This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

The prospect of a day with nothing going on had, at first, seemed like it would be nice and pleasant, a chance to work in the garden, perhaps, or laze about once the ritual practice was finished, but then, in the morning, the rain clouds had begun to hang heavy in the sky. Verity woke up too late to see the party off, but there was a note and a cold breakfast in the chiller for her, thoughtfully left by Mizuki, who seemed to really be going out of her way to be a good host. Verity didn’t normally eat breakfast, but she had a feeling that was going to change if they kept pushing it on her. She had no strong aversion to breakfast nor affection for the Dondrian way, she just woke late enough that it seemed sensible to wait until lunch.

asked Verity as she sipped a cup of hot tea and ate a cold hard-boiled egg.

said Isra.

said Verity. She tapped her foot for a bit and thought about what to do with herself. There was enough time to get to the heart of Pucklechurch, but once there, it would probably start to drizzle, and Verity wasn’t all that sure she wanted to be around people all day. She had half a mind to see whether Isra wanted to do something together, but Isra was used to being alone, and the only thing for them to do was in the garden, which would mean rearranging the weather. Verity didn’t want to impose, and Isra was right, the plants did need it.

She settled in for some music practice instead, though she wasn’t feeling particularly creative, and went to old songs instead of new ones, classic pieces that she’d played in concert halls and at the occasional private party. Most of them were wordless or meant to be accompanied by more vocalization than she would be able to give them. Without her concert lute, the sound seemed small, though the living room of the house had surprisingly good acoustics.

She thought about the next dungeon, and the one after that. The stress and pressure of dungeons was manageable, especially since everyone seemed to be understanding about wanting to relax and take it slow. Mizuki was an ally in that, but even Alfric, for all he was champing at the bit, seemed to take most of his actual pleasure from oddball things like hauling a huge wardrobe up a hill. He hadn’t made it difficult for her. Perhaps he would, in the future, but Verity somewhat doubted it. He was nice. The lies he’d told were small and understandable. She actually somewhat liked him.

The rain started while she was in the middle of playing, and the change in humidity made the strings feel sluggish and slow. She stopped and put her lute away, feeling somewhat frustrated. She’d be playing again at the Fig and Gristle later in the night anyhow. It seemed like Cynthia was going to take a long time in finding a new bard, though that wasn’t terribly surprising. Verity had been playing for not much more than room and board, but it was likely a replacement would come from out of town and would be looking for a more favorable arrangement.

There was nothing to do in the house as it rained. There were a number of books, including those brought over by Hannah. It seemed that Hannah had a particular affection for romances involving exclusively men, which wasn’t in the slightest what Verity had an interest in reading, especially as they seemed to be soaked in maleness. Mizuki had two books from the local library, both of which seemed to be overdue and unread, one a dense history of a man named Alcaran, the other a light adventure story. Neither held any particular interest for Verity.

Eventually, and somewhat despite herself, Verity began to snoop. She consoled herself that this wasn’t exactly snooping, given that she lived in the house, and she kept away from the bedrooms, where people might be keeping things that they really did want kept secret. But she snooped all the same, going down into the basement, looking around in the kitchen but making sure not to put anything out of place, taking stock of the wine cellar, and so on. She looked at the places where things had been, holes in the wall where a nail might have once held up a picture. There were no great revelations from this exercise, only a better sense of the history of the building, which seemed to have accumulated quite a bit of age, despite not being all that old.