On Sevenday I stopped by the main palace of the College of Magisters, in Pierazard. This is Aurje territory, and they are quite proud of it. The higher-up in Magister authority you look, the harder it is to untwine them from the Aurje House. The combination of scrivening, wizardry and lore that defines magisters is also the priorities of the House. So basically every ti you see a magister coming off as high-handed, presumptuous, scheming, sarcastic, authoritative, hypocritical, power-hungry, self-serving, callous and secretive, it's because they're entirely reliant on Aurje sponsorship and approval to advance. Only the apprentices scrubbing the floors have gotten there entirely on rit, after that every promotion is about how much you impress the Aurje leadership. And they're most impressed by flattery. And their favorite flattery is imitation. Essentially they're all jerks from top to bottom. This may have been a factor why I was never particularly surprised that Magister Braux wound up being a murderous bitch. And tried to spike my GPA. I knocked on the front door of the Grand Tower. Which was inside the curtain walls, the gatehouse, the patrolling guards, the sentry picket, and the fence-wards. The massive doors swung open, to reveal a youngish man with black-red robes and a staff, staring at in complete shock. "Afternoon," I said with a smile. "After- hello, and- sorry, how did you get here?" "Magic," I said with a smile. "I'll bet you here that all the ti." "Not really, no- sorry, ah, how did you get here?" "Magic, I promise," I said. "I can travel by magic. Maybe you've heard of ? Lady Natalie Harigold? Ducal princess of adowtam? Sorceress of unique and unprecedented ability? I recently created passages through the Fissure after wizardry and script both failed to do so for a thousand years?" "Sorry, no, they don't let out much," he said with a confused smile. "That's unfortunate. I knocked. What's your na?" "I'm Druse. But how did you - sorry, it's the sa question again, but- but but but nobody just shows up here! I've got an itinerary of everyone who's got an appointnt for the rest of the month! I get confirmations from the checkpoints when soone is forty-eight hours away. I have to countersign anyone passing the periter wards! I sign the approvals for escort detachnts to bring soone in from the reception camp. There's the Ritual of Passage at the exterior gate, and after that-" "Sure sure," I said. "I know, you've got a whole protocol, there's thirteen different steps of passwords, checkpoints, contraband searches, ntal probes, sworn oaths, docunt verifications and background checks. But I don't have nineteen hours to go through all that rigmarole so I skipped it." "You just... skipped it?" "Yep," I said. "Look, I just ca to say that the big event is taking place at Bander, and if your investigative team starts mobilizing right now, you'll be able to help kill a rogue necromancer. Interested?" He panicked silently for a minute, eyes wide, mouthing words, then made a decision. "I think you should co inside and speak to the head of-" "You an that I should submit to three background checks and a purification ritual so I'll be in the proper fra of mind to speak to the Arch-Muck of Whatever," I said, shaking my head. "I promise, promise you, that I'm not interested in a single hour of your ritual, ceremony, pageantry, protocol, traditions, or pomposities. Just run a ssage up the chain, fast. Necromancer. Bander province. Twoday. Tower. Hurry. I won't be standing around all day waiting for the magisters to get their socks on." Druse looked troubled. "You- you won't- " "Nope. Not even a small ritual," I insisted. He nodded, finally comprehending. "Very well. I will begin the Ceremony of Expedited Ergency!" He shut the door in front of . When all this was a video ga, these guys were really funny to in a way. In person they're annoying as fuck. I'm sure it'll be funny again once I've gotten so distance. I could hear the opening chants of the Ceremony of Expedited Ergency, and I teleported out of there.When Kurumi walked in, her face was pale and her lips were almost bloodless. She looked like she was headed to the gallows or the firing squad. Which I presu would use crossbows because I am not teaching anyone in this world how to make gunpowder.
I was busy looking through my ring and jotting notes. This was odd enough to shake her out of the funk that gripped her. She stared a minute. "What are you doing?" she asked.
"Just a normal amount of blackmail," I reassured her, putting my ring back on and then I folded the page I was working on. "Heavens, are you all right? You look like you've seen a ghost and it had your face." She was holding a thick envelope in her hand, with so official-looking stamps on it including an expensive insurance company's logo and the logo of a first-rate ard courier company. The envelope was a thick waxed paper and had several sheets of paper folded within, judging from the thickness of it. Her eyes latched onto , and I could not tell if she was looking at like I was the solution to all her fears, or the source of them. "I can't look," she squeaked, as she sat down next to . She shoved the envelope my way. The foxy sexy math teacher was running late again, so I had ti to help with this before we got to assignnts. The paper parted itself neatly for , and I tugged out the pages. "All right," I said, reading quickly. "The account was closed out on schedule. The trades were finalized. The tallies were logged and locked in when you made the original investnt trade, and confird against the daily rates at that ti. Since you authorized a specific date for the short-sale, your buyer was locked into the daily rate at that ti. And so that ans... At the original investnt, a bushel of adowtam cranberry went for three coops and seven bits. At the tale of buyback, the price per bushel was tentatively given as six clips. A difference of ninety-eight-point-three-seven-eight percent." She started to calm down. "We got a return of over ninety-eight percent?" she sounded a little winded, but not as panicked as just a minute ago. "Now I know you're too wound up to think straight," I chuckled. "That's not how percentages work. No, the rate of return would be nine-thousand-eight-hundred and-" Kurumi squeaked in distress. I set the page down. "I'll try to say this with smaller numbers. Less intimidating. Your initial investnt has been multiplied by sixty-one-point-six. That's what's logged. But it would probably be worth your while to retain an attorney to contest those figures. There's probably nowhere in Hearstwhile you could actually sell a bushel of curse-blighted cranberries and get six clips, not legally; I think technically that would an trafficking in necromantic materials. Even the basket you shipped them in would need to be burned. A lawyer could probably press that the actual value on the day of sale is at most one clip, and-" Kurumi had her head down on the desk. "I invested hundreds- what am I going to do?" "You're going to enjoy being rich, probably," I said. "You won. This is good. Right?" I had a sudden ugly icy premonition- Kurumi had decided she did not trust and had invested her money into buying the berries, not short-selling. I checked the pages in my hands again, and confird that she had followed my instructions. Yep, she's rich. "I spent hundreds..." she moaned without raising her head. "Multiplied? Sixty....?" "Ku? Babe?" I said, patting her shoulder. "You're gonna have to tell what's the matter. You seem to be devastated by what is very clearly good news. Help out, yes?" She made a fist and bumped it against the tabletop, no energy for real effort. "I'm now the richest mber of the Lautan Trade Consortium," she said, voice muffled by the desk. "And therefore, the head of the Lautan Trade Consortium. I'm going to have to go ho. Drop out of school. I studied so hard to get those scholarships, and kept the refunded tuition. It was supposed to be a nice nest egg for to start a sideline and add it to the family business. And now it's my family business." "I don't understand," I said. "You're from a rchant family. They have to proud of you for making a good investnt, right? They're not going-" "If I'm lucky," Kurumi said, looking up now with haunted eyes, "they'll just look at and see a big ol' bag of gold coins that they would like to have for themselves. They'll forget about my tests, my class presidency, my tutoring and sumr jobs and personality entirely and just see a wallet that they'd like to get part of. Or, gods forbid, they'll look at like the golden goose, and ask to make a miracle trade like that again." She paused, and looked at hungrily like I was a golden goose. "Natalie, can you do this again!? Do you know another trade that-" "Not like that," I denied, shaking my head. I patted her arm. "Nothing that direct, dramatic and swift. I can make a list of provinces you'll want to make sure you don't own real estate within, and a few industries that are going to boom soon. And of course, now that the berry market has bottod this will be a great ti to buy in on the upswing, but that's a slower investnt, three to five years I should think." Kurumi nodded. "Yes, of course, way ahead of you, but- but dammit, they're not going to let run the family business from my dorm! I'm going to be shipped back to Gseni and stuck behind a desk!" She slumped back down, dropping her chin onto her crossed forearms. I laughed. "Oh no they won't! Nobody takes my lab partner that easily! It's easy, you're going to invest in your family's business. Take the money you made and put it into their coffers with a contract that they invest a matching amount into the cranberry commodity market with a sell date for your graduation. You reserve first payout equal to your investnt and ninety-percent proceeds after that. That ans they're guaranteed so profit, you're guaranteed a lot of profit, and all of your money is technically their money until you're ready to go back to Gesundheit and -" "Gseni." "That's what I said. Look, I'll write up the contracts with you and we'll make it official. I'll sign as your attorney." I glanced at the papers on the desk. "You can afford my rates." She shook her head. "Sixty-one tis the invest- that was a hundred-fifty gold! That's over nine-thousand gold. That's "where do you want your third palace" money, Natalie!" "Yep," I said, sliding one page across. "They've posted you an IOU, and state that verified copies are also available at your bank's records and with the county courts." "And you, you," she stamred. "The amount you signed over..." I grinned like a satisfied shark. I felt like one. "Hey Kurumi?" I crooned gleefully. "I forgot that there's one more bonus for here. Commodities markets are privately owned." "Yeah, everyone knows that," she said. I snorted. "Funny if true. No, most people don't know that. In fact, only people who are raised in dedicated rchant-trade families know that, or anyone who is raised to have a comprehensive knowledge of the exchange economy in a commodity-trading duchy. So, us- you and I. And an investnt-trade brokerage requires the backing of banks, and there's only one bank in Hearstwhile that has the kind of funds to cover the sort of investnts we've made." "Yeah, the Dominion Backing Fund," Kurumi said, with more 'duh everyone knows that' attitude. "They're the only ones who would ever handle more than a thousand gold coats on a single exchange." "So, your nine thousand," I said, shark-smiling, "and my two-hundred-" "Shhhh!" she hissed, as if it's illegal to say numbers like that. Which, honestly, fair. People get killed over much smaller sums than this. I should probably be a lot more cautious about this. She looked around the room at the other students, but they were really obsessed with trying to finish up the assignnts last-minute while the teacher was running late. This is not a room where you can get attention by quietly murmuring large numbers. Nobody even glancing our direction. Still, caution is a good habit to be in when you're holding a piece of paper that can be redeed for huge amounts of money. I nodded, grimaced, but went on. "- all ca out of the coffers of the Backing Fund," I said. "Which ans it ca out of the pockets of the consolidated Dominion Faction." Back in the old days, shorting a commodity fund like that would wind up hurting the farrs themselves. All the money I just earned would be taken out of the value of the farms and funds that support those farms. But several hundred years ago, so money-hungry superstar ca up with leveraged futures markets, which gave them a way to trade stock in commodities without letting the farrs or their co-ops have any ownership over the process. And the Dominion Backing Fund has been skimming platinum crowns from the agriculture markets for centuries from this. If my short-sale had been positioned to screw over adowtam farrs I would have never. "So how is that a bonus for you?" she said, still confused. "It ans that we just took sixty-thousand coats worth of gold out of the Freckentop fortune," I said with a sunny new smile. "Their share of the consolidated faction." "Oh," she said, rolling her eyes. "Spite." "The spite is almost as good as the money," I admitted. "Never underestimate the healing power of vindictive vindication. Yea my wrath is vast and terrible, well-earned by its recipients and unyielding in its delivery!" "Shut up," she rolled her eyes. "So what are you going to do with the money? Buy a few palaces? Private island? Servant boys to fan you off? Quest of vengeance? Invest it back into berries to catch the upswing?" "Well, first I'm going to quit my night job," I said. "And then I'm going to invest it into berries. Not a major buy on the futures market with a sunset payout, but a dividend-paying administrative fund." "A buh whuh?" "I'm gonna hold so of this back for expenses," I said, laying a hand on top of the other IOU in the envelope. "And the rest goes into a common fund for the farrs and their support industries, to get them back on their feet and rebuild their livelihoods while we wait for the untainted seeds to grow and mature. Not just numbers on a page, but assistance to the needy. I get dividends paid to the increased valuation of the affected lands. Since that money is administered by the duke, those values are technically taxes paid, so no burden on the farr, and since the money is off the duke's books, they don't pay crown taxes on it either, and that's that." Kurumi was staring at in bafflent, speechless. I smirked. "What, did you think the aristocrats do nothing but wear fancy jewelry and go to stupid pointless parties? This is a real job, I'll have you know. I'm not just another pretty face!" "I didn't think that," she said too quickly. "Anyway! Ahem. You found a way to give the money back to the farrs, but also keep it for yourself, and you don't let the royal family get a payout from the farrs, or your family, while you just get charged at capital gains rates?" She paused, and bonked her forehead with her palm. "Minus the charitable donation rate, paid forward. No taxes for you either. So you took several palaces worth of gold from them and they don't even get to claw it back at the tax rate." "My righteous wrath is unyielding," I reminded her. "I spent years getting tutored in this stuff. It's the reason that the rest of the people put up with the Great Houses."Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on."And anwhile, you'll be getting...?" "A couple thousand gold coats per month," I said. "On top of my existing royalty stipends." I am sure I looked very pleased with myself. "Now then, co find in the ga room and we'll draw up that contract so that your money doesn't take over your life, all right? I understand that rchant families teach their children a lot of ways to earn money, but aristocrats get lessons in what to do with it when you've got a dangerous amount of money."
Sounds great huh? All wrapped up in a tidy bow. No problems here, nope, we've got it all figured out! For once, Lady Natalie figured out all the angles and figured out how to beat the system without any complications to worry about!
Just because this ga is written in such a way that you can never just get sothing without a dozen extra steps or so extraneous plotline, doesn't an that they can get the drop on ! No, I outsmarted the whole damn- "I'm ruined!" Elica sobbed, staring at the letter she had just opened. We sat around the card table, all frozen. The rest of the room was bustling, there was a fun and casual atmosphere to the room tonight. All except our corner, where Elica was just opening a waxed envelope with important seals stamped on it, and read the pages within. "What happened roomie?" I said, staring at the envelope on the table. Nearly identical to the one I'd opened for Kurumi. But the envelope this ti was spotted with tears. Actual tears, like from a real human emotion. "The Dominion fund," she sniffled. "They're calling in the backer assets, and I'm in the red. I'm leveraged! Underwater! Bankrupted!" "Ruined," Larianne said, and her tone is horrified but disgusted. It doesn't sound like she's talking about money, she uses the word to an debased and tainted. Vancy's eyes were always very round, she looked surprised very easily. This was even more so. She looked around as if soone would loom out of the nearby ga tables and snatch Elica away to debtor's prison. "But how?" she gasped. "You're an earl. You answer only to a duke! Or like the lord protector, whatever they've got in Wanfarrun..." My stomach is sinking. The Dominion Backer Fund is held equally by all four of the Dominion Faction houses. The Freckentops. Eyellon. Duskare. And Brunbling. "Well," Elica said, wincing. "About that..." I reached out, and took the papers in front of her, turning them face-down so she would not be staring at the offending ssage. "Elica," I said. "Maybe you'd like to tell us everything?"
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