Chapter 18

“Gooooo, Zwei! Don’t let Ein beat you with that rickety old thing!”

Liane Wagner hopped up and down in excitement as she shook both fists above her head. In the distant morning light, two Soul Eaters – Ein and Zwei – crested over the final ridge. Wagon wheels ablur, the vehicles they drew glided forward at a pace that would have astonished even those accustomed to the highest-class wagons of the day. On the stands around her, the workshop crews were similarly on their feet.

“You’re gonna lose, Lady Wagner,” one of the men nearby said.

“It ain’t over till it’s over!”

Though this might have technically been true, Zwei’s wagon was already a dozen lengths behind when it had appeared. As the seconds passed, Ein only built its lead. As the man had predicted, Ein – who was drawing the ‘old’ Mark II model – made it comfortably across the finish line with no threat of a final challenge.

Liane growled.

“Can’t be helped, my lady,” the man said in consoling tones, “you overengineered the Mark III. It’s twice the weight of the Mark II.”

“I even had it painted with a red stripe,” she pouted.

Chuckles rose from around her, and the crews stepped down off of the stands to inspect their vehicles. Grumbling, Liane eyed the small bag of gold coins that she had tossed onto the betting table. Well, it wasn’t exactly a loss. The Mark II wagon was the pre-Runecraft design that was proven best suited for conversion to the new technology. It was about as light as a wooden frame, but the new Runecrafted steel components allowed it to harness roughly eighty per cent of a Soul Eater’s potential.

For the first phase of Runecrafted vehicle development, it would probably be her premier product. The Mark III, as the man had mentioned, was overengineered. The frame could withstand four times the stress, so it was ideal for bulk freight. The real question was which roads could withstand the Mark III. Baharuth’s administrators would probably weep tears of blood if someone tried to use them in the Empire fully loaded.

Leaving her crews to their work, she walked over to the nearby row of wagon bays. The sounds of machining filled the air with their song of advancing industry, and Liane allowed herself a satisfied smile. Two Mark II wagons a day. Two Mark IIIs a week. Two pumping stations a week. She already had enough orders to keep her shops busy till spring. Even the Dwarf Kingdom’s Regency Council had caught wind of her new inventions. They tracked down the source and bombarded her manor office with queries for information within hours of setting up the pumping station under the Demihuman Quarter.

And she was just getting started. Every tool, device and invention was a tiny step towards a future of untold productivity and trade flows that the world had never before seen. The idea of economic domination was like music to the ears of the Sorcerous Kingdom's administration, and they had essentially allowed her the freedom to pursue her objectives.

“Lady Wagner,” a woman’s voice sounded from behind her. “Lady Wagner?”

Liane looked over her shoulder to find Dame Verilyn with Zu Chiru by her side. The enchanted pendant on his neck dully reflected the morning light.

“Oh, looks like you made it,” Liane said. “Figured it’d take a bit longer to work up the courage to come out.”

“I’ll admit that I’m a cautious person,” Dame Verilyn said, “but I’m not a coward. I wanted to fly over, but Zu Chiru…”

The Quagoa merchant shuddered. Liane wondered what the story was behind that.

“How come you’re not in your Quagoa form?” She asked, “You two looked pretty cute together.”

“It’s not a form,” Dame Verilyn frowned. “It’s me!”

“Right…anyway, how’s she been this week, Zu Chiru?”

Zu Chiru glanced over at his ‘wife’ before fashioning a reply.

“Zu Chiru can only wish he could be as brave as a Dragon. There have been various changes – improvements – that have improved sales many-fold. Profits have never been higher. It is only because of her that we can travel to find new sources of goods.”

“A Merchant and a Bard make an amazing team, don’t they?” Liane grinned, “Bards are usually too free-spirited to stand a Merchant’s routines, though. You’re a lucky man, Zu Chiru.”

The Quagoa merchant replied with an energetic nod. Dame Verilyn, however, did not seem so enthused.

“What does anything we’ve done so far have to do with Imperial Customs?” She asked, “All I’ve been doing is learning how Merchants conduct their business.”

“This is the superior approach,” Liane told her. “Unless the local authorities are up to something foolish, a Merchant is welcome anywhere – be it in peace or war. Imperial customs are not the only customs in the Empire: you have dozens of smaller cultures in different parts of the nation. Merchants and wayfarers from all over our part of the world and beyond visit the place too. Only learning how to act like Imperial Nobility opens far fewer doors.”

“But I’m only supposed to go there to learn about the Empire, aren’t I?”

“I highly doubt Lady Shalltear would act in such a simplistic way,” Liane scoffed. “Every member of the Royal Court is an excellent individual, and Lady Shalltear might be the most shrewd of them all. Everything you find out in the Empire has a purpose, and the more you know, the better equipped you’ll be to handle where she sends you next.”

Continuing to stroll along as they spoke, Liane led them to the bay at the end. Unlike the preceding workshops, this one was not set to task creating new pumps and vehicles.

“What are those?” Dame Verilyn eyed several fluffy white bales in a storage area before the building.

“They’re cotton bolls,” Liane replied. “Seed cotton. We got a shipment from the Theocracy, one from the Empire, another from Karnassus. I even managed to get some from Re-Estize.”

She leaned forward and picked up two loose bits off of the ground, handing them to Dame Verilyn and Zu Chiru.

“Once they’re picked,” Liane said, “ya still gotta separate the seed from the fibre.”

Both Zu Chiru and Dame Verilyn shredded their bits of cotton.

“So weak!” Zu Chiru exclaimed, “Weaker than Zu Chiru!”

“Do Humans really dress themselves in this?” Dame Verilyn remarked, “They may as well be naked.”

Liane cleared her throat.

“The point I was trying to get across was how difficult it is to process each one. It’s very time-consuming. Fortunately, the solution to that’s been around for centuries.”

She led them into the workshop, where a colourfully decorated contraption rested on a wooden stand. Beyond its garish markings, it looked little more than a pair of rollers with a crank.

“This little beaut is from far to the southeast - a Churka from the nations of the Beastman Confederation.”

“Why would Beastmen have a tool for cotton?” Ilyshn’ish frowned.

“Hey, I know the tribal Demihumans around here don’t wear much more than rawhide loincloths, but the most advanced nations in the world aren’t Human. They have societies of their own, with high fashion, rich cultures and more technologies than I can shake a stick at. In the Beastman Confederation, they use Golems to drive these.”

“I see…so like that ‘pumping station’, you plan on using Undead labour instead of Golems.”

“That’s right,” Liane nodded. “Undead labour is far cheaper than any Golem, and far more cost-effective to maintain. With our new supply of high-quality ores and Runecrafted parts, we can make scaled up and improved versions of this.”

She nodded to an Elder Lich, who was standing near to the devices. It took a basket of cotton bolls and dumped it into an awaiting Hopper. A Death Knight carefully turned the crank. As the rollers spun, they effortlessly separated the seeds from the cotton fibres, which fell into their respective baskets.

“It seems like the things that you come up with all have to do with Undead labour turning something,” Dame Verilyn said.

“I wouldn’t say it’s as simple as that,” Liane said, “but that is the general idea. Machines turn power into skill, and in the Sorcerous Kingdom, power is cheap. If you try getting a Death Knight to separate the seeds manually, they wouldn’t be much faster than a Human labourer. By making a machine they can straightforwardly apply their power to, a single Death Knight can do the work of two thousand.”

With the load of cotton separated, the Elder Lich brought the products forward to display before them.

“What happens after this?” Dame Verilyn asked.

“The cotton has to be cleaned up and spooled into thread,” Liane answered, “There are tools for that too. We keep enough seeds for planting. If there’s excess, we’ll be extracting oil from them.”

She led them past the Churka, scooping up one of the seeds from the pile.

“Getting to this point is only part of the story, though,” she tossed the seed into the air and caught it again, “Cotton is a crop that requires special conditions to grow year after year. It’s thirsty, drains the soil and requires a lot of menial labour to harvest. In the Sorcerous Kingdom, the first two problems are solved by Lord Mare. The question of labour is answered by, well, Undead labour. I’ll be using Skeletons for now, but I’m sure we'll figure out a better way eventually. Slowly hand-picking everything feels like a waste.”

“I’m curious,” Dame Verilyn said as they followed after her. “How have you been able to build all of these machines? Everyone that’s seen them thinks that they’re some sort of miracle product.”

“Well, it’s not exactly a novel idea,” Liane said, “but it’s still considered a technological secret of the Sorcerous Kingdom. You’ll have to swear not to disclose this information to anyone that's not already privy to it.”

Dame Verilyn quickly agreed, and Liane led them deeper into the workshop. She stopped in front of an empty workstation.

“This is one of our new lathes,” she said. “Our old ones were used to make wagon axles, mill shafts, gears and all sorts of other wooden parts for generations. The new ones are designed to work with steel.”

“Steel?” Dame Verilyn frowned, “Why not something better?”

“The name of the game isn’t to make the fanciest stuff around,” Liane told her. “It’s to be the most economical. Only people with way too much money and no common sense would try to purchase something like an Adamantite wagon. Now…”

She looked around for a moment before waving over one of the apprentices nearby.

“Yes, Lady Wagner?”

“Give Dame Verilyn here a step-by-step demonstration on how the tools here work.”

“Of course, my lady.”

The apprentice instructed the Death Knight at the station to retrieve a four-metre long piece of bar stock. They worked together to fix it onto the lathe.

“The basic idea, Dame Verilyn,” he said, “is that a lathe spins the object that's currently fixed to it. Two Soul Eaters are driving a shaft that runs under the workshop and connects to this station.”

He pressed a peddle at his feet. The steel rod started to spin as a gear clinked into place.

“The craftsman uses a metal instrument to shave the piece down to the desired configuration,” he fished a Runecrafted bit out of his pocket. “All one has to do is hold the bit against the metal and let the rotation do the–woah!”

Dame Verilyn stuck out her finger, pressing it against the spinning rod. Fragments of metal flew everywhere. Zu Chiru threw himself to the ground. Liane took refuge behind a Death Knight. The apprentice stomped on the pedal again, releasing the driveshaft. The workshop employees stopped to look over at the commotion.

Liane peeked out cautiously.

“A-are you alright?" She asked.

“It’s unenchanted steel, yes?” Dame Verilyn replied, “It can’t hurt me.”

“I-Is she a Vampire Bride?” The apprentice gaped at her.

“No,” Liane sighed. “Please don’t do that again, Dame Verilyn. You might be impervious to that sort of damage, but the people around here aren’t.”

She instructed the apprentice to start all over again. They removed the old metal bar – which had been shaved down into an odd-looking shape – replacing it with a new one. The apprentice pulled an instrument out of a pocket of his apron.

“This is what we use to set measurements,” he told her. “It’s not Runecrafted, but conventionally enchanted. There doesn’t seem to be a Runecrafted version.”

He held it up for Dame Verilyn to observe.

“Fifty point five millimetres.”

“Oh…”

The points of the magical gauge adjusted themselves to the indicated length.

“What happens if you say ten kilometres?” Dame Verilyn asked.

“Nothing,” the apprentice smirked. “These ones only go to thirty centimetres. It’s more than enough for what we do here.”

The apprentice got to work calibrating his workstation. After nodding to himself once, he started up the lathe.

“We use a steel bit with a Rune that maintains sharpness,” he said. “Normally we’d have them made out of a higher grade material, but this tool is a hundredth of the cost of a mithril one. It probably lasts longer, as well…you’d have to abuse these pretty hard to break them.”

The apprentice carefully crafted the new roller, then created threads for screw caps on the ends. When he was done, the Death Knight held out the piece for inspection.

“This’ll be on the next shipment to the Runesmiths,” he told her. “Once the appropriate Runes are carved and imbued onto the ends, we’ll affix the caps to protect the Runes from being damaged. When we get it back, we’ll have a new roller for an upscaled Churka.”

“That was rather quick,” Dame Verilyn muttered.

“Yep,” the apprentice nodded. “It’s amazing how quick things get once everything comes together. It’s like that with all the parts. We have lathes, drills, trip hammers…all sorts of machines for making anything we need. All powered by Undead labour. Our productivity is through the roof. If anything, we need more Runecrafters – speeding things up on our end is as simple as building more tools for more workshops, but Runecrafting takes time.”

“I see,” Dame Verilyn nodded slowly, “well, thank you for the demonstration.”

“Not a problem,” the apprentice tipped his protective visor and went back to work.

Walking back out of the warehouse, Liane cast her gaze south, over the test course and to the Katze Plains beyond. Some things technology couldn’t fix. Yet.

“You ready for the next phase of your training?” She asked the Bard-and-Merchant duo.

“Are you sure we can do this?” Dame Verilyn asked.

“Yeah, no problem!” Liane answered, “You’re just going around the Sorcerous Kingdom for this. The Ministry of Transportation wants a few of the new wagons delivered to the Great Lake for testing, so we’ll start you off there. Lord Cocytus is keen to figure out what additional exports the Demihumans in the region can produce, but those lake races are notoriously sedentary.”

“What will Zu Chiru do?” The Quagoa Merchant twitched her nose up at her.

“Have fun!” Liane grinned, “Make money. Making money is fun. A lot of merchants consider this part of their careers the best of times. If it wasn’t for the bandits and monsters and such, anyway. You won’t have to worry about that in the Sorcerous Kingdom, so buy and sell to your heart’s content!”