[Helpfully, Dark]
After breakfast, Maz portaled back to the farms, I portaled to gnome colony one. The gnome guards were lounging, as a frequent visitor, they just let me find the way myself to the meeting room while one of them went off to get Alvyn for me.
“Well, this is a surprise, you don’t find yourself in legal trouble do you?”
“No nothing like that, two things actually. First could you tell me where to find Harvey’s office. Second, I'd like a real rush start to a job.”
“Harvey’s office is two doors down from city hall, he has a small sign in his window. You’ll have to explain the real rush to start a job a little further.”
“Lily at Madd Maggies Bakery has an outdoor oven, it was built to avoid the magical field. Out there Lily can bake with magical ingredients and make cures for certain diseases and even accidents, there is one bread that heals broken bones. An anonymous donor would like to build her a building around her magical oven.”
“Does this donor know what size or type of building they’d like us to create?”
“No, she does not, ideally it’d be just like the inside of the actual bakery I think, but I also thought, if a slew of gnomes descended on the bakery backyard and started bringing in materials, she’d see said slew and come out to investigate, and she could actually tell you exactly what she’d like. She already does so much for the community, she shouldn’t have to stand around in her backyard in the winter baking.”
“That’s very thoughtful of the donor, tell them, I’ll send my chief architect and a slew her way this afternoon, I’ll also have the architect reach out to her if she doesn’t come out after the slew with a rolling pin in hand.”
“Lily would never do that, she wouldn’t even yell, just come out to find out what they were doing.”
“Okay, I’m sure she’s a lovely woman, but we still need her permission to start building on her property.”
“Sorry Alvyn, I never even thought of it like that.”
“It’s fine Rose, that’s my job as a lawyer to think about. Speaking of being a lawyer, this afternoon the judge rules on the lawsuit, seeing how none of the Harris’s came to court I’m sure we will win. Do you want me to pay off the other members of the lawsuit and obtain you the title on all four of the estates involved in the lawsuit?”
“That would be perfect. Do you need gold, I can go get it right now?”
“No, I still have quite a lot left on account. If in the end you owe us money, I’ll send you a bill, if I have gold left over I’ll return it.”
“No, don’t return it, put it towards Lily’s building or just hold onto it, I’m sure I’ll need your services again in the future. So please just hold onto it.”
“If that’s what you wish, that’s what I’ll do, but one way or another you’ll either get a bill, unlikely but a possibility, or you’ll get a note of how much gold you have on account here.”
“Thanks Alvyn.”
“No need to thank me Rose, our colony has grown quite prosperous since meeting you, and we are just about to harvest the first crop from the eight farms that we acquired through you, so like I said no need to thank me. You not only hire gnomes by the slew, you also appoint them to positions of responsibility.”
“They earned it as far as I am concerned and Mossbeard is largely responsible for the very fast roll out of the portal network. I hope just a little bit of how well Mossbeard is doing trickles back to his father. The only gnome that I’ve met so far that I didn’t actually like. Just because Mossbeard wasn’t a great carpenter doesn’t mean that he isn’t a great gnome. Someone shouldn’t try to fit round pegs in square holes.”
“I’ll make sure to deliver the news in person to Mossbeard’s mother, but I’ll make sure to speak loud enough so the father hears just how high his son has risen in the world.”
“Thanks Alvyn.”
Then I portaled to town hall and walked to Harvey’s office. The door had an open sign so I just walked right in.
“Hi Harvey”
“Hello Rose this is a pleasant surprise, what can I do for you?”
“You can come work for me, I’d like for you to run the Harris vineyard and winery and I’d like you to hire as many talented employees as necessary to make sure that running it isn’t a burden for you. I don’t want you spending more than four hours a day on the winery and vineyard. The rest of the time you should be writing.”
“I don’t know Rose, I was the lawyer for the cartel. I didn't run their day to day business, I really know very little about wines or how they are made.”
“That’s why I said you hire talented people who know how to make wine and how to grow grapes. I already enclosed the estate in a magical field, so it will produce grapes year round. I'm sure there is probably some advantage to making wine in a magical field. You can tell me after your workers discover what that is. Dwarven ale brews super fast inside a magical field, maybe the same will happen with the wine. Try to hire Harris’s people, there is no reason innocent people should lose their jobs because of the actions of a greedy family. Offer them a twenty percent raise, or fifty percent more if you deem them either underpaid or too good at their jobs to do without. I need the profits from the winery / vineyard to pay property taxes for families who are too poor to pay and for future infrastructure after the initial construction is completed. We might put a few other businesses on the vineyard as well.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Rose I’m flattered you would have so much trust in me but I’ll have to think about it.”
“Free room and board, you live in the Harris’s mansion, I’ll have a magical sideboard delivered that will give you whatever you’d like to eat, cooked perfectly. You can use one room in the mansion as an office for winery business and one room can be for writing. If anybody interrupts you and the house isn’t on fire they’ll be fired instantly on the spot.”
“You really make it hard to turn you down.”
“After you get it up and running and you know and trust the staff, I’ll pay for a three month writer retreat at my friend's mansion in Wales or if you really want to get away from lawyering and business, I’m attempting to talk a person I know into opening a bookstore on the ground floor of a mansion and a writer’s collective on the second and third floors. Full disclosure there will be a murder in the building. For a murder mystery I plan to write. Most likely the murder will happen in the bookstore, I haven’t decided any of the details yet. But of course I promise you won’t be involved in the murder in any way. I just thought the collective would be a good fit if you wanted to write full time.”
“I’m sorry Rose, it just wouldn’t be ethical. Plus it wouldn’t look good for either of us, it would look like we colluded to steal the land from the cartel. So while I’m sorely tempted I have to decline.”
“Okay, well if you want to be in a mystery novel I’ll pay your dues in the writers collective. That doesn’t have anything to do with the cartel or their former land. So nobody can find anything improper in that can they?”
“No, I suppose they can’t let me think about it. I’ll stop by the bookstore to let you know my answer in a day or two.”
“Do you know anyone who might be a good fit for the position?”
“No, I’m sorry Rose, I don’t, but if someone comes to mind. I’ll come let you know I promise.”
I was disappointed because I wanted someone I could trust, someone I knew would be ideal. I thanked him and it was almost noon so I portaled to the tower. I went to Draco’s lair and knocked.
“Come in Rose, you’re early.”
“Yeah sorry, Opal, did you meet our new roommate?”
“No, Rose.”
“Run down to the library and ask Doug to introduce you, I’ll be down in just a few minutes, we're going to work on some magical fields out on the estates again."
“Yes, Rose.”
Opal hurried out. I made sure she was well out of earshot before I started.
“I had a thought Draco, if Opal can pump magic into a body, could she also theoretically suck it back out again."
“You mean like when you create a magical field and then suck the energy back in so you can keep practicing?”
“Yes, exactly like that.”
“Yes I suppose you probably could but it would probably be even less efficient than creating a magical field and sucking it back in. Besides, doesn’t knowing how to gather, kind of negate all of that stuff.”
“I wasn’t thinking of her using it to get magical energy, I was thinking it’d make a good defensive spell.”
“You want her to suck the magic out of a person who attacks her, it would be great if a mage attacked her and she could just drain his magic before he could even get a spell off. But we’d need to test it, would it work even if the mage had shields up? The other question is what happens if she sucks the magical energy out of an ordinary person. Would they pass out like a mage who pushed themselves too far, or would it drain their life force. Life force and magical energy, magicians have been trying to figure out just exactly what magical energy even is. One theory is that it’s life force. If that were true and Opal drained a mundane, they might not just pass out, they might just die.”
“Wait, if magical energy was life force wouldn’t a healer be able to resurrect someone who’s died, just by pumping magical energy back into their dead body?”
“Yes, that’s one of the arguments used by proponents of why life force and magical energy aren’t the same. But the people who claim they are the same just point out that we don’t know how much magical energy it might take to revive a dead person so just saying that they can’t resurrect doesn’t in itself prove that the two forces aren’t the same. Personally I think they are like electricity and magnetism, two closely intertwined forces. Those two forces power all of earth’s electronics, but they are two distinct forces.”
“So you think it’s too dangerous though?”
“Rose you probably aren’t going to like what I’ll say, so I’ll just say it and say why I think it.”
“No, I respect your insights, I know that you know way more about magic than I’ll ever know Draco.”
“Even so, you won’t like this one, so I’ll just spit it out. If we want to test Opal’s ability to extract magic from a non mage, the best person to test her on is, now think about the strongest non mage you know and you tell me Rose.”
“Lu.”
“Bingo, I told you you wouldn’t like it.”
“You’re right and while Lu isn’t a mage she does have magical abilities. Sparky taught me a spell, perfect recall and it was all about rhythm and timing and I mentioned to Sparky that Lu should try the spell, because she has perfect rhythm, but he said no, because her magical abilities might interact or counteract. I forget which. So even if we risked Lu’s life which I’m sure she’d readily agree to for Opal's sake, we still wouldn’t have a definite answer that it was safe to use on non magical humans.”
“Rose, just leave it for now. We can give it some thought. One thing I know for sure is I want her to try it on me after I put up shields. She’ll know a mage is attacking her if they use a magical attack.”
