Chương 80: 15 – Talks on Grain

Once we decided on a course, Mom needed to leave for Denarla as soon as possible. Every moment we wasted was time for grain prices to skyrocket as the war continued, but she refused to leave until she saw the back of Captain Berkenem. She did trust his character, as did I, but it was best to play it safe. This conveniently put off the conversation about April that I didn't think either of us was ready for yet.

Mom was left at the pepper pits coordinating as the soldiers under Berkenem's command loaded the barrels of paste and spray. I watched the men load the first barrel. The things were heavy, requiring almost three men to load, but there was a sense of deep satisfaction with each heave that hadn't been there when it had been Maulander's men taking them. I'd done this. I'd created this. No talent, no special magic.

Just the knowledge that it existed, a desire to protect my friend, and a little help from a business-savvy Mom. My pockets had clinked with the heavy weight of two gold coin pouches, but I wasn't allowed to stay and watch. Mom quickly sent me off. If she was leaving to buy grain in Denarla, that left me with the daunting task of building a granary. I'd declared my intention and what we planned to do with our new windfall to the Mayor, and the man had practically kissed me.

Building a granary and filling it with city wheat could fix all our problems. Well. All of our food-related problems. He'd cleared the way with ease. Travis was happy to provide the lumber, Mularet was competent with construction, and Lupkep was happy to coordinate the labor to make sure we'd have plenty of workers to get the building erected before Mom could even think about making it back! The only problem was that the miller had heard about it.

"I won't have it!" Andreina Miller shouted angrily.

"I won't have it! I've held the grain for this town for thirty years! Thirty years! I'll not have some jumped-up chit stealing my business right out from under me, just because she gets a bit of coin, hmm!?" Andreina had been married once, but her husband had died of pneumonia long before I'd been born. She was a bitter, angry woman who had been at odds with every farmer in town at least once. Dad… hated her.

Whenever he was helping others with the job, he typically used his talent in exchange for a portion of their harvest. This tended to leave us with the most grain at the end of harvest. There was, of course, only one mill in town, and Andreina had run it with an iron fist for as long as I'd been alive. She did not frequent the bar, hated Edra, and was generally less tolerable than Burnom on his worst days. She tempered this by being incredibly fair, a stickler for exact amounts, and also the only game in town.

If anyone wanted to eat bread, they either went to her or ground their grain by hand. It said something about the woman that several wealthy farmers occasionally chose the manual method. She would also trade raw grain for flour. Credit to her, she usually traded at a fair price. Unless she didn't like you. Then she was a real bitch. Her mill was also home to the town's only granary. It was a small one, nothing like the industrial-sized one I was hoping to build to get us through the winter.

She would store excess grain for a fee and kept meticulous records of what was stored. We had always avoided using her granary. If we could, we typically transported our wheat to Denarla, the war camps, or even sold it to passing traders just to avoid interacting with the woman.

"Miss Miller, the only purpose of this granary is to get us all through the winter–!"

"If the Queen Farmer wants to store her grain, she can do it right here in my granary. It's never been too small for her before!" she said. The woman was old, her back hunching, but her eyes were alight with the same flame I remembered from when I was a kid. I hadn't pranked Normuran as a kid out of pity and genuine fondness. Conversely, I hadn't gone near this woman out of sheer terror. She was… less intimidating now that I'd grown, but remembered fear lingered.

Her need bubble was baffling, requiring nearly as many supplies as Mualander had. She needed to avoid slipping on ice.

'…Probably because goblins would be too afraid to attack her!' I thought bitterly.

"Ma'am, I'm not trying to steal your business. If we don't get more food, we're all going to st–!" Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"Quiet girl! Go play with your dollies! What are you even doing here?" she said, barely sparing me a glance as she glared at Dobretin. I ground my teeth.

"Andreina, it is in the best interest of the entire town that Mera builds a granary," Dobretin said.

"You have no say in whether she builds one or not."

"The hell I don't! If she decides to build a new granary, then the town can just find a new mill to get their flour from!" she shouted. I looked at the woman and was struck with a strange sense of vertigo as I watched her spit fly at the mayor's face. She'd been this way ever since I could remember her. Mom and Dad actively avoided her. There were other farmers who tolerated her, and she had a few friends, but she'd lived here alone for my entire life. She missed her husband.

She felt like an outcast in her own town, but all of her family was dead.

She had nowhere else to go, so she clung to the mill like it was her only reason for being. In many ways, it was. Her son had moved away from Pemolar before I was born as well. He… didn't write or visit. She just wanted to feel in control, and every time someone like my parents came, paying for the services of her mill without ever storing grain, or worse, took our harvest to another town entirely, she felt useless. There was more to it than that.

A wrong foot when Mom had first come here, and a strong dislike of Dad for some long-forgotten slight, but there was a broken bridge here. One that could be mended.

"What if…" I injected, quietly.

"What if we could trust you with the granary?"

"Wot?" she asked.

"How about this? We build the new granary on your property. You control it. The only difference is that for the duration of the war, you also ration it. I am paying for the wheat, the granary, and the labor, now."

"Doesn't sound like I have much control over it with those conditions," she said irritably.

"I'm not done. You owe us credit for the raw grain, but you take your usual tax from all grain withdrawn over the winter. The cost is going to go up, but that's okay. With the way coin is going to be flowing around this village, you'll be able to raise the price higher than what we paid. Once you've paid us back for the grain, you can keep the building. It makes the most sense to have the granary as close to the mill as possible anyway."

"Not the labor, or the materials to build it?" she asked, her sour tone lightening just a bit. I shook my head.

"We don't know how much food we have, but we know that Maulander took a lot of it. If we don't do something, we'll all starve. I know I'll be much happier if we all make it through this and I have a few less coins in my pocket than if we all starve." The woman paused, looking at me as if in a new light.

"You sure you're Atrinaska's daughter? That coin-chasing harpy would never part with a single copper!" the woman insisted. I scowled, my eye twitching.

"If you'd prefer, I can just go upriver and build a whole new mill instead! You're not the only one with riverside property!"

"Ladies!" Dobretin said, stepping between us.

"I believe Mera has proposed a viable idea. Andreina, if you could refrain from defaming her mother, we might be able to come to an agreement, hmm?" The woman looked down at me for a long time. Once, I'd have been frightened of her. Now I finally understood how Mom felt.

"Fine. Fine, I'll allow it on one condition," she told me. I drummed my fingers on my arm, and she took that as a cue to continue.

"You tell me, honestly, how mad your Mother is going to be about this deal."

"Easy. She'll be livid, but she'll deal with it," I said.

"I care about more than money, and so does she."

"I'll believe that about you," she said after a long pause, showing no satisfaction at the fulfilled condition. Mom would be pissed about this, but it would be better than the woman closing her mill down out of spite. She was just the sort of woman to do it, too, and I just didn't think we had time to bicker. If she came out of the war ahead, power to her. She certainly didn't have anyone to celebrate with. The stick-thin woman turned and strode toward the exit, a satisfied smirk on her face.

"Laborers will be there in the afternoon to get started! Have a location in mind, alright?" I told her. The woman didn't respond before slamming the door behind her. I sighed before turning to Dobretin.

"Is this going to get any easier? After we get the granary built, I want to start working on the actual walls for the town. Not to mention weapons from Fedenat! Who knows how long it will be till I can start working on the Captain's new weapon!" Dobretin shrugged.

"It… probably won't get much harder at least. That one has always been a bit of a thorn. You might come to regret that deal."

"I regret it already, but I don't see how I have much choice. She really would stop the mill, and I'm not sure the townsfolk are quite starved enough to kick a woman out of her home… yet." He chuckled.

"Well, for now, as long as you are providing the coin, let Lupkep, Mularet, and me worry about getting the granary built. It truly is a good idea, and the Captain's money could not have come at a better time. I'm sorry you won't get to profit from it as much as you might've hoped." I shrugged.

"At least we'll live. Assuming Mom can actually get wheat from Denarla, and assuming there aren't any problems with the building." Gods, I missed Reid. And Haddy.

"With that note, I've got to get these materials to the good captain," I said, holding up the bag of supplies I'd bought from Sebinet for Berkenem's need bubble.

"Aww, no story today!?" cried a young boy. I turned to look over at him and smiled. His mother had been wounded with a blade straight through her stomach. He'd been here at the bar, waiting for her to recover ever since.

"Sorry, Liot. Perhaps tonight," I said, but I doubted it. I needed to get to work making a weapon. The last thing I wanted was to be dragged to the front lines in three months. But first, I had Berkenem's need bubble to create.