Elija P.O.V.

The last few months have been hard. That foolish power hungry little nitwit had done massive damage to the local economy with his curse infused sicknesses and looking over the contracts we had to fulfill I was starting to get annoyed again.

I knew that the crown had little recourse but to seize all the goods present at the time, not only that but there was no way we would get a market value rate on them but couldn’t they at least make sure we would be getting our stores replenished at the same const in the following months?

This was not the first time in the last few years alone, and I knew for sure that it wouldn’t be the last time that something like this would happen. Incidents like this made merchant organizations in the low classification rise and fall like a tide. Those that were on the high and top level had many branches that could cover the local loss and absorb the damage. We weren’t hit too hard this time since we weren’t heavily invested in the food section of the market but it will still take months to recoup the losses.

It was times like this that I regretted not expanding a secondary branch after all this time. I knew I was overly paranoid for not taking a chance on doing so again after my first apprentice decided to start a branch in a different city only to cut off all ties two years down the line. That event nearly crushed us. The only person I could trust to open a secondary branch even now was my wife and that would mean we would barely see each other. A decision we had both disregarded.

This line of thought always brought me back to thinking about my daughter Silvia. Unlike in the past when I thought about the choice she had made to leave with the man she selected I couldn’t muster the same emotions of hurt and disapproval.

We had always had someone living in that small village of theirs keeping an eye on them and sending us updates on her every few months. The last update we had gotten on her however was a little over a year ago. We hadn’t even realized something was wrong until it had been six months without any updates.

Two months ago we had gotten the news of the attack on the village by salamanders from a nearby cave. It was that attack that had cost our informant his life, but there was still no news on what happened to Silvia. Both my wife and I had spent almost an entire month in a depressed state that had compounded with the curse crisis.

“Sir Elija.” one of our newer attendants burst into the room. I was about to chide her for not knocking when I saw my wife Aurora follow her with a look that seemed to be undecided between hope and horror.

“What is it?” I asked but instead of answering all she did was give a folded up note.

The note was short, no more than a few words written in Sebastian handwriting ‘There is a guest here carrying a token with the family crest.’. The words token with a family crest sent me to my feet in an instant as the only family crest in circulation was the one we had given Silvia the day she left. All that hope and joy turned to dred as I recognised the message, a guest meant that he didn’t recognise the person and he had met Silvia before she left, not only that but as we had established beforehand the way the letters were slanted signified that the guest was a man.

“Have the guest broug -” I started to say.

“Knuckles is already going to bring him.” Aurora interrupted me with an unsteady voice I haven’t heard from her in years.

Knuckles was our head enforcer. He was an average solo adventurer a little over ten years ago whose sister took ill only for him to be scammed by an alchemist for the medicine. Our choice to invest in him that day had proven wise as he not only sold everything he got while delving through us but he also worked part time as our guard for a very reasonable pay when he wasn’t delving. More important than anything else was that he was loyal.

“Do you think?” Aurora asked me as we waited.

The question may have been ambiguous but I knew exactly what she meant, ‘Do you think he knows what happened to her, if she is alive?’. “He must.” I replied. “There was ofcourse a chance that the token could have been lost in the attack and somebody just picked it up but it seemed a little too soon for that person to be here if that was the case.

We were put even more on edge as the sounds of a physical altercation came from the bottom floor through the open door. Both Aurora and I made for the door, unable to hold our curiosity and unwilling to let the chance at finding something out slip us by.

We both stopped after a few steps recognising that we would be liabilities in whatever was going on down there. Despite both of us being above level eighty we were merchants. Despite the common belief that people specialized into fighters, crafters or mages there was a fourth classification. Much like crafters mirrored the stat distribution of fighters, thinkers mirrored the distribution for mages despite not relying on mana skill, merchant and tactical skill were limited by your mental stats. This wasn’t an issue so much in the first thirty skill levels but the requirements grew in line with everything else after that, this was also why most battlefield commanders were mages or hybrid combatants as they could increase their strategy skills.

The sounds quieted down in only a few seconds, but it didn’t seem that way to me. We could all hear the stairs creak slightly in a familiar way I recognised as Knuckles heavy boots slowly followed by two more sets of footsteps.

If I had thought the few seconds of combat before had passed slowly, waiting for them to climb up the stairs made it seem like they were scaling a mountain. Thankfully, my merchant nature took over and I started clearing up any signs of the desperation I felt at getting any information on my daughter. After all one of the core tenants of all merchants was not to leak anything about just how much you value what you want to obtain. A quick glance at Aurora let me see her walking over to my side doing the same thing.

Knuckles’ large frame was all I saw as he led the way into my office, behind him I could see the boots of the guest and another of our guards from downstairs. The guest stopped at the door and angled himself in such a way that he wasn’t turning his back to anyone whereas our other guard mirrored him on the other side. Knuckles on the other hand crossed halfway through the office before he moved from my line of sight though he still stood between me and the guest.

The first thing that took me by surprise was how young the guest was. Despite him being even bigger in stature than Knuckles’ already tall frame I wouldn’t have thought it possible for him to be older than twenty. The second thing I noticed was the split lip that our other guard was sporting, and the accusatory glare he was keeping on the young man.

“This is Sir Elija and Madam Aurora.” Knuckles introduced us. “They have a few questions for you.”

“Interesting way you have to ask a question.” the young man said with hostility. “Do you usually just try to grab clients without a word of warning?”

The commotion from downstairs suddenly made a lot more sense. I couldn’t remember the guard's name off the top but I knew that he was a recent hire who was eager to prove himself. This most likely triggered that altercation we heard.

“We apologize for that.” Aurora said. “He is a new hire and a little eager. We wanted to ask you about the token you used when you identified yourself. Where did you get it from?”

The young man frowned at the question. It was a look I had seen many times before in this line of work but one I couldn’t comprehend from him, why would he be both surprised at the question and angered by it at the same time. Did he think we were accusing him of stealing it?

“Why does it matter where I got it from?” He snapped back. “From what I looked into your group before, your tokens are used as an introduction point.”

“What did you do to the woman you took it from?” I said my temper got the better of me for the first time in almost twenty years.

There was a reason why my wife and I made such a good merchant team, that was because we complemented each other so well. While I could see the market as a whole she dealt with the bartering and the talking.

All my anger drained from me and was replaced by shame as I heard the next words the man said. “You have some nerve accusing me of hurting my own mother after you disowned her.”