***Orson***

“Someone killed my poor, sweet Leben!” One of Orson’s men, a waddling merchant who oversaw a large part of Orson’s Cobalt imports, blubbered in front of him like a child, pressing a silk hanky into his dripping nose.

“I don’t have time for this,” Orson said, flipping through the reports with increasing ire. In one night, someone had just sold lace around town in quantities that dropped the value to barely more than the silk it was composed of. A precipitous fall.

“Please, sir, you have to do something. There was this handsome young man…so handsome, and yet, Avashniel’s fruit. Riddled with venom and worms on the inside. I generously offered to give him a job, and he attacked without provocation.”

Translation: I tried to bribe a young man into having sex with me, and when he refused, I sicced my servant on the man, who was then killed in self-defense, Orson thought, rolling his eyes.

A thought occurred to Orson.

“Wait, you said he was handsome?”

The reports were incredibly varied, some of the people who sold the lace were older, some younger, some men, some women, but two thing all the suspects had in common was that they were rather attractive, and had a slight Gadveran accent.

“Oh yes, he had such a lovely androgynous face, I could hardly tell if he was a man or a woman, just imagine getting your hands on soft man-flesh like –“

“Shut up. Did he have a Gadveran accent?” Orson asked.

“Well, yes, he said his parents were Gadveran and he was an orphan.”

“Uh huh.” Orson said, chewing on his lip as he thought. There had been a rather significant spike in the murder rate last night, as more than one shady merchant had hired goons to tail these sellers back to their abode and retrieve the money they’d spent on the valuable silk, essentially making twice the profit.

Everyone who’d had eyes on the people had been disposed of, one way or another. Except the fat pedophile in front of him.

“Did the boy you met have a bolt of cloth, or a sack of coin?”

“Come to think of it,” The merchant said, tapping his pudgy fingers against his corpulent lips. “He was carrying a bag with the East Bole Trading company’s seal on it. It looked heavy. You think he had gold in there?”

“I’m asking the questions. What direction was he going?”

“West on seventh avenue. I remember because I was headed to a delightful-”

“Shut up.”

West of the East Bole, huh? Orson thought, scratching his chin. More reports were sure to come filtering in, and he would slowly cinch the noose around whatever fool had the balls to make a fool of Uleis.

And when I find them first. I’ll pocket the fortune they’ve scraped together and add it to my own.

***Kala***

“Cast away your possessions!” The shaggy beggar cried, jumping in their way as they tried to walk past him, wearing salvaged leather rags. His eyes bulged with zealous energy. “Join me on the path to the divine!”

“Get lost,” Orson’s bodyguard said, shoving the ragged man aside as they walked toward Orson’s mansion after a failed attempt to arrange a meeting with the Hash’maje.

To Kala’s eyes, Orson looked like a slimy white worm. The worm had razor sharp barbs hidden against its soft flesh to deter predators, and a vicious ring of teeth for it to suck blood from it’s prey.

This stuff is interesting. Kala thought, patting the king’s ransom of Jush-powder in her purse.

Ever since she’d gotten the Skill, she’d made a point of seeing how different drugs interacted with Seer. She’d never used Jush powder before, but it seemed to afflict her with waking dreams and hallucinations without affecting her lucidity too badly.

Although if something truly strange happened, Kala might not be able to react to it in time, considering how numb she was to the bizzare at this point.

The potted plant with golden leaves pushed himself off the ground and skittered away into the alley before Orson’s bodyguard pressed the issue further.

The worm beside her was squirming around a glass vial of scintillating golden water with a large crack in it. Try as it might, the golden fluid leaked through the slimy coils of the worm.

“Does something upset you?” Kala asked as they walked.

“Oh, it’s nothing to bother yourself with, my dear.”

“Please, Mr. Huul, It’s my job to keep the finger on the pulse of Uleisan politics. My only goal is to come to an agreement that is mutually satisfactory, not tear you down. I need to know what’s going on around me to do my job.”

“Hah,” Orson chuckled lightly. “I suppose you’ll hear it from someone sooner or later. Someone conned half the city last night. The merchant’s guild is furious.”

“That’s horrible. How were they conned?”

“We’re not entirely sure, but rest assured princess, the matter will be resolved soon. When this mysterious organization tries to start throwing its ill-gotten wealth around, we’ll get word, then we’ll come down on them like the mountains of Bast. Thieves like that rarely have the self-control to simply sit on money.”

Kala glanced over her shoulder, where Calvin was busily slipping solid Nem cufflinks into his pockets, giving her an embarrassed smile.

Calvin didn’t look like any creature that existed on Marconen. In her eyes, he looked like a realization. The sudden realization of inevitable death and never-ending torment. The realization that all things happen, and one would eventually experience all of them, no matter how awful. Starting now.

It was hard to describe what a realization looked like, it was more about what it made her feel like, as she watched the rapidly fluctuating patterns of Calvin’s soul. Simply looking at him with the jush powder in her system made her hairs stand on end, and her body to fill with an indescribable terror. She glanced away before the shadow inside him noticed her.

Terror didn’t affect her the same way any more, since she’d taken Grounding, the Seer Ability that reinforced her mind’s resilience against mind-damaging effects, including the mind-damaging effect of looking at things mortal eyes weren’t ever meant to see.

Actually, she kind of liked it, now. Just looking at Calvin was a rush of sheer terror that got her heart going in the morning.

And the abs. I wonder what being filled with existential terror and filled with Calvin at the same time would feel like. I bet my heart would explode.

Kala choked back a lewd snicker and turned her attention back to their host. Outwardly the man was nothing but gracious, but when pressed, he didn’t seem particularly helpful. Matter of fact, he seemed more interested in assessing the state of Gadvera using her first hand account, looking for weakness.

Kala talked Gadvera up, embellishing the truth in exchange for information about the state of Uleis, which was similarly disingenuous.

It was Hash’Maje this, Hash’maje that, as if the Hash’maje were some kind of indomitable demigod, stomping from place to place, fighting crime and negotiating trade deals. Kala personally knew how far a single Hash’maje’s energy could take him, and the singing of the man’s praise didn’t have the ring of truth.

“As a matter of fact, you can see the palace from here.” Orson said, pointing at the castle made of enchanted blue glass, a testament to the ingenuity of the Ulesians.

The spires of glass that seemed far too fragile to ever stand on their own were surrounded by a net.

A strange web of chains was interwoven with twelve anchors, holding the palace down to earth.

Seer has increased to level 10! 50% Correction.

+1 Intuition

Please choose a -

Huh. Kala thought, dismissing the notification as she studied the chains. She assumed they were in her head, since there was no possible explanation to use that much steel for decorative chains.

Twelve chains. Twelve laws? twelve families, businesses, people? Something was controlling the power of the palace, and it came from outside of it.

Good to know. She’d have to do a little digging, but it was definitely good to have a hint to start her off, rather than believing a meeting with the Hash’maje would eventually come.

“It’s lovely.” She said.

“Indeed. The palace was built from Living Glass four hundred years ago by the greatest artisan of the day; Bebel Kush. It’s the second greatest pride of our nation.”

“Second?” Kala asked.

“Follow me a bit further, and you’ll see,” he said, smiling.

A couple minutes later, they were at the top of the hill that housed Orson’s mansion. When they crested the rise, a massive crystalline structure revealed itself on the other side of the hill.

A field of needle-like spires of delicate glass rose high up into the sky, gently swaying as the wind blew against them. They must have been absolutely massive in person.

“The oasis alone is not enough to support such a large city, and so we make our own, by pulling it straight out of the air.”

He pointed at a lump in the sand that stretched all the way to the city proper.

“Buried there is the line for the water that is piped back to the city.”

Calvin got a contemplative look while looking at the lifeline, obviously considering a way to poison an entire city. She’d need to gently remind him that that wasn’t an option. Plus the damn thing was definitely guarded.

“Remarkable,” Kala said, her mind disconnecting from her mouth in a familiar way as she retreated inward to think.

She had to figure out who or what was actually running the country and arrange a meeting with them, bypassing the Hash’Maje entirely. The idea of freeing the Hash’maje from the tyranny of those controlling him was…dumb.

A political coup was not the ideal outcome, so she shoved that errant thought aside. Besides, the Hash’maje was probably just as much of a bastard as those controlling him.

She needed to continue to seek audience with the leader of the country to maintain appearances of course, but she also needed to find out who the twelve chains belonged to and what they wanted, so she could negotiate some kind of deal rather than cool her heels here indefinitely.

Work, work. Nothing but work in her busy schedule, when Kala would rather sit on the hillside with her crush, watch the scintillating spires of glass bow like grass in the breeze, and make out.

Kala took a deep breath, shored up her princess face and got back to work.

***Calvin***

“Hold on there,” one of the guards at the fanciful gates of Orson’s mansion said, placing a palm on Calvin’s chest as he tried to follow Kala through the gate.

Calvin glanced down at the hand on his chest, not quite comprehending.

“Only the Princess’s personal bodyguard past this point.”

“So…where are we supposed to stay?” Calvin asked, glancing back at the line of two hundred soldiers behind him.

“Mr. Huul only extends his invitation to the princess. You will have to seek shelter elsewhere.”

“My job is keeping her safe. How does that not include staying where I can see her?”

“It is not our duty to tell you how to do your job,” the smug bastard said with a self-satisfied smile.

A glorified bellhop thinks he’s better than me? I’m gonna kill this guy.

“I suppose someone whose only duty involves standing in one place for hours at a time can suffer from debilitating heat-stroke, because I think you’re hallucinating. Why don’t you try saying that again?”

“Captain,” Kala said from the other side of the gate, shaking her head slightly. “Probably not a good idea. why don’t you find a place for your men?”

Fine. FINE!

“Alright, but I’m going to leave a couple runners here in case of emergency,” Calvin said, turning away.

“Grant, you’re in charge. Take Ella and Carl along with half the company and set up tents here. The rest of us are going shopping for a place to stay.”

Ever since the battle for Fort Choke, calvin had been working on Carl’s movement and defensive skills, along with his Rally Skill, making him the perfect rallying point/bannerman.

“Why me?” Grant asked.

“You can fly, and if it becomes an emergency, I know you won’t choke.”

“Alright.”

“I’ll send someone with an update on our position ever two hours or so.” Calvin said. He gave Kala one last glance before he turned around and headed for the city proper.

Behind him, Calvin caught a fragment of Orson’s men wondering loud enough for everyone to hear, why on Marconen the Gadveran royal family had decided to send someone so young to lead Kala’s guard.

Not quite that politely put, though.

Calvin stomped down on the urge to respond with violence. His behavior reflected on Kala and Gadvera in general, after all.

Poisoning the entire city is starting to sound pretty appealing right now. Not that Calvin had the means to do so.

He needed to bankroll a base of operations for his company, and he had to do it without attracting too much attention from the people who were already trying to strike back against him.

Conning, my ass. Calling me a thief when every single one of those merchants offered a price so far below market value it should have been criminal. Trying to steal a poor man’s inheritance, is what it was.

We could try buying debt.

Say what? Calvin thought.

When a moneylender loans someone money, they have a piece of paper that says how much they’re owed. Often times this piece of paper includes a right to collect collateral. Ownership of this piece of paper is transferrable, and is often traded back and forth between lenders like money.

What would we do with it?

Generally, the idea is to grab people by the short hairs. Buy some rich guy’s debt, then collect the collateral, I.E. his house. You can also use it to force people to do your bidding. It’s great fun.

Sounds like a plan, but I think Nadia’s more suited to that job than I am.

True.

How am I supposed to explain where I got all this money, then?

What are you talking about? You think Gadvera would send it’s finest unit abroad without the money they need to stay solvent?

That’s exactly what they did. I suspect General Andra knew what I was planning.

Uleis doesn’t know that. Could explain where you got the money.

“Hmm..” Calvin held out his hand as he walked toward the hospitality district. He’d probably have to rent out an entire inn for the first couple nights, but after that, he needed a more long term solution.

Chained Spirit.

11/15 Bent remaining.

“What,” She asked, arms crossed.

“I want you and Baroke to go around the moneylenders and see if you can sniff out someone who owns a mansion big enough to house the company and enough debt for us to tear it ruthlessly out of his hands. Sound like fun?”

Nadia gave him a feral grin. “I spent the last two days in all the brothels in town. I already have someone in mind.”