Two-World Traders (progression fantasy)

Choosing a pub in Adelbury was more difficult than finding one, though they settled into a popular establishment a few blocks down Maple Avenue, appropriately called The Peddler's Compromise. If Bertrand had thought the city streets was festive, he should have seen the inside of their present environment. Wreaths of varying sizes hung from every door and available pillar. Carved wooden stars had descended from celestial heights to generously grace the bar's humble ceiling, dangling from rough fir beams on yarn strings of red and gold. Even the food menu was festive. Elias ordered a mince pie alongside his ale.

"Pretty cozy place," he said, accepting his beer.

Briley was first to take a sip from hers. "Don't get too comfortable."

"No risk of that," Elias said. "I know better than anyone why we're here. That goddamn record book." He sighed. "Do you know if Bertrand and Amara are joining us later?"

She shook her head. "I don't think their company is in the cards tonight. I cannot begrudge him one romantic night in the capital of romance."

"I suppose not." Elias took an extra-long gulp. "Honestly, I'm, well, never mind."

"Just say it," she said. "Whatever you were about to say, we both know you'll cough it up before the night is over. In about two more beers, I reckon. I can tell this one's bobbing at the surface."

"It's nothing." He waved it off. "I'm happy for him."

"You're jealous."

"I'm not jealous. Amara is a wonderful, beautiful, intelligent woman, but my affection is aimed elsewhere."

"I wasn't suggesting you were jealous of her—but of what he has with her."

Elias was going to drink this first one quickly. He swirled his ale into a gentle tornado, gazing hopelessly into its ephemeral amber eye. "Aren't you?"

"We were talking about you."

"It's nothing you haven't heard before."

"No. Been a while since you mentioned her name, though."

"I saw her the other day, walking back from Lowtown with Gabby and Iric. I wanted to run and hide. What's wrong with me?"

"A great many things," Briley informed him. "Your affection for Abigail isn't among them, but she is a married woman. Now I'm not saying she chose the better man, or that she made the right decision for the right reasons. But she did make her choice."

"She always spoke of these things so opaquely, with this sad sense of defeat, as if her whole life was out of her control," Elias replied. "I understand it better than I did back then, but I'm still not sure she has the right of it. Sailor's Rise is a free city, is it not? I know it isn't that simple. I know there would have been… consequences for her. But sometimes you just need to follow your heart and damn the rest."

Briley chuckled. "Damn the rest. The three easiest words in the world for Elias Vice—and the three hardest for everyone else toiling in existence."

"But not impossible," he insisted. "Amara comes from a wealthy, important family, and yet she chooses to be with Bertrand. I know the Fairweathers have some social standing, but Amara is of another class."

"Southlander families don't share our culture's obsession with family legacy," Briley reminded him. "On the contrary, they forgo surnames. She's free to love for love. Lucky woman. When was the last time you actually spoke with Abigail?"

"Longing glances don't count?" Their food arrived, and Elias savored a slow bite before answering, fork clinking his plate. "About a year ago, I ran into her at the Trader's Bank. We nearly stumbled into each other, so we couldn't not say something. She asked how I was. I told her I was keeping busy. I asked her the question back. She said… keeping busy. But it was the way she said it. There's still something there between us. I know it. She knows it. I can see it in her eyes. I saw it two days ago when she was standing right next to her stupid husband. That look. That unbearable look. It hardly lasted a second, and yet the whole ocean could have spilled out of her, out of me. I can't… I can't move past her."

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"One wonders what's going through her mind." Briley appeared equal parts sympathetic and entertained. "You cannot truly decipher the fleeting glance of a woman, Elias, unless your strange powers now extend to mind-reading. Wait." She placed her fork down, inching closer to him on both elbows. "Have you ever tried it? Your sight. Have you summoned that little genie inside you and begged it to show you a path forward with her?"

"It doesn't work like that. The distance is too—it doesn't matter."

"You still tried it, though."

"Let's talk about Zeyna." Elias eased back into his chair. "Speaking of healthy, functional relationships."

Briley waved over their barmaid, a curly-haired woman adorning a plaid apron of crimson and green, and ordered two more ales.

"A very different kind of distance divides us," she said. "A more literal distance. Four times a year we go to Azir. Zeyna usually makes it to Sailor's Rise once or twice if I'm lucky. That is all we get together, going on three years now. I fear what would happen to us if Sultan Atakan ever dropped our contract. I could publish a novel with the letters we've written."

"We know publishers," Elias added unhelpfully. "Could be a whole new revenue stream for us."

Briley ignored him. "I should look forward to her letters, but now they… frighten me. I'm worried she'll write to say this is it, that she can't do this anymore, she's met someone else, she needs to move on. I wouldn't know what to tell her. Our business is here. Hers is in Azir. And so we are stuck. Something has to give, eventually. You at least could move on if you weren't such a pathetic romantic."

"I don't think I'll ever meet another woman I'm so fond of." Elias stared out the window beside them. Fresh snow cushioned the frame. "Excluding my favorite business partner, of course." He turned his head and raised his glass to her.

"If my taste in women ever changes, you'll be the first to know," Briley assured him. "I thought Bertrand was your preferred business partner."

"Of course not. You are. Except when Bertrand and I are having a beer. You know I'm perfectly adept at juggling two realities."

"While we're on the subject of things not going our way, perhaps we should return to business matters."

"Right." Elias scratched his chin. "The problem is that record book."

Briley agreed. "Whatever it says, goes. I don't think we can reason with that woman."

"Maybe therein lies our solution."

"Enlighten me."

"That was the fourth time we've met her, and she still doesn't recognize us," he continued. "She doesn't know who we are, and she seems incapable of remembering. That's only a problem for as long as the record book says we signed that contract on the seventeenth of spring."

"So, you're suggesting we break into Adelbury City Hall and change the record book." Briley could read Elias better than anyone. "Presumably they have the original contract stowed away somewhere."

"She didn't check the contract when we asked," Elias said. "Hell, they may not even know where they filed it away. What was it she said to us: I do not question the record book. We have two cards to play in this situation. One is that woman's stubbornness. The other is her awful, awful memory. We tell the auditor our version of the story—which we need to do soon, by the way, before it gets too suspicious—and if they even bother inquiring with Adelbury, the record book will say it was the nineteenth."

Briley's solid chair creaked as she leaned into it with an even stiffer brow, striking a familiar pose, one she could not help but strike whenever aiming and shooting holes into another one of Elias's wild schemes. While her tone would have sounded harsh and judgmental to the untrained ear—and it was certainly both of those things—Briley displayed affection through the seriousness with which she considered an idea. It was a competitive dance that these two sparring partners both enjoyed.

"Let's say you break in, retrieve the book, and find the right row," she said. "You'll have to cross out the number seventeen and write in nineteen. That will look more than a little suspicious, especially alongside an official inquiry from the Trader's Guild."

"I need only add a single swoop," Elias countered. "It takes meagre effort to turn a seven into a nine."

"That depends on the seven."

"I'm skilled with a pen."

"And what about the hard part?" she asked. "When and how do we break into Adelbury City Hall?"

"When? Tonight," he said. "I've already confirmed their hours. They should be closed by now. As for the how, I'll… figure that part out. We both know I have an uncommon gift for seeing unconventional paths forward, for acquiring the things we need—or changing them."

Briley couldn't argue with that. She only mentioned that they might not be at their sharpest.

"My senses are hardly dulled by two beers," Elias replied. To prove it, he swigged back the remaining third of his drink, banging it back down on the table, as empty as a bad promise. "Shall we?"

She shook her head but rose with him all the same. They left a relic and a few coppers between their empty plates.

Elias buttoned up his clay-colored wool coat as they departed the busy pub, while Briley had never taken hers off. Outside The Peddler's Compromise, heavy snowflakes drifted about casually in the still air, forming a thin icing over the idyllic city. They peered down the long road ahead of them, toward a darkened Adelbury City Hall at the far end of Maple Avenue.