“That’s a... very detailed drawing, lad,” Harn, the local carpenter, said. He placed the parchment on his worktable with a pair of aged hands, giving Noa a wary look.

Noa grinned. “It needs to be big,” he said, “with rooms to stay in. I want a guild front that also acts as a clinic front. The clinic to be run by the hand of the guild. And then an attached house over here.” He pointed.

Harn raised an eyebrow. “And what exactly is this?” he asked, pointing to a set of crooked pipes drawn over the house, spraying down droplets of water.

“Running water. Maybe with a pump?” Noa said.

Harn sighed. “Lad, this drawing is...”

“I know,” Noa nodded, perhaps overly happy with his crude drawing of a house attached to a bigger house, and him as a smiling stick figure in the center of it. He wrote some notes down, his own writing no better than chicken scratch. Yeah, he was definitely an artist━a real Bob Ross.

“This is a large structure, it’ll have material costs, unless you’re providing that yourself?”

Noa glanced back at Magenta in the room, who was preoccupied with sorting chess pieces from another workbench. He was examining a knight at the moment, even stroking its fake mane with his forefinger. “Tyrm, do the trolls have a stone quarry?” he asked.

“Ha! Of course trolls have a stone quarry. We would not be mountain trolls otherwise,” he said, twisting in his seat. The leg snapped under him, and Magenta released at yelp as he crashed to the floor.

“I guess that chair was getting old anyways,” Harn frowned. “Say you can gather the resources for this project, lad, it wouldn’t matter. My workload is filled out for the entire year with Lady Lila’s new initiatives, the church’s projects, and the influx of people headed our way.”

“Come again? People?” Noa asked.

“The church is establishing a court system here, among many other things. They already set up a new policing force. Greater church presence, better protection, and more commerce. This town won’t be a town for very long.

“Now, if you build this healers’ guild you’re going on about,” Harn waved a finger, “we’ll become a city overnight, assuming your recruitment goes well.”

Noa scratched his head, briefly looking at Magenta as he tried to put the chair back together. “Can you at least draw up some proper blueprints for a place like this?” he asked.

“I suppose,” Harn sighed.

“And can you take some evolved trolls as apprentices?”

“I will be working with them anyways, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to train them, but I won’t pay them while they’re training. You’ll probably want to talk to a mason too if you’re looking to build part or all of the building out of stone, get him to train some of your trolls,” Harn suggested.

“I would like to learn,” Magenta said, holding up the chair and its broken leg. “We trolls need to learn to build new furniture now that we are small. Can we have a building here too?”

Small... yeah, that was a word for seven foot tall beings of pure muscle mass. Noa deadpanned Magenta.

“What?” Magenta shrugged.

“Don’t you have work to do with the church right now?” Noa asked.

“It was boring. They want me to read their laws.”

“Laws? They have laws drafted now?” Noa raised his brow.

“Armael said that the high prelate had been working on them with the lady. Then he gave them to me to read. I don’t know how to read, but looks boring.”

Noa facepalmed. “You can’t read?” he asked.

“Very few trolls read. Drawing is troll way.”

“Sounds like you have your work cut out for you, lad,” Harn noted. “You need to talk to Lady Lila to obtain land for these things as well. You can’t just claim land and build on it.”

“Of course,” Noa grumbled. He was already getting the inkling that a lot of this wasn’t going to be as free as he hoped it would be. Part of him heard Armael nagging in the back of his head about his poor negotiating skills. Damn, I really am a poor negotiator, he thought, looking at Harn as the old man rolled the parchment back up.

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What could he offer to Harn, Lila, and a mason to just let him build this clinic and guild? Then an idea struck him.

“You say there’s going to be an influx of people, yeah?”

“Yes,” Harn nodded, setting the drawing aside.

“Which means more commerce and more money in circulation; more business.”

“Indeed. Where are you going with this, lad?”

“Have you ever invested your money in a business before?” Noa asked.

“Only my own,” Harn said, raising an eyebrow.

“You believe this town will turn into a city overnight if this guild works, which means the guild will get plenty of business, at least on the clinic front. What if you could share in guild profits as an investor?”

The old man furrowed his brow. “You say, I give you money, you build this guild, and then I get to share in your profits? How’s that supposed to work?” he asked.

“You buy in for a small percentage of the guild, and when it does well, you do well.”

Harn raised a skeptical eyebrow. “And when it doesn’t?”

“You share in the losses as well,” Noa said quieter.

“Ah. Then how about this: successfully recruit ten healers, and I’ll buy in for ten percent.”

“Ten?” Noa squeaked, then cleared his throat, blinking. Ten sounded... impossible! Seemed like there weren’t enough people in town available to become healers. Ten was out of the question! Unless... Could I poach unsatisfied apple farmers? Noa considered.

“Noa Bard, your face,” Magenta pointed.

“What about it?”

“Looks constipated.”

Gee, thanks, he thought, rolling his eyes. “This is my thinking face.”

“Then what is your constipated face?”

“Why do you want to know that?” Noa shot Magenta a look, then shook his head. Come on, focus! he told himself, returning to the idea of the apple farmers. Even five seemed like a hard number to recruit for the guild, but at least it would be far more feasible than ten.

Turning back to Harn, he bargained, “Five recruits, five percent.”

“With how many trolls I’ll be training, it sounds like you’re lowballing me,” Harn said.

“You’d be training them for Lila anyways.”

“Ah, good lad, caught that, did you?” Harn nodded, humming. “Eight.”

“Six, high as I go,” Noa pressured.

“Hmm,” the old man hummed, and stroked at his chin once before pointing. “Six, but Eliaz and Tin do not count towards the six you recruit.”

Cringing, Noa nodded. “Deal,” he said, offering a hand to shake on it, to which Harn looked at with apprehension.

“What’s that for, lad?”

“To shake on it, sort of like sealing the deal.”

“You just did already.”

“A cursed deal.” Noa turned, looking out the open wall from the workshop, Armael standing there. “Taxes, kid, you should have figured out taxes before selling a portion of your profits, and for a building as large as you’re planning, expect Lila to milk a lot of land taxes out of you.”

Noa cringed.

“Do you even have a proper plan built to organize your guild?” Armael asked, walking in. Harn, respectfully, gave the priest a brief bow, to which Armael wove a dismissive hand.

“Uh...”

“Right,” Armael sighed. “I can’t believe you got someone to accept the deal without a well put together plan.”

Harn shrugged. “Healers, Priest, healers.”

“Yes, valuable we forever remain,” Armael rolled his eyes.

“Why are you here anyways?” Noa asked.

“To deliver a message,” Armael pulled a scroll from a pocket within his robes, a rather official looking red seal stamped upon it. He offered it to Noa, who immediately undid the seal.

“Why not pay Tin to deliver it?”

“High Prelate Caradec insisted it be delivered by a priest, considering its importance. Besides,” he turned to Magenta, who shrunk under Armael’s gaze. “Someone ran away from their new duties.”

“He can’t read,” Noa said.

“He can’t read?”

“That’s what I just said.”

“Do you have pictures?” Magenta asked innocently, smiling sheepishly.

Armael released an exasperated sigh, shaking his head. “I need an ardent,” he grumbled, then grabbed Magenta’s arm and tried to tow him along. The troll didn’t budge until Armael asked him to. Politely. Maybe I should be more stubborn like trolls, Noa thought after watching them leave.

He looked to the scroll he’d unrolled in front of him, only to realize Harn was reading it over his shoulder. Looking at the old man, he asked, “Normally read someone else’s mail?”

“You’re in my workshop, lad. If I get a chance to know what’s going on, I’m going to seize it!” Harn grasped at air. “My question is, what’s to be done with Yana’s apple farm now?”

Furrowing his brow, Noa finally read through the letter, the crease between his eyebrows tightening the more he read. A “judgment” was to be held for Yana and Loic, and Noa was required to testify as one of Yana and Loic’s victims. Not even a question, but required to as the church saw fit. Noa found, also, that he didn’t like being called a victim.

You’ve been a victim from the moment you arrived in this world, a voice in the back of his head said, and... he couldn’t deny it. Damn.

“Hm, first thing tomorrow morning,” Harn nodded. “Looks like anyone can attend.”

“Of course,” Noa grumbled.