It’s been a day since I agreed to work for the men who, to put it mildly, “forcefully relocated” me. Although this was exactly as I had planned, I wondered if it was a bit too perfect.

Despite my worries, the past few hours have been relatively peaceful ones.

The man introduced himself as “Qaton” by pointing to himself, and pointed to the other man walking in the distance and gave him the name of “Darat”.

From what I have gathered, their work required them to store large amounts of material, mainly a gold-like fluid called "Alham" filling most of their wooden barrels along with other various metals like mercury and iron.

The whole warehouse that they used was two stories high with the center of the second floor being completely empty, allowing one to see the roof from the first floor. The building had an area of around four hundred square meters with a few dozen wall-mounted torches dotted around the perimeter. It probably had a few dozen of the alham filled barrels alongside miscellaneous items like furniture and wooden crates.

In order to familiarize me with their numerals, Qaton began writing the numerals on papyrus, showing their equivalents of ones, tens, and hundreds in numeral form showing their value by equating them to dots.

Although it had differences from the number system I’m familiar with, at least from what I can tell, it’s a base ten number system. That means that their writing system has nine digits for the one’s place. I couldn't imagine the headache it would cause if it was base fifty or base sixty.

After I took a few minutes memorizing the numbers, Qaton showed me a wooden desk beside a chair with around two hundred rolled up papyrus scrolls lying around in its drawer. Each scroll contained a foreign numbers besides words I couldn’t understand. The desk also had a container of thin sticks that appeared to be used for writing adjacent to a bottle of ink that they would use to write with.

He unfurled two scrolls out of the many on the desk, both of them had numbers but to their right were words written in their unknown language.

He showed me the meanings of the words by adding as many bronze coins as the number said in one scroll and subtracting by the amount shown in the other.

I quickly understood that one word likely meant 'income' and the other 'expenses' based on the demonstration that Qaton had shown me.

As I nodded as a signal that I understood, Qaton seemed to have picked up on that fact and rifled through the contents of the desk to look for something.

After around two minutes had passed, he finally brought a few pieces of parchment twice as large as the rest.

To make an example, he gets one of the long, thin sticks in a jar and places the edge in a bottle of ink.

He then copied the upper-right most word on one of the small parchments, added whether it was expense or income then added the amount.

I guessed that the word on the upper right corner was the title and it gave information about the nature of the exchange.

Qaton handed me another scroll and gestured for me to copy what he wrote.

After I did exactly that, he organized the scrolls and placed them neatly on the desk, implying that he wanted every single scroll on the desk compiled on the writing sheet.

As I thought about how long the task would take, my mind wandered to the thought of taking some time to rest and indulge in a meal. It made me ask myself when the last time I had eaten was and then, and as soon as that thought appeared, I was struck with the sudden realization of how hungry I had been since I woke up.

As if on cue, my stomach growled with a low rumble, immediately attracting Qaton’s attention. He looked at me with a pitying look and opened a door which led to a room adjacent to the warehouse. When he reappeared he came out with a sort of flat bread that, in my hunger, looked as appetizing as the fine pastry. I quickly gobbled it all up as my hunger had finally been sated.

Later on, I discovered that it was a pantry containing different breads, fish and other foodstuffs. Some of which I indulged myself in when I felt peckish while working.

After Qaton finally left to attend something else, I placed my tablet on the desk and I finally started on the final manuscript, finishing it a few hours later after the sun had set. The task itself wasn’t too strenuous, though I can’t deny that it was very tedious. While spending hours meticulously poring over my math to make sure of its veracity isn’t the most fun thing to be doing, it was definitely much better than starving.

Besides, I learned a bit more about who exactly I’m working for. Looking over the different documents I was handed, I recognized around twenty distinct styles of handwriting which implied the existence of at least twenty or more men who contributed to Qaton’s organization. Furthermore, I noticed a pattern in some of the documents. They described how an initial expense resulted in more income than what was originally spent which suggested that the group was making a profit by acting as a middleman. They would take goods from one place and then trade them elsewhere for a higher return.

From what I've seen, it seems likely that the barrels of alham are the primary goods they trade.

As I finished with my task, I set myself to explore more of my surroundings.

I’m sure no one would mind.

As I looked around I noticed four doors.

One door led back to the basement from which I came from.

The other one led to the pantry.

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I was left with two doors which I could open.

The doors were on walls that stood perpendicularly to each other, one door looked quite old equipped with a lock to keep it secure. The other door was a simple wooden door with its defining feature being how new it looked, with almost no scratches or marks in the door.

I first attempted to open the worn out looking door by deactivating its lock, but the door would not budge.

Hearing faint voices, I listened to the room behind it by placing my ear to the door. Behind the door, I could make out distant footsteps and a discussion in hushed tones.

There’s probably another lock on the other side, why do they go through so much effort?

As I walked to the other wooden door, I hoped that it wouldn’t be locked like the other one. As I tried to open it, it moved a bit but got stuck on something halfway through. I gave it a forceful shove and the door swung open revealing a small room with a straw mattress bed, a chest and a fireplace in the corner.

It looked like it hadn’t been used in a while, it has probably been a few weeks to a month since the last occupant left.

Since it had probably been unused for some time, I decided to stay here for now and tidy it up. In the corner opposite to the fireplace was a wooden broom with dozens of small twigs tied up in a bundle at the end.

I used the broom to sweep any dust that accumulated in the room out of it as well as removing any cobwebs that I happened to see.

Once that was done, I thought to myself as I lay on the mattress,

It really has been a busy day, hasn’t it?

As I felt my exhaustion catch up with me all at once, I surrendered to it and drifted into peaceful slumber.

Behind the locked door…

As the dead of night arrived, Darat had notified me that we were summoned to discuss our involvement with the Hamet. They had apparently heard of the situation and were calling all of the group’s members to reach a verdict on the matter.

As all the members gathered to discuss the matter of the Hamet we had in the warehouse, almost everyone at the meeting glared at Darat and I with cold looks all the while maintaining absolute silence. One of the most influential members of our organization was Ishata. She was a stern woman, almost at the point of being called middle-aged, who broke the silence by taking it upon herself to question the judgment of both my partner and I.

She started by saying “Qaton, Darat. This Hamet could be dangerous to us, we don’t know both where he came from and why he’s here. We can’t even ask him any of it because as you’ve told us, he doesn’t speak our tongue ”

“So can you please explain to us why on earth you allowed a random boy we don’t know anything about to access our financial records?” she asked with a smile that seemed laced with insincerity.

Her sharp words had both unnerved the crowd and had stroked their distrust towards us for taking action without their approval.

In order to allow our action to be legitimized, we needed the support of the majority of the smuggling ring.

In an attempt to calm them down, Darat tried to placate them by saying “Calm down, of course we didn’t take him in for no reason.”

“Then why did you do it?” one of them interjected.

Darat responded by saying “We needed a new steward, and he fit the bill so we agreed to let him work for us”

Though Darat was confident in his answer, I found it a bit lacking its ability to convince the others.

They clearly were thinking along the same lines as I was because they seemed more riled up than before.

The same man, now with an incredulous look on his face, exclaimed “Is that it?”

“Have we resorted to plucking children off of the street for labor?” Another man asked.

As the room quickly lost their trust in our credibility, the room quickly filled with doubtful murmurs that signaled to me that they were losing their faith in us.

I had to act now in order to save face, unless we wanted to be passed off as fools and waste our previous efforts.

“Enough of this murmuring.” I bellowed as silence enveloped the room once more.

“We obviously had our reasons. First of all, we need to keep an eye on the Hamet. We don’t know where he came from or why he is here, all the more reason to keep an eye on him. If we teach him our language, he could tell us something that we could use.”

This line of reasoning had swayed some, but not all were convinced just yet.

“Secondly, the boy is simply fit for this role. Ever since our steward disappeared, this whole operation has been hanging by a thread. Our reports just kept piling and piling with no one to organize them. The boy has shown that he has the mathematical prowess necessary to do the job while being willing to take on the work that we give him.”

Judging by the look on their faces, I reckoned we had around a third of the group convinced while another third was wavering in their opinion.

With our side gaining a more favorable result in this battle of opinion , Darat seemed to have regained his confidence. He looked like he had something in mind that he wanted to say. So when he looked to me for approval, I nodded my head, beckoning him to speak.

“We cannot afford to be divided at this time. With the Zi trying to crack down on our operations, we need all the help we can get. We can’t allow the Zi to have absolute control over the trade of alham. In order to keep our way of life intact, we have to use every edge that we have over our enemy to maintain the flow of alham that we need to survive as an organization.”

As Darat’s eyes jerked back and forth, assessing the mood of the crowd, he decided that this was the perfect time to strike.

“It’s time for a vote” he announced.

“Those who are with me, raise their right hand” he said with a triumphant look in his eyes.

With this, a hefty majority of the group raised their right hands with loud cheers. The silent minority which included the woman who spoke against us, looked simply exasperated by the result. While some looked defeated, others including Ishata looked more infuriated than anything.

As the meeting came to an end and everyone went their separate ways, Ishata went up to us alone in order offering a caution.

“Go ahead, give the boy work and teach him our language but don’t blame me when you have regrets later on.” she warned.

As she walked away, we felt both a feeling of relief for our victory as well as a lingering foreboding for what could happen in the future.

In the warehouse, the next morning…

When I woke up the next morning, I walked to the desk with the manuscript and saw Qaton himself poring through it.

As he analyzed the document, I noticed that judging by his facial expressions, he seemed a bit more uplifted than usual. Like a burden had been taken off of his shoulders and he could relax more now that he was free of it.

Once he was finished with it, he nodded at me with a smile. Which was his way of telling me without words that I had done a good job writing the composition.

As if to reward me, he took out my tablet and heated the wax on the board with a candle, then flattened it with the stylus.

He started writing distinct characters. I had seen some of these, while working on the document but in comparison these characters were all spaced out.

These probably aren’t words then, but wait— could this be?

As he finished writing symbols which in total amounted to twenty two characters, my suspicions were all but confirmed.

He began to assign sounds to the characters which removed any doubts that I may have had.

“This is their alphabet.” I concluded.

I’m one step closer to figuring out where I am.