William watched with appreciation as Bruno and Wilma extracted far more information from Dylan than he likely expected. Very skilled persuaders he thought as he took mental notes. Their ability to find a solution acceptable to all is even more impressive. Not many would be able to persuade the potential victim of a theft to give a young man just starting down the slippery slide of thievery another chance. One of the great advantages to dealing with truth and a desire to heal rather than punish. Of course, the requirement for both him and his fiancé to work here bound under a geas for a year to always tell the truth and not do anything to hurt the household doesn’t hurt either. It’s obvious that neither Dylan nor Almira really wants the life of a thief. They just want enough income to get married. Working here with room and board included should make it much easier on them and bind them with bonds of gratitude and loyalty to the Strongholds.
The group was now back in the dining room, Dylan no longer tied up after having given his oath and being enchanted. A servant had already left to bring Almira back.
“Bruno, would you please bring out the food box to celebrate?”
William enjoyed the look of surprise on people’s faces as Bruno calmly reached into his backpack and somehow pulled out a beautiful cabinet, about four feet long and two feet on a side. He pressed a button and four legs extended from the cabinet bottom raising the top to a comfortable height.
“What is that?” Ferdinand asked as the group gathered around. “And how did it fit in the bag of holding? I thought only items small enough to pass through the opening could fit.”
“Bruno’s backpack is not a bag of holding, but a backpack of shrinking. When he manually activates the Store Item feature, the item is shrunk before entering the backpack which allows much larger items to be stored. Since it is not a dimensional anchor you don’t have to worry about the occasional catastrophic failures bags of holding and the like can sometimes have when one tries to enter another. Nor do you have to worry about something in the dimension a bag of holding pokes into breaking or raiding it.”
“Amazing!”
William zoomed over the table to the left cabinet door and opened it. A cold breeze blew out of it and looking in, people saw a variety of foods stored in various bins. “The cold box can help prevent food from spoiling for over a month and is always kept at a temperature a couple of degrees above freezing.” He pulled out a ham and cheese sandwich.
Closing the left door, he opened the right to show a small space about one and a half feet on a side with a ceramic disk in the base. Sticking the sandwich on it, he closed the door which turned transparent showing the sandwich within. Two dials appeared, one with temperatures from 50 to 450 degrees and one with times ranging from 5 seconds to 2 hours. He turned both and stepped back to let people see the disk holding the sandwich rotating while numbers appeared above the door indicating the temperature within. A minute later William opened the door and removed the sandwich which was now at the proper temperature for enjoyable eating.
“How does it work? Are you tapping into other planes? Do you need to be a spell caster to use it?” Stronghold asked with excitement. “I’ve seen spellcasters chill and heat food with cantrips, but the only cold boxes I’ve seen generally tap into the plane of ice. Most people use normal fires and stoves to heat food.”
“Anyone can use it and it doesn’t tap into any planes for power. Most of the heat comes from the cold box.” Will explained, watching the expression of desire for it on Lady Thalia’s faces as well as the faces of the kitchen staff poking their heads out the kitchen door. “It’s one of several inventions I’ve been working on using a new means of magic I call Magi-Tech.”
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“But how does it work?” Stronghold repeated himself while examining it closely. “It’s obviously an enchanted item, but I’m not seeing any runes and I don’t know of any spell that can do all the things it does. It must have cost a fortune to make!”
“It uses many spells rather than one, but anything else is a trade secret, as you would expect. As for the basics, one spell moves the heat in the cold box over to a heat storage item, but only if the temperature starts rising above the cold box’s desired temperature. This itself makes the cold box superior to the standard one as items are never accidentally frozen but are kept at the perfect temperature for preservation. Both boxes are insulated. The heat being removed and stored is used for the hot box side which draws the proper amount of heat from the storage unit until the temperature is where it should be. A minimum amount of heat, enough for one hour of cooking, is always stored and additional heat is created using ambient mana, if needed, to keep the heat storage unit topped off.”
“I want one!” Thalia turned to her husband while various kitchen staff started rubbing their hands thinking what they could do with it.
Drummond looked at his wife and tentatively asked, “How much?” expecting it to be in the thousands or tens of thousands of gold pieces like most enchanted items were.
“750 gold pieces.” Nurrim replied enjoying the shocked expressions on his host’s faces. “I told you. I have found better ways to enchant items using Magi-Tech that should lead to a greater use of magic in people’s lives. All people’s lives.” he repeated as he looked at the kitchen staff who were no longer hiding but obviously gaping at him and his invention from the kitchen door.
“Done!” Thalia snapped before her husband could reply only to pause as Nurrim held up his hand with a smile.
“While I appreciate your enthusiasm Lady Thalia, as the first people offered a look at my new inventions, I have a special offer for you all. I will offer it to you for 500 gold pieces if you will be willing to let others know about it. In addition, for each person who buys one because of you at the regular price, I will give you a twenty gold agents fee. Here is the contact information for my agent in town.” Bruno pulled a business card out of his breast pocket and handed it over. “He will be able to tell you how many are available for sale at a given time. I believe currently 20 are in stock, but more will be created as demand increases. However, you may not promise potential customers cabinets which are not in stock. I do have a reputation to maintain after all.”
“A detective, spellcaster and inventor all in one. Quite the resume. I agree with my wife that this is worth purchasing under the terms you outlined.” Drummond said as he pulled out a cold bottle of juice and a turkey sandwich, the latter which he immediately put in the hot box. “I assume we should visit your agent in town to pay for and pick up our new appliance?”
“Correct. There is one other thing to be aware of. Attempting to take the appliance apart or copy its magic is forbidden. Trying to do so will cause the appliance to stop working and send a message to my company leading to an investigation.”
William gestured to his fellow detectives. “As you can see, we are very good at finding the truth. Anyone convicted of attempting to steal Magi-Tech secrets will be banned for 10 years from purchasing any other Magi-Tech that is developed in the future. When you buy the appliance, you must sign a contract allowing for truth spells to be used on you if such a thing occurs. This is to prevent the misuse of Magi-Tech and provide a safeguard for you since if someone else attempts to break your appliance, you can prove your innocence and avoid both the loss of reputation and opportunity to buy future Magi-Tech that would occur.”
The rest of the day was spent eating, cooking and reuniting Almira with Dylan, once she had been informed of the situation and wisely chose to follow her future husband’s lead.
As William and his team left, his keen hearing picked up Drummond commenting to Dylan. “Looking back, your attempted theft was the best thing to happen to all of us. Who would have thought?”
Who indeed! William smiled as the first steps of his and Nurrim’s plans unfolded.