Chapter 9

Back inside the trio headed into Mr Bates’ office, followed by the two coffers carried by the struggling labourers. The workers dumped down the chests at the front of the room gasping and massaging their sore backs.

“Careful you dimwits! I’ll dock your pay for that!” Mr Bates barked.

Grumbling, the procession left the office, leaving the original occupants to their devices.

“Now then my Lord, before we continue may I take a look at the investment? Only to check the authenticity of course.” Mr Bates continued humbly.

Jason, who has been grinning from ear to ear ever since they entered inside, “Of course! Who am I to impede your good work sir!”

Mr Bates nodded and lifted the lid to one of the chests, inside, there were thousands upon thousands of tiny green cubes, placed symmetrically on top of one another. The cubes themselves had little white streaks running through them, like veins, while a tiny insignia of a head posing sideways was imprinted into the top of each square.

By now Mr Bates’ hands were shaking, never in his life has he seen so much value at the same time, nothing he ever had to sell was worth this much and the money was certainly never exchanged so casually, who could be so stupid as to simply carry this with himself to buy a house? Armoured carriages would take money from bank to bank, transferring the coinage from one account to the other, that’s how business was conducted, this was… Well, unheard of!

Taking one zin he got out a monocle from his pocket, inspecting the insignia and veins, looking for anything out of place. He did this several times, reaching down layers at random, upsetting the perfectly placed blocks in the process. After five or so minutes, Mr Bates finally said.

“How much is in each chest my Lord?”

“Approximately 500 000 zins.”

“Both?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll send the chests back with the remaining zins in it my lord.” Mr Bates replied

“Yes, I’d appreciate that.” Jason smiled good naturedly

“Well, all seems to be in order, so let me get the deed for the land.”

Mr Bates stood up and went to a different shelf, this time pulling out a roll of parchment. Walking back he said

“Here are several documents, one is the acknowledgement of the king that you are the rightful owner of this estate and the surrounding land, bear in mind the title of ‘owner’ can only be assigned to a single person at a time. The second one is changing the name of the Estate, previously known as the Springwell Estate, this is important for the previous document as the name of the land has to be written down on that as well. The third document is a citizenship document, once a citizen, you have to abide to the laws of Iona, a city of the humans. Along with the citizenship you get a copy of the laws and regulations which will be sent to you by post, you should also note that only the landowner has to be a citizen.”

“Very well I’ll be the owner.” Jason said

Mr Bates nodded, “Please sign here then. And what shall the name of the Estate be?”

“Hmm, Tilda tell me. What’s our family name again?” Jason frowned.

“Uhm, its Fyr.” Tilda muttered while inspecting a zin.

“Then it shall be called the Fyr Manor.” Jason grinned.

“Please write down the name here… And here… Very good my Lord, and finally the citizenship.”

Mr Bates cleared his throat “Please state your full name here then repeat after me.”

“I Allan Bates swear,”

“I Jason Fyr swear,”

“That I will uphold the law,”

“Will uphold the Law,”

“Keep the peace,”

“Keep the peace,”

“And will be Loyal to his Majesty and all who bear the title.”

“And I will be Loyal to his Majesty and all who bear the title.”

“Congratulations Lord Fyr, you are now a member of Iona, the capital and center of humanity.”

“Wonderful, anything else?”

“Ahh yes, here’s the key.”

Mr Bates handed over a slim silver key with a teardrop shaped end.

“Now please allow me to escort my Lord and my Lady to the carriage.”

“No need, my sister and I have things to discuss that cannot be left until we reach the privacy of our transport.” Jason said, waving his hand.

“Well then, I hope you enjoy your life here at Iona my Lord.”

“Oh I shall, I shall, goodbye Mr Bates. May we conduct business again.” Jason said holding out his hand.

Mr Bates took it and shook it “I hope so too my Lord.”

Jason and Tilda left the office, with Tilda in a daze. Once outside Jason started walking, his appearance already reverted.

“Who are you?” Tilda asked in a small voice behind her back as she saw her simple garb again.

Jason stopped and looked at her “Think of me as a man with no limit, no matter how far you’ll look into me you won’t find where I end.”

“DON’T PLAY GAMES WITH ME!” Tilda suddenly shouted.

A moment pf silence passed before Jason turned around sighed, “Look, you are probably thinking that a man this powerful could drag your children into something horrible, but listen to me, and I mean listen because I will only say this once. I will never, place you, or your family, in danger.”

Tilda was relieved, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, now, what’s next?”

“We need to move belongings from our old house into the new one.” Tilda said, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Fabulous, let’s go then” Jason said.

As they made their way back to their old home the bells rang noon.

“Do we need to notify anyone we’re leaving the house?” Jason asked

“No, my parents brought it, I doubt even the man who sold it to us remembers it exists.”

“Great! Then could I use it for my own nefarious purposes?”

Tilda shrugged, “Knock yourself out.”

“By the way Tilda, how old are you?”

Tilda glanced suspiciously at Jason before saying, as off handed as possible “Thirty seven.”

“I’m only asking because there’ll be a lot of suitors going for you after the world finds out we’re the richest family in the city.”

Tilda stopped, Jason turning around was wondering what the problem was before Tilda burst out laughing. “Let them come! I’ll test each and every one of them! Let’see who can win my hand and heart!”

Jason was surprised “So you’re not against remarrying?”

“Me? Of course not, I intend to use as much as I can of my remaining years. I don’t need to be faithful! Besides I never even married. We were too poor to fund the ceremony.”

“Oh.” Jason said “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be, my family was never big on religion anyway, those who struggle in life either turn their back against the gods, or become fanatics.” Tilda said.

As they made their away along the streets they slowly reached their house in the slums.

“Haa, I never imagined I’d be able to rid myself of this cursed place, I’m really grateful you know, we all are.”

“Well don’t think life is going to get any easier” Jason warned “There’s gonna a be a lot of work from now on, we’ll have to hire servants, set up a business, we can’t just rely on me to make money every time when there’s a problem. And of course since we’re a family, we’ll have to attend parties, go to meetings, perhaps we’ll even have audiences even with the king. Your children might have marry without love.”

“Come what may, we’ll weather through it. But at least we’ll have warm beds and food on the table.” Tilda said sagely.

Jason and Tilda entered the house to the sound of shouting. The place was turned upside down as furniture was thrown haphazardly into the little dining room, from beds to baskets filled with clothes to even a small doll sitting on a wardrobe, it was chaos incarnate.

“Give it back it’s mine!” Ilios shouted.

“Shut up! No it’s not!” Gwandere shouted back.

“What’s going on?” Tilda barked as she ran to one of the bedrooms, Peyton chose this exact moment to come running down the steps, shouting “Fire in the hole!”

There was a tremendous crash and dust flew down from the attic. It was a truly terrifying sound, the top steps even seemed to have been even covered in a mysterious blue slime.

“TELL ME WHAT’S GOING ON OR I’LL HAVE YOUR HEADS RIGHT THIS INSTANT!” Tilda roared as she charged towards Peyton, who was shaking at the sudden arrival of his fearsome mother.

“Weeeell, you see uhh, I found this uhh, thing aaaaand Gwandere and Ilios seemed to be busy and Nasha was doing something as well and we’re moving out you see so I thought that maybe I could perhaps…”

“Perhaps what?” Tilda asked with barely contained anger.

“Well…” Peyton said in a really tiny voice while poking his fingers. “Explode something?”

“WHAT? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” Tilda shouted, there was spittle coming out of her mouth by now.

“I just ripped my pillow apart that’s all! I swear it wasn’t much!” Peyton shot back, suddenly offended.

Ilios chose this moment to storm out of Gwandere’s bedroom looking angry and pissed. “Ma! Gwandere says that you made that blanket for her!”

Gwandere came rushing out after Ilios clutching a red, threadbare blanket “That’s because she did! I remember she promised to make it for my seventh birthday!”

“No! She made it for me saying that you and Nasha already hav-”

“BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP!” Tilda snarled, she was becoming more and more feral by the second.

“PEYTON NEARLY KILLED YOU BOTH AND YOU’RE ARGUEING ABOUT A BLOODY CLOTH! GET OUT OF MY SIGHT BEFORE I KILL YOU MYSELF!”

The two girls were stunned, they dared not utter a single word that could cause their mother to be angered further, quietly, the exited the house.

Tilda turned back to Peyton and smacked him on the back of the head, hard. “That’s for nearly killing your sisters.” Then she sat down on a chair and sighed, “Tell me, what did you do upstairs?”

Peyton, who was staring at the floor mutely after his punishment looked up, “I got some Sanguine powder, put it in my pillow and poured water in to it.” He mumbled

“And why would you do that?” Tilda asked

“Why? Well Ahh… Why not?” Peyton said, nervous.

Tilda let out another exasperated sigh, “Did you at least empty your room before you did it?”

Peyton nodded vigorously “I got everything out, Nasha did as well so she went off to get a wagon to put the stuff in.”

Tilda smiled, “At least one of you has a head. Tell the other two to come back inside.”

Peyton did so and the two girls shuffled in, nervously looking everywhere except Tilda. Tilda on the other hand simply said “How much have you done?”

Gwandere started “We, um, got the beds out,”

“And the cabinets” Ilios put in helpfully

“It was only Gwandere’s wardrobe where we had, um, issues.” Gwandere finished lamely.

Tilda just shook her head sadly, “I don’t even understand why you made such a big fuss, neither of you even wanted it that’s why I put it there.”

The girls looked like they wanted to argue but just then they heard the clop of hooves outside, Jason went over to the door and opened it, finding Nasha riding up to the door with a mule drawing a rickety wooden carriage.

“It isn’t the best thing out there but the owner didn’t want the mule anymore.” Nasha called over from behind the driver’s seat.

“It’ll do, now then. I think it’s time to get this show on the road.” Jason said, turning back to the pile of stuff in the house. With a click of his fingers, every single object slowly lifted off the ground and levitated on to the cart. Everyone was dumbstruck except Tilda who said

“Yeah, yeah, we know. He’s amazing, let’s go everyone! I wanna get to the new place before third bell.”

“Where are we going anyway?” Peyton asked, climbing on top of the pile on the carriage.

“That’s a surprise.” Jason winked.