interested in. I didn't even know what I was good at. Mother had taught me this and that about acting, and I had read a lot of books. But that was about it.
I supposed I had better start somewhere so I settled on one of the merchants, taking a seat in front of a stall where a man displayed exotic goods such as amulets made from rare metals and crystals, as well as clothing sewn with gems and precious stones.
He took one look at me before saying, "You will not be my apprentice."
"You didn't even ask me a question!" I told him.
"And yet, I was already given the answer."
Toby always used to say, "A person should know when it's time to stop kicking a dead dog." I didn’t really know when it was time to even begin kicking a dead dog, truth be told, but I took his advice. Rather than argue with the merchant, I simply stood up and walked away. I needed an apprenticeship today, or I was in trouble, but I wouldn’t be treated like dirt.
Unfortunately, the next stall I visited did not provide what I needed, nor did the next five after that. A blacksmith said I didn’t have the build for forge work. A tailor told me my manner was too uncouth for fine garmentry. I visited almost every stall in the market, finally having to resort to applying for apprenticeships with a cheesemaker, a weaver, and two butchers. None of these professions interested me, but I was desperate.
It was all for nothing, though. The cheesemaker made me sample two kinds of cheese and tell him which I preferred. My answer seemed to preclude me from ever having a future in producing quality cheddar. The weaver was interested, but when she had me try her loom, she quickly ushered me away as though my mere touch on her equipment had bestowed a curse on her future labors. Both butchers, meanwhile, rejected me for being too scrawny and underfed, as though the size of my belly decided my ability to cut through meat.
I watched with dismay as the traders and crafters began to pack up their stalls, many of them leaving with their new apprentices. Families bade tearful goodbyes to teenagers who were off to start a new life. A lone man began sweeping the plaza with an oversized broom, lost in thought as he cleared up everyone else's mess. I half wondered if I should ask him for an apprenticeship, but he pushed his broom with such a melancholic gesture that I foresaw great misery in my future if I took up with him.
I decided I better try to find somewhere vaguely warm to sleep before night settled in. Barns were a favorite of mine because they were often unattended for hours, and there was always a warm haystack or even a friendly sheep or two that I could snuggle up against as the clutches of winter grasped the Easterly skies.
"Gods damn it!" said a voice.
I turned around. A man was crossing the plaza. An old man with thick arms and gray hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. He had dark eyes set deeply under heavy eyebrows. Approaching the man with the broom, he said, "Did I miss it?"
The man rested on his broom. "Miss it, Mr. Cooper? I'll say. By a good hour or so."
"Damn it."
"Were you taking on an apprentice?"
"Don't sound so surprised."
"It's been a long time since you done that. You might not recall, but when I was a lad, my Pa asked if you'd take me on, and you refused. Said you don't take on apprentices, as I remember."
"Well, I’ve had to soften my stance a little," said the old man. "Work’s tough, and I'm not getting younger."
"I hear that, good and proper. Well, like I said. You've missed it. Sorry."
The old man clapped his acquaintance on the shoulder and said, "Not to worry. Have a nice evening, Bill."
I studied the old man from afar, trying to work out what his profession might be. He didn’t have any props or accessories with him, so he clearly hadn't put much thought into the apprentice fair. His arms suggested that he did physical work of some kind, but his shirt confused matters. It might have been white many, many moons ago, but now it was a faded yellow, and it sported all kinds of stains and even blackened patches.
Was he a mage? No, he didn't look at all like a mage. Besides, most mages taught in colleges. Those who didn’t, often recruited students from college cast-offs.
Okay, then. So what was he? Potioneer? Blacksmith? Metallurgist?
Whatever he was, I decided that he clearly needed an apprentice, and I needed a profession. If it was something boring, then it didn’t matter. I would have a roof to sleep under, and I would finish my apprenticeship with a class to my name. What was there to lose?
Smoothing back my hair, I crossed the market plaza to introduce myself to the old man.
The artificer was named Cooper. Master Cooper, to use the name he insisted on within a breath of me meeting him. He was an elderly man who looked like he'd been working with metal since before the first town was ever built. His eyes were sharp and wise, perhaps too much so. They seemed to look at me yet beyond me at the same time, and his mind was filled with ideas and theories that he constantly had to scribble into a thick, leather-bound notepad.
At first, he didn't trust me to use the forge or do any real work until he gauged how much I could learn from him. “I want to see how much of that space between your ears is air and how much is useful.”
What he did offer was a place in his workshop and a chance to learn whatever skills he had. I thought that was fair enough.
I was to start, he told me, as a level 0 apprentice artificer. To officially become recognized as an artificer proper, I had to earn the five basic artificer skill trees and then display my knowledge by completing a class-earning project.
The five basics skill trees of artificery were ‘Simple Craft and Forge Work’, ‘Simple Unenchantment’, ‘Simple Enchantment’, ‘Simple Tinkering’, and ‘Simple Alchemy’.
“First things first,” said Master Cooper. “Can you tell me what artificery is?”
"It's when you make something," I replied. "Like making swords."
Cooper half smiled. "That's right, sort of. Artificers do make things, but our work goes far beyond that. Nowadays, people call everything that involves using both crafting and magic 'artificery'. It's more accurate. Now, let’s talk about the rules of your apprenticeship.
“You must work here, under my supervision. If I ever ask you to leave, you will. You also have to follow all the laws of the village and the state unless I tell you to break them. There are no exceptions."
I nodded. "Yes, sir. I won't break the law."
"Good lad. Now, this here is called a token bracelet. Do you know about tokens?”
He was holding a dull bronze bangle designed to snap around a person’s wrist.
“Vaguely,” I answered.
“Okay. So tell me.”
“When you’re trying to earn a skill, you wear a token inside a token bracelet. When you finally get the skill, the ability is transferred to the token, and you can switch and swap the tokens you put inside the bracelet to use different skills.”
“You’re almost right,” said Master Cooper. “Put the bracelet around your wrist. It doesn’t matter which wrist. Good.” He held up a blank token, which looked like an oversized coin. “Now, earning a skill will make an image etch itself onto this token, indicating that the skill is there. But really, the skill is inside you, just as all your earned skills are inside you. All the tokens and the bracelet do is focus them. Otherwise, you could just lose the token and lose your skill. With me?”
