This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

“I don’t really understand why she hates you so much,” said Verity.

“I don’t either,” said Alfric. “We were pacted, and we were friends beyond that, but… I don’t know why she’s intent on interfering. If she is. I don’t know why she’s here.” Certainly if the previous day was viewed from the perspective of ‘everything that happened was what Lola wanted to have happened’ it didn’t seem all that bad. She had stirred the pot, but not to within the limits of her ability. She hadn’t planted rumors and apparently hadn’t even told Mizuki that they were chrononauts.

“I mean no offense,” said Hannah. “But how do you know she was responsible for it all? Your other failures.” She said it very gently.

“I was wondering that myself,” said Verity. She was less gentle.

Alfric felt a sourness in his gut. “It’s a fair question,” he said. “She admitted to taking the party and doing it to manipulate me. I think she must have tried other methods before doing something so extreme, and it obviously took some planning on her part. Relationships between chrononauts are complicated, though, because you end up knowing someone through undone days, and most of what passed between the two of us probably happened in days I never experienced.” He could feel himself hesitating when it came to the core question. “She did take the party though, and that was first for leverage, which failed, and then for spite. As for everything else, the rumors seem like they have her as the obvious source, unless people suddenly decided to make things up about me at the same time she left with the group. Actual sabotage… I don’t know. For too much of it, she was on the other side of Inter. Not that she couldn’t have used travel entads, and her family has good ones, but… I don’t know. It seems implausible to do it and not get caught by anyone.” It was entirely possible that some of the failures were his own, beyond the problems that Lola had created.

“The rumors might have started because you had a group collapse on you,” said Hannah. “Just playin’ the imp, since I don’t know, of course. There were rumors about her, after that, weren’t there?”

“I suppose,” said Alfric. “Uglier than the normal rumors about her.”

“Four men and a woman,” said Hannah, clucking her tongue. “I can practically taste the rumors.”

“I’ve never really understood that,” said Verity. “They get that women and men can sleep with each other in any combination, don’t they?”

“Well, ay,” said Hannah. “And let me tell you, at the seminary, where symmetrical sexuality was more of a given, people would jump on any two women spendin’ time together as cause for gossip. Alfric, do you think she would?”

“Would what?” asked Alfric.

“Have a relationship with any of them,” said Hannah. “Just out of curiosity.”

“This is the ectad shop I was told about,” said Alfric. He was still lugging around the book, which had the stone in it, which in turn had the two tall trees they’d managed to get into it. He was going to be happy when he could go without carrying around fifty pounds of book. His legs needed a rest. “And no, I don’t think she would, but when she left, she made it clear that I didn’t know her as well as I had thought.”

The ectad shop was on the edge of town, as ectad places often were, since they needed somewhere to house their equipment. Wilch, over in Tarchwood, hadn’t had the full setup, but this place seemed to have it all. There were big vats for distilling down materials, grinders for reducing stone to dust, and furnaces for melting metals. Ectad materials came in a variety of different forms, which then had to be refined in various ways, all of which had to be done differently depending on what the end result would be, especially because they usually started ‘expressing’ partway through the process. A half-completed waterstone would start leaking water, which would create all kinds of problems if the ectad engineer wasn’t prepared for it.

“Wait,” said Alfric as a man walked over to them. “Wilch?”

“Nah,” he said. “Wilch is my brother.” He shook his head. “Not even twins, and we get mistaken for each other all the time.” He held out a hand to Alfric. “You must be the up-and-comer. I got a guild message about you. Name’s Besc.”

Alfric shook hands. Besc had the same build as Wilch did, barrel-chested and a bit of fat on what were probably powerful arms. They were both mostly bald, with wild hair, a thick beard, and a wide nose that marked them as having Chelxic ancestry.

“Pleasure to meet you,” said Alfric. He looked around the yard. “We have two trees, but they might be a pain to get out, and any assistance you could give would be great.”

“And these trees,” said Besc, nodding, “they’d be the ones lodged up your butt?”

Verity burst out laughing, and Besc smiled at her, chuckling to himself. “Only a joke, only a joke,” he said. “Wilch told me about you, and I take the shots I see.”