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I am doing a
little experiment. I am going to write a series of chapters in a fantasy
world of my creation and see if it goes anywhere. Since I have not
prewritten this story and have no outline, it will probably end up a convoluted
mess. I do not know how often I will be able to update this or if it will
ever finish. This is the link to CHAPTER 1. (I have also found that I have to go back and clean up
very broken sentences in previous chapters. This is why I need an editor.
I understand what I am writing, but I need to make sure other people do
too.)
Chapter 4: Malachite
As a teen,
Malachite had been part of trade caravans from his home city of Hasenburg, the
oldest continuously held County in the region famed for pepper and steak; north
across the Painted Plains, so named for the nomadic tribes that rode mottled
horses and painted their faces and skin to match the pattern; and then winding
thru the passes of the Bones of Giants, a mountain range filled with abandoned
cliff side villages with choked out stepped planting areas the bones of a great
mountain people now gone. The ultimate
destination was Solace, the free harbor.
Solace was
the only major trading city that was not under the control of the Maunder
Empire, whose legions controlled the southern half of a continent hundreds of
miles away, and most of the western part of this continent. Solace was instead run by the Fingers, a
syndicate of aristocrats who elected a council of five from the property owners
of the city, but the rule of law was not so strong.
The Fingers
were rich, they made the city function to maintain their wealth, and they used
the wealth to stay in power. And they
kept those who had the arms to change things fed and housed to a level that
they felt the system worked. Limited
slavery, trade in drugs, and very few duties kept people coming into the city,
kept money flowing thru the city (though the bribes one needed to utilize might
have balanced that cost out). Say what
you will about the Maunder, the tax was the tax, and giving or accepting bribes
meant the loss of literal fingers. In
Solace the Fingers were there to count bribes.
But it made
for a flexible market that could be worked by someone who had the mind to. And Malachite's father wanted Malachite to
have that mind. The Dandy Knight was
taken on trade mission after trade mission to hear the haggling, how to sell
cows, how to buy horses, how to check purity of salt, what to smell for, what
to listen for, and what people said with their eyes. Malachite was known as a swordsman, because
Malachite sold himself well as a swordsman.
"How
could I have survived as many battles as I have dressed like this if I were not
amazing at what I do?" "He
told you I fought how many? That is too
many, I... Well, let me count, 1, 2, the man with the net...you know, now that
I think about it, I might have been too humble." "You need to provide more than that, I
slept on a bed of straw for three nights and have eaten nothing but meal and
bacon, the way I see it whether or not your battle goes forward luxuries have
been denied to me and compensation is only fair."
And he took
these things in Solace, but his penchant for haggling and self promotion took a
backseat to his greatest skill, cutting his friends in on the deal.
Malachite
was a networker, keeping lists of names in his head with his own system of
nicknames to keep them all straight, little rhymes to remember if they owed him
favors or if he owed them, and he always kept those debts very well, and
managed to pay people back by setting them up with other people who he owed
favors to, always working to make everyone's interests grow to a bigger
interest. He fought, but he was always
batter at getting people to fight. And
now he was being given a bottomless purse to finance as many friends as he
needed to get the job done, he was going to be owed a lot of favors after this. And in the process he would have the
legitimacy of working with Pasgard the Wizard.
And so the
two of them were off, to find Pasgard's secret... Whatever.
