Chapter 14 - Master of Masters

A large room with a windowed view, overlooking the quiet Malaren Road. It was dark outside but inside were some oil lamps that sat on top of a stack of books, an end table near the door and on a desk in the center of the room. The desk was beautifully crafted, with ornate legs and a painted golden bird engraved on the tabletop. A few elderly men and another, who was perhaps two dozen years younger than them, all sat around the desk.

"Did you hear that that kid, Helvet, is planning to make his eldest son his heir?" asked one of the elderly men. He wore a tall top hat that had a red ribbon that was threaded through the side brim.

"I heard, but why does it matter, Grand Master Lovell? The boy has a fine head on his shoulders and makes calm decisions. It should be easy to deal with him in the future." said the man to his right, who looked quite fit and much younger than his actual age.

"Of course it matters! Whoever he chooses might marry little Soozy! That boy isn't good enough for her." The man to the left the top hat was clearly upset.

"Shut up, Olaver. You say there's no one good enough for her except yourself, you sick old man." said the young old man.

"You're damn right! Only I am allowed to marry her!" Olaver proclaimed loudly, trying to convince everyone in the room it was true.

"Enough. I've told you, Grand Master Olaver, to not talk about my daughter and Grand Master Relant is right. Whoever becomes the next Zanako has never affected us. Just let the Aster clan handle their own internal matters." the youngest man in the room said in a commanding voice.

"Sorry for my outburst, Guild Master." Olaver apologized but seemed resentful, probably because of the fact the Guild Master refused to marry off his youngest daughter to him.

"The three of you may go now." the guild master said and the three of them bowed and left the room.

The guild master picked up a stack of papers on his desk, reading them. These were the daily reports that the Merchants Guilds' Grand Master ranked members would write. Grand Masters of the guild would compile their own information in addition to anything their subordinates found. Information would start from the bottom rank with Apprentices, then Talents, Oranens, Masters, Grand Masters and then finally reach the Guild Master. This system would, in theory, easily collate relevant information so that the guild master had a clear picture of the current situation. And using this information he would be able to make predicted moves ahead of their competitors, ensuring the continued prosperity of the Merchants Guild.

Suddenly a white haired maiden swung open the door and ran towards the desk, throwing her hands up in the air and slamming them onto the desk. "Illius, I need a few medicinal herbs for my master. Also another one of your badges, I lost mine."

"Feliti, my dear. You know I've asked you to call me father." said the guild master, Illius.

"If you don't get me those things I'll tell my master that you refused to help him, Illius." Feliti said, this time accentuating the fact that she refused to call him father.

Illius sighed and rummaged through his desk drawers, pulling out a golden medallion which was the same that Feliti had given Arnest. He tossed it to Feliti and said "Take care not to lose this Phoenix Badge. Also you can go get some of our people on the second floor to find the herbs for you."

"That'll be all then, good night." Feliti waved condescendingly, with her back turned to her father, as she walked out of the room.

"What am I going to do with that girl?" Illius said to himself, while going back to reading his documents.

Outside of the guild, Arnest was starting to return back to his ship when a well dressed young man ran up to him, handing him a parchment envelope. "An invitation from his excellency, Helvet Aster." said the man, before running off.

There was a red seal of a tortoise that sealed the letter. Arnest broke the seal and removed two pieces of paper.

"This is an invitation to Second Prince's celebration banquet. Please present this at the Zanas Mansion docks and you will be ferried across to the event..." The first part of the letter was mostly instructional so Arnest briskly skimmed its contents but on the second paper was a personal message from the city lord.

"Greetings! I welcome you to come see my favorite sons' birthday to enjoy some fine wine and exquisite foods. This celebration is going to be especially exciting because  I have something important to announce and hope you'll be there to hear it. My sons' event has been well anticipated in the past few months so I'm fairly confident you'll be there. Well, until then!" The message was concise and friendly. It also pretty much confirmed the rumors of the eldest son being named Zanako.

"It's good that Talas was able to get me an invitation but it seemed to take longer than I expected. I wonder what took him so long." Arnest stuffed the invitation into one of his pockets and continued back to the ship to practice his mana control.

A few days passed and the awaited banquet was now today, later in the evening. The city preparations had almost all finished and there was only thing to do now was wait for the festival to start. Plenty of the citizens had already used the excuse of celebration to get ridiculously drunk on the local wine. Rogar, although not a local, also decided to get heavily drunk with Clyde, the former pirate captain, and Halphas, both of whom he goaded into a drinking competition. He also tried to convince Arnest but he remembered the last time he tried some of the “fire water”. To avoid the unpleasant experience again, he used the excuse that he had to prepare an outfit for the banquet.

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But this was a lie and Arnest had already went to a high-end tailor to get an outfit made. He did have noble looking clothes, but he wanted something more special to make an impression at the banquet. He asked the tailor to design something for him that a young magus might wear at the city lord’s mansion. What he got was quite strange. It was a normal tailcoat suit, with a white dress shirt, grey trousers and grey coat. But the tailor attached what looked like a cloaked hood to the top. It was meant to look like a magus’s suit but it’s upper half just looked like one of Arnest’s cheap cloaks he got from Black Fox. Arnest didn’t really understand the look either, but decided to wear it anyway. He just assumed the cloak suit was some sort of fashionable trend in Zanabo and went along with it.

The other thing he didn’t own but needed was a carriage, something that only the supremely rich had. Making a carriage wasn’t expensive, it was just mainly wood and perhaps some other special materials if you wanted to make it look fancy. But what was impossible to get was the horses to drive the carriage. Horses weren’t indigenous to the Lanexi islands and could only be found on the mainland, Trilantus. There used to be some trade between Trilantus and Lanex but that stopped when the human kingdom, their trading partners, was overtaken by the elves. The only remaining horses were bought countless years ago and the rich fought over them, making the price of these scant amount of horses invaluable. A few islands currently are trying to breed them but the climate is not optimal for them to live long lives, either too hot or too cold.

So Arnest walked through the streets, like he usually did, but this time in his new cloak suit. A few people stopped and stared at the boy wearing a strange outfit but no one really said anything. Just stopped, pointed maybe and whispered to their friends.

However the festival was going on at this time and there were a few drunk people on the streets looking for the next drink to sate their parched mouths. When one of these drunkards saw Arnest in his get up they called out “Nicee suuuuit keed. Where’d yah get it?”, slurring his words.

Arnest stopped and looked to the drunkard and replied “I had it custom made. I’m glad you like it.” Arnest was being his usual polite self and this was mostly because he didn’t really understand what alcohol did to a person’s mind. He did think the slurring was weird but thought perhaps it was some sort of foreign island’s dialect. Arnest didn’t understand what it meant for a person to be drunk yet. After all, he was still a young twelve year old boy.

“Well, hiccup, I think I’ll order...one... too?” The drunkard was completely disorderly and couldn’t think straight and just walked away.

“It was a good choice getting this made. I’m sure it’ll grab everyone's attention!” Arnest was feeling pretty self-confident and happy.

When Arnest finally arrived at the shore closest to the Zanas Mansion, he saw the dock and a large crowd. Most of them were guards and ferryman and the rest were well dressed guests who were there to attend to banquet. Arnest got on line and waited for a while. His gaze was scanning the guards, looking for the guard who harassed him last time but couldn’t find him.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten you yet.” Arnest cursed the guard under his breath.

One of the guards noticed Arnest’s angry face and mutterings. He approached Arnest and asked, “Sir, is something wrong?”

Arnest’s face quickly switched from anger to a pleased smile  and he replied “Everything is fine. I just was thinking about something.”

“Oh, okay then. Don’t hesitate to ask if you need something.”

“Will do.”

Arnest eventually reached the end of the line and was led to a small boat that was upholstered with comfy cushioned seats. It was dark outside so there was an oil lamp that hung from a wooden handle at the ship's’ front. Arnest was by himself so he sat alone with the ferryman who rowed him towards the mansion.

When approaching the Zanas Mansion he was able to get a better look than the day he just saw from the shore. Arnest noticed that unlike the buildings in the rest of Zanabo, which were made of cemented seashells, it was made entirely of huge blocks of marble. It was smooth to the surface and there were no hard edges. The builders had carved out these large marble slabs into rounded corners to give the mansion the look of being slightly wavy and rounded. There was only one rigidly straight part of the mansion, which was a tower that shot up from the center towards the sky.

There were also more unique features to the mansion. There was no shore at the small island that the mansion sat on but rather a dry dock extended around a wide staircase. Some of the boats were already docked while the ferrymen lead guests by the hand and up the stairs. On the top of the staircase was Zanas Mansion, guarded by an also marbled facade. Even the door was made out of marble but was pushed out so that people could enter. Usually the marble door is slid into place, becoming another block of the mansion and making the entrance seemingly invisible from the outside.

“Hello my apprentice!” a white robed man called out from the other side when Arnest was docking.

Arnest turned to his right side and saw Whitebeard waving at him. “Good evening, master.” Arnest said respectfully back, also waving.

“This way, sir.” the ferryman said, leading Arnest by the hand into the mansion. Arnest nodded while feeling slightly nervous. The scene was reminiscent of a child being taken to their first day of primary school.

“I hope everything works out.” Arnest said to himself as he walked into the marble mansion.