Shango POV: Day 94

  Current Wealth: 196 gold 19 silver 32 copper

  I’d been very, very busy over the last three days. I’d had to be. When one lost one’s only chance in a while to snap bricks in half and do a quadruple backflip, one found distractions to cope with the fact. Mine, as usual, was in work.

  Phelia had been the one to bring the possible sources of wealth to me, of course, but it was Solitaire I’d gone to to find out our options. He’d asked for a few days while he worked on them; then, in true Solitaire fashion, delivered in seemingly the precise instant where my patience was about to run dry.

  “Behold!” He declared, leading me to his workshop and proudly pointing at a weird, big vat. “My big elliptical pig-iron blowy machine!”

  The name could certainly have used some work, which told me it was an idea he’d coined independently. I took a long look at the thing, trying to figure out what it might do and how it might do it, then just gave up. However it worked, it wasn’t intuitive enough for me to figure out. Solitaire evidently noticed how lost I was, because he launched into the smug process of explaining.

  “Alright, so basically we pour molten iron in, right? Standard shit, we do a lot of that anyway and already have the equipment to make it. Difference here is we also have a giant pump that I’ve set to be driven by either a superhuman, several humans or a primitive steam engine. Pump pushes air and oxygen through, which removes impurities in a fairly uniform way, keeps the heat up and eventually turns the whole batch of iron into decent-quality steel. Decent being better than most of the stuff this world’s idiots use, that is.”

  It was a lot to be told at once. I decided to start with the most crucial part.

  “How much steel can we produce a day with this?”

  Solitaire shrugged.

  “Probably…I don’t know, ten tonnes or something? It’s not a really big blowy-”

  “-Don’t call them blowies.” I cut in, he spoke over me.

  “-but it’ll still process quite a bit through sheer volume.”

  I stared at it, considering all the pitches I might make with something like this to back them up. For now, I decided, it’d be better not to let people know about it. This thing might have made as much steel as the entire city combined, or a sizable fraction at least. Being known as people capable of that didn’t seem like it would be good for long-term survival.

  “You did…Very well.” I grinned, mood lifting pointedly upwards. Pointedly, and quickly. How had I not felt this way instantaneously? This was possibly the biggest thing Solitaire had made since black powder. And once again, it was ours.

  Best to keep it on wraps, but we’d be fucking going places.

  Phelia was where she always was, her study. My study, whatever. She was reading, as per usual, and didn’t bother looking up at my entry until I actively spoke to her. Even then, I could see I didn’t actually have her attention until what I was saying properly sunk in.

  “Solitaire can turn over a tonne of iron into steel every day, if you can find someone to provide the iron then we can turn a pretty easy profit.”

  Her eyes couldn’t have darted up faster, even if I’d lit myself on fire and shot her in the leg.

  “Do you have any idea what this-”

  “-I do.” I cut in, having gone out of my way to research and memorise as much of the local economy as was possible. Even if I hadn’t, shopping for the stuff not too long ago would’ve made it abundantly clear anyway. I couldn’t read, still, but I’d made a step towards even that through learning with Helena. So was Solitaire, as I gathered it.

  Geniuses that we were, both of us were almost as literate as the average five year-old was back on earth. Still, better than the average five year-old on Redacle at least. Small victories and all that.

  “Lord Wilskasai.” Phelia said at once, and I nodded.

  “Just who I was thinking, mines, refineries, iron, right? What sort of deal do you think we might get from him?”

  Phelia’s brow furrowed at that, the book finally placed down as she dedicated the entirety of her not-inconsiderable intellect to the problem.

  “...The more we let him know we have, the more he’ll want.” She said at last. “Wilskasai is greedier than he is rich, and he is very rich. But also, fortunately, not an ally of Byror or his compatriots. And cautious of them.”

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  I winced at the last part. Cautious didn’t mean antagonistic, and often implied the opposite. Byror’s animosity toward us was common knowledge by now. It meant we were fucking radioactive to any potential deal-makers who feared him.

  “So how would you suggest we approach?” I asked her.

  Phelia seemed surprised, and I wasn’t sure why, because I’m an idiot, until she spoke next.

  “You…Want my opinion?”

  God, mediaeval patriarchies. It was like something a cartoon world would have.

  “Yes.” I told her, flatly. “Spare me the false modesty, you’re cleverer by half than anyone in this city not named Belahont, and you know a thousand times more about it than I do. I want your opinion, and I will weigh it quite strongly once you’ve given it. So spare us both a bit of time and speak.”

  Say one thing for Phelia, say she was fast. I’d stunned her more, perhaps, than I’d ever seen a woman stunned- excluding those Solitaire had punched in the head- but she bounced back near instantly.

  “I see.” She swallowed, eyes burning with something too quickly vanished for identification. “Well, then, I think the best option here is to simply offer him returns from the profit of steel we make, asking for iron as payment. Make it a direct transaction with him. If you simply purchase large quantities of iron, and he finds out only later that you’re turning it into wealth via this new steel-making method, then he may feel slighted. And-”

  ”-Powerful men do terrible things when they feel slighted. Yes.” I noted, nodding along. “Fair enough then, good idea. When can you set up a meeting?”

  “Now.” Phelia replied. A nice surprise, and I sent her off to do just that.

  Phelia really was quick. I had my meeting scheduled within the hour, and was waiting only a few more hours after that before it was ready for my presence. We used the time to prepare.

  My clothing, fortunately, was made more appropriate by raiding one of the old wardrobes in Phelia’s mansion. One of her relatives at least had been close to my height, and he had a nice outfit that both fit me adequately and smelled of such concentrated wealth as to congeal gold dust on the floor with every step I took. These were just the beginnings of our work, though.

  Firstly, my accent was wrong. Yeah, no surprise there, when you’re dealing with rich people back on earth an African accent is always fucking wrong. It wasn’t a case of specific bigotry here, though, more just generalised xenophobia. Redaclans weren’t much trusting of outsiders after all.

  I didn’t take long to coach into a more appropriate pattern of speech, and from there I got down to working on the memorisation of Wilskasai’s preferences, history, views. More or less anything which might let me subtly influence him one way or the other. And it was work, too, because I didn’t have an on-demand memory like Solitaire. Just a very good one. After that, came the conversational practice.

  “Wilskasai is one of the cleverest in the city, and all the more ruthless for it.” Phelia had warned me. Suddenly I regretted deciding to make Redacle a land of skilled politicking and cerebral sparring. It would’ve been so much easier on all of us if its nobility had been violent, egomaniacal morons like in real life.

  Eventually my hours slipped by, and the meeting loomed over us. I set out for it, Phelia in tow, Magnus following after to guard us. I’d come to suspect that an actual attack was unlikely to befall us at this point.

  Unlikely, and suspect, though, was far from a certainty. Thus the fucking bodyguard.

  Wilskasai’s mansion was not bigger than Phelia’s, which was a surprise. It was far better maintained, though. Its gardens had groundskeepers actively working, and as we were invited into the sprawling structure I found no shortage of servants and guards within. My wife had told me, at length, how wealthy the family was of course. It was different to be told than shown, though. I found myself tallying up the likely cost of keeping so many on payroll, then giving up once I counted past my two dozenth face.

  If nothing else, there was certainly a lot of potential money here. I just had to wring it out.

  Wilskasai himself received us in his office. This was not normal, nor was it proper. We were nobles, and Phelia herself was of old, pure blood. It was not the done thing to receive nobles in an office, because offices were for receiving inferiors, as I myself had seen demonstrated quite well in my earlier visits within the city.

  I knew Wilskasai wasn’t the sort of man to make this mistake either, it was deliberate on his part. I was of thin blood, my wife of empty coffers, and we were his inferior in all but name.

  Fine then, we’d just have to see how long that lasted.

  “Lady Velaharo.” Wilskasai smiled. “And Lord Velaharo, might I offer my congratulations on your wedding?”

  He might have, and it would’ve been a fucking joke. One didn’t address the woman first, either, in this land. I didn’t care in the slightest of course, but Wilskasai would have. He was trying to get to me, another slight to remind me where we stood.

  Which, itself, was an advantage. Because it told me the sorts of things he thought others would notice, and that implied that he himself would notice those very same sorts of slights. I was dealing with a thin-skinned man, then, who cared about how he was seen. A useful hint, thanks moron.

  Wilskasai was a man in his middle years, average height and thin with cheekbones which seemed to be attempting an escape from his face and dull brown eyes. His hair was tousled, skin unusually pale, entire visage groomed to perfection. If I’d needed any confirmation about his vanity, I’d have found it in a single glance.

  “Thank you my Lord.” I smiled, showing all the deference a man like this would want, and letting him see a shade of quivering ego. It would irk him to see his petty jibes go unnoticed, and thinking he actually got a reaction from me would hopefully improve his mood. It seemed to work.

  “Oh, you can dispense with the formalities.” He grinned, waving a hand as if he actually meant a word of what he said. “Please, I’ve been itching to meet you. Heard stories, you know?”

  That I actually believed, there was no other reason he’d be slumming it with this meeting on such short notice.

  “And I much appreciate being given the chance.” I replied, showing just enough enthusiasm. “Hopefully I can make it well worth both our times.”

  Hopefully I could.