An Unbound Soul

Henry dropped us off near the town market, which was a square courtyard surrounded by shops. They were the first obvious stores I'd seen, with colourful signage hanging outside and themed decoration. There were no window displays, though, which would have been hard without any windows. Despite the buildings being stone instead of wood, they had the same wooden shutters as we had back in the village, with no glass in sight. The courtyard itself was currently empty, but apparently villagers from nearby would come to open stalls there on specific days each season.

Our first priority was to buy what Mum needed; if we failed there, then Mum would be out of work until we could restock, which would cause us financial problems. Henry was able to give directions since he usually picked up Mum's supplies for us, so we headed over towards the shop of interest. It wasn't as if Mum had never been here before, but she hadn't made the trip personally ever since I'd been born, so her sense of direction was somewhat atrophied. Not that the town was large; we could have found it easily enough by aimless wandering.

The shop we entered was full of thread, yarn, fibres and fabrics. What it wasn't full of was staff. I expected Mum to call someone, but she started picking up spools of thread and bolts of fabric and tossing them into her bag. Seeing her casually carrying multiple bolts of fabric was impressive. Obviously, using Earth strength as a standard was setting the bar too low; even tailors here apparently had superhuman abilities.

Suitably loaded up, she proceeded to a desk at the back of the shop where a box was placed next to an abacus like device. She fiddled with the abacus for a bit, then counted out a bunch of coins and dropped them in the box.

I watched the whole process with some amount of incredulity. It was nice that they were so trusting and all, but how did they stay in business with no security whatsoever? A question I posed to Mum. "What's to stop someone from just taking something without paying?"

She looked confused. "But when you take something, you have to pay for it."

"But what if you don't? I don't see anything stopping you."

She looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. A quick double check confirmed that I hadn't accidentally slipped back to English, so why was she so confused? I knew our village was close knit and highly trusting, but this was another town. We didn't know anyone here. Was the crime rate so low that she couldn't even comprehend the concept of theft? Wait, speaking of English... Crime, police, law, murder, theft, war. Even something as mundane as 'lie'. I'd never heard the local equivalent of any of those words. There were others. Criminal, bandit, thug, murderer, outlaw, liar. A whole section of the language relating to criminality was missing. I'd thought it had just never come up back in our little well-behaved village, but on reflection it was very odd.

At this point, Mum came out of her stupor. "I'm sorry, little one, but I don't understand the question."

Weird. It wasn't that hard of a concept, was it? Then, while we were on the subject, I decided to try a different tack. "Mum, what do you call the people who enforce the... umm, what's a good word for (law)? People who enforce rules?"

She looked completely nonplussed. "Why would you need to enforce rules? What sort of rules? You mean like a child cheating at a game or something?"

So the reason I hadn't heard a word for police was that they had no police? That the people living here couldn't even imagine breaking the law, to such an extent that they didn't even have an explicitly written out set of laws? There was no crime at all? Not only was there no crime, but they couldn't even understand that crime was a thing that could exist? What sort of whacked out utopia had I reincarnated into here?! The world may only be a few hundred years old, but that's more than enough time to invent crime, for goodness' sake. I'd met humans. I was human. We were not generally known for our good behaviour!

"So what would happen to someone who took some thread from here without paying?"

This time, Mum just smiled. "You're being even weirder than usual today, aren't you little one? You have to pay. I suppose that if you did accidentally forget, you could always come back to pay later when you noticed your mistake."

There was something about the way she enunciated 'have' that made me suspicious. That didn't sound like she simply didn't understand the concept. That sounded like she literally had to... Or at least, thought that she did. "So when you say 'have to', you mean that if you don't, something physically stops you?"

She looked confused again. "Why would anyone..." Suddenly her expression changed, the confusion replaced with a big smile. "Come on, little one, I've got what I needed here. Let's move on."

I blinked in shock. What the hell just happened? One minute I was making progress, the next she seemed to forget we were even having the conversation. Was everyone in this country under some sort of screwed up brainwashing or something? That somehow being a reincarnate made me immune? No, not just being a reincarnate; any sort of mind control would be soul magic, wouldn't it, so [Abnormal Soul] would protect me. It was also possible that it just didn't affect kids; maybe I could ask Cluma some careful questions when we got back home. But still... Even if that's the way things were here, that didn't sound so bad. A perfect world with no crime, no war, where everything was fair. Wait... Was I really thinking that or was I actually under some amount of mind control too?! My resistance wasn't perfect after all. Arggg... What was I supposed to do if I couldn't even trust my own head? If I asked Mum about it, would she turn me over to some secret police for extra brainwashing? But there were no police? Again, arggg!

My increasingly panicked mental game of ping-pong continued as we wandered around more of the town, adding a few more small items to Mum's bag. But then we walked past something that I couldn't ignore. In large, proud lettering, a store that declared itself 'slave merchants'. Through the window I could see four people, three of whom were deep in discussion, two in fancy attire and the other practically in rags. The fourth was also in rags, sitting on a chair and swinging his legs, which were too short to reach the ground. The reason they were too short was obvious; he was a child no older than ten. Apparently noticing me staring at him, he looked up at me and smiled.

So much for a utopia, messed up or otherwise... That was not going to be something I could unsee ever. In retrospect, I realised that I already knew that even though the local language was missing lots of crime related terminology, it did have a word for slave. I really needed to spend some time sitting down and working through what I thought I knew, to re-evaluate everything without my Earth biases. But there was no time for that right now; this needed an explanation. I had no idea how to phrase the question, so I simply went for blunt.

"Mum, why are they selling children as slaves?"

"They aren't selling children, little one. If you want to borrow money, whoever you borrow from needs to know that it'll be paid back. If you can't pay, or even if you haven't borrowed money but can't afford to feed yourself, you can go to the slave merchants for help. They'll pay back any debt on your behalf, then find you work to do to pay them back. Maybe not work you'd have otherwise chosen to do, but it's not forever."

That didn't actually sound so bad. So they were debt slaves or poverty slaves, or maybe 'slave' was a mistranslation, and I'd made assumptions again? No, from the way Mum said that, it was obvious anyone using their 'services' didn't get to choose whatever work they were assigned. But they would earn back their freedom once the debt was repaid through their labour, which meant people weren't buying slaves, but only renting them. At least for debt slaves. That... made some kind of sense, except...

"But there's a child in there!"

Mum looked surprised at my not-quite question, but answered anyway. "If a parent has a debt, would they abandon their children in order to pay it back? They could leave a child with relatives or friends, or even in an orphanage, but why would they if they can keep their children with them? Anyone hiring a slave is required to provide food and shelter for dependents as well as the slave in question. Besides, if the child works too, the debt can be repaid faster. If I had to work off a debt, wouldn't you want to help me? You help out enough around the house already, despite being so young and not getting anything in return. Of course, they aren't forced to work, but most would want to help out their parents. Admittedly, it's more common to leave children with relatives when there are any around, but if there were, the relatives would often help support the family in the first place; the sort of people who require the services of the slave merchants tend to not have family to rely on."

Okay, fair enough. If their employer had to care for the child too, then of course they'd bring them along rather than throwing them into an orphanage. And yes, I would want to help. Mind controlled or not, she was my mother and she obviously loved me dearly despite how weird a child I was. And I loved her back, and would sacrifice much for her. So it wasn't as bad as I assumed, but I was still suspicious. I was surprised that anyone would want to pay money for a slave they didn't get to keep and that came with attached baggage, like children. This was weird... How did they get their money's worth? Was this some sort of alien social security implementation? What if someone needed money but was physically unable to work due to illness or something? Or there was simply no work available? How did poverty slaves work, given that there was no debt to repay?

I had so many questions, I didn't know where to start. I decided it was safest to hold my tongue for now. On the one hand, being a child probably gave me a lot more leeway with asking questions that adults would consider nonsensical, so I really should ask all these difficult questions sooner rather than later. On the other hand, I really needed to sort through what I knew, and what I thought I knew, before I started asking the wrong questions. Particularly now that I was worried about what asking the wrong questions might result in. How many days ago was it when I thought to myself that I'd learnt a lot about this world? I was still too naïve. I knew nothing and had been leaning far too much on Earth knowledge that was obviously not at all applicable.

I was too lost in thought to even notice that Mum had finished her shopping and that we were heading towards the library. I was expecting the library to be another building in the town centre, but when Mum prodded me out of my near sleep-walking state, I found that I was actually staring up at a large manor house. Mum nonchalantly walked up the path towards a side door. Wasn't this a noble residence? It didn't have a wall or guards, but neither did anything here. Why were we visiting a noble's house?!

Given the mind control revelation, the obvious question to ask was who had done it. Since the earth mother had buggered off and hadn't been heard from in the past three hundred years, there didn't seem to be any reason why she would be involved. Foreign countries would only do something like this as a prelude to invasion or to take advantage of us, and that didn't seem to be happening. It could have been this so called 'Emerald Nest' to ensure they had a reliable food supply, but if so, all the merchants must be in on it. That left the last suspects as the nobles, brainwashing their citizens so that they were easy to manage. How much simpler would it be to run a territory if the citizens couldn't even comprehend the concept of crime? Or insurrection, should the leaders abuse that power? I shuddered at the thought of certain leaders back on Earth having that ability, and the ways in which they would gleefully use it. I had no evidence, but I couldn't think of a better theory, and now here we are walking straight into what was potentially the lions' den. I desperately wanted to tell Mum to forget the whole library thing, and to just go home, but she'd already knocked. It was already too late to run.

The door was answered by an elderly gentleman. Very definitely a gentleman, as dapper as could be. He was wearing a black jacket and top hat with a handlebar moustache, and even had a monocle. A butler, maybe? The image was so alien to my current mood that I froze up completely, forgetting even to be nervous. He spoke in carefully clipped tones; "How may I help you?"

"We would like to visit the library, please."

He looked intently at my mum, before looking down at me. "Of course. I shall lead the..."

He locked up mid-sentence, eyes open wide and still staring at me. What, was there something on my face? My nervousness instantly returned with a vengeance, and I clung to Mum's leg. He recovered within a couple of seconds, his momentary surprise wiped off his expression as if it had never existed.

"My sincere apologies for my discomposure. I was startled to see a mage so young."

Crap, did he just hit me with [Analysis]? I had no idea of the etiquette here. Or where here was. Fortunately, Mum responded for me before I had a chance to embarrass myself.

"There's no need to apologise. He is indeed a rather surprising child. He is the reason we wish to access the library."

"As you wish. Then I shall lead the way at once."

He turned and led us through a couple of corridors. I was panicking like crazy on the inside, despite doing my best to keep up appearances on the outside. How much of my status did he just see? He hadn't mentioned anything other than knowing I was a mage, and hadn't named my class or a single skill or trait. Perhaps it was a rank two [Appraisal] rather than [Analysis]? Or it could have been even worse, and he was using a rank four skill that showed everything about me. It would be natural for an employee in a noble manor to have higher skills than a random villager from the edge of nowhere, right? If he saw my affinity attunement... He might be leading us into a trap right now, or he might leave us in the library before going to fetch a squad of guards to capture us. I wanted to scream and run away, but if he had rank four skills, there was no hope of actually escaping.

My fears only spiked as he let us in to a small room which contained a half dozen desks placed along three of the walls, but certainly no books. Mum seemed completely unconcerned as she thanked him, and he wandered off. We weren't alone; there were a couple more people sitting at desks, eyes closed and a hand placed flat over... something. I wasn't tall enough to see, but they definitely seemed to have a hand over something on a desk. Before I could say anything to mum, she lifted me up, sat down at a free desk and put me down on her lap.

"Here you go. Put your hand on this crystal, and you'll be able to access the library."

...Huh?