by Peter Hartz
The room beyond the doorway was different than they expected. The outer wall of the room was just to the left of the hallway, and it appeared that the hall continued onwards a few feet before opening to the main room on the right. A wall had been laid to cut off the line of sight into the room for anyone standing in the doorway.
They turned the corner, and were in a comfortable sitting room, with chairs and couches arranged into a cozy area around a low table in between. The queen looked up as they entered, and stood, walking over to embrace her son. She had changed from the courtly raiment she had worn in the throne room, and instead was in a more comfortable dress, with stockings on her feet to give her some warmth on the polished wood floor.
The walls and ceiling were also of a rich wood finished in a warm brown, and burnished to a smooth finish that did not reflect much light. Here and there tapestries were hung to break up the sound, displaying scenes and images from the world around them. Windows opened to look out at the city, and towards a wide river flowing past in the distance at the edge of the town.
The greeting lasted a few moments, and the queen turned to the rest of them. Michelle bowed slightly, but the queen waved her hand in a dismissing gesture.
“I have no need of such courtesies here in my private quarters, and I seem to see that you are unused to employing them. Come, sit with me, and we shall talk.” Then she broke off and looked down at Sadie as the reddish-golden dog came over to the end of her leash and sat in front of her, wagging her tail up at the elvish woman, a smile on her doggy face.
“And who are you, my grand dame? What a splendid creature you are!” She bent down to let Sadie smell her hand, then passed it down the side of Sadie’s neck in greeting, clearly comfortable with animals, or at least dogs.
“Pretty lady nice. Sadie likes you.”
The queen laughed, and turned to her son. “I didn’t sense you cast Animal Speak. Your skills are getting better, my son.”
Giltreas shook his head. “I cast it some time ago this morning. It has not abated as expected. See for yourself.”
She gave Giltreas a confused look, and then turned back to the dog she was petting. The detect magic spell was as natural as breathing to her, one of the earliest spells a person with any skill at magic learns, and she murmured the incantation almost automatically. Then she focused on the dog in front of her, and gasped.
“What does this mean? The spell is permanent?”
Giltreas shrugged. “Apparently so. If not, I cannot ascertain when it will fade.”
“But only a Mid-God should be able to do such a thing. This is shocking. My son, have you ascended to Deus?”
A shocked look passed over Giltreas’ face, and he turned his focus inward to think about the question. “I do not know. It certainly did not occur to me that I might have. I have had no opportunity to ask any God if that is a truth, at any means.”
“We must ascertain this.” A determined look crossed her face, but before she could do or say anything else, she was stopped by a single quiet word from her son.
“Why?”
The quiet word, spoken calmly and neither defensive or accusatory, caught her by surprise. As she thought about it, she could not come up with a reason other than personal pride.
“Do you wish to know?” Her eyes searched his. She had always been challenged to understand what was in the mind of her quiet, different son. His sire had been a mystery, but he was always more so. Normal patterns of behavior and expected responses were few and far between when he had been young, and without knowing it, he had taxed every one of his care givers, an enigma that few could understand.
“It would change nothing about me that is worth to know, Mother. I find contentment in that which I am.” He spoke the words surprisingly without the rancor and bitterness she might have expected from someone forced into what he was required to do by his Patron. That thought was followed by another, and she wondered if what had been demanded of him, and what he had done to meet those demands, had bent his mind after such a long time. But his smile was gentle, soft, and warm. Nothing showed her that he was injured in the mind at all, and she sighed. He was right. Knowing would not change what mattered about him.
“Forgive a mother’s pride in her son,” she said with a gentle smile, as she turned to the others where they sat. “I welcome you to my home, and my city.”
Michelle smiled back. “Thank you. It is peaceful here,” she said as she looked out a window that overlooked the city, and towards a wide river at the city’s edge.
The sounds of a modern city she was used to were all missing – the cars, trucks, and busses, the sounds of people walking, the occasional airplane overhead. And even more, the smells of a city – the dust, exhaust, and, sometimes, the smells of the sewer system underneath that was often so hard to get away from in some parts of downtown. Instead, the sound of the wind through trees, people, horses, oxen and other animals walking and lowing, and the fresh smells of nature – trees, grasses, and even the distant smell of water carried from the river to the room.
The central building housing the queen and her seat of government was the highest building in the city. The floor they were on seemed to be probably thirty feet above ground level, and the view seemed to indicate that every other building was no more than two floors, with possibly an attic here and there. Even buildings of commerce, inns, and the royal stables were all lower than the manor they were in.
Michelle turned back as the queen spoke to her. “You have had such an ordeal. How are you fairing?”
She thought about it before speaking. “I am all right, I guess. The biggest difference is how much my appearance has been changed. I don’t know that I can go back to my old life. No one will be able to recognize me. I certainly can’t go back to my company and attempt to continue running it. Everything seems so surreal. I have never really looked like this before, even when I was young. Giltreas erased a lifetime of scars and old injuries that I suffered over the last thirty-plus years. Now I don’t know what to do with myself. I am certain that I do not understand why this has happened. And I do not have any idea what to do and where to go with my life from here.” She said it quietly, with very little emotion, but even Giltreas was troubled by this.
“Michelle, I do not know what to say. I was directed by my Patron to do what I have done, but if my actions have caused you harm, I deeply apologize. Your condition before what those men did to you, along with what you said about your plane not having any magic, nor any race other than humans, tells me that most humans have never experienced this before. I fear that my helping you has done you no favors.” The look on Giltreas’ face plainly identified his inner conflict, but Michelle shook her head emphatically as she turned to face him.
“It is okay, Giltreas. You have no reason to apologize. As you said, you were directed to do this. I deeply appreciate what you’ve done for me. I just don’t know where to go from here. My path forward will be very different than my path before, I am guessing.” She smiled at him. “Life is an adventure to be lived and not just experienced, right?”
Dave twitched as her last sentence struck a familiar chord in his memory. She had leaned on that philosophy as change after change had thrown her entire life and the goals of her teen years out of reach, as she adapted to her challenges, and made new goals.
A brief, small, tremulous smile found its way onto Giltreas’ countenance as he acknowledged her statement, but his internal discord continued to fester. Magic had always been an accepted part of his life, and as much as he had used magic in the service of his patron, he had also used it to heal and help others whenever he was free to do so. But here, with this woman, was evidence plain that his successful attempt to help, even at his Patron’s request and, even, His urging, had caused harm. What did it mean when a good act caused harm?
Giltreas continued to contemplate the thoughts running through the back of his mind as he listened to the conversation continue around him, no sign of the inner turm
oil that roiled through him.
The queen picked up on something that caught her attention earlier in what Michelle had said. “You said you run a… company? What do you mean by that? I have no knowledge of this.”
Michelle thought for a moment. “Do you have merchants here? People and groups of people that buy things and sell them to others?”
“Yes, we call them merchant houses. You run a merchant house?” The queen’s question came from her confusion. While her opinion of the capable young human woman in front of her let her believe that she could do anything that her mind was set upon, merchanting was sometimes and even often not the most honorable business, and many times, larger merchant houses were suspected of supporting piracy, and possibly brigandry as well. She and her advisors were unsure of the exact relationship between the larger houses and the annoyances that caused so much trouble, but they felt, indeed almost sensed, its existence. Often they tried to extirpate it from one region of the seas, only to have those they removed be replaced by others. There was no simple answer to this vexing problem. It was simply too expensive to ship things by magical gates, as the number of mages that could cast such powerful spell was limited. Even those that could cast it and keep it open long enough to move any number of freight wagons through it could not do it regularly, as it was simply too taxing of a mage’s magical strength and reserves of energy.
Michelle thought for a moment, sensing the distaste with which the queen held such enterprises and the people who were involved in them.
“Where we are from, we refer to a merchant house as a company. A company may have one or more things that it does. Some make things to sell; those we call manufacturers, as they manufacture things. Some buy from manufactures and resell them to other companies or directly to people who use them. Those are wholesalers and retailers. Still others do things, perform services, for companies and individual people. My company provides services to other companies.”
The queen thought a moment, then asked another question. “What services does your company perform?”
“Most companies have a huge amount of information that they need or want to keep track of. My company provides ways to store and organize that information, to bring it up as needed, and to perform research on it. We also keep it safe from those who shouldn’t see it. We make it available when the owner of that information wants to see it, add to it, change it, or get rid of it.” Michelle spoke calmly, as if such a thing were commonplace.
Seeing the quiet, almost proprietary air that Michelle spoke with when describing the… ‘company’ she was involved in made the queen pause. It was somewhat of a minor shock that merchant houses would pay someone else to house their records and the like. No one had ever thought of doing such a thing in any of the realms she protected. It also confused her.
“That is… interesting. I never would have thought of forming merchant house -- or company as you call it? -- to do such a thing. Moving information around must be cumbersome and challenging.” Her mind held an image of a wagon with a huge load of papers and books being pulled through the city streets, followed by a retinue of men with swords and spears to protect it.
Michelle smiled internally. This was an interesting challenge to her – to describe modern information technology concepts to someone from a pre-industrial society, let alone a pre-information-age society.
“We have things, devices, that are capable of storing much information and displaying it when needed.” Michelle turned to Allison, who reached into her pocket and removed her phone, handing it over to Michelle with a small smile of her own.
“No signal here, I suppose,” she said with a chuckle.
Michelle nodded, then stood and walked over to the queen, turning on the phone as she did.
“This is just a small one. Others are much larger, and can hold a lot more information,” she said as she called up the Kindle electronic book reader application Allison used to read from. Opening it, she turned the screen to the queen, who gasped.
“What is this?!” she said in hushed, awed tones.
“This is a book reader. You have scrolls? That is close to what we call a book. This device, called a smartphone, can store hundreds or even thousands of them. Ally has a few dozen that she keeps in here to read when she has free time.” She held the phone in her left hand, and showed the queen how to turn pages by touching the screen on one side or the other. Then she went to the library page, and showed that there were several books stored on the phone, and each one had its own text, and a unique cover page and picture.
Overwhelmed by the small thing in front of her, she closed her eyes for a moment, then blinked up at Michelle in awe. “And this is what you do? You store books for companies?” Her confusion grew.
“Not exactly. The words in a book we call information, but information could be many different things. One company that makes things might have the plans on how to make those things, instructions on how to use them and maintain them, other information on who has bought them, how much it costs to make them, how much they make selling them, and so on.” The queen’s eye started to glaze over just a bit as new concepts came at her so quickly.
“So you run a company that stores information for other companies. I think I understand that a little better now, even if it will take me some time to make much more sense of it,” she added with a small smile as she regained some of her internal balance.
“Well, yes I run it, that’s true; however, I started the company myself many years ago, and have been growing it ever since. Right now it is in two different countries, and expanding as customers demand more from us.”
“How many persons does your company employ?”
“Ahh, I think the number is just over one thousand two hundred now. We acquired another company last fall, and have integrated them into what we do, adding another two hundred or so. Dave, here,” she nodded at her brother, “is the head of the part of the company that deals directly with the devices that store and move the information.”
The queen and Giltreas were both shocked. This unassuming human woman in front of them ran a merchant house which employed over a thousand beings? The queen paused to consider for a moment, and decided she wasn’t sure if that was more surprising, or if it was that Michelle had built it herself. She detected no falsehood in the woman, though, and her brother and his mate showed no signs of unease at her statements that would indicate a falsehood on her part.
Giltreas had known that Michelle was a woman of some substance and achievement, but that large of a merchant house was almost unheard of. Rarely would one find a merchant house of more than some few hundreds, with possibly only one he could recall possibly approaching a thousand. Even the standing city guard was barely two thousand, out of a city of twenty-three thousand beings of all races – mostly elves, but some humans lived there, and fewer yet dwarves from the mountains to the west.
The conversation turned to more practical matters as the humans continued to process the events of the last day, and Giltreas and his mother the queen continued to consider the strange humans in front of them.
“Mother, I will need to assist David in bringing things that Michelle and Allison will wish to have with them while they stay here, as well as things and food the dogs will require. Will it be acceptable for me to open gates here inside the royal quarters to accomplish this?”
Michelle started to speak up, “Your Majesty—”
“You must call me by my name, Delara. I have no need for such formality in any setting other than the throne room,” the queen interrupted with a smile and some humility. “I have no need of people to constantly remind me that I am a ruler. It keeps me from communing with others.”
“Delara, we don’t wish to be a burden or cause problems. I have no idea how long we will have to stay here, or how many times Dave and Giltreas will be coming here while they are looking,” Michelle said quietly.
The queen’s facial expression was gentle and kind. “You should have no fear
of being a burden. I cannot imagine that any such as yourselves would be vexing. And as for my son coming to visit you, and by extension, me, on a regular basis: I welcome the chance to see him more often. If keeping you close to me in my living place gives me that gift, I cannot see it as a burden, but as a gift. You would be granting me a boon by staying here.”
Allison smiled, and even Michelle felt better about that. But the Queen’s next question drew her up short in thought.
“Do you not have responsibilities to your merchant house that you must attend to? Will those responsibilities languish unattended while you are here gossiping with me? And Allison, what of the needs on your time?”
Allison turned to look at Michelle, and saw that she was considering the question, so she spoke up. “Dave is such a good provider that I don’t need to work. I have no real responsibilities. I volunteer my time to help others, but I am not required to be anywhere. And I can disappear like this for a few months before someone gets concerned. I travel a lot with my free time. I might need to call someone in a few weeks so that they don’t worry about me.”
Delara pondered Allison’s statement as she thought about someone having no need to work on a daily basis to feed and clothe themselves. Her had thoughts turned to the idle nobles of some of the southern human kingdoms, but decided that the comparison of those indolents to Allison didn’t seem to fit, when Michelle interrupted her musings.
“I have been planning for a transition to new leadership at the company for some time. Some time ago, I was told I had a disease inside me that was slowly killing me, so I set everything up for Dave to take over the company. I will write a letter to my lawyer telling him to transition everything to Dave for the duration while I am away. He already has plans for Dave to take over eventually. This will simply put them into play for the short term.” Michelle turned to look at Dave while she said the last sentence, and the smiled at the shock on his face as he realized that he was her hand-picked successor – something he had clearly not expected.