Chapter 180 – Threads to Weave Into Strings

Mirian strode through the room with her head held high. She quickly found the Sacristars, who were talking to a man Alexus seemed to know.

Nicolus’s jaw was open as she approached. “Damn, Mirian,” he said. “I knew you—but I didn’t know—I mean—”

Sire Nurea let out a soft exasperated noise. “It’s like I taught him nothing,” she complained to the air.

Alexus let out a chortle.

“Lady Mirian, if you would,” she told them.

“My lady,” Nicolus said, giving her a curt bow that somehow managed to be sarcastic.

“Lady of what?” one of the businessmen at Alexus’s shoulder asked, mirroring Nicolus’s bow.

“I find it a bit crass to discuss such things, don’t you?” Mirian replied haughtily.

“Lady Mirian,” Alexus said, without missing a beat. “This is Clement Stalswrot. Friend of mine. He’s just made some large acquisitions.”

“Oh?” Mirian said, giving him a small smile. It was easier to play her role if she thought of the people here as game pieces to be manipulated, rather than human.

She saw Clement’s mouth twitch and his eyes briefly scanned her. “Just a small thing,” he said dismissively.

Alexus laughed. “A small thing, he says! Too modest, I’m afraid. He’s gotten ahold of most of the myrvite hunting rights from Westshire to the Hikstoluck! A lot of wilderness out there, but with all these factory expansions, it’s a surefire investment.”

“Interesting. Why didn’t the others buy it up first?” she asked, gesturing at the rest of the party.

“Ah, that’s the trick, isn’t it?” Clement said. “A good businessman can’t be revealing his tricks. Suffice to say that what people believe about an investment is far more important for its price than what it sells for on the market.”

Alexus let out a guffaw and slapped the man on the back as he doubled over at what, apparently, was a clever joke. Even Clement seemed a bit taken aback by his reaction, and a bit of his drink splashed.

“So Akana will keep moving west?”

“Of course, Lady Mirian.”

“And then where will it go?”

Clement’s eyes twinkled. “By then, we’ll be living in a new world, the world we’ve laid the foundation for.”

Mirian considered the conversation and how to maneuver it. “People are so set in their ways in Baracuel. There’s maximum quotas south of the frostlands, and bits of wilderness cut into neat little ranches. There, the spellward is the king on the throne. Here, though, you eschew such limitations. How many myrvite organs do you ship down the Hikstoluck River?”

“Twenty tons per annum,” Clement said.

Mirian reeled at the number. “And that’s just the spell organs? Is that you, or the whole industry?”

“Oh, just me, my lady,” Clement said, smiling again.

Mentally, Mirian was calculating just how many beasts that would be. A bog lion mane was about three pounds once shaved, while a chimera skull was usually between one and twenty pounds, depending on the size of the creature. A cockatrice heart was only two-fifths of a pound. Depending on what the breakdown of the myrvites they were killing out there was, Clement’s operation was killing and shipping some 50,000 myrivtes per year. No wonder the Ennicus family couldn’t compete, she realized. She had seen some of the operations out west, but only now did she truly comprehend the scale.

“See, Nicolus, that’s what I’ve been saying,” his uncle said. “Akana is the future. Baracuel is too tied down by the past. That’s the kind of numbers a Bardas could only dream of!”

Shortly after that, Clement excused himself to join another circle of businessmen, and Alexus whispered, “He spread rumors of a Mianol uprising and that Westshire reformists were going to ban myrvite hunting west of the mountains. Used his broadsheet business in Westshire to help spread that. Then he used shell companies to pick up all the rights on the cheap before his rivals figured out he was behind it. Vicious as a Florinian portmaster!”

“Brilliant,” Nicolus muttered.

“Psychotic,” Mirian said. Akana’s invasion of Baracuel is just another opportunity to seize valuable resources to put to market, she realized. She went to one of the windows and looked down. Below, glyphlamps illuminated people scurrying about like ants. Here, above the fray, what happened to the little people was of no concern to them. Then how to convince them? As separate as they thought they were, they were still a part of Enteria. And when the foundation crumbles, there is no tower they can build high enough to preserve themselves.

As she turned away from the window, idly setting her drink down for the spell engine to pick up, she caught sight of several figures moving towards a window. Lord Saiyal and Magnus Tyrcast were among them, along with Tyrcast’s wife, Josephine Rosen. Her father, Lester, appeared to be talking to Lord Saiyal.

She moved towards them. She kept the two in her peripheral vision and went to stand by the window, gazing out at the city. She wanted to know what they were talking about before she started making changes. As she listened, the city of Vadriach caught her eye, tens of thousands of glyphlamps glittering from buildings and from the spell carriages roaming the streets. It was hard to comprehend just how many people there were.

And all of this is possible because of spell engines, she knew. Before the invention of the spellward, people had been forced to live in small communities. Farmland had to be hidden behind walls that were routinely patrolled. For thousands of years, there had only been a few great cities able to sustain a periphery that could bring in enough food for them. The rest of humanity had been small and scattered. Now, it had burgeoned into this.

Lester Rosen was getting up there in age. His hair had given up on silver and was now settling into white, while his wrinkled skin reminded Mirian of cracked leather.

Lord Saiyal said something to Lester that she didn’t catch. Lester replied. His voice had a creakiness to it. “I’ve always thought the Gods made a mistake when they decided not to charge for the price of a sunset,” Lester was saying. “Even a breath of air should cost a beadcoin. Then, people might value what they have more. And oh, how I’d like to buy the breaths of those who don’t know the value. How I’d like to put them to better use.”

“Plenty of people to buy from,” Lord Saiyal said in heavily accented Eskinar. He paused to take a drink, then said, “You heard what that crowned-rat was saying?”

Mirian adjusted her view so she could just see the reflection of them on the window. She could see Lester sneering. “Can’t even wipe your ass without hearing about him. Withdraw? He’d hand your whole country over to the rebels, and then what would fuel the factories? A menace, an absolute menace.”

Kinsman, she realized. They’re talking about Prime Minister Kinsman.

“In Alatishad, if there’s a rat infestation, we find cats to hunt them down,” Lord Saiyal said. “Surely, you have methods of pest control here?”

“Oh, we do, we do,” Lester said.

Just then, Mirian caught a piece of the conversation to her right. Another group of businessmen had picked up the same topic, and she heard one say, “—well, someone ought to do something about him.” Murmurs of agreement followed.

On impulse, she looked back through the party. Through a faint illusion of ribbons dancing in the breeze, she saw him: Allen Matteus. He would stop, shake hands, talk briefly with a group, then move along. Getting a sense of the mood, she realized. The pieces were all starting to come together in her mind, like how she visualized the pieces of a magical device assembling before she started building an artifact. The conspiracy was here, but at these heights, it didn’t have a name anymore. Matteus took no orders. He would simply roam about the party and take away one idea, that very idea that was circulating all about the party like a disease: that Kinsman was universally loathed. He had to go.

The idea would seem unanimous. After all, Matteus wouldn’t be shaking hands with any of Kinsman’s supporters in the streets. Either he didn’t know, or didn’t care for the opinions of people that little.

Mirian turned back to the window. From here, the people below were literally small; they were specks, ants, that could roam around in this hive. As long as they produced, they could crawl around any which-way they wanted. If there seemed to be a problem, they could poke at the hive and stir it up, then point the swarm at something they wanted.

An individual person looked up at the golden tower scraping at the clouds, looked around at all the endless buildings and streets, and knew just how little they were. How could they change any of it? They were so small, and the world so big. Best to go along with the flow.

Up here, there was a sense of community, however perverse. Through handshakes and smiles, the people here knew they had each other’s backs, and when they looked down, they saw a world made small, shrunk to the size of toys they could manipulate. Even if out in the world they vied to win the most coin, here, there was class unity. Playing dirty was just part of the game.

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“May I ask your name?” a woman’s voice asked, snapping her out of her reverie.

Mirian turned to see Josephine Rosen in a beautiful blue dress. She too had a ribbon circling her bare shoulders. Josephine was nothing like her father. Where he seemed like dried leather, she was soft silk. Her hair was done up with elaborate weaves and ornaments.

“Lady Mirian Sulalnahr,” she said as they both curtsied at each other.

Josephine furrowed her brow. She wasn’t recognizing the name, and likely, that was unusual for her. “My husband here couldn’t help but notice you standing there,” she said.

Archmage Tyrcast blushed, which was something she’d never seen him do before. Usually, he was too busy acting like everyone in the world should be thanking him just for being in the same room. “Told you it was probably just a coincidence with the placement of the spell engines,” he muttered.

Mirian looked at Tyrcast, keeping her posture formal and her attitude aloof. A third of her knowledge of these events came from Nicolus, a third from a book on Akanan high society and etiquette, and a third from those mystery novels she’d read so many years ago. The protagonist of them had sometimes needed to attend an event to meet suspects.