I had an audience waiting for me when I landed, a full twenty familiar faces from the beginning of my new life in Old Alkerist. Shel was there, along with six other Arborists. A few random villagers I hadn’t had much interaction with also stood below, watching me. There were four children, none of them older than ten or eleven, but I didn’t know them. I’d been exiled before my mandatory enrollment in the village school, not that I’d had any plans of going.
It was possible Senica might know a few of them from school, but given the age gap and how young she’d been after we’d left, I doubted it. Thankfully, the school teacher, a man named Cherok who harbored a great deal of hatred for my father, was still back in Old Alkerist. Satisfying as it might have been to verbally abuse him today, it would make my task here all the more difficult.
Surprisingly, Karad was there. That head of the Garrison and de facto governor of Old Alkerist was not someone I expected to defect when the village had split apart over the usage of magic. If anything, I would have thought that, given his surprising stance on it, those who hated magic would have been the ones to leave.
“Stranger,” Karad said, stepping forward. “Welcome to Vestrus.”
“Stranger?” I repeated with a laugh. “I suppose none of you remembers me? I was born in Alkerist, too.”
Brows furrowed, Karad exchanged a confused look with Shel. When nobody stepped forward with any information, he turned back to face me. “I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize you.”
That was fair enough, really. I’d sped up my aging with alchemy and looked to be in my early twenties, an age I planned to maintain for a few thousand years. Not having back pain, joint pain, constantly upset stomachs, and a sagging face appealed to me. But my reincarnation’s actual age was ten or so – I’d lost track over the years. Maybe I was twelve? It wasn’t really that important to me.
“Keiran,” Shel said suddenly.
“What? No,” Karad said. “Keiran would be…”
He held a hand to his chest, then gestured to me. At around six and a half feet tall, no one else even came close to my height. That was also due to my abuse of alchemy on my body. A bit of height was a small advantage when determining core size, but I’d been tall in my previous life too and there’d been no reason not to make myself the same size when the option was available.
“The aging ointment must have worked,” she said.
“Is she right?” Karad asked, turning back to me.
“She is,” I confirmed.
“Well… Welcome to Vestrus, Keiran. This village wouldn’t exist if not for you.”
“Yeah. Uh, about that. What happened? Last I remember, the council was a united front on wanting to get rid of me, not get rid of magic completely.”
“That’s a delicate subject,” Karad said.
“No, it’s not.” Shel shoved her way past the man. “Melmir was being a jackass about the whole thing. He was pissed that the Collectors got disbanded once everyone knew how to donate mana to the ward stone directly. So, he lobbied for some rule changes prohibiting people from using magic on the basis that we should all be donating all our mana to the defense of the village, never mind the fact that we were making so much mana now that it only took twenty people to keep everyone safe.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Karad objected. “There were other factors to consider, like when Tsurai accidentally destroyed both her home and her neighbor’s trying to figure out that fire blast spell. Melmir had some good points. That’s why Solidaire agreed with him.”
“But you two didn’t,” I said. “I get why Shel would be against banning magic, but I’m a little bit surprised you backed her up.”
“Magic isn’t evil,” Karad said. “Yes, Noctra did some bad things to the village. For that matter, you did a few yourself. But you also saved us all, twice. And you saved Nermet’s life. I haven’t forgotten that.”
That had really been more Father than me. Yes, I’d untangled the mind control spell Old Alkerist’s former governor had laid on Nermet, but Father was the one whose mana had kept the man alive until I could free him. I would have simply put him out of his misery to prevent Noctra from using the enslaved man against us.
I glanced around at the gathered villagers. “You all felt strongly enough about the new rules demanding you stop using your mana for yourselves that you banded together and left? Why? With this many people against it, surely you could have just rejected the ruling.”
“We tried that,” one of the gathered villagers said sourly. “Didn’t work out.”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Things got violent,” Karad added. “It was tearing Alkerist apart. The jail cells were full even after we added a few more. The way it was going, we were going to starve just because there weren’t enough people to grow food.”
“That’s all history now,” Shel said. “We left. We founded this village. And now we’re doing just fine. No offense, but you’ve never shown any interest in Vestrus before. Why are you here now?”
“I always liked that about you,” I said. “Direct. To the point. None of this waffling and politics I’m always dealing with. Put simply, I am in need of some emergency alchemy supplies, and I’m here to offer you a trade for access to your gardens and greenhouses.”
They didn’t outright reject the idea, but I could tell they weren’t happy about it. They probably had good reason for growing the things they did and lacked the manpower and the supplies to grow extra. If I took some of their stock, there was the potential that it would hurt them down the road.
I’d just have to offer enough to make it worth their while, then. Relatively speaking, I was rich. I had what was an effectively unlimited mana budget, as far as they were concerned. I had all the knowledge to make practically any sort of tool or enchantment they might desire. It was very rare for me to enter into a negotiation where I didn’t have something the other party wanted.
“Why don’t we find a place to talk things over?” I offered. “I’m sure these people have lives they need to get back to anyway.”
“Hmm,” was all Karad said before gesturing toward a nearby building.
I followed him in with Shel and two other Arborists—or whatever they were calling themselves now—behind us. At first glance, it looked like we’d stepped into some sort of communal kitchen. There were a few tables set up at the front half of the hut, which was all one large room, and the back side had several firepits. Two of them had cauldrons suspended over them, and another was some sort of grill with a flat sheet of metal suspended over the flames.
Upgrading their cooking equipment was probably a good place to start the negotiations. Then again, it was hard to demonstrate the immediate benefits when their current system no doubt felt fine to them. And honestly, if their town was struggling to survive, maybe a magical stove wasn’t the luxury good they needed.
The building itself was sadly reminiscent of the mud-brick huts they’d been using back in Old Alkerist. Apparently, their advances in magic hadn’t extended deeply enough into the discipline of transmutation to allow for stone-shaped homes. There was nothing wrong with their current construction methods, but they weren’t terribly sturdy, certainly not anything I’d want to waste time reinforcing with enchantments.
That being said, renovating the entire town was a little much for access to their herb gardens. I could offer to raise a single building and do some enchantments on it. Then they could study and copy it at their leisure. That was probably a good deal.
“Let’s start with the hesitation I’m sensing from your side of the table,” I said. “You’re obviously growing those plants for a reason. I assume it’s important. Medicine for the village? Some sort of catalyst to increase crop yields?”
“Crop yields? Is that even possible?” Shel asked.
“Sure. It works on the same concept as fertilizer, just… uh… without the associated smell.”
Karad gave me a wry smile. “Now that’s something I’d be interested in.”
“But no, it’s not either of those. It’s just that we’re sort of under contract to produce them for somebody else already,” Shel said. “It’s not that we’re not willing to trade them away.”
“It’s that they’re already sold,” I finished. “I see.”
“How urgently do you need the reagents?” the former leader of the Arborists asked. “We could sell you the next crop. Or even clear some new patches and start growing something now.”
I shook my head. “I’m afraid my need is quite a bit more urgent than that. I’ve already made arrangements for future supplies. I need reagents to get me through this week and I don’t have the time to go hunting for wild plants.”
“Then I’m afraid there’s not much we can do to help right now,” Karad said. “This particular crop is already spoken for.”
Well, that certainly limited my options. It didn’t necessarily eliminate all of them, however. “If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly are the terms of the contract?”
“Two dozen ointments that block scents for hunters, ten healing potions, and a flask of… ahem, let’s just call it renewed manhood.”
I frowned at that, not because I cared that some old man wanted an alchemical pick-me-up for the bedroom, but because their fields held far more reagents than were needed for such a small order. “That’s everything?” I asked.
“It is, so you can see—”
“I can make all of that with less than a quarter of your yield.”
Shel paused for a moment. “A quarter?”
“Less than that,” I repeated.
“That’s… I know our techniques aren’t as good as yours, but are we really that far behind?”
“I have no idea what techniques you’re using. I’m just saying that you’ve grown far more than you need for what you’ve listed.”
“Are you offering to make everything for us? Because if not, it doesn’t really matter.”
“Yes, that’s what I’m offering,” I said. “A few hours of alchemy. I’ll take everything you planned on using, and you get your contract filled. This way, you’re not out any of the ingredients you grew and you don’t have to actually do any of the work making it.”
“Give us a few moments to confer, please.”
Shel’s group retreated to another table and talked in hushed whispers while I did my best to ignore what they were saying. That took an active effort on my part since the far table was still only ten feet away, but it was a short conversation. The only possible downside was that I might screw something up, but Shel laughed away that suggestion when one of her subordinates mentioned it.
Even an active effort not to eavesdrop was doomed to fail in such confined quarters.
After a minute, Shel and Karad returned to the table I was seated at. “We’ll need to clear up some details,” Karad said. “The contract is due in a week. Can you get everything done by yourself by then?”
“I can have it all done this evening,” I assured him.
“And you can guarantee the quality?”
“Please. Don’t be insulting.”
“Our people will harvest everything for you. You’ll return everything needed to fulfill the contract and the rest of the supplies are yours to keep.”
“That’s what I’m proposing, yes,” I said.
“I think we have a deal,” Karad said, holding out a hand.
“Not just yet!” Shel said. “I have one more condition.”
Oh, no.
“I want to watch. And ask questions.”
I hadn’t missed that part of Shel’s apprenticeship, not at all.