by Ivan Kal
Ashara immediately turned and ran toward the noble, who was just about to leave the warehouse.
“My lord! Can I have a word, please?” Ashara called to him. The old man turned and looked at her.
“Run back, girl. Your master will not change my mind. He asks too much.”
“Just a short word, my lord. It’s important,” she said and gave him one of her best, most inviting smiles.
The old noble stopped, and then nodded. “Best be quick about it.”
“Well, we really shouldn’t be telling you this… You see, it would actually hurt our business…”
“Speak, girl, I don’t have much time!”
“My master thinks that you should reconsider his offer. You see, soon the price of grain everywhere will jump much higher.”
“What? I’ve heard nothing about this!”
“Of course you didn’t,” Ashara reassured him calmly. “My master only sent me to tell you this because he has great respect for you, my lord. He is of course a man of honor and would never dream of giving out privileged merchant information to just anyone.”
“And I am just supposed to believe you at your word, now am I?” the man said, arching a brow.
Ashara placed one hand over her chest, feigning insult. “My lord! You must know that my master is as honorable as a merchant can be. Certainly you have never heard of him cheating someone on a deal!” Ashara said. From the short time she had known her employer, she was certain that he wasn’t in the habit of making deals in bad faith—but she also knew that there was very little word about him in the city, and that meant that the lord before her probably hadn’t heard anything. No word was as good as good word for what she wanted, she knew.
“That is true,” the noble said to himself thoughtfully. “But still, I need a bit more than that if I am to trust you and buy your grain.”
“Well…” Ashara made a point to look around as if she were checking if someone was listening, and then she gestured for the noble to get closer. “Kahaldia seems to have had a bad year, and has bought almost all the grain in Amaranthine. Given their size and population, I have no doubt that they had bought grain from other large kingdoms as well. And that means that soon the supply of grain is going to suffer. The Lashian Empire doesn’t trade much of their grain, as they keep most of it to feed their armies. The Shattered Kingdom has few farms, and most of what they produce goes to feeding their own. That means that any grain we want to buy will need to be transported from the east by road, and getting it from there will mean a greater expense in caravan size and their protection. And so the price will jump up.”
Ashara leaned back and watched as the noble started mulling that over. So she spoke before he could think much on it. “Of course, we will need to raise the price up soon as well. But as you have already approached us, we are willing to sell to you for the current price.”
She saw him crack and get to a decision. “Fine! But,” he threatened, “if you have lied to me just to get me to buy…”
“Never, my lord!” Ashara protested. “We are a reputable merchant house, with no desire to cheat our best customers.”
“Let’s go and sign the documents, then, before I change my mind.”
Ashara smiled and led him to Haris’s office.
* * *
A still-bewildered Haris bowed and assured the noble that his grain would be transported to his estate outside of Tourran by the end of the week.
“How did you get him to buy?” Haris asked her once the noble had left.
“I told him that Kahaldia had purchased most of the grain in Amaranthine and that soon the price would be raised.”
His eyes widened, and he stood up, clutching the documents in his hands. “You lied!”
Ashara looked at her employer. He was almost ten years older than her, and clearly had no idea what he was doing. He had inherited the merchant house from his father, who had passed away recently, and was completely unprepared for the job.
“Relax, Haris. I didn’t lie,” Ashara told him.
“But—”
“I told him the truth.”
“How could you know this? There hasn’t been any talk…”
“I was in Amberhorn a few months ago, and I saw the Kahaldian transport ships myself. I know that they purchased a lot more than they ordinarily do,” she told him.
“That’s not enough to make it truth.”
“No, but I have also overheard a few Kahaldian sailors talking in an inn. They were talking about the drought and how their ships were here to secure purchase for more grain.”
“They are of course keeping the fact that they need more grain quiet, otherwise everyone would be selling them grain at a much steeper price.”
“I…” Haris slumped back in his chair. “I’m not good at this,” he admitted in a whisper. “I should’ve sold the company after my father died. If you hadn’t managed to make this deal, we would’ve been ruined.”
“You are good at numbers, Haris,” Ashara told him, trying to make him feel better.
“Yes,” he said, then suddenly chuckled to himself. “But I am a failure at everything else.”
“But you don’t need to be. You already know your shortcomings—now you just need to make sure to hire the right people to offset them. Luckily, you have already done that.”
Haris looked at her in confusion.
Ashara put her hands on his desk and leaned toward him. “I think that a promotion is in order. I believe that I have proven how good I am at making deals happen.”
“A promotion?”
“Yes. You make me your head of trade, and I promise you that I will help you keep your father’s business from failing. You will be in charge of the finances and everything concerning numbers, and I will be bringing you business.”
Haris looked at her, mouth agape, but Ashara could see that he was thinking about it. She had, after all, picked his merchant house for a reason—he was desperate enough to accept. It would’ve been impossible for her to advance working with any of the other, bigger merchants.
Finally, she saw him come to a decision. “It’s not like I have any choice. Either I trust you, or I lose everything. Fine.”
“Good!” She clapped her hands. “Our first order of business should be to transport the grain. Then we should use the money we earn to buy as much low-quality grain as we can.”
“Why would we buy low-quality grain?” he asked, perplexed.
“Because soon everyone will know that Kahaldia has bought a large portion of that grain. And, if they are as desperate as I think they are, they won’t care that the grain is of low quality—they’ll still buy it. And we will sell it at far more than what we’ve purchased it for. But we will also sell it to those in Tourran and the Shattered Kingdom, who usually get their grain from Amaranthine.”
“Makes sense. Anything else, my lady?” he asked sarcastically.
Ashara grinned. “Yes, actually. We need to make more contacts, friends and business partners. You are nobility, right?”
Haris nodded slowly. “Lower nobility, yes. Why?”
“Then you must be invited to a lot of gatherings and such? Those are the places where we need to be. Those are the places where most deals are made.”
Haris nodded absentmindedly. “Yes, I rarely go… I’ve been too busy trying to make the business work…”
Ashara shook her head in disbelief. He was as hopeless as she had thought—instead of mingling with his fellow nobles and other merchants, he had been doing who knows what. She watched as he reached down into one of his drawers and pulled out a piece of paper.
“I have been invited to this event at the palace, a ball. Is this the kind of gathering you meant?”
Ashara took the invitation from him. “Yes, this is it exactly. Hmm… It’s in three days. I think that we can do it. Oh, and we will need a nice dress.”
“A dress?”
“Of course, I can’t go in these old things.” Ashara pointed down t
o her trousers and shirt.
“You want to go?” he asked almost incredulously.
“Didn’t we already establish that you are not good at making deals? Trust me—a few dances, and I will have this warehouse filled,” Ashara said, her mind already far into the future. With a bit of luck, she would make this small company into something really special.
* * *
Later that night, once she got back to the Eternal Soul Inn and walked up to her room, she found Vin sitting in the middle of the room with his legs crossed. He had pulled his hair back from his face into a tail at the back of his head. As soon as she entered, he opened his eyes.
“You look…happy.”
Ashara jumped on the bed and sighed in content. “I am happy,” she told him. “I got what I wanted. Things are looking up.”
“Congratulations, then,” he said as he closed his eyes again.
She rolled on the bed so that she could look at him. “What about you? Anything?”
“I’ve put my name on the boards,” he said simply.
Ashara grimaced. “I know that I asked you to sign up. But an unknown alone will not get many offers.”
Vin shrugged. “You said that caravans always look for protection, and that not everyone can pay for professionals. I come cheap.”
“I still think that you should try to find a permanent job in the city. I can get you a job at the warehouse easily,” Ashara said. Vin had spent his days in Tourran looking for information about the Arashan, listening and asking about red-skinned darji mages. He hadn’t had any luck. He had also taken a few work-hand jobs, and he had even helped in the warehouse where she worked, but he refused to sign up for more than a day’s worth of work. Some days he didn’t work at all, instead focusing on his training. She didn’t quite understand his power, nor could she imagine what it was like to have once held power and then found yourself without it, and Vin was adamant in wanting to regain it. And to do that, he told her, he couldn’t be tied down by a job. It didn’t really matter yet anyway—he didn’t spend much, and what he earned was enough to pay for his share of the room and their meals.
“You know that I can’t,” he told her. “A caravan might take me away from the city and cut into my time for training, but at least I will see more of your world, will hear more.” He looked at her, his eyes radiating intensity. “I need to find them, Ashara. Before it is too late.”
“I know.” Ashara sighed. “But you first need to find someone to take you on, and honestly no one will. No one knows you here.”
“We shall see. I am content to wait here as well. People from all over your world come here. If Arashan are on your world, I will hear about them eventually. In the meantime, I can advance on the path.”
“And how is that going?” she asked, truly interested. The idea of one strengthening their own body by will and strange power was fascinating to her.
“Surprisingly well. Your world is rich in aura—I have more power readily available to me here than I had ever seen on my world. I think that I will be ready to make the next step in a day or two.”
“Well, good for you I guess,” Ashara said as she rolled onto her back, letting her head hang from the end of the bed. She looked at Vin while upside down. He seemed almost motionless, but she could see tension in his body, and his breathing was strange as well. He was following some strange pattern that she knew had something to do with his powers.
“Vin?” she called.
“Yes, Ashara?”
“What do you think you will do after?”
“After what?”
“After you find the Arashan and stop them.”
Vin turned to look at her. He quirked an eyebrow and gave her a kind smile—a rare occurrence. “You have no doubt that I will achieve this?”
“There is no point in thinking about failure. According to you, if you fail, then everything will be destroyed. And there is nothing that I can do about it.” Not as she was. They had spoken about the Arashan plenty, and she had even suggested that they tried to warn rulers of the world—but she knew how foolish of an attempt that would be. No one would believe them. Not unless she managed to rise high enough that her word had weight.
“True. I did not think on this. I assume that I will continue as I always have, walking the path, following my way.”
Ashara looked away, through the small window of their room and at the blue sky. “I envy you that. You know exactly who you are, and what you want. I am just fumbling around.”
“You are following your way, but you have no path… That is something that you need to discover on your own. To find that which you desire above all else, and then to walk the path toward that goal.”
“And what is your goal, after everything? Why are you walking on the path you are?”
Vin chuckled. “Many on my world walked the path simply to gain strength, power, or influence. And those are not bad goals, but to them the path had always been a means to an end.” He paused, and she turned her head from the window only to find his eyes gazing at her with such an intensity that they looked to be almost glowing. “For me, the path is the end. I walk it simply to see where it ends.”
“I don’t understand.”
Vin turned his whole body to face her. “For my people’s spirit artists, there are seven steps of the path. And before I lost my born body, I had been a spirit artist of that final seventh step. Only a handful had ever achieved it in our history. And I had been the youngest to ever achieve it. All hailed me as one of the greatest spirit artists that had ever lived. For all of them, the seventh step is the pinnacle of power. The greatest height one can aspire to climb. But I had stood there, on that final step, and I knew that there was more beyond it. I know it in here.” He stabbed two of his fingers at his chest. “No one before me had risen further, and I will be the first. I know now that there are more worlds out there, that there are strange beings with strange powers. Perhaps even true gods. And I will stand above them all. I will learn and understand all that there is to learn.”
Ashara’s first instinct was to laugh at the absurdity of it all, at the ambition to be so great so as to match the gods—but she saw the look in his eyes, and his eyes spoke only of truth. For that look and for his desire, she envied him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
VIN
Vin sat in the middle of the room, with his legs crossed and his breathing calm. The ki in his core swirled as he prepared to take the next step on the path. He had only waited this long because of his injury—he had needed to allow time for his ki channels to recover from the strain—but now he was ready, although it still felt bizarre to him that he was able to advance so quickly. It had taken him a year on his own world to accumulate enough aura turned ki to take the second step. Here, however, there was so much more aura… It almost made him jealous that he had not been born here. But only almost—he was fairly certain that the reason the Arashan or the people on this world hadn’t developed spirit arts was because they had so much of aura. Instead they had went in another way, with their magic. It pained him to admit it, but there were similarities between their magic and his spirit arts. And he had only seen them on this world, where mages didn’t use power stored in gems like the Arashan had on his own world.
But it didn’t matter to him. They had their way, and he had his. He turned his focus inward, putting the full weight of his will on his core, willing it to begin the change. He stopped the swirling of the ki, and instead focused on the walls of his core. The ki inside started to churn, and then it expanded as he closed down on his core, forcing it into his ki channels. The ki burned through his channels, and in the process he transformed them, reinforcing them to handle more of the ki at once. He cycled in the precise patterns he had learned long ago and had done countless times—but still the burning surprised him. It had been a long time since he had done this. He guided the rhythm of the river flowing from his core through his body, and then, once all his channels had been transformed, he pulled the
river back, draining the rest of his body and filling his core.
Soon his core’s walls started to strain as he pulled more aura from around him into his body. And then, with one gargantuan push, he forced the core to expand again. It felt like an intense pressure in the center of his body, but slowly it abated as his core settled into its new form. Twice as big as it had been previously, and far stronger for the transformation it had just went through. Now he would be able to compress his ki at a far greater rate, and collect far more of it.
He relaxed, and started cycling ki through the core and his body, using the slow, cleansing breathing techniques he had been taught as a child. He turned his focus to his core, studying it with interest. It had been so long since he had felt anything more than a trickle of power there; and while this was still nothing compared to his core on the seventh step, the difference between his core at the first step and the second was the same as the difference between a pond and a lake. As it will be for every next step, he thought, for each step is far harder to achieve than the one before it.
And even though he had advanced faster than anyone ever had before, he was already looking forward to the next step. The third step would be far harder, and carried with it a far greater decision. It was the step where he would need to reforge his body, to choose what way he would follow, as well as force his core to absorb an affinity, and he had yet to decide. In his last body, he had followed the Way of the Heavenly Crashing Lightning, one of the most powerful ways, whose secrets had been guarded fiercely. His core held an affinity for lightning and air elements, a powerful combination for any spirit artist, but more so for him, as he had been given the secrets of the Heavenly Crashing Lightning.
He could do the same here; it would even be much easier to achieve. There was air aura all around him, and he was certain that on this world he would only need a thunderstorm to find the lightning aura. On his world there had been only one place where he could’ve gained lighting affinity, and it had been a trial even getting there. But the realities of this new world had opened far more opportunities for him. He had already seen almost every element in the aura around him, and he would easily be able to accumulate enough for his needs.