“What would you pay to have access to your own personal waterstone?”

Ms. Ruby, the Orc woman, parted her dreadlocks from in front of her face, as if doing so would somehow make her hear me more clearly. “So that again, pretty boy?”

We were standing at the bar within the tavern, Phee and I still damp from our dip in the tub. The crowd had gotten more lively now since we’d left with the patrons shifting from diners to drinkers, filling the atmosphere with raucous laughter and loud music. Yunni and Devena had already left it appeared, perhaps retreating to the relative serenity of our loft upstairs. Our landlady continued to just stare at me confused as she held a half filled mug of ale in her hand.

“A waterstone,” I said again. “You’d never have to fetch a bucket of water ever again. How much would you be willing to pay for that?”

“Pay for it?” Ms. Ruby let out a sharp laugh. “Let’s see you lot pay for what you damn well owe me first, before you try swindling me out more than this place is even worth. A waterstone…piss off, pretty boy!”

Oratory vs Ms. Ruby: Failure

-0 to Relationship

Current relationship 300 Positive

I grinned at her. “You wouldn’t have to pay a thing,” I explained. “As you said, we owe you for too much, but you’d gain the full benefits of a waterstone. The only thing I’d need from you is your permission to house it on your property, just out back by the bath and the dock, and you’d have access to it forever.”

Negotiation Vs. Ms. Ruby: Minor Success

“So you’re going to pay me back by putting a waterstone on my property?”

“Essentially yes,” I said. “And I’d be willing to throw in free upgrades to the inn as well. In time.”

The Orc lady eyed me more suspiciously now, perhaps sensing I was being completely serious about the whole thing. She then looked up at Phee. “That tricky bitch dragon whore put you all up to this?”

“No, no,” I said quickly. “This has nothing to do with her. It’s all my idea.”

“Well then,” she said, her look of skepticisms switching to a cringe-inducing smile. “If that’s the case then I’d rather you pay for this deal in flesh, if you know what I mean…”

She winked and me and my spider sense went to Defcon 4. “Uh… no. I don’t know what you mean actually, but I think sticking to gold as our basis for transaction would be—”

“You bums can’t afford to even pay me what you owe me, so how in nine hells would you come up with thirty-thousand gold to put a damn waterstone in this dump?”

Oratory vs Ms. Ruby: Failure

“Well we wouldn’t be buying it you see, I’m going to make it.”

The portly Orc woman laughed. “Tell you what, pretty boy, since the chances of that happening are slim and it’s more likely you all are just running a new scam to keep you all living here for free while you muck up my back yard, I’m going to be make sure that I get something out of this deal…whether you pull it off or not.”

The brash Orc woman just went up a notch in formidability in my books. She definitely wasn’t a slouch when it came to negotiating or reasoning. I took a quick peek at her stats with my discernment ability, and sure enough her intelligence was thirteen.

“What are you proposing?” I asked.

She gave me another rotten-toothed smile. “Looks like you already done married yourself off to this one…” she said, jutting her double chin at Phee. “…so I won’t be too imposing. How long it going to take you to build this thing?”

I thought on my feet. Ideally I needed it up a running before the competition, but having it ready for the Expo would be even better. But it was just an idea so far and I had tons of work ahead of me before I could even guestimate a schedule. But sensing where this was going I needed to give her as long a timeframe as possible. “One month.”

Negotiation vs Ms. Ruby: Failure

-50 to relationship.

“One month?” the Orc lady scowled. “You all ain’t living off me for that long. I’m giving you a damn week, pretty boy. You fail to deliver and you owe me two hours all to myself. In the bedroom. Deal?”

My gut clinched as she gave me another wink. I glanced up at Phee for her reaction and to my horror she was nodding her head as if you say, “That’s not too bad.”

“Phee,” I said incredulously. “You’re okay with this?”

The Half-ogress leaned down to me and whispered in my ear. “As your firstbond I do need to advise you in these matters. So no I don’t approve of you bonding with her, but I can attest that two hours with you does hold fair value, Cole. And with our present financial situation, we have to consider the use of all of our abilities.”

“Oh my god…Phee…are you actually pimping me out?!”

Phee shrugged. “I don’t know what that means, but if it’s anything like, ‘taking one for the team’ then I say, yes.”

Phee chuckled softly and gave me a peck on the cheek, leaving me stupefied.

Ms. Ruby merely grinned.

“So, what will it be, pretty boy?”

* * *

I burst through the doors of the loft, with Phee still laughing her head off behind me, feeling simultaneously like Don Juan and a two bit gigolo at the end of his rope. Devena and Yunni glaced towards us at Phee’s uncontrollable laughted.

“What’s so funny?” Yunni asked.

“Don’t ask,” I said. “Everyone. Team meeting. Now.”

I rallied them together around the workbench to lay out my plan. I didn’t have much time to begin with but now that the sanctity of my precious junk was on the line, I really needed to amp up the timeframe.

“I’m switching our focus,” I said. “We can’t compete with these other guild. Not yet. At least not on their own terms. So I’ve come up with a strategy that will bring us income regardless of what they do.”

I then explained the idea in detail, or as much as I could anyway. By the time I finished, however by the confused looks on their faces, it was clear that they’d only understood about half what of what I’d said.

“So you’re going to make a waterstone?” Devena said sardonically. “Out of metal?”

I sighed. “Yes. Sort of. Back home we call it a pump … but here it’d be called a… mechanical waterstone, I guess.”

Devena shook her head. “That’s the stupidest sounding thing I’ve ever heard of.”

“Well I think it sounds intriguing!” Yunni, the perpetual cheerleader chimed in with a smile. “But I’m still not clear on how it makes the water exactly. The metal forces the water into a tiny space and then because the water doesn’t like to be squeezed it gets all angry wants to forcefully go somewhere else, right? So does the metal make the water come alive to starting thinking like that? Or does the water always think like that and it’s really just us communing with the water spirit through the metal to tell it what to do?”

“Um…” I ran both hands through my head at Yunni’s bizarre recount of my clearly failed explanation on of the incompressibility of a fluid. “More like the second one, I guess…?”

“Look, Master Cole just placed his body on this deal,” Phee said saving me from the agony of further explanation. “So I’m trusting him on this, no matter what. Now what do we need us all to do, Cole?”

I smiled up at my sexy Firsbond, thankful for her undying faith in me.

“Phee, you’re easy,” I said. “You just keep doing what you always do, bring in as much crystals as you can. But now that you have Lex, challenge as tough of monster as possible. I’m going to need a lot of mana to pull of what I’m about to do and you’ll be the primary source for that.”

The half-ogress smiled. “I won’t let you down.”

“Devena.” I turned to the dragon lady next. “You’re on procurement detail. Tomorrow I need you to scour the city and source as much cheap scrap iron and copper as you can find. If you can grab some steel cheaply that’d be even better. ”

The request seemed to surprise her and just when I expected some kind of pushback, she gave me a smile. “Consider it done. What quantities are we looking for? The more bulk, the lower I can negotiate the price.”

I saw a new spark in her. Devena was still a diva for sure, but I was happy to see she was being a team player now and getting on board. Maybe I had her figured all wrong. Like any high performer, I guess, she just wanted to be used in her true area of worth and expertise. While I still thought having the racial ability to heal someone was freaking amazing, perhaps for her it was more like me calling up a Chinese plastic surgeon and then constantly asking the guy to make me an order of fried rice—totally racist and ignorant perhaps.

“Shoot for two thousand pounds at least, but the more the better.”

“And how are we paying for it?” she asked the next obvious question.

“We’re not for now,” I said. “Just get quotes and pricing. If you can go to different suppliers to get separate quotes so we can compare prices that’d be good too.”

She nodded. “I’ll do that.”

“One more thing,” I said. “We’re going to need a contractor. Or what you guys call a contractor anyway.”

“Contracts,” Phee said. “I don’t know if it’d be wise to put our agreement with Ms. Ruby in writing, Cole.”

“No not for her,” I said, shuddering on the inside. “This would be for phase two of the three of the plan. I need someone who would have no issue writing a contract based on pure speculation and no guaranteed outcome.”

Devena frowned. “Contractors are a stick to the law kind of bunch. I don’t think you’d find any who’d be willing to temp the fates or the wrath of the Goddess by writing contracts like that.”

“Oh don’t worry,” I said. “I already know a dude. And he kind of owes me one. See if you can track down a Satyr named Yaya Shreef Eldeen. Tell him the powerful, monosyllabic Cole is now a Guildmaster and requires his services.”

Devena magically produced her book and began wiring down what I said verbatim. “Extremely odd, but will do.”

“Excellent.”

“What about me?” Yunni asked, looking up a me. “What do you need me to do?”

I smiled at the Nymph. “You get the best job of all, Yunni. No more research for you, tomorrow. Tomorrow you’re going to be my assistant.”

Her eyes went wide with wonder and excitement. “I can’t wait.”

“Okay let’s all get a good night’s rest. We have a ton of ground to cover tomorrow. Ms. Ruby gave us a week, but I want this ready for the Expo. So that means we only have three days to pull this off.”

They all stared back at me like I was crazy.

“You heard me. Three days. But we can do this. Trust me. The fate of the Guild depends on it.”

The workaholic in me wanted to stay up, but I was physically drained and I knew I would perform best in the morning with a fresh start. As we went to bed and I lay next to Phee, my mind was ticking over with the ideas of my plan. I resisted the urge of just tapping into my amulet to get started, and instead forced to go to sleep.

Get your rest, I told myself, because tomorrow you’re going to have to engineer the shit out of this.