An hour later, in the ACME headquarters in Gadobhra, Layla was walking down the stairs, dressed in full baronial finery. A few minutes before she'd been in a robe in her bedroom, eating breakfast and looking at the shrinking finances of the Barony. Building the new fortress was like the death of a thousand cuts, with new wounds opening each day. They needed this deal with the Fae badly. When word had come up that Suzette was downstairs, she spent a few minutes on her hair and burned a large amount of her mana using one of her skills to be instantly presentable. She might be getting along with Suzette these days, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to compete.

"How nice to see your darling. I have some tea coming out in a moment. You're a bit early for the nightly blood and gore, what brings you here at the crack of noon?"

Suzette looked at Layla for a moment, then grinned, not able to keep quiet any longer. "I have a bank!"

Layla blinked. Billy had been trying to get a bank in Gadobhra. Banks meant power and success to him. So far no one had taken him up on his offer of a large corner lot. No businesses and no money meant no interest. But of course, the little barmaid had found someone to open up a bank. Probably a halfling with a magic chest who would sit on a corner and put your money in one of seven magical pockets. Nothing in Sedgewick was ever normal.

"That's wonderful dear. You have a place to start putting away a nest egg for your old age." The Baroness sighed. Old habits die hard. "But if you're up here to tell me about it then it's significant. What can a bank do for you? And more importantly, for me?"

"Well, for one, it can get bigger. The more it has, the more it can offer. Eventually we can gain the ability to sell to the entire empire. And all by a secure transfer. No chests of gold traveling roads and subject to bandits."

Layla paused to think. That was a huge asset. She needed all the details. "Start at the beginning, and don't leave anything out." A half hour later, and several sheets of vellum sacrificed to the god of paperwork, Layla understood the basics, and they were starting to firm up a plan.

Layla watched Suzette, who was enjoying the Danish that had been brought in for brunch. The two of them had taken a small break by mutual consent to do justice to the pastries. They'd come from somewhere south, brought by their local merchant prince.

"The Kallveks are the people we need on board with this. We need to convince them that it's going to make them more money to list our items and take a cut, than to buy them and sell the items themselves. Right now, he can make more buying some enchanted knives, or items from your dungeons. But when the Menagerie and Pit start getting regular parties exploring them, we may have plenty of business to send to other merchants. Billy managed to acquire a whole pile of items recently. I was going to talk to you about putting a few up for sale in your tavern."

"Yes, I talked to them a little this morning. I think their hopes are that we will continue to sell to them, and they in turn can sell for a much larger profit deeper into the empire. Right now we need them, and I like them, but we need a better system.

"I have a better idea than just a few more items in the tavern. Tomorrow I'm opening a shop for magic items in a building next to the tavern, and linking it to the bank." Suzette had been thinking about it for a while. She had a few dozen items now, and the Tavern walls made for poor shopping. She had an idea about who she wanted to run it.

Layla liked the idea. "Splendid. And when an item sells, all the money goes into my account? Very convenient and makes for easy paperwork."

Suzette giggled. "I love it when you say something funny with that perfect poker face. Really dear? All the money? Poor impoverished Sedgewick deserves something for its work."

Layla hadn't thought the idea would fly, but she'd tried anyway. "Then what were you thinking?"

"I'm thinking 80% to you, 10% to the store to help cover wages, and 10% to the village account. If it was anyone else, it would be more. A lot more. But this takes into account that Sedgewick owes a cut to Gadobhra and lumps that into the 80%." Suzette and Ozzy had talked a lot about how to handle Billy and Layla. For now, the strategy was based on being useful and working together. Hopefully the two ACME managers reciprocated. If they didn't? Well, things would change rapidly.

Layla blinked. That was a very reasonable offer, she had been expecting to have to negotiate. "That works. There are already more adventurers down in Sedgwick, with Gadobhra being a little scary still. We'll get a lot more sales this way and start converting dungeon loot to cash, and have less things that need us to focus on. I don't have to tell you how busy things are going to get with the ongoing construction and little problems that are popping up. What else do you need from us to get the magic shop started?"

Suzette had a list. "You and Billy both need to open personal accounts, as well as an account as Baron and Baroness, and an account for the city. The banker suggested all of that. Additional accounts can be opened for guilds. Then we need deposits. The quicker the bank builds up a big hoard of gold, the faster we can have shops in the Capital list our goods. I'm going to talk to Marcus about paying for a small stand at the merchant’s area at the keep, and renting storage space. We'll need it for shipping goods eventually. I think with just a bit more in the bank, Gadobhra should be included. That will mean someone can buy from you here, with money from the Sedgewick bank. That will let you open more shops here as the city grows."

Layla opened a bottle of wine. She poured a glass for each of them. "I propose a toast: To Conquest through Commerce."

Billy found the two of them giggling and laughing an hour later, with several empty bottles on the table. He retreated upstairs, grumbling. "Dammit, I just restocked my wine cellar, that woman is going to bankrupt me."

"Easy job. The guy is out in the fields away from the other people for hours at a time. No one's going to miss him. The only thing tough is making sure we catch his pet in the net. Then we just walk back to the horses and head south for a big payday. And no more whining about being here." Sevigny was irritated. The idiots had heard some stories from a drunk in a tavern and suddenly they were spooked to even do an easy job near the weird little town where strange things happened.

Dmitri had other opinions. "Look, I just don't want to lose all of my gear again. You said joining up with that other guild to clean out that bandit stronghold was 'an easy job' and yet somehow, we ended up tied to stakes in the forest, the bandits taking all of our stuff, and a crazy guy with goat legs and horns comes along and draws weird tattoos on us that cost us all the gold we had in the bank to get removed."

Sevigny winced. "Look, the plan was solid..."

"And yet we all got a penis drawn on each cheek and our bank accounts drained." The other two men nodded, agreeing with Dmitri.

"Look, guys, I suffered through that too! Plus, all the thanks I get for finding us ways to make quick cash is having to hear this crap from you for the next month. I'm hurting too! That's why I grabbed this job. It's a little weird, but the Baron there is obsessive about butterflies and he wants this one. He's offered 1000 gold for a live specimen brought to him, and 500 if dead and intact. That buys a lot of gear. Then we go hit some dungeons and we'll be back to the point where we can get into a good guild. Some of the guys were even talking about a Thieves Guild we could join, but you have to have done some successful thieving to apply. We have to start somewhere."

There was some grumbling still, the town had a bad reputation in Northguard, and that old drunk hadn't helped at all. He had a dozen weird stories to tell about some war that took place here last year. Dmitri was a sucker for any story about weird stuff, and his complaining had spooked Bert and Greggy. Sevigny hoped that this was the last time he had to convince them all.

"Ok, here's the plan. Calves are always wandering off from that herd. Then the shepherd and his pet come find them. He uses it like a sheep dog to round up the strays. We just grab the calf and take it off a little further. Get it really stuck in a thorn bush, and then wait. Bert and Greggy pop the nets it, and then Dmitri puts bug and nets into the barrel, and we head off. If the shepherd runs over, then I'll take care of him."

There were nods all around and they waited impatiently for one of the calves to wander their way.

"Squirmie, I think one of the little calves got lost!"

come and find me!' Hopefully it gets eaten by squirrels.>

"Ah, Squirmie, have I been working you too hard, little buddy? You've been doing a great job of rounding them up."

"I gotcha! We'll go hunt something up after we bed the herd down for the night. Go bring in that calf and then we'll thin out the squirrels some before we head up to Gadobhra for butchering."

Squirmie grumbled a little, but flew off to find the calf that had been intentionally wandering towards a thicket. Rolly yelled out to Thumper to start rounding up the cows and calves. The young bull was becoming better and better at commanding the herd and some of the younger cows always clustered around him now.

He knew immediately when Squirmie was surprised and attacked. He whistled for Thumper who came running immediately. Rolly grabbed hold as the bull came running by. Sevigny had been prepared to deal with an annoyed shepherd and was ready to put his sword through him. He wasn't prepared for an angry sedge bull charging straight through the brush. Thumper lowered his head and dealt with the bug-napper as he would Ozzy. Sadly, for Signy, he weighed half of what Ozzy did with 25 points less in strength. Nor was he skilled in the gentlemanly art of Bulldogging. He went flying through the air after being gored by a horn, and landed deep in the thorn thicket where Dmitri was still struggling with the calf. Older branches broke off and speared through Sevigny's thigh and shoulder. He wasn't going to be able to extricate himself without help or losing a lot of blood.

Rolly saw Squirmie on the ground, covered in netting. Bert and Greggy were trying to wrap her up. Two razor sharp wings expanded to their full size, slicing through the thin cotton netting, and through the thin skin of Bert and Greggy. The two men dropped the deadly bundle and backed away. Bert only had a superficial wound across his chest, but Greggy was holding his abdomen to keep things from his insides from moving outside. Rolly dived off of Thumper and tackled Bert to the ground.

Thumper veered around Squirmie and planted a hoof onto Greggy's kneecap as he ran by, crushing it. Dimitry tried to hold the calf in front of him as a shield, but it kicked him hard in the guts with a rear hoof and scampered away. Dimitry took Thumper's charge badly and was driven far into the thorns, piled atop a screaming Sevigny. Thumper backed out, shaking his head to free it from the thicket, thorns breaking off on his hard hide.

Bert had never had any fight in him and had been expecting things to go badly. He didn't even try to fight back. Rolly hit him a few times and let him surrender. Squirmie tossed off the shreds of the netting and flew over to Rolly who gave her a hug. "You ok?"

"I'm surprised these guys could ambush you like that."

Oh no, I have been captured! Come save me brave shepherd'.

"I like it! Can I be the victim next time?"

"Good point. I'm not nearly as pretty as you are. Let's play another game. This one is called 'Interrogation'. I want to know who was trying to steal you from me. These guys don't look like the type of people who like pets."