In a few hours, I was to talk with Hasbel to prepare for his first meeting with the fire-fighters. Although they weren’t exactly trained in any way, not yet at least. So I needed to purchase the materials that he would need to train them by approaching my contact, Shur, to procure them.

I met with Shur in his shop instead of him coming to me, in a refreshing change of pace.

“Hello Hamet.”

“Hello.” I replied in turn.

He smiled and said, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I need to prepare some things for the men that I hired.” I replied.

“Oh, what do you need?”

“Some buckets that could hold a decent quantity of water could be good.”

He thought for a moment and then replied, “Alright, so one bucket will cost five bronzes.”

“That’s a bit pricey for a bucket.” I remarked.

“Well these are better iron buckets, so it’ll be worth it.” he noted.

Since one meal of average quality cost around a bronze, five of them was a rather hefty amount for each one individual pale. Although I hesitated a bit when I heard of their prices, I agreed to buy Qaton’s buckets since they would probably be more worth my money in the long-term.

“Fair enough. I’ll buy ten.” I said.

“That’ll be five silver.”

“Alright.” I confirmed, as I took out a few silver coins that I had earned from Hasbel’s efforts.

After he briefly counted the silver coins, he was satisfied with the amount.

“I’ll drop it off at your place of residence in a few hours, I’ll just have to find them,” he said.

“That’s fine.”

“Good luck with the firefighters.” he said.

“Thanks, but really Hasbel is doing most of the training.”

Shur shifted his eyes at the mention of him, like there was something that came to mind.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s nothing.”

“No, seriously.” I continued, “ What is it?”

“He’s been acting a bit suspiciously recently, I’ve seen him walking around the streets very late at night,” he admitted.

“He’s at that age, you know how teenagers are.” I said.

“That makes sense… Wait, aren't you around his age?” he asked, ”Shouldn’t you be off doing whatever adolescents do?”

He made a good point. After all, I should have been doing more age-appropriate things than trying to start an insurance business. But I didn’t have the time or desire to do anything so frivolous.

“I’m an outlier, perhaps.” I finally replied after a brief pause.

“Right… well anyway, don’t you get too complacent around anyone, even me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, see you.”

He then walked towards the door and stood in front of me, making his tall stature clearly evident.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“See you.” he finally said, as he opened the door for me.

As I walked back to the compound, I wondered whether Shur’s suspicion of Hasbel had any truth to it. Well, so far nothing bad has happened and he seems to be trustworthy. So I’ll assume he’s not working for the Yad or something until he proves himself guilty. He’s done nothing so far, so it's lunacy to think that his recent behavior is anything to accuse him of.

Two hours later…

Around thirty minutes ago, Shur came here to drop off the ten buckets that he promised. They looked well-constructed and were vastly more well proportioned than the “bucket” that I lent Hasbel last time. Hauling it there and back was quite a hassle, so I was relieved to have something that I could carry with the actual handles.

I walked all the way to Hasbel’s abode once again, since I didn’t have any real way to contact him aside from just going all the way there. Unlike all the other times I was there, this time I caught a glimpse of his father. He was a rather dignified looking man who seemed busy with conversation with other men who appeared to be merchants. I didn’t want to disturb his work, so I ignored him and went on to meet with Hasbel.

When I saw him for the first time since the test, he looked strangely relieved and his expression brightened.

“What’s with that face?” I asked.

“I was hoping that you wouldn’t bring that… thing…. from last time and I’m glad that didn’t happen.”

“Oh that bucket, thankfully I didn’t bring it this time.” I said, “Do you want me to bring it next time?”

“Don’t even think about it.” he said sternly.

“Alright, alright. I brought these new smaller buckets, take a look.”

“They seem nice, where’d you get them?”

“I bought them from Shur.”

“That makes sense.”

“Anyway, so now I’ll try to explain to you how a bucket brigade works.”

“Okay…?”

I placed down the ten buckets in an orderly file, and began to make him pay attention to how I was going to switch them around.

“Alright so pretend that the buckets are being filled on this end, and being used on the other. So the men will shuffle the buckets like this so that the filled ones get to the fire and the unfilled ones can get filled.”

While explaining, I shuffled the buckets around so that each one would take the place of the next and next and so on.

“I think I get it.” he said after observing me for a while.

“Show me.”

I stepped aside to allow him to do it for himself, and he seemed to get the idea.

“I’m satisfied, so I can start briefing you on the procedures that I want them to learn.”

“Couldn’t you just write it down or something?”

“I think it's easier if I just use verbal instructions.”

“Alright then, hit me.”

“So you know how I’ll have them work both night and day shifts, right?”

“Right.”

“During the day, I’ll just have them prepare for it if they're even alarmed by some citizen. But during the night, I want five men patrolling the streets for any fire and if there is one that sees the fire will alert the rest of the men.”

“Isn’t it better to have someone looking for fires during the day too?”

“Sure, maybe one of the men will patrol sparsely populated areas during the day. The point is that for each shift, maybe five men will be on duty and if it requires all ten men then they can send a person to call them to join in case of emergency.”

“I think I understand,” he said after a brief pause.

“Can you repeat it to me then?” I asked.

After I was satisfied with his summary, I gave him instructions on how to facilitate the session later in the day and I left him with the ten iron buckets that I had brought.

“Make sure that they understand what to do, and can repeat it back to you.”

“Okay.” he nodded.

“I’ll discuss their progress with you after the meeting is over, so I’ll meet you here again.” I said.

After we finished we said our goodbyes and I went to the location that I told him the meeting was in, Piyan’s old house. It was currently undergoing construction ever since the Zi burned it to a crisp, but I had started efforts to reconstruct it and make a facility where the firefighters could work in. The carpenters in charge of rebuilding didn’t really work at night, so the Hasbel could train the men in the yard of the property.

The meeting was set to three hours after dusk so it was a bit difficult to see if anyone had arrived there or not. But sure enough, I managed to spot a gathering of three men who had come to the premises early. I waited until one by one, they finally reached their maximum number of ten men with Hasbel coming just slightly before they were complete.

As far as I could tell in the hazy darkness, he started by describing how the procedure would work in terms of their schedules. I wasn’t too specific so I expected him to take the initiative to figure the finer details out for himself, and since he didn’t come to me for help I assumed that he figured it out.

After they hashed out their plan for how they would act, Hasbel started training them on how the bucket brigade would work. I felt that he could take it from here, so I began to head back to head back to the compound to do miscellaneous tasks. I had enough confidence in Hasbel that I didn’t really think that I needed to direct his actions too much.

The next morning…

After I woke up and made sure that there was nothing vital left to be done, I tidied up and set off for Hasbel’s house. I was curious as to the outcome of last night’s meeting with the men and whether or not he was successful.

I found him deep in thought in the room where we usually met, so I waved my hand in front of his face to get him back to his senses. When he noticed that I was there, he flashed what looked like a guilty smile that indicated to me that something went wrong.

“How did last night go?”

“It went fine,” he said, looking away.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m pretty sure, yeah.” He repeated.

I didn’t really believe that everything went perfectly, but I had a feeling that Hasbel was less than willing to share what happened.

“Maybe we should have some sort of a test to gauge their understanding?” I suggested.

His eyes widened at the idea, “Maybe… but how?”

“Let’s pretend that your house is burning and then we can observe what they’ll do.”

“What do you mean?”

“You stand in your house, and then time how long it would take for them to notice you from the time you stand there. That way, we would know how long it would take to bring all five members of the day shift with the ten buckets that they need.” I explained.

“I can do that.”

“Did you assign them roles like who would scout?”

“I did, yeah.” he said confidently.

At least this he seemed to have actually done properly, but I still wasn’t convinced that there wasn’t a flaw in other areas.

Perhaps something had gone wrong when he tried organizing the men?

“Alright, so maybe we'll do that tomorrow and today you’ll brief them on the test later on.”

“Sounds good,” he said.

As I walked away from Hasbel’s abode I felt like something was off about how Hasbel talked about the training last night, so I thought that this test would show if they actually learned something. I hoped that it would go as well as I hoped, but a part of me didn’t think that things would go so smoothly.

I would have to wait and see what tomorrow would hold…