God of Eyes

The next two days had me mostly resting, in an isolated stone-block room two levels below Alanna's quarters, three levels below the church proper. Alanna, as a goddess "of knowledge", had a number of books just laying around that she insisted I read. As I came back with increasingly basic questions, she gave me increasingly basic books, finally giving me a tome of magic that, on my world, would have come with a "For Dummies!" label scrawled slightly askew on the cover.

That book said this: neither magic nor gods are a natural part of the world. In antiquity, powerful creatures known as the Arch-Sorcerers developed a system, known across the world as the Dragon System, for gathering knowledge and power to create magic, and opened great channels in the world to spread that power to every child born upon it. Since then, all forms of creatures have gained magic, grown because of it, become warped by it. And although the mechanism is unclear, the birth of magic gave birth to gods, who feed off the knowledge and power in people's souls, and in turn guide and protect their people.

Apparently, the Dragon System had nothing to do with big scaly lizards when it was created, but since then, the massive structures that house the thing are guarded by flocks of the things. There are many structures, each a "temple" that defines a part of how magic works on the world, and some new ones have been created since the Arch Sorcerers disappeared. The original eight, and supposedly the final two created shortly before the Arch Sorcerers vanished, were all elemental in nature, giving people the ability to control the elements while also defining schools of magic associated with them. Fire, for example, was the element associated with the school of destruction, which made sense. Other combinations were harder, like Water magic being associated with enchantments and bindings. I guess that made sense to the people here, but it wasn't an obvious connection.  How the final two even counted as "elements" was beyond me; one was just "divine" and the other was something about dragons.

Some of the newer Dragon Temples were new ways to understand and interact with magic. For example, one set defined "magic gifts" that made it trivial to teach people magic for the first time; if you were introduced to the gift of the Magic Lung, you could begin to store magic energy in your body immediately whenever you breathed in with a certain intent, and if you were introduced to the gift of the Magic Claw, you could create a jet of destructive energy from your hand. Compared to the elements, which were heady, scholarly things that needed decades of study, these were dirt-simple to start with. Even just reading about them, I could touch on magic for the first time in my life.

Alanna was not impressed.

"Of course you can do it," she said. She was directing me to do some cleaning in the store-rooms on the second basement, above me and below her, and I was rambling on about what I had learned as I did it. I was by no means doing a perfect job, but it wasn't hard work, just laborious. "They wouldn't be written about if they weren't reliable powers. There are a few restricted ones, smaller temples that empower a nation or two and nobody else, but the main ones are built to be used. Everyone born here can use them."

I stopped scrubbing with the cloth and looked at her. Alanna had seemed tired, and I thought she was probably low on energy, although exactly what she had been spending her godly energy on was none of my business. I debated for only a moment on exactly how honest to be, before simply saying, "I wasn't born on this world."

That made her freeze, and it seemed like a long moment passed before the shock of what I'd said really passed. Nevertheless, she tried to pass it off as though it was a very normal thing. "Oh, I guess that explains why you were mixed up with my father... somehow." She used one hand to toss her hair a bit. "Um... so where exactly ARE you from?"

"Another world. Terra." I frowned, realizing suddenly that the word that had come out of my mouth wasn't quite the one I had intended. We called our world... Terra?

"Oh... yes, that's what it is, isn't it?" Alanna didn't look in my direction, but just set herself to pacing, always turning away from me and never towards me. "There are numerous records of offworlders... people from that plane..." as she drifted into mumbles, I had to wonder just what exactly made it so important.

Of course, if I'd met a person on Earth... now see, there it goes again. Why did I say the word Terra, before?

"Anyway, I don't know of any Offworlders who became gods, but I suppose it all explains why you seem to know nothing at all. How my father..." Alanna tsk'ed her tongue, stopped and looked at me. "Keep cleaning, idiot. You still have a job to do." When I turned back to the job of scrubbing, I heard her continue pacing behind me. "Well, since I'm incredibly generous and I guess also a goddess of knowledge, I will help. A little. As long as you don't cause problems."

"Thank you, Lady Alanna," I said in a cheerful, faux-monotone.

"And don't call me Alanna! I go by Lucile here." I heard her sigh as she stopped pacing. "Good grief, I just know you'll end up spilling almost all of my secrets before this is done. Why my father sent you to me is beyond me..."

I had no idea what his reasons or intentions were, but I had to admit I was honestly very pleased. Alanna trying to help, was knowledgeable and kind. The town was quiet and as long as I didn't do something stupid, it didn't seem like I was going to be at the center of any serious problems. The fact that her kindness and beauty made her a temptation was... a manageable burden. And she was very definitely an adult who was likely very, very capable of keeping me at bay if, for some reason, I lost control.

So I crawled around on my hands and knees with a wet cloth and cleaned her store-rooms while she lectured me. What did I have to complain about? This was certainly the best my life had been since I was reborn, and not terrible compared to my old life, either.

Within a few days, I had been given a full set of tailored (but loose fitting) clothes that marked me as a devotee and (at least temporary) employee of the Church of Alanna. That, a haircut, and full access to bathing facilities was all I really needed to clean up my appearance, although I was nowhere near fully healed. Whatever happened to my body before I got here, it was in bad shape. Although Alanna had shown she had the ability to heal me, she certainly didn't seem to have the inclination. As long as it didn't interfere with my ability to work, I decided I was okay with that, and didn't press the issue.

I just hoped it wasn't fantasy-world cancer. Or, like, real-world cancer that just also happens here. Both of those would suck.

With the uniform, I was now given tasks that involved actually leaving the church. It wasn't a significant set of tasks, usually picking up food and delivering messages, but it got people used to the idea that the filthy hobo had cleaned up alright and was staying, politely and somewhat meekly, at the church. I was also allowed, finally, to do some of my assigned reading in public rather than locked up in my quarters. I still could not read a number of restricted texts anywhere but the church, mostly ones that described godhood in any real sense, but it was enough that I could get out and not be quite as isolated as I had been.

I favored the docks as a place to read. I liked the water and the cool sea breeze, but mostly, I liked staring out at the horizon, so impossibly far away. Sitting on a dock and letting my feet dangle in the water is... hypnotic. Relaxing. And, frankly, it helps me to think, which is something that is harder to do when in a very cramped stone room fairly deep underground. That's only possible if a dock is free, but trade ships appear to be mostly irregular here, and the fishing boats don't bother someone who's wool-gathering unless they need help.

All of that led very quickly to my first job.

An argument between a fisherman and a fish monger turned out, very quickly, to be an argument over math. Apparently, the fisherman thought twenty fish at nine coppers apiece was something more than twenty silvers, rather than slightly less. As the port master was hurrying over to resolve the dispute, I just casually turned around and spoke up.

"The monger is right, fisherman," I called back to him. The two stopped, and the fisherman started to storm up to me, but I continued, easily. "Nine coppers is one less than a silver. Two fish would be two less than two silvers, right? So tenfold that, twenty fish is twenty coppers less than twenty silvers. That is, eighteen silvers for twenty fish."

"An' 'e 'as the right of it," snarled the monger. "I ought 'a give you less, what with you makin' a scene, an' not th' first. Shown you the ledgers, an' I 'ave, you know th' price 'a fish, an' you know what you's owed."

The fisherman bared his teeth at the fishmonger but stomped back and accepted the small sack. When he spoke, it was with a heavy islander accent. "You are always telling me these things and I am always sure you are lying, because you are a lying piece of crap. You lied to me, to my parents, to my child. You will lie to me again tomorrow. You know I am weak to numbers. But the man says you are right, and he makes sense. But I know you will lie to me, and I hate you."

The fishmonger snorted and slammed shut the wheeled cart he'd put the fish in. He tossed me a half-silver piece, which bounced off the pier and almost fell into the water before I caught it. Although he didn't have anything else to say, the port master did.

"'Ey lad, an' fancy you doin' numbers like that in your pretty little head. You're the young man what's workin' at the church now, right?"

I just smiled and set down the book, nodding quickly. "Yes, port master," I said easily. "I had... an odd life, I know."

"I'm not in th' business of judgin' people, or leastwise, none that the church approve of," said the port master. "Here, if you can prove you can be trusted, an' your numbers are as good as they seem, I'll give you a job going over shipping ledgers. Two silvers a week, an' a half silver bonus any day you catch someone lyin' on a ledger, 'less I find it first."

And so Port Master Manne gave me a job. Alanna, for one, was thrilled to know I was no longer her sole responsibility, and immediately began requesting, but not demanding, a tithe to stay at the temple--a half silver per week, which was certainly still less than the value I got from it in food and rent, so I agreed without any semblance of disapproval or resentment. It was also good for me to have a reason to get out, consistently.

And the work, boring as it was, was useful. The ships' ledgers that I inspected were all very trite, and were it not for the fact that the numbers were generally in golds or silvers, the math would be very simple. But knowing as I did that the true values of the goods were in coppers, it quickly dawned on me that the tax rate of one in twenty, or five per cent, was being badly rounded off. As in, a cargo of nineteen golds gained received no tax at all, since one part in twenty of nineteen was zero.

I asked Manne, and his response was only to shrug. "Even if you know it, an' can show the truth of it, ship captains won't want t' accept it. You'd have to convince 'em your numbers were right, an' th' same for every ship captain that comes in. Though, th' city an' the nation would thank you, I think." Manne tapped his chin with a finger, sitting behind his big hardwood desk and squinting at me through his big, circular glasses. "Time was, back when I started this job, I thought of writing up the whole of them, but numbers are hard for most folk, an' that is a lot of numbers to add up. I'd have to think even to figure one-in-twenty tax on a single gold, now."

I sighed in response. "Well... a single gold is a hundred coppers, yes?"

Manne lowered his head and looked at me over his glasses. "Aye."

"So two golds is two hundred. And one part in twenty of two hundred is...?"

Manne thought only a moment. "Ten coppers."

"Half of that is the rate for one gold, then. Five coppers." I grinned. "You can also say that it's half of one part in ten. That's half a silver, then."

Manne nodded, fidgeting with a pen in his off hand before putting it back in an inkwell. "You've the right of it, of course. If I had a sheet to do the numbers on, I'd come up with it, but I am no good at doing the work in me head."

I shrugged. "Now... if the rate for one gold is five coppers, what's the rate for nineteen golds?"

Manne stopped and glared at me like I was toying with him. "I can't do that in me head, lad."

"It's one gold less than twenty, Manne." I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair, looking satisfied. "The tax rate for twenty golds is one gold. So one gold less than that..."

Manne rubbed his head, then sighed. "Nine silvers and...?"

"And a half. A gold minus five coppers." I shook my head. "I'm only so good with numbers, Manne. If I had to give the tax rate for nineteen golds plus four silvers and change, I'd have to write it down. But one part in twenty is a full silver every two golds. You can't let them get away with that."

Manne's shoulders sagged in defeat. "Alright, lad. I admit, I'm a lousy tax man. An' the traders, well, they're never happy. But perhaps you're right, an' things will be better if we're paid what we're owed." He scratched his chin. "But... to avoid arguin' with every captain, you might as well round the tax off at the silver, at least. One for every two gold."

Instead of arguing, I took a few pieces of paper and wrote out different tax schedules, from one to twenty golds in value. But for the ink drying, it was all written out in minutes, and he could see from a glance that it was simple enough. One was the truth of it: for every two silvers, there was a copper in tax. The next was a half-silver per gold, and the last was a silver per two. After having written them all out, the only advantage I could see in the last was that it was shorter, easier for a man who doesn't know his numbers to understand it at a glance.

I suppose that was worth something, and in that frame of mind, I went ahead and disposed of the longest one, knowing that we would never get taxes on every last silver of value that passed through the port. But, a half silver for every gold didn't seem to be difficult.

Of course, I was vastly underestimating the stubbornness of sailors.

The first captain to port in wouldn't hear talk of raising taxes even by a shiny penny, let alone several silvers, and in the end Manne overruled my attempts to argue him down, and agreed to stick to the old rates--for now. In the end, he couldn't bear to take the chance that the captain wasn't bluffing, and lose out on a chance to get his business, especially since the business he WAS doing was already more than twenty golds--so there was more than a gold of taxes on the line if he chose to leave.

I had hopes that the first cargo load we got that was nineteen golds in value would be different, but as it turns out, that cargo had a very different problem. Even a cursory glance at the ship's ledger told me he was pirate, smuggler, and general no good scoundrel, but the captain passed what was obviously a large bribe to Manne, and the whole thing was over before it began. Worse, I felt an awful aura from the ship, one that made me think that whatever he was smuggling, it wasn't some simple contraband.

Instead of meddling directly, I took a radical action: quietly, under my breath, I prayed to Alanna. And quickly, almost instantly, she answered.

And her answer was wrath itself.