The first delivery arrived from the furniture makers. A dozen carriages rolled up to the entrance drive, which John and his team had paved in a mosaic of leftover stones, carrying bed frames, tables, chairs, desks, and anything else they might need. Laurel flaunted the transcendent powers of a master cultivator by taking everything into spatial storage, and then dropping it in the rooms Annette indicated.
“You know, as Quartermaster, shouldn't I get a spatial tattoo as well?”
“You need to carve permanent mana channels in your body first. Otherwise you’ll pop like a soap bubble,” Laurel said
“Right, I didn’t want one anyway. Thanks for the nightmares.”
********
Adam was an uncomfortable mix of ecstatic and disgusted at the amount of money they had spent. With the deliveries rolling in, and a couple of teenagers needing to be kept busy with chores each week, he had all he needed to set up the library of his dreams. Even better, the ancient Loremasters of the Eternal Archive had left an intact catalog system, which Laurel had recalled and pulled out of storage a few months ago. Armed with a full list of their collection, he delighted in moving the piles of books Laurel removed from storage to their proper place. Most of them were unreadable by anyone without a specialized degree, but eventually that would change. He was already dreaming of the translations he would be requisitioning from the students in exchange for contribution points. He had taken it upon himself to translate a couple of the cultivation guides Laurel had been pulling from, and to pen a pamphlet for sect members, outlining their rules and procedures.
********
Annette was in her happy place. She let Adam lose himself in his library while she got to decorate their sect house however she liked. While the old books had been protected, only a few of the furnishings had been salvageable, according to Laurel. So Annette had gotten to start from scratch. It was a childhood dream come true. It had taken her weeks to shop for rugs, wall hangings, some inexpensive but tasteful art pieces and a thousand other small things to make this place worth living in, and she was up to the challenge.
With Lucy’s enthusiastic aid, each room was transformed from a gray box into something warm and functional. The rotunda, already the heart of their sect, got the most lavish treatment. Comfortable couches, low tables, and even a few potted plants were arranged in harmonious patterns. Lucy found the plants delightful and promised very seriously to keep track of them. Black and metallics were fine for an eye-catching uniform, but not ideal for a place anyone actually had to live. Instead she chose rich jewel-toned furnishings and prioritized comfort in addition to style.
********
While her friends did the hard work, Laurel took over the magical drudgery. Light crystals were placed in sconces along hallways and in unobtrusive corners, providing a welcoming glow without being harsh. Water crystals found homes in the kitchens and in wash rooms. These took more maintenance than the light crystals, but the overabundance of mana made it a non-issue, despite how wasteful it felt. Basic sound crystals were set up in the public areas to chime the time of day and sound an alert, which might become useful when they had anyone to respond to it. The rotunda-lounge, the offices, and a few of the other public rooms got small hotplates and heat crystals, along with low tables, intended to serve as tea stations. Because if she was going to be Sectmaster, she could do what she wanted. And she deserved tea in every room!
Classrooms came together, and just in time, since a tutor hired from the university was coming to fill in the children’s lacking academic background. Esther entrenched herself as the most beloved member of the sect by continuing to cook the best meals most of them had ever eaten. The deliveries slowed and they were able to settle into something comfortable.
Two weeks after he officially joined the sect, Laurel was toying with an advanced sound crystal she had made for Leander. When he channeled mana into it, he would be able to make the words he was thinking project into the air. In reality it was a fairly rough creation. Even with the leaps and bounds her cultivation had made, she just didn’t have the expertise for anything better. The crystal would need constant maintenance and recharging, and even with that it would only last a few years. There was no way to add any tone or inflection to the sound produced, either. She hesitated to give it to him. He mostly got along fine without it. After a few days, the rest of the group had stopped accidentally excluding him from conversations, giving him time to write or gesture to get his point across.
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Laurel leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. There were fewer than ten people in her sect and she was barely able to make good decisions. One of her alchemy instructors during her own training had been a stern-faced master of fire. The woman was blind from some older injury, and had once berated an initiate boy until he fled the room when he suggested she needed to visit the healers. In the end she handed it over in a quiet moment after Leander's reading lesson and assured him it was up to him. The boy was trying and failing to hold back tears when he accepted it. He vowed to work on his mana control until he could use it regularly.
Morning cultivation still took place outdoors. General Mansfeln had started sending another handful of soldiers after the success with the first trio. Trip was almost at the point of sustained active cultivation, which was the next watershed her students would aim for. Despite having the shiny new sect house, Laurel resisted moving the class. There was something primal and invigorating with connecting to the energy underlying the universe while standing in nature. Or as close to nature as one got in a major metropolis, in any case. The second reason, which only Adam called her out on, was that the local children were still listening in on the lectures. They were driven indoors when the winter weather got too bad, but she wanted to stretch out the informal training as long as she could. At Mr. Mercer’s suggestion, she even had John’s team come back and set up a pavilion where the crafting tent had sat before. With some magic cheating and heat crystals they would be able to use it for most of the year.
They were still lacking for students, but Laurel had plans for that.
*******
The Shipwrights Guild of Merista was smack in the heart the bustling port of Verilia and had the smell to match. Seaweed, fish guts, and coal smoke combined into a stench only those who lived and worked nearby could tolerate for more than a short while. Leander hadn’t complained on the journey across the lower reaches of the city. Though Adam was painfully aware that anyone used to the Flats would be able to handle the port without an issue.
The guild hall stood at the end of a busy street which they traversed on foot, the carriage driver flatly refusing to try and go any further. Stone pillars made porous by exposure to salt accented the corners of the building otherwise made out of reclaimed ship wood in a hodgepodge facade. Two large women stood out front, their arms covered in nautical tattoos. Neither bothered to stand up straight as Adam and Leander approached.
“Hey there mates. What’s your business at the Dockyard?” The one on the right asked.
Adam held up some paper and gestured at the box Leander was holding. “Putting in an application.”
“Oh! Well go right in then lads, though you might have to wait a minute for someone to help.”
They entered, blinking at the sudden change in lighting when they were almost bowled over by a man with an entourage. Jumping out of the way and yanking Leander after him at the last minute, Adam watched as the man stormed out without even a glance.
“That, Leander, is an example of the entitlement of nobles. Once you start watching for it, you’ll notice it everywhere.” They made their way over to a harried guild member at the services desk and dropped off the paperwork with little fuss.
“Next stop is in the markets up in the Cartine district”. Leander followed along. He rarely used his speaking stone outside the sect house, and even there he was prone to listening more than chattering on. Adam appreciated the peace and quiet. The two of them retraced their steps away from the guild and caught a ride to one of the nicer districts towards the top of the hill, after a quick detour for a snack. The boy was still thinner than he ought to be.
Unger’s Stationary was as pristine as the Dockyard was weathered. Perfectly painted in a pale blue, with careful displays along walls and shelves of paper folded in artful patterns to show off color or flexibility. Not one of Adam’s preferred stationary shops, but they needed some purple ink for correspondence with the palace, and only a few shops bothered carrying it without charging two arms and a leg. They might have money but Adam wasn’t about to turn into a snob that was too good to shop for the best price. Leander looked around wide-eyed. The lad was probably afraid of smudging the glass or knocking a display over. At least that’s how Adam felt when he first started studying and needed to enter the upper-crust shops.
“Ahem. May I ask what you are doing here?” The man behind the counter was eyeing them warily.
“Yes, we need some royal purple ink.” Instead of responding the shopkeeper gave both Adam and Leander a once over. Adam suddenly very much regretted coming in casual clothes instead of the sect uniform. And Leander, well, the lad was still young and had somehow stained himself on the docks. Adam didn’t care to examine the contents of the dark blotches.
“I’m afraid we don’t have any available.” The man said.
Adam looked at the man, then the shelf directly to his left where the bottles were clearly labeled.
“Is that so?”
“Yes, it is. Maybe you’d have more luck at one of the shops in Darrow” he said, naming one of the lower class districts just a step up the hill from the Flats.
“I’m standing right here, willing to pay for your overpriced fucking ink –”
“As I said, none of that is available to you.”
The tirade building in his mind died before he let it out. These types of people never changed just because you yelled at them. They just used it as a reason to ignore the next ‘low class’ person who wandered in. “Fine, let's go Leander.”
The youth trotted along behind Adam as they left the shop. Though just before they got to the door, the boy stumbled and his hip knocked into a parchment display, causing it to tumble to the floor. They could hear the shopkeeper swearing as the door closed behind them.
“Good lad.”