1????????Soul Bound

  1.3??????Making a Splash

  1.3.2????An Allotropic Realignment

  1.3.2.30 People like us can't afford dreams

  Once the orphans had finished congratulating Nicolo, their mood was fairly downbeat. A quick glance at Wellington’s score chart explained why:

  The other Wombles, who’d all re-joined her, were only too happy to tell her about the drama she’d missed, as the orphans lined up in front of a round-bottomed kettle pot, dented with age and so large the lunch team had had to carry it back suspended from a pole bourne on their shoulders.

  Kafana: “... so the Phantoms’ captain got trampled?”

  Tomsk: “Not deliberately, as far as I can tell. Two Juveniles players tripped, and several others fell on top of them. He ended up at the bottom of the pile.”

  She could see the captain in his #4 shirt, where he’d been given a place of honour at the head of the soup queue along with the rest of his team. She remembered his bright smile and alert eyes from earlier, his short hair still wild, despite attempts to tame it with close shaven sides. He wasn’t smiling now, and there were streaks of dried blood in his hair. He walked with a heavy limp, but an inner stubbornness kept him going, head held high and gaze undaunted.

  Nicolo came over to sit with them, carrying a simple wooden bowl as though it were precious treasure. The bowl itself looked like it had been handed down by generations of orphans, the legacy of chips and stains making clear that it too was a survivor. But Nicolo’s attention was upon the bowl’s contents, a pungent fish soup. He drank precisely half, then handed the bowl to her.

  She closed her eyes and tried a sip, focusing her sense skills upon it like she would upon a sample of Columbina’s cooking. A mistake. A big big mistake.

  It was clear the orphanage’s cook had simmered it all morning, doing her best to produce something tasty and nutritious with the cheapest trimmings available from Fish Town. She’d nearly succeeded... but herbs can only cover up so much. At best it could be described as “warming”.

  Wordlessly she passed it around the other members of House Sincero, daring them to reject the gift, and left Bulgaria explaining vessels to Nicolo while she took the opportunity to flip out to The Burrow and play Vessel Kafana’s message.

  It felt so nice to feel the emotions of her other self, even second hand via a recording of Wellington experiencing vessel Kafana’s thoughts as they shared minds using the Stone of the Mind Healer. She flashed through a memory of a morning spent replicating the sweets they’d obtained in the Arsenal and enchanting them, a memory of her other Self working out how to shape runes onto the surface of multiple roast almonds at the same time, and the dark chocolate Columbina had shown her how to produce and coat them with.

  She remembered the bitter taste of the chocolate, and the pride her vessel had felt in winning praise from Columbina for valuing presentation and combinations that brought out the subtleties of taste, rather than just strength of magical effect. She felt how seriously she’d taken her commitment to the professions Kafana had fallen into. Not just towards becoming as great a cook as she could learn to be. She’d spent hours accompanying Vittoria picking out a site for the new temple to Mor, because she was now a guardian representing all the deities, not just Cov. She’d spent days labouring at mage craft with vessel Wellington and talking about the new homes they’d soon be raising with the temporarily displaced residents now watching them - talking in such passionate tones that the residents' resulting belief empowered the Reality magic rather than hindering it.

  It wasn’t just vessel Wellington she’d worked with either. Though she kept visiting the worst parts of the city by herself to share her healing, now accompanied by throngs of mudlarks or toughs from the Roave, she spent most of her time helping the other vessels; riding on patrols with vessel Tomsk, researching dragonettes with vessel Alderney, schemes and games with vessel Bulgaria and vessel Bungo. Her loyalty and selflessness were total. Blinding.

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  She realised, in a way she hadn’t fully taken in before, that to her vessel Soul Bound was life itself. Each day Kafana spent eighteen hours outside the game, but for her vessel there was no outside. Her every moment was spent on Covob, her skills, her identity and very periods of consciousness all shaped by a stranger she’d offered up body and control to, in return for a chance to explore new things, a chance to serve Cov’s will; a chance to become something more.

  How could Kafana match that, be worthy of that? If Nicolo owed Kafana a debt, how much more did Kafana owe one to her vessel, if one even could owe oneself a debt? How could she even let vessel Kafana know how she felt, how amazing she thought her vessel was? Experiencing it directly just wasn’t the same as reading words in a letter.

  She flipped back to the game, to discover that in her absence her vessel had sung healing for the players of both teams. More than that, she’d fed them enchanted ginger tostees to restore their stamina, and had used her Direct Kitchen skill to marshal legions of helpers wielding knives and chopping boards rather than spears and shields. The resulting baskets of tossed salad, being shared around the spectators, contained spiced baked croutons and toasted pine nuts, pale crunchy lettuce and golden friggitelli peppers, bright red onions and tiny tomatoes, a smattering of Magusan olives and crumbled Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, all united by a vinaigrette that her vessel seemed to have enchanted to create harmony. It tasted wonderful.

  [Skill “Food quality improvement” has reached level 12.]

  [Skill “Preparation” has reached level 9.]

  [Skill “Direct Kitchen” has reached level 5.]

  [Skill “Rulership” has reached level 2.]

  Was directing a kitchen similar in some way to ruling? She looked around at the way the food had brought the two sides together, crafters and orphans eating out of the same salad baskets. She’d done more than direct helpers in preparing the food - she’d leveraged her skills, her reputation, and her resources to alter people’s mood and behaviour. She’d redefined the meaning of the event by effort of will, just as a Reality mage fighting against resistance could pour in mana, like water rising behind a dam, until a critical pressure was reached and things started moving.

  Not that this new spirit of shared identity seemed likely to make the teams less competitive - the Phantoms had polished off their meal and grabbed Bulgaria before he’d eaten even half his bowl of salad, and in another direction the tall Juveniles players were sitting in a semicircle around the towering Bungo, attentive but slightly puzzled, while he attempted to explain football tactics to them in terms of bluff and misdirection in Primiera (apparently a game the locals played with Tarot cards, that involved betting and the careful use of passes to set up the conditions needed for a big win).

  The rest of the orphans though, especially the twelve year olds still hoping to find a job or apprenticeship to move onto to before they reached the orphanage’s age limit, were treating this as an opportunity, and were now mixing freely with the Juveniles supporters, asking questions of apprentices about the wages and dangers of different crafting professions. Morelato himself, and the other senior figures, were being treated like high nobility - not besieged but, rather, surrounded at a respectful distance by courtiers performing calculated displays intended to impress him. One neatly dressed girl played a sprightly tune on a set of shepherd’s pipes she’d whittled herself, while a sharp eyed lad juggled stones with some panache, even catching them behind his back and pretending a bird had stolen them. The best attempt was by an adorable pair of Slavic twins, seven years old at most, whose heart-warming antics had her entranced until Nicolo spoke up.

  Nicolo: “Pietro and Pepina. They’re still babies, still dreaming a family will one day come and shower them with love, if only they put enough stat points in Charisma and work hard enough on their routine. They do it every time a new person visits the orphanage, and practice every hour they’re not working with the rest of us to keep fed and clothed. We tried to tell them they’re wasting their stat points.” He sighed.

  Kafana: “Is it a waste?”

  Nicolo: “Orphans can’t afford dreams. You have to be real. The only people who come to take orphans are molestatori or employers, and only the former want charisma - real employers want points put into stats that help a worker build products faster or cheaper. Management jobs that require charisma only go to relatives or the children of rich guild members. That’s just how it is.”

  He shrugged.

  Kafana: “Are the villagers of Celleno not looking after the orphans they’re teaching about farming?”

  Nicolo: “I guess. But they had lots of their own children eaten by trolls, and they wouldn’t have come all the way into Torello to our orphanage if it hadn’t been for you; they’d have put word out to neighbouring villages. You can’t pin your hopes on something like that. The only reason I have some points in Charisma is because the brothel owner gave me a choice between obedience then being allowed to continue singing, or disobedience then…”

  He broke off, choosing not to complete the sentence. He didn’t need to - she’d been inside his mind and seen more than enough memories of his past to fill in the blanks. She nodded acknowledgement and moved on.

  Kafana: “What about the Guilds? Once you’re a member, doesn’t promotion depend upon your skill and reputation?”

  Nicolo: “If you can get in? Yes. Sometimes. It depends upon the guild and the guildmaster. But it’s the master who chooses the apprentice, not the other way around. No matter which the guild, most masters will pick their apprentices with an eye for favours and what the apprentice and the apprentice’s family can do to benefit the master, not just for how dedicated and talented the candidate is. Resources, connections, reputation - we don’t have any of that.”