Weeks after the road project began, and most villagers spending time on the road, Janick hopes to tack on lumber as another area of economic activity for the village. However, she realizes that she's lacking in manpower to do so. Especially with the Supreme Council's courier coming in, noticing there not being a whole lot of refugees being housed in this village:
"Lady Janick, you owe the Supreme Council an explanation over the apparent lack of progress on your assignment" the Supreme Council's courier admonishes her.
"The damage caused by the uprising is extensive, and airlifting of iron by carpet is not economically viable, so building the road will make it easier for the village to trade with the outside world" Janick explains herself. "Seloniel and I decided that we had to provide the pre-existing population what they needed to prevent a future uprising"
Any wizard who flew a carpet for freight will tell you, the heavier the payload, the more mana it takes to fly it. While, obviously, the more you use magic, the bigger your mana pool can grow, you still need to sleep to recharge it, Janick starts realizing that it has been a while since she even flew the carpet to a market. However, it seems that, at least for now, there's enough milk and apples to make the flour last longer.
"Is the population happy at least?" the courier asks her.
"Yes, they work hard to get the road finished because they know the village's livelihood depends on it. Now, if you may excuse me, since the village is tax-exempt, I need to get to the market or fair" Janick then voices her displeasure at how the Supreme Council treated the frontier. "You asked me to get the village back on track, but I was given no money, and no manpower! You think that, because we got rid of a major nuisance to the realm, we can magically make the frontier viable?" she keeps whining.
"What did you hope for, milady, prisoners? Refugees? Or some deadbeats?" an angry courier asks her.
"I guess, out of that list, prisoners are the least reliable labor. As for seed money, I wanted enough money to buy the village a few wagons, along with a supply of food for a few months while the road is built, and hire skilled labor to repair the damage the uprising did to the village! Like carpenters or roofers!" an angry Janick then prepares the carpet to get to the fair, and hopefully get a family of refugees to the village.
Phew! At least the villagers actually like me; the Supreme Council hangs the village out to dry! Even if it was for the betterment of the realm! Janick sighs, reminded that the village's tax exemption also extends to her.
She prepares to leave the village on her carpet, with an empty puncheon on it, as well as an empty coffer. As the Supreme Council's courier leaves the village in a cloudy sky, she can't help but think of the villagers. They have it rough in the forest, but it will be worth it upon completion of the road. Speaking of road, it might be a good idea to take preorders for iron rods or ingots, or even for items if it's more profitable to take preorders for forged iron rather than for iron in rod or ingot form, she has another plan for getting money for the village.
The question being: how much iron is going to be sold in preorders? For delivery in a month, and then delivery in two months, but she doesn't feel like it's worth it to sell off future production any farther out. Especially since there's so much uncertainty surrounding the early stages of the mine's reopening.
Another aspect she needs to address is the amount of iron she can sell in pre-orders. She then meets with Seloniel at the bakery.
"Before I go to the market, I would like to know how many axes, saws or pickaxes you can make in a month; I plan to take preorders for axes, saws and pickaxes for you. That way we can get the Supreme Council off our backs!" an exuberant Janick tells the fire witch.
"Do I have to mine the ore myself or do I have the villagers mine it?" Seloniel asks, knowing that the road will still take the better part of a month to finish.
I used to be making arrowheads and horseshoes! Out here, on the frontier, I am forced to diversify what I can do as a magical blacksmith! Cart wheels, axes, pickaxes, cask hoops, saws being the main items, Seloniel reflects on how she grew as a magical blacksmith as a result of working in this frontier village.
"The question then becomes: how much longer will it take to finish the road?" Janick asks her fellow witch.
With fire magic, the main bottleneck for metalworking is no longer charcoal supply but ore output. Janick starts thinking about the cost savings of having Seloniel use fire magic to forge items for sale over non-magical means. But even with Seloniel using magic to produce iron items, if we want to keep producing lumber, or hold our own market days, we need to have a road open nonetheless, Janick is reminded of why Seloniel had the villagers build a road.
"Maybe two to three weeks, depending on the weather" Seloniel answers her fellow witch, and then talk about the problems with using magic for mining. "However, the main problem with using fire magic for mining the ore is the risk of cave-ins, and even in the absence of cave-ins, you still need to get the slag out"
They sleep away from the village, close to their hand carts, because of how putrid the town smells. However, the smell of iron smelting might make the odor more bearable, but no less unhealthy, once production restarts, Seloniel reflects on the progress of the road project and what it means for the future of the mine.
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"Did you notice whether the tools you made have any magical properties other than maybe not needing to be sharpened, and extra durability? Even that could fetch good money on pre-ordering!" Janick asks Seloniel.
"You do realize that we still need some lumberjacks for after the project ends?" Seloniel asks about another concern.
Janick nods and tries to think of just how much she can try to drive prices up by listing the two core magical properties of what Seloniel can make using magic on that marketplace.
"I must go to the market for two or three days"
By then Janick must plan on being at the marketplace for more than one day at a time. She leaves the village on her flying carpet, and flies towards the nearest market. And it's a much bigger town than Laverton, or even her native Caladon.
Ertzheir, the last major market town before entering the frontier. She rents a stall at the market and she believes that, by starting the day at the market with the presale of five types of items, she can fetch a pretty amount of money.
"I am currently taking pre-orders for the following magical items: swords, spearheads, axes, pickaxes and saws!" Janick hollers from her stall, not realizing, until now, that people who could afford magical weapons usually insist on custom features.
Such as the hilt being of a certain length, pommel and guard being of a certain shape and size. Which she writes down on a stave of her puncheon, along with the customer name and amount paid. That's a lot of money for what could take Seloniel just a day or two to make, knowing that, with fire magic, a two-handed sword could be made in a matter of hours. And she also sold three of these two-handed swords in a few hours.
"One last magical sword available for delivery next month!" Janick hollers, before she auctions off the final sword slot.
There are a few of these nobles who are seemingly willing to spend exorbitant sums just to get a shiny new magical sword. Man can knights get reckless with money! Did they think they were going to buy some alondite blade? Knight-errants might travel the land to fight for hire, but the prices are reaching alondite levels! Janick keeps seeing prices go up, even dwarfing what she believes are the sums of money she can fetch from the sale of alcohol magic. That said, it was the best way I found to make the most money without making Seloniel burn her hands beyond what the rubbing alcohol spell can do.
The customer gives Janick the specifications. Which means that he wants a flamberge (a two-handed sword with a wavy blade) and a V-shaped guard. But then the same customer comes along and commissions another item from the witch:
"I would also like, if there's space in your production schedule, to fit in a heavy plow since we have new land to till" the customer asks.
"Heavy plow? Do you have enough oxen to pull it? I'm afraid it will require at least four oxen to pull the plow, and maybe even eight" Janick points out that heavy plows require a certain number of oxen. "And obviously, the heavier the plow, the more oxen they require"
I guess, I am not the best person to advise him on what plow he needs. However, I can kind of feel like he wants the biggest plow that can fit on a carpet, Janick starts thinking about how she will do the work on that moldboard and share. Sure, Seloniel would be able to work her magic to make a heavy plow's moldboard and share, but even then, she isn't the best person to advise a farmer on plows.
"Why oxen?" the wealthy landowner asks her about the draft animals.
"Really, it could be horses, too. I'm just talking about oxen because past customers used oxen to pull their plows" Janick answers, while trying her best to sound natural, even though she didn't sell a plow before.
"Because I want to till plots of land in different locations, I also want to..." the wealthy landowner just keeps blathering about what he wants in a plow, and how he plans to use it.
Bewildered by this request, Janick just can't seem to make heads of why that customer wants a plow that can be hauled by carpet. Much less why that landowner is apparently ready to fork a fortune for one such plow. He sounds like he always has access to a flying carpet, and his lands are probably somewhere else on the frontier, her head starts spinning.
"Very well..." Janick sighs, upon receipt of her copy of the landowner's bill of exchange that he used to pay for both the sword and the plow.
What the hell was I given? That letter refers to instructions to transfer a certain amount of gold into my bank account, but I don't even have one! Janick is wondering what she has gotten into by selling magical swords and a plow on Seloniel's behalf. On top of that, she has yet to sell magical wine.
So while she stashes the amounts paid for the first 3 swords into her chest, she goes to the nearest banker to make more sense of what she deems to be a mysterious letter received from a customer for paying her. And any excise taxes she might have had to pay. When her turn comes at the banker's bench...
"I need help; I don't understand what this letter is used for" a distraught Janick asks the banker. "All I can make out is that it instructs a bank to transfer a certain amount of gold to my bank account, but I don't have one!"
"Why? You sell magical wine; how could you not have had a bank account before?" a puzzled banker asks her, but has bought magical wine from her in the past.
"Every customer I had until today paid me without using these... letters!" She shows the letter to the banker.
"These letters are called bills of exchange. Mostly used for wholesale trade. They're used to pay people in different locations and different currencies without having to physically carry the amount in question" the banker explains to a clearly clueless Janick, before cashing out the amount of gold indicated on the bill of exchange.
"Thank you for clearing up the confusion" a somewhat relieved Janick then picks up the amount of gold and puts it in her chest.
After that, she finally sells some magical wine, with the drunkenness and, the following day, hangover that accompanies the volume usually sold in such marketplaces.
By the end of the following day, she returns to her village, laden with flour and gold. The cloud cover makes the hangover more bearable in flight to her, albeit at a reduced speed because of her mana consumption and the payload. When she arrives at the baker's shop at night:
"So I sold four high-priced magical swords on preorder, and you would never guess what else I managed to sell that wasn't magical wine!" Janick tells Seloniel about what transpired at Ertzheir.
"Then what is it that you managed to sell in my name?" a puzzled Seloniel asks her. "On a sidenote, I helped a family of refugees settle in and start working as lumberjacks"
"A heavy plow" Janick starts listing what she feels are ridiculous specifications for each of these two-handed swords, and, of course, the heavy plow.
"You really sold a heavy plow that you can somehow transport on a carpet?" an astonished Seloniel is left wondering how big a plow can be to be transportable on a carpet. "Way to put the plow before the oxen! But I guess, we'll spend the next spend three or four days making everything you sold on that marketplace!"