Pater turned to Jeric. “It will work?”
“Yes. I’m just not sure how effective it will be for the king.”
Isabelle squeezed her husband’s hand harder than necessary as she began to scowl. “Jeric Nobleman, are you seriously considering making our 17-year-old daughter lord of Blackwood without consulting her? Need I remind you if we are successful, she will be stuck there for the rest of her life. You think she is moody now. Imagine what she will be like after you do this to her.”
A guilty expression crossed his face before his features firmed. He turned to me. “Arnold, I think it’s time that I take my wife to the other room and explain everything I haven’t told her?”
Isabelle looked at me questioningly.
I nodded. “Do it.”
Jeric sighed like I’d lifted a great weight off of him. “Pater, I’m sorry to impose, but can we use your quiet room?”
Pater waved his approval, unfazed by secrets. Jeric and his wife stood and went through the door behind Pater, further into the house.
When they were gone, I asked, the obvious question. “What’s a quiet room?”
Pater rubbed his bald liver-spotted head. “It’s a magically warded room that cannot be spied upon by means both magical and mundane. Most nobles have them in their parlour, but I like a little sun while I play cards and entertain, so I have mine in my library. I’m surprised you’ve never heard of it.”
“It didn’t come up.”
Pater deflated, suddenly showing his age, looking frailer than he had since our arrival. “Please tell me you’re not so ignorant that you at least understand the significance of what you are about to do.” His tone held a hint of fear.
“What am I about to do?”
“You are about to declare political war on a woman who is more powerful and cunning that you can hope to be. She also does not like to lose and is petty enough to take any form of vengeance she can. Have you considered the longterm repercussions?”
“No, but the only alternative is giving her what she wants. And I’ll damn myself before I give that sadistic bitch anything.” The last few words had a bite to them.
“That might very well be the case. The king’s authority only goes so far. She will make your lives as difficult as she can.”
I paused, fighting the anger rolling through me, so I could reply without snapping at him. He didn’t deserve it. He’d been nothing but helpful. “What can she do? That’s an actual question, not rhetorical.”
He didn’t even need to think about it. “She will start by putting pressure on the merchant guilds. She’s done it in the past. She’ll have their people contact those merchants who visit your village and have them change their trade routes, so they ignore you. You are a minor village so the loss of revenue will be nothing in the grand scheme of things. Next, she will demand the crown's portion of the tax be paid in one particular resource, something that the village already collects, but will inconvenience you if it all has to go to the crown and can’t be sold or traded back to the locals. Once you start running low on supplies, high-level merchants will appear and begin charging you exorbitant amounts for basic items. She will bankrupt the village within eight months.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
“Then she will start getting creative, maybe try using other guilds to ostracise you from the surrounding villages, boycotting your products. If it goes far enough, she will start a war and conscript you.”
That last part surprised me and I thought that I was done being surprised by the regent’s actions. “She’s done that?”
“No…that was mostly bluster, but I don’t doubt she would be capable if she thought it might work. My point is, there are a hundred ways she can make your life difficult, and all it costs her is a conversation. You might be able to thwart her attempts, but each instance will cost you far more time, resources, and effort than it does her. You’re playing a game of chess where you’re only starting with your pawns and your king, and she has a full board. She will grind you into nothing if you aren’t prepared.”
I smiled. “Your tone suggests you know how to prepare.”
A “no” formed on Pater’s lips, but he paused before any sound could come through. A look of confusion crossed his brow as the pause lengthened, and he leaned back. He stared at me, lost in thought. After a minute, a tired smile played across his lips. “This is one of those rare instances where you don’t know you know something until someone asks you if you do.”
“So you know how to prepare?”
“No, not personally. But I know someone who does.”
“Who?”
“Noblewoman Rina, the regent’s twin sister. She can teach Jeric and his family what they need to survive, maybe even thrive. She’s been countering her sister’s attempts to ruin her for her entire life. And she’s only had the one serious failure. If anyone knew how to grow a village or town with the regent working against you, it would be her.”
“Would she help us?”
“Yes, but it won’t be out of the goodness of her heart. The two of them are as bad as each other. However, I imagine she will jump at the opportunity to frustrate her sister. So she’ll offer you a reasonable price for her services. However, I will warn you now that if you intend to gain her services do so before the need is dire. Hate will only cloud her judgement so far, and if she sees you as prey she will pounce on you as quickly as her sister.”
“Thank you for the warning…I have a few unrelated questions if you don’t mind my asking.”
“I’m charging Jeric as much per minute as most lawyers would by the hour, so I would consider you wasteful if you didn’t.”
For a second, I almost asked how much he was charging, but I realised that I didn’t actually want to know. The frugal part of me would get sidetracked by the number and I might start panicking. So I launched into my long list of questions. Our conversation turned more abstract. I asked about different laws and how they applied to our situation, using the opportunity to gain more information.
Pater was an excellent teacher, answering my questions quickly and concisely, without going into technical details that would bog down our conversation. A few hours flew by without me noticing as I tried to expand my understanding of the situation we had gotten ourselves into. Knowledge was power, especially in this world.
Eventually, Jeric and his wife returned.
Isabelle’s features were firm as she took her seat. “That was an interesting conversation. You and my husband have been causing all sorts of trouble. When did you want to do this, Arnold?”
“You’re in?”
Her face softened. “When I told you I would do everything in my power to help you, I meant it. And I must say I’m as curious as my husband to see if we can pull this off.”
“In that case, the sooner, the better. We’ve been reacting for too long. It’s time we fought back.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
LOOSE ENDS
A knock on the carriage door woke me in what felt like moments after falling asleep.
“Sir, the owner has arrived,” the driver said through the door.
I stretched, working blood through the knots developed from sleeping in an uncomfortable position. My hands hit the carriage walls as I moved about. The lack of space was uncomfortable, but it was better to sleep in the carriage than risk going back to the palace and not being able to come back out. I blinked away sleep several times, fighting to stay awake, before finally saying, “Thank you. I’ll be out in a moment.”
The driver gave a grunt of reply and I felt him return to his seat at the front of the carriage.
Since Jeric’s father was a member of the royal council of scholars, he was confident he could acquire a summons from the king by the end of the day. That would get us out from under the regent’s thumb, but it also meant I was out of time here in Melgrim.
I had to make an important decision far sooner than I wanted to.
I bit off another y
awn as I opened the carriage door and stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of Quilly’s store. The front door was open, with a sign showing a clear invitation to enter. The sun had barely appeared which meant I’d been asleep for a couple of hours.
I gave myself another shake to wake up and then walked inside. Quilly sat behind the counter, working on something with a whole lot of minuscule gears, no bigger than anything you would see in a wristwatch. A glowing crystal, with a desk lamp like hood, sat above her right shoulder, providing light. The store smelled of grease and metal, with a hint of something I couldn’t place.
She didn’t even look up as I entered. “I’m not done with the first one yet. Come back in a week.”
“I won’t be here in a week,” I said, trying to be cheerful and pleasant despite the hour.
She scowled at the device. “Not my fucking problem.”
“Has anyone ever told you your customer service is terrible?”
“I’m a trapsmith, not a bard,” she growled. “My job isn’t to give a pleasant experience. It’s actually the bloody opposite.”
I thought about it for a second. “Okay, I’ll concede that.”
“Good, now fuck off and come back in a week.”
“No. I’d like to see what you have done.”
“It’s not finished.”
I dropped my pleasant tone. “I didn’t ask if it was fucking finished. I said I wanted to see what you had done.”
Quilly huffed out a breath as she slid a gear into the device in front of her. She looked up and glared at me. “If I show you my unfinished work, you have to agree to no refunds first. I’m not having you say I’m not worth your money simply because you look at something that isn’t bloody finished and think it’s not worth your money.”
She gave me a smug smile, expecting me to disagree.
“Deal,” I said.
Her hands froze and she looked up at me. “Seriously?”
“Yes. I want to see what you have done.”
She gave a confused shrug and put down her tools. “Wait here.” She went out the back, into her workshop, and returned carrying my book of designs and a stack of drawings. “After going through all your designs, I decided to start on your trapdoor pitfall design.” She opened up my design and then began spreading out pieces of paper. “I saw that a few of your ideas had crude mechanisms built into them for multiple uses and figured that you would want them all to be multi-use, but you couldn’t work out how. So I replaced your hinge system on the trapdoor with a central pivot point so it will spin and drop your target into the pit before locking into place again. I’ve also changed the lever mechanism that caused the door to drop to a safety mechanism that now causes the trap to become active. I’ve added weighted locks that will hold the trapdoor in place until something steps on it. These weighted locks can be changed out to allow different weights to stand on them without activating them. I’ve also changed the design of your spikes so that you can’t grab onto them and climb out unless you are wearing steel-plated gauntlets. Other than that, there isn’t much you can do to a pitfall trap to make it more dangerous except make it deeper. I do have a few extra designs here for things like mithril razor thread that will cut anything that falls on it in two, but you said you wanted any old smith to be able to make everything, and that’s a custom item.”
I stared in awe. Not because of what she had created, though that was impressive, but because she'd also added the instructions for building and installing each part. Anyone could follow these instructions and do what I was doing—a lot more effectively.
I went through page after page until I came to one that didn’t make sense. “What’s this?”
“It’s the part I’m stuck on. Like I told you, you can technically use the spikes to climb out of this if you’re wearing plated gauntlets, or the equivalent. I am trying to fix that issue by making some of the spikes also behave like switches, which will activate pressure spikes that come out of the walls if something tries to climb out. However, I can’t figure out how to make them reset without adding so many other mechanisms that it will double the size of the trap and quadruple its cost.”
Damn.
Well, I had my answer.
She was worth the money.
Now, I had to secure her assistance. “I would like to hire you longterm.”
She scowled. “You’ve already bloody hired me for the next six weeks. How much longer could you possibly need my services?”
“Four and a half years. The first year will be paid in advance, but you would have to relocate and take an oath of secrecy,” I said. That was roughly how long I had Ranic for, so I figured that it was the safest bet to have her help for just as long. If I hadn’t worked out a safe and reliable way of gaining experience by then, it wasn’t going to happen.
“No way. I’m not taking a contract that long without becoming a retainer.”
“Without becoming a what?”
“A retainer. You know.”
“I’m recently incarnated. I don’t actually know.”
“You’re yanking my balls, right?”
“No.”
She sighed. “Basically, you would become my employer instead of my client. You would pay me my standard rate and I would work for you exclusively. If I have spare time and someone comes to me wanting me to do a job on the side, you would have to approve it, but you would also receive the profit associated with that work, except in the case of blueprints. In that case, we would split the profit.”
“That sounds like what I proposed, except I might make some money back.”
“It does, except as your retainer, you would be obligated to feed, clothe, shelter, and equip me with tools. You would also be obligated to give me a fund for supplying me with resources outside of those projects you request so I can grow my class.”
I frowned. “Okay, that sounds like it heavily favours you.”
She grinned and scratched her chin, smearing it with grease. “It does.”
“What happens at the end of the contract?”
“That depends on our relationship and your needs. If you still need my services and I enjoyed working for you, we can choose to continue working together with or without a new contract.”
“I think I’m going to need a few more details,” I said. “Is there a place around here where we can get some breakfast?”
Her eyes went wide. “Wait, you’re seriously considering making me your retainer?”
I nodded. “I’d rather just employ you, but if you will only accept being a retainer, then I’m going to at least consider it.”
“What would a nobleman need with a trapsmith retainer?”
“First of all, I’m not a noble. Secondly, that’s a secret you’ll have to take an oath to find out. But let’s discuss what becoming a retainer involves before we go down that path.”
It was early afternoon by the time my carriage rolled through the palace gates. The meeting with Quilly had gone on for hours as I tried to understand what was involved in making her a retainer. The comparison to an employee turned out to be a poor one. Retainers were more like paid members of a household.
Because I was already so exhausted, it had taken me a while to get my head around everything involved, but I’d eventually understood. With all the extra costs, having her as a retainer could end up being almost ten times the price of merely hiring her services, but I eventually agreed to pay after she took me into the back to her workshop and showed me “the good stuff,” as she called it.
I had to fight to suppress a shudder. There had been this exploding mithril razor thread ball that could instantly turn any tunnel, room, or hallway into a death trap. Try to walk through and there would only be chunks left. It was like a medieval version of the laser hallway in Resident Evil.
She’d asked dozens of questions that I refused to answer, before she took an oath. Once she had, I hired the use of the oath binder’s quiet room, because I was now paranoid, and told her what I was attempti
ng to do.
She’d started cackling.
It had been more than a little unsettling, but she had agreed to become my retainer and we had the oath binder write up a five-year contract, not four and a half like I’d originally intended. I’d paid for her first year of services in advance, purchased her tools and equipment, and given her a fund for transporting everything to the village. The ongoing costs of keeping her services were going to be much higher, but compared to the price of buying out the villagers for the crown to issue the abandonment order, it wasn’t that much at all, and luckily I could use the loan to pay her.
I had no idea if I was making the right decision without Ranic or Salem to run it past. It felt like the right decision, but I’d have to live with the consequences if it wasn’t.
Fredrick was waiting for me when the carriage pulled up outside the palace. “Farmer Arnold, you agreed to stay in at night and leave your mornings available for if the regent needed you.”
So it was no longer Landlord Arnold. “I had pressing business, Fredrick,” I snapped, trying to keep him on his toes. “But that has been taken care of. My day is now free.”
“That was not the agreement. And the regent wished to speak with you. As you have breached the agreement, your lawyer has been contacted and informed of your actions. You may not leave the palace grounds for the next seven days.”
“Fine,” I said.
Fredrick opened his mouth and froze before frowning. “You don’t intend to complain?”
The regent’s actions yesterday made the whole point of staying during the mornings abundantly clear. It was just a way for her to make my life difficult. It was meant to aggravate me into rebelling which would give her more power to use against me.
Leaving last night and not coming back this morning had been a calculated risk. And I’d expected this sort of reception. Fredrick's actions confirmed my suspicions about how the regent worked. She was about control. She liked to poke people until they snapped. But she poked them in the right place and made them snap to her command, giving her an advantage she would exploit.
Oh Great! I was Reincarnated as a Farmer Page 39