Roadwork

Warmer weather meant roadwork. Long lines of quarrymen and hired hands had been dumping layers of sand, sediment, and rock onto the path all day long, until they had a low dike running between farmers' fields. The choice of this particular lane, and the few others that year, was meant to benefit as many farms as possible. Roadwork was always costly, but the township wasn't just repairing things this year. These were major improvements.

A boy walked along the long mound. His hair was midnight blue, and he dressed in layers against the mercurial spring weather. He could have been any child of ten or so years, except for two unusual features. First was the mask he wore, green with white wyverns over the cheekbones. Everybody knew the mark of Bilius d'Mourne, the new legate of Township Mourne, cursed son of the previous legate.

Everybody knew about his curse: His face made people hate him. For those who dared, there were curse-molifying rules for interacting with him safely. Yet, despite his oddities, he'd become admirable in a best-from-a-distance kind of way. Mourne hadn't had an active legate in a decade, and the new legate's strength was undeniable. If anybody expressed doubts about that, the locals directed them to a certain tavern where a massive wyvern head oversaw the town's socializing.

The second odd feature about the boy was what happened to the mounds of earth as he walked on them: they shrank, shifted, compacted, and morphed into proper roadway. To the few who were willing to risk speaking to him, Bilius was happy to explain that proper roads were more than a layer of packed ground. They had multiple layers under the surface, each with a purpose, a slight slope toward either side, adequate drainage, and other niceties. Anyone who listened to him thought he had a weird depth of knowledge about roads for a ten-year-old, but that was fine. Cursed legate children were bound to be a little different from everybody else.

The lane itself was a little wider than a cart path, but it was important to the farmers. Township Mourne was investing a fortune in new machines and animals, but new equipment was useless if it couldn't get to where it was needed. Several new fields would be opened in the coming year, and existing fields should yield more. That was on top of the increase from praying to the divine statue of Feythlonda, goddess of fertility.

Praying to the subordinate gods was a recent practice in the township, and the divine statue was a gift from their new legate. People liked doing it. It felt right, and they often wondered why the practice had been forgotten for so long.

What they didn't know about Bilius d'Mourne was that he didn't think of himself as Bilus at all. To himself, he was Taylor.

Taylor had lived many lives in many worlds, but he'd only died of old age once. His goal for this life was to do it again. It was hard, training up new bodies and minds to contain all of his potential. He couldn't learn a lot of new things until enough of the old things fit inside of him, and that took years of effort.

A case in point was the road he was working on. He had learned earthworks from a succession of architects, civil engineers, and intuitive geniuses. He once worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Disciple Zorda, the greatest road builder of any world, and built highways at a brisk walking pace. They could do twenty miles in a day. Now, he could barely manage three hundred meters of country lane, and only if the material was carted in first.

He ran out of material shortly before he ran out of mana, so he spent his last drops of magical strength preparing the next section of road. He worked until there wasn't anything left to give. His hands shook, and he felt dizzy and used up. Most magicians couldn't use their full capacity, and grew slowly as a result. Taylor could squeeze every drop and still fight with a sword. That capability had saved his life many times.

The sun was going down, and that meant it was his favorite time of day: Time to fish! This world had a kind of walleye that was delicious, and they came near the surface to feed in twilight. He pulled a message tablet from his satchel, put his thumb on the 'write' button, and thought words at it.

Legate-X: Finished roadwork for the day. Gone fishing.

Curator-J: See you tomorrow.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

He ran for the local river, a merry thing swollen with snowmelt from the nearby hills. He could sense fish nearby, in a lazy section of water shaded by thorny brambles. To get there, he had to widen an existing path with his township-provided sword until he found the shore, then pull on waders from his bag. Those were followed by his tackle box, fishing pole, and a floating cooler full of ice. Space expansion was, in Taylor's opinion, the most useful everyday magic. One rarely needed to blast away wyverns, but one could always use extra storage.

For tackle, he chose a new lure, weighted to drift a couple of feet underwater and move to imitate live bait. He cast his line and let the stream pull on it, driving it down to the desired depth. Simultaneously, he heaved a sigh of great relief.

Fishing was the best. Nothing to do but feel the wind against his hot skin, watch the grasses wave, feel the mud around his feet, and enjoy the stream. Silently, he thanked Lanulculte, goddess of rivers and streams. She didn't talk to him much, but they had an affinity for each other. There were a few divine statues of her around his domain, either in or near water, and he always acknowledged her when he passed one. The townsfolk knew of at least two of them, and he'd seen other anglers pay her homage.

His first catch was a carp, slightly bigger than his hand. Taylor set it free.

His second catch was also a carp. The same carp.

"You don't learn very quickly, do you?"

This time, the little fish got tossed upstream.

His third catch was the same carp again.

"Come back in a couple of years, when you're big enough to eat." Taylor threw him downstream, far enough to avoid his line. Maybe it would be too lazy to come back against the current, and go downstream toward the reservoir instead. He didn't particularly mind catching the same one again, but he was still fishing for tomorrow's breakfast.

His fourth bite nearly ripped the pole from his hand. It was something large, with considerable fight. It had to have been lurking deep under the mud. The pole bent nearly in half, but Taylor wasn't worried. It was a praxis, engraved with spells for durability and enhanced strength. Taylor fought the fish as it tried to escape upriver and down, chose his moment carefully, and hauled it from the water all at once to land on shore. It was dark by that time, so he had to summon light to get a good look at what he'd caught, thrashing in the brambles.

It was a monster of a walleye. Not monster as in 'exceptionally large', though it was, but monster as in 'mutated by magic'. It looked like the local species, but four feet long and with more vivid colors: light gold-green bands shone brightly against nearly black scales. It had a lot more teeth than a walleye should, and its dorsal fin was topped with a row of barbed spikes.

Taylor killed and cleaned it, and made sure to get the mana stone. It shone like the fish's scales, gold-green flashes at the surface and deep black-green in its depths, about the size of his thumbnail and purer than he expected. The stomach contained a little bit of everything: bugs, crayfish, smaller walleye, and the unfortunate carp he'd caught earlier.

To his surprise, Baby Carp was wounded but alive. For no particular reason, he practiced his healing magic on it and then dropped it into the river.

"Today, you are the luckiest fish in Aarden."

Since he didn't detect any poison, he pulled the mana out of the monster walleye, cut it into pieces to fit inside his cooler, and hit them with a preservation spell (technically necromancy, but nobody liked to call it that). He was just stuffing everything into his satchel when the external, non-expanded pocket beeped at him.

His tablet.

Curator-J: Check the Midway channel.

Taylor thumbed the Midway channel and gave it a quick read-through. The expected trade caravan was missing, as were the deputies they sent out to find it.

Legate-X: That's not good. All the town's new machinery is on that caravan. And the mansion's remodeling material. We're insured, right?

Curator-J: We are. But losing it means we don't get any of it until summer, at the earliest. It puts our plans on hold. The projects might not get done at all.

Father, the previous legate, had been gone for a decade, with no sign of ever returning to the township that broke his heart. But there were signs the restoration was failing. If Father returned and resumed his role, any half-finished projects were probably doomed. He had not set eyes on his cursed son since the day he was born, and didn't answer the boy's letters. It wouldn't be surprising if he reacted badly to all the changes Taylor was making.

That was one concern. The other was that Taylor hated bandits.

Legate-X: I'll drop a line to BlueMarco and invite myself over.

Curator-J: Good hunting. Please don't die.

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