Chương 136: Assets and Liabilities

The tray of food and cup of water sat untouched on Jakob's bedside table. He hadn't moved. The blankets Cal had tucked around him were still creased in the same places, the pillow still dented by the same angle of his lolling head. Cal set a fresh pot of broth beside the old one and left without a word. Twelve hours later, the bellows groaned under his palms. The massive leather lungs of Yorrin's primary forge fire required a steady, joint-grinding tempo to operate.

Push the handle down, compress the chamber, force air through the iron nozzle into the coals. Release. Let the counterweight drag it back up. Push again. Each cycle took three seconds. Each cycle sent a fresh gust roaring into the furnace, turning the coals from sullen orange to furious white. And Cal had been pumping for hours. His shoulders burned. His forearms had gone from aching to numb to a state beyond either: leaden heaviness that made his fingers feel like they belonged to someone else.

Sweat wound channels through the soot coating his face and neck, dripping from his jaw onto the packed-earth floor. The monotony was the point. Yorrin had made that clear at dawn, when Cal had arrived expecting instruction and received a grunt and a pointed finger.

"Ya want to be a smith? First, ya learn to feed the fire. Pump until I tell ya to stop." He had lost count of how long ago that had been.

"Cal!" He snapped his head up. Yorrin stood at the anvil, tongs gripping a bar of glowing steel with a dark look on his face.

"I said steady. You're slowing down. The fire needs a consistent breath, not yer daydreaming." Cal reset his grip and carried on. This had better be worth it… I've got plans that need seen through. The forge sang its endless, hungry song, and Cal fed it, his mind spinning through thoughts of the future. Soot streaked his forearms and dusted the collar of his shirt in a grey film as he hurriedly climbed the stairs to Jakob's apartment. His hands still throbbed from hours at the bellows, but he hardly noticed.

The bedside lamp was lit. Jakob was sitting up against a pile of pillows, his hollow face illuminated by the red light of second dusk bleeding through the thin curtains. His hands rested in his lap, palms up, and he was staring at them, unblinking, somewhere between sleep and waking. The food and drink remained where he had left them.

"Jakob!" Cal crossed the room in three strides and pulled the merchant into a hug before the rational part of his brain could object. The frail merchant let out a strangled groan that started in his ribs and ended in the back of his throat. His whole body went rigid. Cal released him immediately, stepping back with his hands raised.

"Sorry. Sorry! I'm sorry, I—""I appreciate the enthusiasm," Jakob rasped. He winced, shifting against the pillows to find a position that didn't make his face contort.

"But if you could... not do that again - for maybe a year - that would be appreciated." Relief flooded Cal, leaving him standing in the middle of the small room with burning eyes and absolutely nothing intelligent to say. Jakob wasn't looking at him. He'd lifted his hands again, holding them before himself with his fingers spread. The new skin was pink and smooth, like a newborn's. Where mangled stumps had been, ten complete fingers now extended, each one whole and functional.

Jakob flexed them slowly, watching the tendons shift beneath the fresh skin.

"Are you..." He turned his hands over, examining the backs.

"Responsible for this?" Cal flinched at the question's double meaning before grabbing the room's only chair, dragging it to the bedside and sitting.

"Yeah, I gave you a couple healing potions while you were out." Jakob glanced toward the side table where the pot of broth and the jerky lay uneaten. He frowned, and Cal watched the merchant catalog other details of the room, like the clean linens on the bed and the refilled water pitcher.

"You've been nursing me?"

"You… kind of needed it." Jakob's cracked lips twitched. The ghost of his magnificent self surfaced for half a second before weariness dragged it back down. Cal pressed his hands together. The excitement was fading now, replaced by the guilt that had been sitting on his chest since Narbok had displayed Jakob's fingers like some grisly prize.

"Jakob, I need to say something."

"That sounds ominous."

"Yes, well. It's like this: what happened to you is my fault. Loric's people took you because of your association with me. They tortured you to get information about me. You paid for my problems with your hands and your blood, and I'm sorry. That's not something I can fix with a few simple potions." Jakob studied Cal for a long moment, his blue eyes clear despite the fatigue he must have been feeling. Then he shook his head.

"Just stop. I knew what it meant to start selling your potions just as well as you did. The inherent danger. I'm not a man immune to taking risks that don't always pay out, and we simply landed on the wrong side of this one. I'm just glad we're both still in one piece," he said with a smirk, raising his newly regrown fingers.

"But tell me: what happened to you? I got the sense they were going to do even worse to you once I finally cracked." He exhaled slowly.

"I spent days in that cellar absolutely certain that the next time that door opened, someone would walk in and tell me you were dead." Jakob clenched his jaw.

"If anyone should be apologizing, it should be me. So don't sit there and make this more awkward. Just… tell me what happened." And so Cal did. The ambush at the clearing. Gavin's death and Mira's injury. How he'd managed to surprise and kill the Mycari with the help of Corinne, horribly injuring himself in the process. The desperate trip into the forest for a remedy and the second ambush from Cillian. And finally, the contrived story Selara had left him about how they killed Zarven.

Jakob looked up abruptly, his swollen eyes going wide. His mouth opened, closed, and opened again. The merchant settled back against the cushions, his mind still clearly racing.

"I grew up in the slums of a city much, much bigger than this village. Down there, you learn to read people fast or you don't survive long enough to learn anything else. And one of the first things you learn—" He paused, looking like he swallowed something unpleasant.

"—is that sometimes, the real power walks through your neighborhood in plain clothes. Not the Gilded merchants with their bodyguards, mind you. The real power. High Illuminet. Ancient houses. They come down to the slums for sport, or curiosity, or reasons you never find out. You learn to spot them by the way the air changes when they enter a room. By the way high level toughs suddenly find somewhere else to be." He fixed Cal with his eyes.

"I knew the Veils were something like those the first time I laid eyes on 'em." Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! Jakob leaned back and stared at the ceiling for a long time. The lamp sputtered, throwing wavering shadows across his features as the sky darkened outside. Cal could see the gears turning, the fast-talking pitchman retreating behind a harder, colder persona. Likely the one that helped him get out of those slums.

"Loric," Jakob said abruptly.

"What happened to Loric Thane?"

"Gone, as far as anyone knows. He wasn't there when Zarven was attacked and hasn't been seen since." Jakob nodded, looking unsurprised.

"He would have. I always got the feeling that man went where the wind blew. The moment Zarven stopped breathing Loric's only thought would have been distance. He was never a loyalist. Mark my words, he'll head somewhere else and find another criminal to work for, never bothering about Deadfall again." He tried to get comfortable, wincing as something protested.

"The Verdant Phial itself... that's a different consideration. Zarven ran a tight operation, but he ran it through fear and overbearing control. Everything went through him. Take him out and what's left?" Jakob raised his restored fingers and ticked off points.

"A handful of mediocre apprentices who were kept deliberately ignorant of the full operation and likely never taught to brew anything too complicated. A supply chain that relied on Zarven's personal contacts. And a protection racket that only worked because people feared the man at the top and his smiling knife." He lowered his hand.

"Without Zarven, those apprentices are going to eat each other alive. They'll fight over the stock, fight over the clients, fight over the name. Within a month, the Verdant Phial will be a hollowed-out storefront with three different people claiming to own it and none of them capable of brewing anything more complex than a hangover cure." He turned to Cal.

"The threat from Zarven's organization is over, my friend. It died with him." Cal couldn't help but agree with the man's assessment.

"But there's another loose end," Jakob said, his voice shifting to something more cautious.

"The Mycari." Cal tensed.

"If Narbok is dead, his father will know by now. The entire enclave will know. Have you heard anything from that quarter?"

"No," Cal ground out.

"And if they come looking for consequences, they'll find them. I'm done holding back." Jakob watched him for a moment, reading Cal's posture, the way his hands had curled into fists against his thighs.

"Careful, Master Valorn. And I mean that sincerely. Elven honor is an ugly, illogical thing, and the Mycari variety is the worst of the lot. A Mistblood father who lost his son might not weigh the odds before he acts. He might feel entitled to blood regardless of who was right." He paused.

"You've broken through to E-tier, and that'll help. But the enclave has D-tier veterans. Supposedly former Mistblood warriors, although I heard that the real ones left this area a long time ago. Either way, they could still become a problem for you. Just… be careful." D-tier. Cal turned the warning over in his mind. His attributes were at the E-tier baseline now, freshly broken through and still barely tested.

He was stronger, faster, and more durable than he had been even at peak F-tier, but the gap between a fresh E-tier and an established D-tier was enormous. Even though fighting E-tiers at F was something he'd had success with… he knew that the differences between tiers widened as one progressed. Part of it was due to the raw performance of the attribute increases, but there were qualitative differences in the very nature of their power too.

I need to push up my attributes and get to the peak of E-tier as fast as possible. It was already part of the plan, but this confirms it. I hadn't considered the Mycari backlash…

"I'll be careful, Jakob. No worries. And thanks for the warning." Jakob held his stare for another beat, searching for sincerity. Whatever he found seemed to satisfy him, because he gave a slow nod and let the subject pass. They sat in quiet. The lamp guttered once, darkening the room further for a moment before it steadied. Outside, true night approached, and the sounds of the village continued to settle around them. A creature howled in the distance.

"How did you get me out?" Cal had been waiting for the question.

"I found a way into the cellar. Broke the chains and carried you home. Easy as pie." The merchant accepted the obvious lie with grace.

"You know," Jakob said, rougher and more honest than Cal had ever heard from him, "you really don't need to apologize for what happened to me."

"Jakob—""As I said, I knew the risks. Where I grew up, Cal, the things Loric did to my hands..." He glanced down at the pink, new fingers resting in his lap.

"That wasn't creative. It was little more than a favored pastime of some of the crueler gangs. The difference is that back then, when someone took your fingers you either found a way to scam and steal enough to get healed, or you learned to live without them. Nobody came for you. Nobody sat by your bed and spooned broth into your mouth and poured potions down your throat while you were too broken to swallow." He met Cal's eyes.

"Thank you. For not making me do it alone this time." Cal only smiled, knowing that he couldn't have acted any other way.

"That's what friends do."

"Friends." Jakob straightened in the bed. A spark of the familiar animation entered his voice.

"We're not just friends, Cal. We're business partners. And business partners don't let golden opportunities pass by just because of a few hiccups." He leaned forward, wincing but committed.

"Here's my proposal: we go public. A formal partnership. Your product, my market. We take every customer the Verdant Phial is about to hemorrhage and we capture that market share before anyone else can move on it. The Golden Mortar and Aurelian's reputation, combined with Jakob's Magnificent Market's distribution network create a supply chain that no one in Deadfall can compete with." Cal opened his mouth, but Jakob wasn't finished.

"On one condition. From this point forward, if there is a threat to this partnership, to either of us, neither one walks into it blind. Complete transparency. You tell me what's what, and I tell you what I know. No surprises." He wiggled his fingers, the gesture deliberate.

"Partners don't let partners get blindsided. It's bad for business."

"Agreed. Although I'm not going to be telling you how I got you out of that prison anytime soon." Cal grinned mischievously.

"Ha! Fair enough, my friend! Fair enough. Now." Jakob clapped his hands together.

"Talk to me about production capacity. If we're going to absorb the Phial's customer base we need volume. How many potions can you realistically produce in a—""I'm one person, Jakob. I can't brew, forage, train, and adventure simultaneously. Oh, and I'm learning blacksmithing now! Potion production will be limited to what I can manage between everything else." Jakob squinted.

"Blacksmithing? Really? What would have possessed you to pick up yet another crafting profession?"

"What can I say, I'm a quick study! And there's just something I have to make… but enough of that. I have a question for you now. What are the regulations for converting an alchemy shop into a bakery?" Jakob's eyebrows climbed, and he blinked rapidly a few times.

"A... I'm sorry, a what?"

"You know, a bakery. Bread, pastries, cake. I want to know the process for converting the Golden Mortar's commercial license from alchemical to food service. If that's even a thing."

"I..." Jakob worked his mouth soundlessly for a moment.

"I heard you, I just... why?"

"I have a friend named Leo Tanner. He's got more talent for baking in his little finger than anyone around here, and I believe in him. The Golden Mortar's location isn't the best foot traffic, but the building is structurally sound, and the space in the back could be converted to a kitchen without major renovation. I want to set him up and give him a real shot. I think it'd be a worthwhile investment." Jakob just stared at him.

"You're… actually serious," Jakob said. Cal shrugged. Jakob sank back against the pillows, looking genuinely surprised.

"You are..." Jakob shook his head.

"You are a deeply strange man, Cal Valorn. I have met a great many people in my life. Ambitious people, ruthless people." He side-eyed Cal.

"Clever people. I have met very few who are altruistic."

"Is that a compliment?"

"It's an observation. And… yes. I suppose it is a compliment. Now, a bakery. On that street…" He tapped his fingers against the blanket.

"The licensing conversion will be a nightmare. The Dominion classifies alchemical premises as hazardous, so you'll need a full decontamination certification before any food-service permit can be issued. That means inspectors, which means bribes, which means—""Which means you know exactly how to pull it all off." Jakob gave Cal an offended look.

"Of course! Do not insult me my friend." Cal stood. He turned his back to Jakob under the pretense of rummaging in his pack, which he'd set against the wall by the door. Shielding the bag with his body, he reached into the void ring on his right hand and channeled a pulse of Mana through the band. Four vials materialized in his palm: two healing potions and two Stamina potions, each one E-tier and labeled in his own handwriting. He placed them into the open flap of the pack, then swung back toward the bed.

"I almost forgot." Cal withdrew and set them on the bedside table, arranging them in a neat row beside the water pitcher.

"I brewed these last night. Consider them our first official inventory." Jakob looked at the vials, then back to Cal. The grin that spread across Jakob Mathews' painfully thin face made the merchant look almost as good as new.

"Magnificent!"