Drawstone

A man of Trey's occupation could often grow tired of their offices. There was a lot of pressure that came with being at the top of the hierarchy. Trey didn't mind the pressure. He had spent his whole life dealing with it.

He pulled the sweet, earthy smoke from a cigar he'd been enjoying over the last half hour. A ring of smoke blew from his lips, expanding as it neared the window. It rose and dissipated against the grey autumn sky.

He was really fond of that trick.

A self-satisfied smile touched his lips as he filed the papers he'd been glancing at. Mrs. Verilian's signature double tap echoed from the door at the front of his office.

Was it that time already?

He loved his daughter — the life of a Council Seat was busy and making time to be present with her was challenging, but it was a challenge he didn't avoid. It was important to him he was present in her life.

But she was the scion of a great family. She was a future record holder, a tremendous athlete, an intelligent young woman, and she knew it. On their own merits, those weren't so bad. What gave him pause was the fact that she was a teenager. And like many children her age, she believed she knew better than those who raised them.

Parenting during his daughter's teenage years was challenging. He understood these formative years would significantly influence her adult life, both positively and negatively.

Still, his heart, having trended towards growing colder in recent years, always warmed to a significant degree when he could spend time with her. So he stood and made for the large double doors to meet with his favourite guest. Opening the doors, Mrs. Verilion stepped to the side, revealing the frowning form of his daughter.

He beamed at her. She was the spitting image of her mother. A bit more athletic, a bit more arrogant. But she has the same inquisitive focus. One day she would be leading high-level boardroom meetings with dozens of ambitious subordinates, all jockeying for position and distracting her with their pet projects and opinions. Such a gaze would cut through their dreams like a hot knife through butter.

But until then, all it could do was communicate her disapproval with his choices. Despite himself, he let loose a small scoff.

Teenagers.

He wanted to chastise her. To laugh at her impotent rebellion, but that would come later. He knew why she was here, and he had a strategy in mind for dealing with her complaints. Laughing would lighten the tone of this conversation a bit too much. He had a point to make, and he knew exactly how to make it. His daughter had learned much from him, but there was a gap which nothing but experience could fill. She might be bright, but considering his decades of experience, she was nothing but a predictable child.

"Aera, so good to see you. Come in, come in," he said. Mrs. Verilion raised an eyebrow at him, her silent way of asking if her presence would be required. He shook his head. She smiled and closed the doors behind them as they Trey led his daughter to sit on the sofas.

"Coffee?" he asked, pouring himself a cup. Aera shook her head.

"More for me," Trey said. Four sugar cubes, and enough cream to make the purest of clouds connipt with envy. He sat opposite his daughter and sipped the heavenly beverage, sighing in bliss.

"So," Trey said after waiting for the warm feeling in his chest to settle. He realized he'd left his cigar on his desk by the window. "You're here about the tutoring sessions."

Aera rolled her eyes. He smirked.

Should he go get the cigar?

"Am I so predictable?" she asked in an exaggerated, dramatic tone.

"Yes," Trey said, "You know I raised you, right?"

"So…" she said, which he assumed was teenage-speak for asking him what his point was.

"I haven't changed my mind," Trey said, deciding that he was rich enough to just light a whole new cigar altogether.

She crossed her arms and frowned.

"I get why you brought him in. I already told you I thought it was a mistake, and nothing he's done over the last few weeks has changed the way I feel. The benefit he can bring us pales compared to the damage he can do to our image, our legacy. For heaven's sake, he's the son of Gideon Koar —"

"Careful," Trey said.

Aera winced. She'd have heard that tone before in boardroom meetings, when he'd be sitting face to face with powerful men who would like nothing more than to see their family and company forgotten by history. It's the tone he used when he was ordering a man's life to be ruined.

"I'm sorry," Aera said, seeming to choose her words a bit more cautiously, "all I'm saying is that at best, it's not a good look. And at worst—well, you're the one who's always going on about how important our reputation is to the company's future, especially now."

Trey pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn't enjoy being the bad guy. He could sometimes fall victim to the idea that his daughter was wise beyond her years. But it was a no more than a vain hope.

Many lessons he'd had to learn over the years had been painful, and he always hoped to spare his daughter the same pain. It was the pain that came with regret, from mistakes made from naïve ignorance.

But Aera was a very proud young woman. He'd raised her that way because it would serve her. A weak-willed heiress could not inherit the family's fortune or position. She needed that pride. She needed every ounce of emotional advantage she could get in order to fight the battles she was going to fight one day.

But there was still that gap. Experience and maturity came with learning about certain realities. And this was as good a time as any for her to learn.

He once more considered his strategy for addressing this. Bridging this divide would be important for both Aera and Hunter. Bringing Hunter into the family was no small thing. Despite what his daughter may think in her episode of frustration, the family name meant a lot to him — but reputation was always a fickle thing. Sometimes you had to learn that the only way forward is to take steps backwards. Reputation served the family, not the other way around.

If a temporary hit in reputation meant the family would benefit, then reputation be damned.

That had been his first consideration. It made the stakes of this conversation, and what he assumed would be a few similar conversation in the coming months and years,very clear. Hunter and Aera would have to learn to trust each other, and work together.

A Council Seat's life involved more risks than he preferred, but that was part of the job—it was business. And the woman his daughter would grow into was also his business. The company could not afford a spineless leader, nor could it afford for her to grow into an ignorant, immature narcissist. His job was to find the balance between reinforcing her confidence and kicking out the foundations of her arrogance — or at least corroding those foundations. Then he could let life itself take on the role of the teacher she'd need in order for her to become the woman the company and family would need.

It wasn't up to him to change her mind. Trey preferred to influence someone over the long run. It all starts with a seed, and it was one that he'd already planted. It just needed a bit of watering.

"You know what's more important than reputation?" he asked.

She shrugged and shook her head.

"I'm sorry, I didn't hear you."

"No," she said, her annoyance and frustration manifesting in her voice rasping and tense, released through gritted teeth, "what's more important than reputation?"

He took another sip of coffee, and after placing his cup on the table, he leaned forward, sure to enunciate every syllable with a tap on the table.

"In-teg-rit-y."

"But that's what I'm trying to—"

"No, not the integrity of our image. Aera, you are a brilliant young woman, but there's so much you don't know. And you don't even know that you don't know. That's a dangerous situation to be in. How much have I told you about my time with Gideon Koar?" he asked, mimicking the disrespectful tone she had used to mention the man's name.

"You've only told me you two started a few businesses together when you were younger, and that you became good friends."

He nodded.

"To be more accurate, he saved my life, and then we became good friends."

Aera's eyebrows furrowed.

"What do you mean?"

He hid his smile, letting the small warmth of victory he felt when a plan came together. The bait was taken; phase two could begin.

He laughed and enjoyed another sip of his coffee.

"What I mean is that I was a hothead when I was younger. I thought that, because I had money, and because I was the heir to a Council Seat, that I was invincible. Sound familiar?"

"No," Aera muttered.

"Of course not," Trey said with a smirk. "I had taken advantage of the goodwill of some of the less fortunate in our society. They worked in one of my warehouses and I thought it would be a brilliant idea to cut their already meager pay in half. I thought nothing of it. I was who I was, they were who they were. It would be their privilege to serve me for any amount of money, wouldn't it?"

Aera's frown deepened. By now, she'd be connecting the dots between the character he was illustrating and many of the young men and women she associated with.

"That doesn't sound like you," she said.

"That's who I was encouraged to be, when I was your age," Trey said. "Those men and women, whose pride I trampled over — whose lives were already difficult enough before I made them more so in a fit of youthful narcissism — took my fate into their hands. They demanded their due, and when I refused, they beat me."

He still felt it. The remnant of fear and shock from over three decades ago. He took a breath to steady himself.

Die, Oberon, they'd chanted with spittle flying from their mouths.

It echoed through his mind, sometimes. It had been a nightmare, once. Now it was nothing but a sore reminder that the people he employed were just as human as he was. Blaming them for their flaws was fruitless. He may as well blame himself.

"Gideon stopped them. I'd hired him before. Dirt cheap. He needed the money to pay his way through school. Every week, he visited to maintain our constructs and fix what was broken. Well, he was scheduled to visit that day. It wasn't like I'd treated him any differently than I had the others, yet he decide to pull them off of me, and convince them to leave me alone. I still don't remember what he said. All I remember was feeling relief from being saved."

"I still don't get what this has to do with me and Hunter," Aera said.

"Children these days, always so impatient. I'm telling you I was almost beaten to death," Trey sighed, exasperated by his daughter's behaviour over the last few days, "and to your point; I'm getting to that."

He took another sip of coffee, realizing he'd almost drank it all already, and pouted. It wasn't just a vice, it was a humanizing habit. It was a strategic vulnerability, a means to help him govern. He stood to grab some more, talking as he walked.

"Gideon hailed me a cab, and we found our way to a hospital. This was before cellphones, and the landline in the warehouse hadn't been working, so he had to hold me up and keep me warm while I shook from the remnant adrenaline and more pain than I had ever felt before. And there was so much rage, Aera. I was talking about revenge. I could have had them all killed," he said. He wasn't proud of who he'd been back then.

"Gideon explained their point of view to me. I didn't get it at the time, but it made some sense in an abstract way. I'd miscalculated how much they needed the money, and what they'd be willing to tolerate from me. The way he explained it, he made me realize that the only person I had to blame was myself. To be honest, I'd never taken the time to consider who the people I'd employed were, the lives they lived, and what a cut in pay would mean for them. Most of them were supporting children and wives, and there weren't a lot of jobs to go around during those days. Such pay cuts weren't uncommon, and they'd had enough. Similar sentiments had been brewing all over the domain — and others."

"Let me guess; Then he opened your eyes to the plight of the less fortunate, didn't he? This changed your worldview, right? Made you more empathetic?" Aera asked, gazing with disinterest at the books lining the shelves of his office.

"Another unfortunate quality of youth is the terrible habit of trivializing matters which are far from trivial. You mistake your immature attitudes for wisdom. Yes, he helped me see the world in a new way. He introduced me to other brilliant people. And some others who weren't so brilliant but had a passion that would keep them working for days on end in order to better the lives of the people they loved. They worked harder than people I grew up around, and some of them weren't even a quarter my age. And you know what?" he asked, making sure his daughter was paying attention.

"What?" she asked with a sigh. Trey figured she was tired of being lectured to, but she needed to hear this.

"He didn't have to do any of that. Ask yourself, if you were him, what would you have done?"

Aera was about to respond, but the look in his eye was gave her pause. She knew better than to push his buttons when he got like this.

She tilted her head, considering the question. Then she shrugged.

"I guess I would have pulled them off of you as well, but I'm not sure I'd have stuck around after getting you to a hospital."

Trey shook his hand, showing that he thought she was on the right track.

"If you were them, if you'd grown up in the same circumstance, and hated the rich and powerful as much as they did, then you wouldn't have stopped them."

"So what? You're saying Gideon didn't hate you for being rich?"

"Oh, he most certainly did," Trey laughed. "If there was one thing Gideon despised, it was the rich — especially the offspring of the rich. But he was the type of man who could put that aside if it meant he could change a life. Do you understand how rare that is? No, don't answer, I'll answer for you: No. You don't. You couldn't, because you're far too young. You're too inexperienced to begin to understand that most people are not only unable, but unwilling to do so," Trey said, letting the frustration he was feeling about his daughters' behaviour rise to the surface.

He could see his reflection in the glass covering a rather nice painting he'd bought years ago. His face had been growing red as his temper rose.

Good, he thought. Maybe it'll help sell the point.

He sat back down, exaggerating the acts of calming himself down. A deep breath in, holding it for a second, and a deep breath out. He lit the cigar he'd taken out earlier, and took a long drag, savouring the flavour before blowing it out.

"Gideon Koar saved my life. He also saved me from the person I would have become without his intervention. Yes, we started businesses, most of which failed. And yes, we became great friends along the way. But the lessons we both learned, the impact that we made, ripple through the world to this day," he said, his mind wandering back to those early years.

"We taught skills to people who never would have learned them otherwise. We helped them transform their communities. They started businesses which have gone to make millions, even billions, of credits. Countless lives were changing, all because Gideon gave me a chance. A chance which, by all appearances, he had no reason to think would bear any sort of fruit. And it all came at a considerable cost to his own reputation," he said, spitting out the last word.

Then he sighed, satisfied that he'd said what he needed to say. Aera was looking at him with open skepticism, but she wasn't protesting his words out loud. He'd done what he could to steer her in the right direction. He'd have to trust that life would show her the truth of what he'd said. And now that he'd said it, she'd be more open to learning a lesson that had almost killed him.

Although she wasn't happy with the way the meeting turned out, she seemed to accept that she wouldn't be changing his mind. Trey told her she was free to go about her business, and she thanked him for seeing her. If nothing else, she knew how to appear polite.

He suspected that not only would she have a thing or two to learn from Hunter, but maybe Hunter could learn a thing or two from her as well. He knew how his daughter could be, and he imagined she hadn't made it easy for the young man. But Hunter had seemed proud of himself for having made it through the last few weeks, and Trey was relieved that his own gamble had paid off. He was eager to see how far Hunter would go at the Academy — if Hunter could overcome the challenges presented to him.

He knew it wouldn't be easy, though. The children of his peers often lived with little in the way of consequences — they were like ravenous wolves to those who they saw as lesser beings. He knew them. After all, he'd been just like them once upon a time.

Barnum would be a crucible for the children. He would have to trust that Hunter's sheer stubborn tenacity, and the loyalty that he had fostered in Aera, would be enough to bond them together — and he suspected that such a bond would be nigh unbreakable once it set.

Hunter would always be a Koar, and Trey wouldn't have it any other way. But Hunter was now an Oberon as well.

That would mean more than wealth, power, and status ever could. Since it was Trey's turn to steer his family's future, he would ensure that being an Oberon would mean having integrity. And if Hunter had the potential to be anything like his father, then Trey would rest assured, knowing that the boy would fit in with the family line just fine.

Aera would come around in time. He knew it.

Fathers knew these things.

He took another drag of his cigar, and then remembered that he'd made himself another coffee. He drank it and smiled. It was still warm.

He stood and stared out the large window of his office, considering the grey sky, sipping the coffee and reviewing his plans — many of which he wondered if they would ever see completion.

There were troubling undercurrents rippling through the Council strata. Whispers of chaos that might require a very drastic action on his part — one which he'd already prepared for. Large movements of money and personnel. New ships being constructed at new, hidden shipyards, built with the family's private resources — resources the company had no access to, or ways of tracking if he was careful enough.

The light of the phantom sun was fading. Soon, the dark would swallow up the sky, the mountains, and the valleys.

Yet the moon would cast silver linings upon the clouds, showing all those who care to see that even before dawn breaks, there is light.