Chapter 104: Euniscopian

Theodore turned to me with a frown.

"You know Euniscopian?"

’Euniscopian?’

The word landed in my head like a stone dropped into a well. I had no idea there was such a thing. I had simply heard a familiar language and answered it without thinking.

"Yeah," I said, scratching my cheek. "A little bit."

It was a lie, and not a small one. I had replied in plain English, the language I had spoken for my entire first life, and I was now far more confused than Theodore could ever be.

For a heartbeat, my pulse had screamed one word at me.

Transmigrator. Another soul dragged out of my old world and dropped into this one, sitting on a mattress in a vampire’s palace, humming and smiling. But Theodore’s question had cut that thought in half. If he recognized her speech as a language of this world, then it was a language of this world. A transmigrator would have been a stranger to it too.

’So this is not a person like me. This is a language that came from someone like me.’

I turned back to Camila and kept my tone light and curious.

"Who invented Euniscopian?" I asked, in English.

She did not even blink. "Zeno VI."

’Zeno VI.’

The name settled over me, heavy and cold.

Every child in the world knew that name. The greatest scientist who ever lived. The man who had introduced steam and machinery to the world, who had taken a land of horses and forges and turned it into a land of pistons and rails. The railway that Lee’s father had once overseen, running between Oakland and Hulam, only existed because of him.

"Where are you from?" Camila asked, tilting her head.

"Valemont."

"Wow." She grinned. "You speak really good Euniscopian."

I only nodded. My mouth did not seem willing to produce anything more.

It was already too much to process. Zeno VI had been a transmigrator, just like me. A man from my old world, who had arrived here with a head full of ideas this world was not ready for. As far as I knew, the head of the Zeno family now was Zeno XXII. Twenty-two generations. The family had come a very long way from that first stranger.

And his real name, the one nobody here would ever think to question, was Richard.

’Richard Zeno VI.’

I wondered if he knew about the book or had just transmigrated into an unknown place according to his mind. Then I wondered, uncomfortably, whether Camila’s language was a message he had left behind on purpose, for anyone who might someday come after him.

I shook the thought away. Not now.

’Focus. You are Peter. Peter is a scared, naive boy who is mildly impressed that a girl speaks another language.’

I turned toward the other two beds and made myself smile.

"Hello. I am Peter. This is Rudy."

The girl on the second bed sat up straighter. She had brunette hair, braided neatly over one shoulder, and a scattering of light freckles across her nose and cheeks that gave her a quiet, honest kind of charm. She looked about my age.

"I am Hazel," she said in Minkz, with a small, shy wave.

"Nice to meet you."

The third bed creaked as its occupant stretched.

"And I am Charolette," said the girl on it, in a lazy, amused voice.

She had blonde hair that fell loosely down her back and bright blue eyes, sharp and a little teasing. She looked a year or so older than me. And she was showing a great deal of skin. Whoever had designed those shorts had clearly been in a hurry, or had never heard of fabric, because from a certain angle her buttocks could be seen by the naked eye. Her top was not much more generous.

I looked at the ceiling.

’No. I do not see her like that... Do not look goddamn it... She is a roommate... A very, very exposed roommate... Look at the wall... Look at the goddamn wall... The wall is very interesting.’

I greeted her politely, with my eyes fixed somewhere around her left ear.

Beside me, Theodore was not so disciplined.

That dawg had drifted half a step to the side, tilting his head with the casual air of a man examining a painting, and his eyes were fixed on exactly the angle I had been avoiding. His expression was perfectly innocent. His ears had gone pink.

I felt my lips twitch.

’I cannot blame him, honestly.’

Both Hazel and Charolette had fair skin, the pale, soft complexion that most people from Valemont shared, and as I looked between them, a small, strange comfort crept into my chest. They looked like home. It was the first time since entering this mountain that anything had felt familiar.

I coughed into my fist and spoke up, because someone had to rescue Theodore.

"Uhh, which bed is mine?"

Charolette looked at me, one eyebrow lifting, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. She seemed to know exactly what had just happened and was kind enough to let it pass.

"The one next to mine," she said, nodding toward the empty bed beside her. "Rudy can take the one next to Camila. Those are the only two free."

She said Theodore’s name without hesitation. I had given both names a few moments ago, and she had not forgotten.

’Sharp. She listens. Do not underestimate her.’

"Also," Charolette continued, sitting up and crossing her legs, "the bathroom is attached, so you can use it whenever you like. We keep it clean, and we split the duties. Tomorrow is Camila’s day. The day after tomorrow, it is yours, Peter. And the day after that, it is Mr. Rudy’s."

"Rudy," Theodore corrected automatically, then flinched, as though the correction had been meant for himself.

"Rudy," Charolette agreed with a grin.

Theodore’s face had gone stern. He said nothing at all. I could almost hear the sound of a nobleman’s son, a viscount’s heir, quietly absorbing the news that he would be scrubbing a floor in three days.

’Do not laugh. Do not laugh. Do not laugh.’

I held it in, barely.

"You can also buy clothes here," Charolette went on, "but not with promises. With coins. They do not care about anything else. A Latent rank gift is worth ten coins. An Awakened rank gift is worth fifty. And a Bound rank gift is worth two hundred."

Her words dropped into my mind one by one, and I felt something inside me begin to turn. It was not a thought, exactly. It was more like the sound of a very large gear engaging.

’Ten. Fifty. Two hundred.’

I ran the numbers without meaning to.

A Latent gift was ten coins. The Piercing Leaf I had taken from that ugly little crab in the swamp was a Latent gift. Ten coins for a single leaf. And Ferals dropped gifts, sometimes, if one was lucky. Beasts dropped better ones. A Beast Horror, like the Kutur we had just left lying in that courtyard, could have dropped something far higher.

I thought of the Serpent of Luck resting against my chest. Its rank was Sovereign, something far beyond a Bound gift, and it was not for sale. But the ladder was there, and I could see every rung of it.

Five Bound gifts, Bianca had said, and the King would let a man go home. Two hundred coins each. A thousand coins, if the price were ever measured in this way.

’And we kill Beasts nine days out of ten.’

The numbers became a slow, dangerous smile that I had to hide behind my hand. The system did not simply let me steal. It gave me a reason to hunt. Every beast was a coin purse with legs. Every dead creature was a deposit.

Money, here, was not just a way to buy clothes. It was a way to buy time, and a way to buy rooms, and perhaps, one day, a way to buy a door out. In a mountain run by fear, the one thing a man could still own was a pile of coins that nobody could threaten away from him.

’Peter will be poor and frightened. But Edmund will be rich.’

I nodded slowly, as if Charolette had only told me something mildly interesting, and walked to the empty bed beside hers. The mattress was thick and firm, and when I sat down on it, it sank with a soft sigh. I leaned back against the pillow, let my shoulders drop, and let my whole body relax like a boy who had finally found somewhere safe to rest.

Across the room, Theodore stiffly dropped onto the bed beside Camila’s, wearing the expression of a man sitting on a very expensive chair he was not sure he was allowed to touch. Camila grinned at him and he nodded back, very formally.

Hazel had returned to her book. Charolette lay back with her arms folded behind her head. Outside the window, the crimson light had deepened to a color like old wine, and the whole room seemed to breathe slowly in and out.

For a moment, there was peace.

Then the silence cracked.

Gong!

A deep, resonant note rolled through the palace, shuddering through the stone, the floor, the bed frame beneath me. It echoed down the spiral stairs and out through the long red corridors, and somewhere far below, I heard the sound of footsteps beginning to move.

"Lunch," Camila said, bouncing to her feet.