I Swear I'm Not A Dark Lord!

The Trades

He woke when the sun didn't shine on him anymore, and the room started to cool. Someone had put up the paper screen, he assumed Jane, and placed his mask nearby. It was Blake's latest effort, sanded smoother than the others, a little more graceful in its lines, and the wyverns painted with more life in them. Taylor dirtied them often, and they sometimes got broken during his fights with Kistur or while chasing down wolves. He carried extras for those events, so Blake had a lot of practice with "the d'Mourne face".

Jane was up, reading a historical fiction in Arcaic from Taylor's library. He'd loaned it to her when her reports ceased to interest.

"Are we going down for dinner? I saw a restaurant downstairs."

"We're having it brought up. I don't want you wandering around until you're properly dressed."

Taylor felt the discomfort of his preconceptions realigning. "The hotel specialists are for me, then?"

"I'll get a little refresh too, but yes. They are mainly for you. Estfold is paying for the accommodations, but we pay for any extra services. Be prepared to spend a significant amount of your wyvern money very quickly. Her Excellency won't see us for several days, so we have time to do a proper job."

Taylor started to complain that he'd just earned this money and didn't want to spend it all right away, except to buy a few things he needed for his studies. But, and this idea hurt him in the way true but inconvenient things often do, she was right. He didn't have the clothes or the graces he needed to face a provincial governor or the tidal wave of important people who surrounded her. He probably wasn't even fit to meet with a legate from another town. His clothes were second-hand and hard-worn by his lifestyle, his hair was only semi-tamed (and not in an artful way), and he'd never had a formal meal with another person. Not ever. Kistur didn't count.

His shoulders slumped, and he groaned. Just a little. "That's so much work." He groaned again and threw himself at the couch. "Wake me up when dinner gets here."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're kind of cute when you act your age?"

"Gods, no. And please don't spread any strange rumors about me."

Dinner was fried chicken. Soaked in buttermilk, spiced, battered, deep fried, honest-to-Omoyon fried chicken. It was served with elegant side dishes sauced with wine reductions or heated up with rare spices, an incongruity Taylor forgave as soon as he had that first, juicy, spicy, crispy bite. He had to move his mask half-up, so he could get the meat into his mouth where it belonged.

"Oh, Gods, thank you!" He ate another bite. "This is the stuff, right here!"

"Bilius. No." Curator Jane glared at him reprovingly from across their little dining table, brandishing her fork and knife at her meal. "What in Aarden do you think you're doing?"

"Eating fried chicken, like fried chicken was meant to be eaten. I don't know what these sides are supposed to be, but this has to be eaten with hands. Like festival food."

"Not in a governor's palace. And not when you're supposed to be giving a good impression of a legate, instead of a wild animal."

"Fine." He let go of the delicious chicken, wiped his hands on his napkin, and picked up a knife in one hand and a fork in the other. Imperial forks were twice as long as they needed to be, with tiny barbed tines at the end, better for fondue than eating from a plate. But that was the current style, and they were handy for tucking food under his mask so people couldn't see him while he was eating. He imitated his guardian well enough to cease her glares.

The sides were quite good, but nothing could convince him they belonged with fried chicken.

To meet the tradesmen, they scheduled one of several rooms Red Jade Mansion kept for such meetings. The visitors came early, suffered through security checks, set up in the room, and were waiting for him when he arrived. Jane emphasized this was his meeting, and she would only interfere if she felt he was making some kind of mistake. He thanked them all for coming in the evening, and set up his screen to meet with them one at a time while the others waited at the far end of the room, away from his curse.

First up was the agent who administered the wyvern corpses for Taylor. She was someone Jane knew well, so Taylor had little worry she'd try to cheat. But there were a lot of details to go over. Wyverns broke down into many parts: meat, organs, bones, skin, claws, and scales. Many specialists were involved, and a good chunk of a monster's value rightfully went to those who could handle them well. An additional three percent went to the agent, who now delivered a full accounting to Taylor.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Importantly, a share of the wyverns had been held back from sale. He kept a selection of the smaller bones, a few scales, several yards of the thinner hide, and the monstrified beast's mana stone. It was similar to what he'd harvested from eels, but the size of an ostrich egg. It wasn't pretty — it was black and dirty purple, full of inclusions, air bubbles, and clots of blood caught up in the crystal's formation. But it was a stone of significant capacity, and worth a lot of money. As a magician, it was assumed he would use it for a praxis of some kind.

All his goods were neatly arranged on one of the tables. After reviewing the documents and counting his monster loot, Taylor thanked the agent and moved on to an up-and-coming young man with the Leatherworker class. He brought a rolling cart with him, full of example backpacks. Taylor bought one, and asked for a second like it to be delivered. He planned to engrave them with expansion magic and resell them.

"Now I have a commission for you. I'd like you to make one of these for me, but with a few changes." He produced the satchel he carted around everywhere, an old thing salvaged from his attic and restored by Blake. "Can you make one capable of handling major expansion magic, if you used the blue wyvern leather?"

Mana circulated around the leatherworker, hard-edged and quick, as he examined the satchel, pried into all its seams and pockets, and asked about the desired improvements. The price he quoted wasn't cheap, but Taylor convinced him to buy back the enchanted backpacks if they met with his approval, at a price that would more than cover the satchel's cost. The agent was called to write a bill of sale and a witnessed agreement between them. For a fee.

Finally came the toolmaker. She was a dwarf, probably two hundred years old, and the first of her kind Taylor had seen up close. Their race was taller than arcs but shorter than humans, broad in the shoulder, with twice the body density of the other races. What looked like an eighty-pound human with thick black hair was nearly two hundred pounds of hard-to-kill dwarf. They were naturally tough people, and often worked in dangerous jobs like mining and soldiering.

"These are the kits I brought with me, Mister d'Mourne. Starter tools are on this end, followed by journeyman, and a selection of our masterwork tools. Most come with enchantments for sharpness, durability, and so on. Your message wasn't very specific. If nothing here interests you, I also brought a catalog."

"I want mana-sensitive tools without enchantments. A good journeyman kit plus a few specialized items would be ideal."

"Do you plan to enchant the tools yourself, or use them with controlled mana?"

"The latter."

"Not many craftsmen go in for mana control these days."

"I find it essential." He handled implements from every set and only found one he liked, on the masterwork end of the table. He put an edge of mana on the little chisel and tried it out on a piece of steel he brought for the purpose. He was surprised the dwarf didn't try to stop him. With his added mana, the tool carved steel like it was soap.

"Oh. That's nice. Compared to what I'm using now … well, there is no comparison. I've had to remake my tools a few times, and they were never like this."

"You're in luck, Mister d'Mourne. That was made by a former student of mine. He's an eccentric, so his work is undervalued. But I can only deliver a handful of tools to you right now. He will need a week to fill out your list."

The price she quoted was enough to give him pause. Granted, it was a lot of pieces, they were perfect for the way he worked, and it was only a dent in the large sums he made from selling wyvern parts. But the most money he'd ever spent was when he bought Ted and all his tack.

"Mister d'Mourne. Do you dabble in engraving once in a while, or is it a regular occupation?"

"It's more than dabbling, but less than a profession. I'm constantly making things to help me study magic, or just because I want them. I might make things for sale from time to time, but my real client is me."

"If you're engraving that often, and you depend on the items you make, the investment is worthwhile. These tools will last a lifetime, a human lifetime anyway, and they'll only fail if you pursue heights of mastery few ever attempt. I'm sorry to say I can't give a discount. The young man in question needs the work, but there are guild rules."

"What if you bundled some supplies with the sale? I need just about everything."

They struck a deal, and Taylor took partial delivery of his set along with a pile of wires, threads, fixatives, sealants, small ingots of metals, and other odds and ends. Jane's agent received more work, writing up terms for the promised goods. The contract probably wasn't necessary, but Taylor wanted his new tools on time, so part of the payment would be held by the agent until they were delivered.

"You made a bundle deal."

"I made a bundle deal," he agreed. "She couldn't move on price even though she wanted to, so I let her move on goods. She seemed happy."

"She was. But, where did you learn that?"

They were in their room, drinking herbal tisanes with a side of tiny cakes. One of the cakes had a candle on it, because his birthday had passed while he was hunting wyverns, and Jane was just now remembering. She was too late, though: the mansion staff remembered long before she did and had celebrated first, so they got full points.

"I'm not sure." Taylor honestly couldn't remember where he'd learned the bundling tactic. He'd had so many lives, and he couldn't recall all of them clearly. In this life, however … "I must have picked it up from you at some point. Maybe all those contracts you made me read? Lumping a bunch of stuff together for a single price obfuscates the real cost of any one thing. Normally, it annoys me, but it was useful this time."

Jane sounded doubtful. "It's probable, I suppose." She abandoned the tea and retreated to her room, having exceeded the limit of her curse tolerance for the day. "Don't stay up too late. You have an early day tomorrow."

But he did stay up late. The wyvern's mana stone fascinated him, and it suggested possibilities he needed to explore.