Honesty is the best policy when you're a child lying to your mother about who ate all the cookies. Lying through your teeth is the best policy when you're an adult arrested for selling poisonous cookies to school children.
In my defense, those cookies were meant for their enemies.
- Basen Koh on staying out of trouble
"He's lying, right?" Reid asked Kris.
"Truth," Bad Advice, the talking head, said.
Reid put his hand over his face. It was just going to be one of those things. He'd started thinking about how to best work with Basen, and as far as he could tell, the only way they were ever going to get any work done is if he ignored Basen's tangents. The problem was that how could he ignore the fact that the man just said he'd burned down an orphanage.
"It might be the truth," Basen said, "but it lacks nuance. Anyway, Reid, I hope you haven't asked this spirit for any advice. Kris, you should know better."
Kris scratched his head and nodded. "Sorry, boss. I just thought Reid would get a kick out of it."
"It's not a toy. It's a spirit older than our civilization."
"You're just mad that the only advice you've ever asked for worked out so poorly," Bad Advice said.
"Enough! Would you like to be banished back to the spirit realm? That cage might keep you, but it does not protect you."
"Hmph."
The head turned around and closed its eyes again.
"This is so weird," Reid said.
"I told you!" Kris said, slapping Reid on the back, nearly knocking him off of his stool.
Basen pulled out his stool and sat behind the counter. He set down his tea and looked pointedly at Kris and then at the spirit of advice. Kris got the message. He picked the cage back up and brought it into the back.
"Why do you keep that? It doesn't seem like you enjoy having the spirit around."
Basen paused and tugged on his beard. He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Many reasons. I'll admit that a few are petty and shameful. Either way, Bad Advice enjoys having a physical form, and I have no intention of releasing her from her prison, so we're all...content."
Reid dropped it. His relationship with Basen was new. If he still wanted to know in a few weeks, he'd test the man's limits then. He could always see what Bad Advice had to say on the subject.
Basen didn't continue the conversation either. He pulled out a few documents and a small physical ledger from behind the counter. Kris walked back up to the counter and leaned on it.
"I just did a little sorting before Reid came in, and we hung those shields and unpacked a few boxes. Need anything else, or should I just do some more sorting?"
"Why don't you join us for some business discussions? I always value your opinions," Basen said. He started flipping open some of the folders he'd pulled out.
"That's not what you said about the doctors."
"It's not that I didn't value your opinion, Kris. It's just that I know they're all idiots."
"You're still mad they won't let you into their club?"
"It's a medical society, Kris, not a club. And no, I'm not mad. It doesn't change the fact that they're all idiots."
"Sure, boss. I still don't think you should have tried to throw him off that ship. What business stuff are we talking about?"
With all the talk of burning down orphanages and throwing doctors off ships, Reid decided it might be best to guarantee some privacy, so he got up and shut the door. Kris sat on the extra stool he'd been using, so they were both sitting across from Basen when Reid returned.
"This may come as a surprise to you, Kris. I won't beat around the bush: the Immaculate Collection is not doing well. We're behind on basically every bill I can think of and probably some I can't."
"Huh," Kris said. "I knew it wasn't doing great. I mean, we sell one or two items a week. I just assumed you were financing the whole thing out of your personal funds for fun."
"Not quite. I have supplied the inventory, but that is the vast majority of my wealth. I have a few hundred gold squirreled away here and there, but I cannot make good on my debts with that money. We need to make do with what we have right now."
"Good idea," Reid said. "If we have to borrow just to get out of the hole we're in, then it's only likely to buy the business time."
"That was my thinking. Besides, I don't have enough cash anyway."
Reid nodded. He mentally prepared to remember any numbers, unsure if his Ledger would pick things up if he heard them, but wasn't fully engaged.
"We're walking through the numbers?" Reid asked.
Basen nodded and pulled over his ledger.
"I have a few items written down here. I can mark off the forty silver debt to Veris. Paid in full. What's next. Ah, yes. I have a number of small charges from the initial shop opening. Early on we had some excess funds, so I paid back some of them. How specific do you want, Reid?"
"I'll take specifics once we can start paying, but we can probably group anything small for now. I do want to split them by money owed and ongoing expenses. So, what expenses do we have that aren't going to grow, and what expenses are charged every month. We can skip labor since we talked about that yesterday."
"Very well. In one-time expenses that are still outstanding but not growing, twenty gold. In one-time expenses that are accumulating interest, two hundred gold. In—"
"I'm sorry. Did you say two hundred gold?"
"I did. The building needed a little work. Display cases and shelving, and I paid some people to move things from my home in the south to the city. Money for that came from a loan."
"Okay. Before moving on, what is the interest on that? Are you making payments? Do you have a copy of the contract?"
Basen produced a paper from one of the folders. "I have all the contracts in here. You can view them at any time, but for now, it appears the interest rate is ten percent per year. I haven't made any payments yet."
Reid covered his face with his hand. "So you don't owe two hundred gold."
"No, I do. That's how much I borrowed."
Reid didn't think much of his education, but he'd been taught about contracts, loans, terms, and other things. The Glarrus mine was the primary and most consistent economic driver in the area, and given Reid's interest in the mercantile arts, he'd made studying the contracts something of a hobby. Basen either didn't know or didn't care about the terms of his agreements.
"But how much interest has accrued? Has it capitalized?"
"I don't see what grammar has to do with this, Reid. The interest is ten percent per year. It hasn't been a year yet."
"That's not how these usually work, Basen. Here," he took the agreement and skimmed it for the basic details. He noticed the contract was drafted by the Greymoon Shadows, so Terrance had been correct there.
"Right here. Interest is accrued monthly. There's a non-payment fee of fifty silver if you don't pay in a given month, and both interest and non-payment fees are capitalized if not paid within two months, which is more generous than I expected. Let me see that pen."
Reid calculated the monthly interest rate and began mapping out how much damage had been done already.
"Let's see. This month's due date has already passed...so we'll capitalize the first four months and add the non-payment fees...there! The numbers are a little rough. I'm not sure how they'll round, but I've assumed it won't be in our favor. Your loan today stands at two hundred and eight gold, twenty-one silver, and twenty-seven copper. It's accruing roughly one gold, seventy-three silver, and fifty-one copper in interest this month. The interest will continue to grow if we don't start making payments. You don't have any term limits. You just need to make a payment every month of at least interest owed to avoid the fifty silver penalty. That gives us flexibility, but also means this might be hanging over us for a while."
Kris whistled when Reid finished.
"That is a lot of nonsense," he said, pointing at the unorganized mess of calculations Reid had done. "Where'd you learn that?"
"In Glarrus," he said, shrugging.
"Hmm," Basen said. "It seems the bog lurkers have taken a liking to math and finance."
"I can't imagine they're busy with much else," Reid said.
"Oh, you'd be surprised. Anyway, that's not good news. I have been rather negligent in my management. We have a few more things to cover, and I doubt that is my only blunder."
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
"Nothing to do but face it, Basen. We can't figure out how we're going to fix a problem without knowing all the facts."
"Well said. Shall I move on then?"
Reid nodded.
"Next, in rent payments, I'm ashamed to say I only made the first one. I thought this would be easier. I just assumed I'd have a decent stream of income to put toward these things. I don't dare guess at what I owe. The lease for the building is ten gold per month."
That seemed reasonable to Reid, but his knowledge of real estate prices in the city was essentially non-existent. Compared to the two hundred gold loan, it didn't feel like a big deal. He accepted the contract from Basen. He read the main points out loud as he found them.
"Four year lease. Ten gold per month. Fifty silver late fee. Oh, ouch. The late fee is assessed for each month every month. So if you didn't pay two months ago, this month you'll owe fifty silver for two months ago and fifty silver for last month until those months are paid. What else?"
Unlike the loan terms, the lease had much more complicated conditions. There were details about either party breaking the terms of the lease, and penalties and concessions for various items. There were lists of things that Basen was required to report on to the landlord, inspections that were supposed to be arranged regularly, and a host of other things he had no doubt the man was even aware of.
On its face, the lease had seemed reasonable. Right now, Reid couldn't even hazard a guess at how much Basen might owe.
"This isn't great. Have you reported your monthly inventory, or had these inspections done?"
"Hmm? No one told me about inspections or reporting."
"Yeah. I spoke with a shopkeeper down the street, Terrance. He said the Greymoon Shadows are probably trying to get you so deeply in debt that they can get the courts to authorize seizure of your inventory for non-payment."
Basen slapped the counter, causing the glass display it rested on to crack and the glass to fall onto the floor.
"Damn snakes everywhere I turn. Repair."
The glass display case became whole once more, the broken glass vanishing in the blink of an eye. The casual and incredible magic still left Reid speechless. Basen rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes.
"So, how bad is it? You don't have to pull your punches Reid, I can take it."
"Honestly, Basen, I have no idea. There's too much here to guess what they've fined you for, and I can't make heads or tails of the fee schedule. We'll have to ask them. At minimum, we owe fifty-five gold in back payments right now, with ten for rent plus another two or three gold in late fees each month."
Basen nodded.
"I don't suppose that's everything?" Reid said cautiously.
"Not quite, but I only have those two contracts with the Greymoon Shadows. We're a member of the historical society in this part of the city. Most of the businesses in the area are. They have a community center a few blocks away and do some general work to help maintain our area. That's one gold per month, but it's a voluntary donation, and I'm current on it."
"So we can drop it?"
"We can lower it. I've committed to membership, and there's no way to back out for a year, but the minimum donation is only ten silver per month. I think that's about it."
"Crystal tears," Kris said.
"Ahh," Basen said, wincing. "I may have placed an order for a batch of crystal tears. Those are, what, a month away?"
"Give or take. Ran into Darius the other day at the west gate, and he said the basilisks are a few weeks out from their first cry."
"Basilisks? Like, the deadly poisonous snakes that turn people to stone?"
"Venomous, Reid. Although, I've never heard of anyone trying to eat basilisk meat. It does seem like a bad idea. But yes, those snakes. They have remarkable natural magic that develops quickly. When they're young, they can't yet turn anyone or anything to stone. Honestly, though, even the biggest basilisk would be hard pressed to turn a full grown human to stone. At most, you'd be paralyzed for a few hours."
"The tears, Basen?"
"Right. When their magic first develops, they can't control it. It's concentrated in their eyes, and they end up turning their tears to stone. It's gradual and usually continues for several days until they're completely blinded by the shell now encasing their eyes. Through some unknown process, the blinding shell breaks apart, and the basilisk blinks it away, essentially crying crystal tears. These crystals are incredibly potent magical bases. Highly sought after. I ordered a crop's worth to try my hand at some magic item creation."
"Okay. That's really cool, but how much are they, and when do you have to pay? Can you cancel the order?"
"I'm afraid I've already paid half up front. The second half is thirty gold. We'll want to go through with the purchase, even if we don't have the budget for it. We'll be able to sell them at an overall loss, but we can probably sell them to a magic smith for forty gold within a day or two."
"And if we keep them, is there an upside?"
Basen pantomimed balancing scales. "Possibly. I can make magic items, but I am not practiced at it. The outcome, whether or not I can make amazing items, is that we'll have even more inventory. That is one area we don't seem to be short on."
Reid looked around the shop and nodded. He hadn't even been in the back room, and there was already more magic in this one space than he'd imagined he'd see in his whole life.
"Well. It sounds like we have a few weeks to figure that out. Anything else? Any ongoing payments for anything, or anything else you need to purchase regularly to run the shop?"
"I don't think so. Kris?"
Kris shook his head.
"Alright. We're not in a great spot, but I'm not sure how bad it actually is. We need to meet with the Greymoon Shadows sometime and get an idea of what we actually owe them, and how we can avoid any more fees."
"A sensible plan. We can head over to their society building tomorrow. You're staying at the Dusk Guild, correct? I can meet you there. It's not far from the Greymoon building."
Reid shook his head. He'd only had a little time to think about things since he'd spoken with Terrance, but he wanted his overall plan to remain the same.
"Before we go, I want to get the shop to the point where we can start selling things regularly. I haven't heard great things about the Greymoon Shadows, but if we go see them, I want us to have the upper hand in some way. If we go in there owing money and having no idea how we're going to handle the debt we have, then they'll just dictate terms to us."
"You want us to be able to pay off some of the debt?"
Reid nodded.
"It's tough. I don't see any details about defaults in either contract, but I also don't want debt to keep piling up while we get in order."
"So what does that mean?" Basen asked, confused.
"It means we give ourselves a deadline. We try to cover the fifty-five gold before we meet with them, but if we can't, we still go in to establish that we're serious about repayment now. We pay what we can with the understanding that we're on our way back up. I'd say we should go in before the next rent payment is due. Twenty-three days."
Basen nodded. "Yes, I like that."
"At that point, they can't intimidate us. They can try, but the contracts don't seem to give them too much extra leverage over us."
"And I can handle any standard intimidation tactics," Basen said.
"That all sounds great, Reid," Kris said. "But how do we get there?"
Reid stood up again. "Hard work. First step is to get this place looking more like an item shop than a warehouse. I want to get everything else in this room unpacked today."
Basen and Kris looked at the stacks of boxes behind Reid.
"Mary is expecting me home in a few hours," Kris said.
"I'm not asking you to stay extra yet, Kris. Can you, if we need it?"
"Sure. I work for Basen exclusively, but he'll have to pull me off my other work."
Basen clapped and grinned. "Not a problem! This is your priority now, Kris. Just do whatever Reid asks of you, within reason, of course."
"Great," Reid said. "Let's get started while we have you."
They spent the rest of the afternoon doing inventory. Reid pulled and marked items, setting them where they belonged while Basen and Kris followed, writing out tags. They were moving much faster than he and Kris had earlier, and Reid resisted the urge to spend time on any particular items.
They stopped when Reid suddenly developed blurry vision.
"Essence starvation," Basen told him. "Just sit down and relax. It will fade."
"What is that? It doesn't sound great."
"Every time you use magic, it uses a little of the magic essence your body has saved up. The essence is created by your potential, and you generally won't notice it until you take too much. It recovers quickly."
Reid's vision cleared after a minute. "Why did it mess up my vision?"
"Because your eyes have been using essence. Once you unlock your potential, your body naturally starts relying on the magic essence produced to enhance itself. It's why you grow stronger, faster, and gain stamina and damage resistance as you rise through the magical tiers."
"Really? I knew about the stamina thing, or at least I had heard about it. I didn't know how it worked or about the rest of it."
"Indeed. It's something you would have been taught or found out sooner if you were combat focused. Running out of essence like that while in a fight is deadly. When you watch the arena duel in a few days, you'll notice an inflection point where each fighter has reached the edge of their safe essence consumption. The whole fight will change. At that level, with relatively equal power and rank, the fight is almost always decided by the best essence management."
"Is it something I should worry about for myself?"
"Keep it in mind. As a lesser mage, it almost doesn't matter. You'll get blurry vision, a headache, soreness, or any number of other small maladies, but your actual enhancements are minimal, so it won't truly affect you in a dangerous situation. When you eventually make it to your current cap of three stars, I can teach you how to feel your essence more closely. It becomes much, much easier with magical mastery at Greater Mage, but a Mage should be able to learn."
"Thanks, Basen. I look forward to it."
Kris left shortly after they started again. He'd told Reid he had a wife and two children, and Reid made a mental note to make sure he never kept Kris too late. The mental note had triggered an unexpected reaction.
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Merchant's Ledger - Employee Scheduling update
* Kris
* Availability: Early Morning to Later Afternoon
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Reid tried to reproduce the update by trying to make mental notes of things he wanted to do in the shop, but it seemed his Ledger had a finite number of things it tracked for him, and a simple to do list wasn't one of them.
Hours later, Basen sat down behind the counter, and Reid joined him. The bone weary fatigue that he'd been fighting off all day had just about won. Still, they'd done it.
He looked into the back of the shop. Roughly half the shelving was now filled with dozens of items, all identified and tagged. The aisles were mostly free of boxes and crates, with the remaining boxes emptied and stacked against the back wall. That simple change made the store feel twice as large.
"Amazing what a day of hard work can do!" Basen said.
"Yeah. Why didn't you put in the time before I started? You've been here for months."
Basen shrugged. "I don't know, Reid. I just find it hard to finish tasks. It's been a battle since I retired, and I often wonder if it was the right choice."
"From adventuring?"
Basen nodded and spun around on his stool. He waved a hand over the glass case behind him and pulled out a green bird from the case. To Reid's astonishment, the bird came to life while Basen touched it.
"You might call it adventuring. It was a combination of things. Exploration. Combat. Questing. Delving. It was never the same thing. I went where I was wanted or needed or neither. No matter where I went, I could do something good. In the shop, I do something, but nothing changes. It requires some kind of concerted effort that I've forgotten how to put forth."
Basen was stroking the bird, who nuzzled his hand.
"Would you like to hold it?"
"Is it an item? Or a bird?"
"Both!"
Reid held out his hand, and after some encouragement, the bird hopped onto him. Its claws were sharp, but it didn't grip tightly enough to hurt him. It looked at him and tilted its head back and forth.
"Perhaps I just don't spend enough time doing the right things," Basen said. "Either way, I should stop complaining. We did well today! I think with your help, we can make this work."
Reid nodded, but he was honestly transfixed by the colorful bird. It felt so peaceful. He couldn't feel any magic from it. It just seemed like a bird.
"This seems rude. Can I mark the bird? I have no idea what that will do."
"You can certainly try. I'm not sure, either.
Reid used his mark. Something changed. He knew the bird was marked, but he also knew his mark wouldn't be visible. He wasn't sure how he knew, though.
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Tranquility
* 3 Star Living Item
* Unbindable
* Anyone in the presence of Tranquility will feel a small amount of tranquility
* Touching Tranquility will bleed away stress and provide contentment at a higher rate
* After five seconds without physical contact, Tranquility will return to its non-living form.
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"I expected everything in those cases to be high star, powerful items."
"Some are, but it's also home to those items I value the most. Tranquility has been with me for a long time. I don't know if I would have ever crawled out of the pit I was in without this beautiful bird. As you might imagine, Tranquility isn't for sale, but you are free to use her whenever you feel the need."
"Thanks, Basen."
"You are quite welcome. Now, I'm going to call it a day. I'm happy with our progress, but before I leave you, I have something else!"
Basen returned Tranquility to the case and closed it with another wave of his hand. He turned back and produced a grey key from his pocket.
"As promised. A key to the shop."