Fifteen cubed is… one fifty plus seventy five, two twenty five times fifteen.. add a zero, then half again… two thousand two fifty plus one one twenty-five….three thousand three hundred and seventy-five.

Calvin’s leg muscles screamed in protest as he pulled the wagon while he figured out Nadia’s summon duration. He could be riding it, but he needed to raise his physical abilities to match his Body.

Calvin started on the other side of the problem with minutes in a day, his mind rearranging the problem into easier chunks as he pulled, leaning into the thick bar of beautifully carved wood.

Why not make the wagon something he could sell when he got there?

Twenty four times sixty…. Two forty times six… four eighty times three. Five hundred times three minus sixty… one thousand four hundred and forty.

Two eight eight zero out of three three seven five.

Five shy of an even five hundred remainder.

Four hundred and ninety five divided by fourteen hundred and forty.

At this point Calvin felt confident he could round up to just above a third, which left him with forty-eight hours and eight more, plus a tiny bit extra.

Each Nadia would last two days and eight hours. Chained Spirit is awesome.

He regenerated three point four Bent per day, giving him basically seven Nadia’s to work with and still maintain a stable Bent supply.

“Are there princesses in Uleis?” Calvin asked, glancing over at his wagon pulling partner, someone who he could pump for information regarding politics at any time, day or night.

“Yes.” Nadia said, grimacing as she leaned into the yoke beside him.

Plus, she pulled a mean wagon.

“How many?”

“I’m not sure. Last I heard, the Hash’Maje of Uleis had seven wives and thirty two children, most of which are most likely daughters between the ages of fifty and five.”

“Why most of them?”

“Because male heirs tend to die young, which would weight the remaining children towards being female.”

“Ah… do you think it would be easier to kidnap a fifty-year old princess or a five year old one?” Calvin asked,

“Fifty-year old.” Nadia said, her legs flexing as they started their way up the gentle hill to where they were meeting the rest of the caravan heading out into the desert.

“I didn’t expect you to say that, I mean isn’t a child small, stupid, and portable?” Calvin said, shaking his head.

“A child will be chaperoned and wary of strangers. A fifty-year old matron…they’re desperate for a little excitement in their lives. Easy enough to get them away from prying eyes.

“Eww…are you suggesting I seduce a woman three times my age?” Calvin asked.

She met his gaze, her blue eyes steady. “You asked which one would be easier. I told you. Whether you’ve got the balls for it is up to you, isn’t it? What’s your fascination with princesses anyway?”

“What, and tell you all my secrets so you can betray me to my enemies?”

She raised a brow.

“I’m just kidding. I know you’d never betray me because your existence depends entirely on my whims.”

Calvin gave a raised brow back at her before looking back at the road.

“I’ve got a mutation that gives me two points of Body for each princess I kidnap. You technically counted, if that makes you feel any better, existentially.”

“It does,” she said, her gaze lingering on the side of his face for a moment before she looked out to the road.

“That’s an awfully specific Mutation that doesn’t seem like it would arise in nature. I mean, princesshood is a social construct, not something you can interact with.” She looked him up and down. “You don’t look like a Warped. You think you’re a new species?”

Sometimes a creature, or more rarely a person would mutate in the Break, and the mutation would pass down to their children. It was how most of the speaking races had come to be. At least as far as the scholars of Gadvera believed.

“Oh, I’m something, all right,” Calvin said, not really interested in thinking about his mutations and their deeper meaning.

He’d asked enough questions to enough different strangers that he had gotten a pretty clear picture of what was not normal. Humans got Abilities, not Mutations, and nobody’s System made snide remarks and called themselves Elliot.

Speaking of beans. Thermite that rock!

Calvin put his fingers on the ingredients in the belt over his shoulder.

He didn’t have to do it, but it helped his speed and accuracy greatly if he had some definitive sense of exactly where the ingredients were when he cast the spell.

Multi-Shaping.

3/15 Bent remaining.

Calvin closed his eyes and pictured the bar of magnesium with big holes drilled through to aerate the top half. These holes were stuffed with God’s Fire and a tiny flake of the reactive metal.

The magnesium appeared on top of the rock buried in a mound of thermite.

Just like Elliot had showed him, the god’s fire ignited the magnesium, the magnesium ignited the thermite, and in a moment, the boulder had a smoking hole in the top where the thermite had burned through.

Oh, my god, I can’t get enough of that. Although it took three seconds for you to visualize it all properly. We gotta work on your draw speed, kid.

At least it actually caught this time. That’s more important than speeding up and risking a dud.

Why don’t you hop in the back, and we can do some Shadow-Boxing?

Can’t, I’m working out.

Working out is so boring! Elliot exclaimed petulantly. Savages work out. Real wizards only need their minds.

I don’t disagree, but wouldn’t it be stupid not to take the opportunity to have both? And isn’t being smart rule number one of being a wizard?

The first rule of being a wizard is that people are stupid and will believe things to be true if they want them to be true, or are afraid they might be.

Sounds more like a rule for ruling weak-minded masses.

Pretty much.

“What in the Abyss was that?” Nadia asked, craning her neck to look over Calvin at the hollowed-out, smoking boulder as they passed.

“A spell I’ve been practicing,” Calvin said. “It’s too slow for fighting with, but you never know when you might want to melt something on command.”

Amen.

Nadia gave Calvin a curious glance, dropping down to his belt stuffed with various vials, woods, and bars of metal, then she shrugged and got back to pulling the wagon loaded down with luxury goods.

Calvin didn’t want to destroy Maggie’s or anyone else’s entire family business, so he didn’t resell any of the lace in Mujenan, instead pawning a few select pieces of Scrimshaw art that his Knick-knacks had made with coral, shell and mother of pearl, in order to buy several more bolts of silk along with the materials his Knick-knacks would need to make more art: Stains, dyes, paints, laquer, that sort of thing.

Come to think of it, no matter where he went, he was taking money out of the hands of someone by cornering a market as thoroughly as he was planning.

You wanna make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs. You’ve literally killed hundreds of people. Think of this as defunding Uleis to weaken their position while Kala negotiates, and try not to think of all the thousands of people that will probably starve when you put them out of a job.

Gee, thanks.

Just putting things into perspective. Moving up in the world crushes the people beneath you. There’s no way around it.

So helpful.

Still gonna do it?

Calvin glared out at the road in front of him. I’m still gonna do it.

Thattaboy.

A few minutes later, they crested the rise, and Calvin’s company came into view, along with Kala’s oversized carriage covered in vibrant decorative plumage, along with her similarly plumed Royal Guards.

“Gotta go,” Calvin said, slipping out of the yoke, leaving Nadia to pull the wagon on her own. She gave a tired grunt and kept pulling while he ran ahead of his caravan of luxury exports.

Calvin jogged up to his company, in as dignified a manner as he could. Grant was chewing his lip and shaking his head as he watched Calvin approach, while Lieutenant Veyers stood at strict attention.

“You’re here early.” Calvin said as he approached. Calvin had been intending to have everything set up by the time anyone arrived.

“Grant suggested that the Hash’maje might appreciate us being early, and it paid off.” Veyers said nodding at the fancy carriage.

“Do you have identical octuplets in black leather pulling your wagons?” Balud asked. The green-sashed engineer was standing at the front of the assembly with another two dozen or so curious onlookers.

Calvin glanced over his shoulder at the caravan of eight identical wagons, each pulled by a separate Nadia in her typical black leather.

That’s gonna suck in the desert.

At least we’ll find out if a Chained Spirit can suffer from heatstroke.

“No.” Calvin said, turning back to the assembled men.

“Who here’s got Strength or Endurance below their Body?”

A surprising fraction of his men raised their hands.

“Excellent. Those of you with your hands up, join the octuplets in pulling the wagons. Those of you with your hands down… find a seat in the wagons if you can, and the gods help you if you get confused about which group you’re in.”

The hundred and eighty-seven men and women hustled to do his bidding.

“Why is Nadia pulling the wagons?” Kala asked as she approached, trailing her guards. The first wagon was coming to a halt in front of them as Kala stopped to talk to him, putting the three of them within earshot.

“I didn’t have the money for Guar. Besides, she doesn’t need to eat.”

At Kala’s horrified gaze, he shrugged. “She likes being abused.”

“He’s lying.” Nadia said, her voice iron. Her gaze told a different story.

“You know I can literally tell what you’re feeling, right?” Calvin asked, glancing over at her. Nadia growled and pulled the wagon away from them. “I don’t really get it, but it is convenient.”

“It’s not for me. I prefer dashing knights and romance.” Kala said, holding a hand over her chest.

“Followed by animalistic lovemaking, right?”

Kala’s guards stared at Calvin with bloodshot eyes.

“Ella told you about the books, didn’t she?”

“Let’s just say she’s recently acquired a profound interest in learning to read a certain kind of literature recently, and it wasn’t me that introduced her to the Cave Gardor series.”

Calvin crossed his arms with a smirk. There was only one place those books could have come from, and they offered a little window into what made Kala tick.

Kala stepped near, her scent tickling his nose, slender body so close his enhanced senses could make out every curve. It was intoxicating.

Then Calvin notice her scowl.

“You tell no one, understand?” She whispered harshly, poking a finger into his chest…hard. Maybe hard enough to draw blood under his shirt.

“I was mistaken,” Calvin said loud enough for her guards to hear it. “And terribly rude.”

“That’s right you were.” She said with a sniff.

Ella approached as Kala walked away, her posture impeccable.

“Was it just me, or did I just piss her off?” Calvin asked.

“Was she wearing the gold earrings or the pearl ones?”

“Why does that matter?” Calvin asked.

“Because you flirted with her while she was Diplomat Kala. Didn’t you get the message at the market?”

“What message?” Calvin demanded, testing the skin of his chest for abrasion.

“The conversation we had? Different earrings for different things?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Ella narrowed her eyes. “You don’t have very high natural Intuition do you?”

“Why does everyone say that?”

Cuz it’s true. But you’re not totally to blame for this one, women are staggeringly better at communicating via body language. You were literally missing out on one out of every three ideas communicated on that date. The low Intuiton doesn’t help, either.

“Kala can’t be your friend all the time, especially not one you flirt with, while she’s being followed around by her father’s goons. The earrings are indicative of when it’s safe to talk to her.”

I did not get that from the conversation last week.

“Why can’t people just be…What they are all the time!?” Calvin asked.

“It’s about the roles we play in society.”

AAHAHAHAHAHAH, you’re getting lectured about propriety by a cannibal savage! There was a thump and the crashing of furniture as Elliot continued to howl with laughter.

“Okay…fine.” Calvin said, taking a calming breath. “I’ll mind my behavior, but you guys have to tell me what you’re thinking…with words. Because I understand words. I don’t understand…” Cavin winked twice and nudged Ella’s arm with his elbow.

“You just insulted my mother.” Ella said.

“Really?”

“Nah.”