Qaton

When I followed a hooded man to meet his master, I never expected to have to interact with the Yad. He was a man of great power and influence, and I would have to be careful around him.

We were sitting on ornate oak seats in what looked like a lounge of sorts, with the distinct smell of various perfumes lingering in the air. The room simply emanated extravagance which displayed the tastes of its owner. This is probably where the Yad brought guests to talk and show them that he isn’t to be trifled with.

“Greetings, Yad. My name is Qaton.”

“You’re one of Ishata’s associates right?”

“Yes I am. How did you know that?” I asked with a surprised look.

“Well she tells me all about your little operation’s going, you do know that you people “assist” me right? Remember that I keep your little smuggling operation safe from the Zi, you would do well to get along with me.”

Just then, I remembered our financial contributions that we sent to the Yad in exchange for his silence.

“Oh right, of course.”

“Anyway let’s get to the matter at hand. Who is this boy you have with you?” the Yad asked.

I beckoned the boy to introduce himself as Hamet and noticing the seriousness on my face, he greeted the Yad as politely as he could.

Then I continued, “He’s to replace Halel, you knew him right?”

“Ah yes, Halel. A good man. Such a shame that the Zi got to him.” the Yad said with a disappointed sigh.

“Couldn’t you have stopped them?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, my hands were tied. I do have direct orders from the king to assist in their efforts to investigate your organization. He said something about the Zi government sending men to investigate some smuggling incidents. So even though I don’t particularly care about their success, I can’t be seen trying to hinder their efforts. Halel was unfortunate, but we can’t do much about him now.”

“Where are the Zi anyway? My partner Darat and I haven’t seen them for about a month now.”

“Some rumor spread that they are the ones that killed Halel, so they went into hiding for now to let the heat die down.” explained the Yad.

“I understand.”

The Yad was satisfied with my answer until he seemed to have remembered that he still had things that he wanted to ask me?

“We got a bit sidetracked there again, let’s get back to the topic I meant to ask you. Who is this Hamet boy and why do my people tell me about some sort of flame stick?”

“We don’t know where he came from but since he had some useful skills we hired him as a steward, and for some reason he had an idea for a product and Darat funded him. I’m acting as his interpreter for now because Darat and I both have a stake in his success.”

“I see. You really don’t know anything about where he’s from?” the Yad asked in an incredulous tone.

“As of right now he can’t speak our language well enough to communicate complex ideas, so either he can’t tell us where he came from or simply does not want to tell us.”

“So that’s why he can’t understand us? Alright, I trust that you can keep an eye on him. Can you make sure he doesn’t do anything that creates too much disorder?”

“That’s what I’m doing right now.”

With his concerns assuaged, something else seemed to have crossed his mind. He leaned over to quietly talk to me, making sure that no one else could hear what he had to say.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Also, do you know the formula for his product by any chance? Something as successful as his matches can’t belong to him alone.” the Yad said with a greedy smirk on his face.

“I don’t, he maintains a high level of secrecy a lot of the time.” I admitted.

“Maybe you can—”

The subordinate that led me to him whispered something in his ear which seemed to have caused him some amount of distress, after the man finished, the Yad began to stand up.

“I apologize, I have to attend to something. I bid you farewell.”

“Thank you for your time.”

As Hamet and I walked out the building I couldn’t help but wonder if the Yad would try to influence the boy to his favor.

I couldn’t have him do that.

That honor belonged to me.

Hamet

The next day…

Recently I have just learned that the Zi aren’t the only ones that can pose a threat to me in this town.

According to Qaton the person that runs the place in the king’s stead, the Yad, is quite formidable himself.

Though there isn’t anything to worry about because we have an “arrangement” with him apparently.

So the Yad is aware of the smuggling ring?

Well if something happens because of that, it’s not my concern. I have more important things to take care of.

For example, squaring off my debts was one of those things. I had finally managed to repay all the investment that Darat had initially given me back. Now, I could focus on growing the business and increasing profits instead of having to concern myself with paying back what I owed. In order to do that, I would have had to ramp up production. Like a lot.

But first, I still had obligations to the organization that hired me. Darat and Qaton may have let me take a week-long break to get my affairs in order, but work piles up. Eventually I thought it would be prudent to ask Qaton for the work so I could get it over with. A lot of records were made when I was busy, but eventually I managed to finish it all.

While waiting for Qaton to come back for the final manuscript, I realized something. A good business takes records of everything that they sell and purchase and I had easy access to writing materials and things to write it on.

When Qaton got and collected what I wrote, I asked him if I could use the paper to make records of the matchmaking business. He permitted me to do this, probably because it would benefit him in the long run, and I got to work writing down what I remembered from my sales.

If I recalled correctly, the first day was the most profitable with the following week being slightly less profitable. I also tallied down the price of the materials that I would use, Piyan’s wage as well as Darat and Qaton’s profit.

If the business went on like this, every week I would probably earn around three gold coins for myself every week. This was a decent figure, but in order to earn more I would need to produce more.

I had already received the first shipment of supplies that morning, so I started preparing the excrement for the nitration process. It would be a while before it turned into potassium nitrate, but I still had a decent quantity left that I could use for the next month.

So, I had a decent amount of supplies and had the production capacity to make hundreds of matches a day. There was only one bottleneck in this whole operation right now— the store.

While I was well aware that Piyan was doing the best he could and was selling the product well, its distant location probably affected its ability to generate sales. In addition to that, only one person was currently selling the product and advertising it which isn’t the best if I want the maximum amount of sales each day.

In addition to that, Piyan’s role as the sole seller of matches in this town brought lots of attention as evidenced by the robed man we encountered. We needed to make it so that the focus wasn’t only on him so that our operation could continue smoothly without any interference from the Zi.

That was when it hit me.

We needed to wholesale the matches.

To wholesale the matches we could contact local prominent merchants using Shur and sell them the matches at a slightly higher price.

This would do two things. One, it would deflect the focus from Piyan and I to the other merchants that would be selling the matches. Two, it would allow the reach of the matches to be widened, so that more people would have easier access to the purchase of matches.

But for this to work, I would need absolute secrecy from the people I sell to.

Maybe I could use Shur as a proxy and make him my contact?

This would allow me to have a degree of separation from the people I would be dealing with, allowing my involvement to remain hidden.

I decided that this was the best course of action and asked Qaton to contact Shur once more.

I informed Qaton of my plan beforehand and he seemed to agree with it, so he communicated this proposition to Shur and offered him some of the extra profit that would come from the matches. Thankfully, Shur found these terms acceptable and agreed to act as the proxy for the matches.

What he didn’t know was that my other reason for using him as a proxy was to protect myself. So if the Zi caught onto our involvement in the matchmaking scheme, they would encounter a red herring by the name of Shur. He had a decent amount of connections in this village so the Zi wouldn’t be able to get to him so easily, without alarming us in advance.

Later that night, Shur met some of the main merchants near the match store. Qaton and I were watching the exchange, but he had already left to go back to the compound.

He was with around five merchants, their clothing and demeanor indicated that they were relatively affluent and successful in their trade. When Shur showed them the utility of the matches, they all had reactions that ranged from confusion to curiosity.

Nonetheless, they all had the same thought.

“I need to acquire those matches.”

As I watched them eagerly deal with Qaton, I made a self-satisfied smirk.

A sign of a job well done.

Feeling that I didn’t need to stick around any longer, I began walking back to the compound. While walking I noticed a few sources of light walking around, I went closer to investigate but what I saw chilled me to the bone.

The Zi.

They were here.

I didn’t know why they were here, but I noticed that they were looking for something… or someone.

Before they noticed me I sprinted out of there as fast as I could, leaving only the sound of my footsteps echoing behind me. They probably heard the sound of me running, but they weren’t able to find me in the night’s inky darkness.

All the fears that I had were suddenly real.

The Zi were a threat once more.

And what they did to Halel, they could do to me…