Two-World Traders (progression fantasy)

Elias ended his day alone in their Hightown office with only Islet for company. Or at least, he thought he was ending it, but that casual assumption was about to unravel like the loose thread that weaves through a life's tapestry.

The good news came before the bad.

As rain pattered on the window beside him, Elias was slouching in his leather desk chair, awkwardly opening mail with one had while petting their cow-print cat with his other. Islet was coiled over top his coat in case he entertained any thoughts of leaving, not that he could ever resist the siren call of her rumbling purrs.

It was junk mail mostly, though he employed both hands to open the thick envelope sent from the Trader's Guild. The Two Worlds Trading Company had recently paid their taxes for the year, and the letter confirmed their continued good standing. It was a second slip of paper, tucked behind the first, that caught Elias by surprise. He read it slowly, carefully, then twice to ensure he had not read it wrong.

Dear Mr. Elias Vice,

The Trader's Guild is pleased to inform you that, as chief proprietor of The Two Worlds Trading Company, you are invited to occupy a seat in the House of Merchants upon receiving this letter. As we are sure you know, every year the one hundred largest companies in Sailor's Rise, as determined by tax-filed revenue for the preceding year, are offered voting seats in the House. As the ninety-ninth largest firm for this tax year, The Two Worlds Trading Company is one such company. Your seat will remain yours for the next year, provided you stay in good standing with the Trader's Guild, and you may retain it in subsequent years assuming you maintain a place among our top earners. Were your company to grow large enough in the future, the Guild's ten highest-earning companies are granted voting seats on council, while its largest venture is granted the position of council chair. Congratulations, Mr. Vice, and have you any questions, an official representative of the House will be happy to assist you during regular business hours.

Yours sincerely,

Bartholomew Grimsby, Council Chair

Elias let both hands fall to his desk with a wooden thud, nearly dropping the letter before gripping it like some lucrative contract in a windstorm, as if good news had to be delicate—as if no one else would believe it until they too saw the official letter.

A seat in the House of Merchants.

Elias had certainly hoped this day would come and, yes, many nights dreamed of receiving such a letter, but he had not expected it so soon. Were they really already the ninety-ninth largest company in Sailor's Rise? They employed at most two dozen workers, but he supposed their numbers over the past year had impressed even them.

More than that, however, he suspected another trend to be the true culprit. The Rise's largest companies were increasingly absorbing their competitors through acquisitions—some more amenable, others more aggressive—and this left fewer individual companies on the proverbial battlefield. Alas, it did not quite equate to less competition for The Two Worlds Trading Company. On the contrary, their competitors were more centralized and, accordingly, better resourced. If the House of Merchants had lowered its barrier to entry, it was only because council had collected those spare stones and built itself a veritable fortress.

Still, climbing that castle was a challenge for another day. As Elias stood up and stared out the window beside him, gazing down at the empty, lamplit cobblestone street below, he was simply, stupidly, stubbornly thrilled, bordering on giddy. And a bit cold, come to think of it. Autumn evenings were growing cooler, increasingly catching him underdressed. He fetched some kindling and began building a fire in the fireplace, his mind detached from his body, constructing something else entirely: a fantasy about what it would be like sitting in the House of Merchants—the connections he might make, the invitations he was sure to receive, the votes he would vote on. The prestige. His would be the ninety-ninth largest company in Sailor's Rise, and everyone would know it. Perhaps he was getting ahead of himself.

Elias blew some life into the fire and felt its flames warm his cheek. He splayed his hands before the hearth, his body finally easing at the end of another long day. Islet sauntered over and settled down beside him.

He stiffened the second someone knocked on the door. In Elias's experience, unexpected knocks on the door were generally accompanied by unexpected news.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Come in," he said slowly.

The door was still unlocked. It creaked open.

The tall woman who stepped through was certainly better dressed for the season in her long, green and gold coat. Her sharp, stoic features seemed squarely directed at him, her unreadable eyes the color of emeralds. She stepped toward the younger collector with a purpose she always seemed to possess.

"Constance," Elias said. "What are you doing here?"

"Visiting you," she replied in a way he could not quite read.

He cleared his throat and walked back over to his desk, offering her a seat she promptly ignored. "Visiting me about what?" he asked.

Constance Eve stopped halfway between Elias and the only exit. Her showing up here was, to say the least, unusual. While he had seen her around over the past couple of years, at Sultan Atakan's palace in Azir and in the Trader's Hall atop the Crown of Hightown, they had not spoken in earnest since that night at Bartholomew Grimsby's estate, when she had offered him a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join their ranks, to become one with the Valshynar, and he had politely declined.

Evidently, she remembered that night as well as he did: "Do you remember what I said to you, what was it, over two years ago now?"

Elias nodded. "Not word for word, but I think I recall the gist of it."

"I told you not to do anything stupid. Do you recall that?"

He racked his brain for stupid things he might have done, ranging from every minor blunder to the fatal transgression that still infected his sleep like an incurable curse. He had killed one of theirs, a Valshynar named Orin, only a few years older than Elias at the time. Orin had possessed an impossible strength and an untamable anger. Elias had tried to escape, tried to negotiate, tried everything, but in the end his freedom had been bought in blood.

He swallowed his worst fears. "What do you want, Constance? I've been careful."

She stayed standing, and thus so did Elias.

"You've been found out," she said. "The Valshynar know. Your secret is no longer a secret. I mentioned I knew you and offered to confront you myself. Consider that a favor."

"What do you mean I've been found out?" He knew more or less what it meant, but not the how nor the more specific what. He really had been careful.

"You've been using sky rifts to travel, haven't you? I'm sure it's been good for business, but traveling across the Great Continent at an impossible speed through an invisible portal is hardly subtle, no matter how careful you think you're being."

Elias's mind immediately went to the pirates that had ambushed them weeks earlier, leaving him to wonder if he should have killed them all. Like he'd said at the time, he did not like witnesses. Though he was somewhat surprised the Valshynar apparently kept company with unscrupulous skyjackers.

"What did you hear?" Elias wasn't ready to reveal his hand, to offer her more than she might otherwise know.

"One oddity raises a red flag. Two warrants an investigation," Constance informed him. "Someone realized your ship had been in one place and then another, far away, more quickly than made sense."

"Who?" he insisted.

"We do not reveal our informants."

"And the second thing?"

"Someone spotting the famous, Emerald-Cup-winning Sapphire Spirit vanishing midair without a trace."

"Those damn pirates," Elias muttered.

"What pirates?" Constance furrowed her brow.

He shook his head, course correcting his train of thought. "Nothing." He huffed, trading glances with Islet. Surely, the cat was still on his side. "What happens next?"

"You come with me," she said.

"Where?"

"To the Gray Academy."

Elias had always wanted to visit the Gray Academy, a hidden fortress Jalander once described as the de facto capital of the Valshynar, a place where collectors studied and practiced together, where consequential decisions were made. Decisions about people like Elias. Its location was practically unreachable, his estranged mentor had said, its very image hidden. Yes, Elias had wished to see the Gray Academy for himself one day—but perhaps not this day.

"What if I refuse? What if I run?" He crossed his arms and eyed the closed window beside him.

"You cannot run," Constance stated matter-of-factly. "You have already been found out. I'm doing you a favor being here, you realize. This is your best-case scenario. Your alternatives are worse. Trust me on that."

Elias supposed he did, at the end of the day, trust her. She had kept his secret all this time, until apparently it was no longer anyone's secret to hide.

"How you respond to your new reality from this moment onward matters, Elias," she continued. "Nothing is yet decided. I would advise caution and… keeping an open mind."

"I have an open mind," he said. "My worry is that they won't."

"We shall see." She beckoned him toward her with a single outstretched hand, her fingers curling inward, playing the air like a harpist. Was this the ballad of his demise? Its notes were a popping fireplace, a purring cat: the sounds he would miss in their inevitable absence.

"Are we leaving right now?" Elias confirmed.

"If you're done haggling," she replied.

For once, he said nothing and nodded silently.

Elias turned to Islet, dropped to one knee, and gave her one last chin scratch to remember him by. "Briley will be here in the morning to feed you, my furry friend. And I'll… be back when I'm back."

Constance was waiting by the door.

As Elias retrieved his favorite blue jacket from the back of his chair, wishing he had brought his warmer coat in today, he caught a glimpse of the letter that had started his solitary evening on a very different, far more pleasant note, informing him that he'd been granted a seat in the House of Merchants. Power gained and power lost in the time it took to burn through kindling. Life was funny like that.

He grabbed the letter, a fresh idea brewing in his mind, before quietly pocketing it on the way out. "Let's go," he told her, as if the decision might have been his.

Constance went first, their footsteps thumping down old stairs. She held open the front door, waiting for him, then led them silently past The Two Worlds Trading Company's downstairs neighbor, a closed candlemaker full of unlit candles. In the warm, amber light of the city's countless oil lamps, the cool autumn air welcomed Elias like a cold bath.