Book 3 - Chapter 2: Discussing Business

++My father had that all-too-common and frustrating combination of traits. A mix of stubbornness and stupidity. This did not make him impossible to use, just difficult.++

- From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, ‘The Great Lich’. 1,891 A.E.

I continued to socialise with my mother, father and sister for the better part of an hour. Then business came calling.

Or rather, I called it. A brief moment to ask that my father come aside to talk with me in private, which he hastily granted. He still feared losing face, being seen to defer to his daughter’s judgement in the running of our family, above anything else. Within a minute of my asking we were both back in his office, sealed off from the outside and alone with each other. I looked around and found that it had not changed much since I was last here.

Though there remained a vaguely head-shaped dent in the far wall’s brickwork, where my father had needed correction a few years ago. Apparently the family’s finances were still not quite sorted out, because it had not been more than hastily patched over yet.

“Drink?” my father asked, pouring himself one already.

“No thank you,” I replied. “Alcohol causes major organ damage and kills you.”

He snorted and swilled his down like he was planning on dropping dead right then and there just to prove a point. He did not, of course. In fact had his glass been filled with pure ethanol I doubted his head would grow more than a little cloudy at emptying it.

“So what did you want to discuss?” he asked.

“The Estian offensive is going to be delayed by at least a few years,” I told him. “At least three, and I would expect more like five or even ten. Which means that our family will not be able to sustain itself through the next decade with leylines and magical production.”

Actual work on our own Lachfel-local leyline had already begun downsizing, and by now the family was freeing up funds to move into the transport and storage area of the business now that it was becoming increasingly clear Garamon was running out of the magical resources to sustain us.

My father knew this, but apparently he had been banking on an Estian success more than I thought. He carefully put his glass down before clenching both hands into fists. I actually thought I saw the air vibrate around them with the strength of his grip.

“What do we do then?” he asked quietly. “Am I going to have to re-enlist just to start bringing home a colonel’s salary?”

I did not think that would help us very much. A colonel could expect to take home perhaps four hundred crowns a year. It was considered a handsome sum by most standards, and if my father enlisted again, as a veteran, he would very possibly find a role in the Long Guard, that most veteran order of soldiers composed solely of those already discharged honourably from previous service. His salary may reach as high as five hundred in that case.

But neither four nor five hundred crowns a year would sustain an estate of our family’s magnitude. We spent twice that just on maintaining the grounds.

“That will not be enough,” I pointed out. “But I have a plan for something that might.”

I had his attention instantly, more completely than if I had suddenly removed one of my own limbs. “I’m listening,” my father told me.

“If Agrian is made governor of Orapathaqi more permanently in the future, this will still be a useful source of revenue,” I began. “So be willing to commit to it fully.”

“Just spit it out,” he snapped. As impatient as ever. Come to think of it, that was one trait he shared with me.

“Oil,” I told him at last.

“Oil,” he echoed. “You want to hunt whales?”

“No,” I buried my annoyance. “I want to extract crude oil from the ground.”

“That’s even more absurd, what good do you think that will do us?”

Sometimes it is terribly annoying, talking to mundane, unaltered mortals. Their minds move so slowly and reluctantly compared to mine that it feels rather like conversing with an especially verbal chimpanzee.

“It can do what whale oil does,” I told him. “But it is more voluminous, more reliable, provided you find a large enough reserve, and…possibly has other uses as well.”

I had been winning him over, but realised that my last point was a misstep.

“So you want to invest family money on, what, your experiments?” My father was closing up again, I was losing him.

“No, I want to invest it in a growing industry that is likely to replace whaling in the next generation. There are a finite amount of whales in the world, and the market is expanding faster than they can reproduce. Anyone able to offer an alternative will be able to profit immensely.”

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“You’re an enchanter now, aren’t you?” he asked. “Why don’t you start making magical items to sell off and fund the family while we wait for another chance at leyline extraction?”

It was a good suggestion, and I had considered it myself already. “I can do that,” I told him. “But it will not support our whole estate, I will need another source of revenue. And your enlisting will not do either. But if we take our current savings from the downsizing, and whatever income I can produce with enchanting, and put both into starting up an oil extraction site, we could take a new industry by storm. This is a growing field, this is our only chance to enter it before larger fortunes snatch up all the opportunities.”

He started pacing, like he always did when he was thinking.

“What you’re saying sounds good,” he sighed. “But you need to understand Isabel, the world doesn’t just hand out opportunities this easily.”

It did not, I had uncovered this after quite an exhaustive amount of research and questioning on common commodities, letting me learn how increasingly expensive whale oil was growing.

“I know you think you can do anything, but the truth is you’re actually…well, you’re rather innocent,” my father finished. “You don’t understand how the world works.”

I had almost forgotten how infuriating this man was.

If I lashed out and did something to demonstrate my superior intellect, he would get defensive and stubborn. I could try to beat him into compliance but…no. That would make him an enemy. This fragile equilibrium only worked so long as he was able to salvage some measure of pride from it. He could tolerate giving me my way sometimes and taking my council, and the notion that physical violence would be met with violence, but that did not mean he would let himself be bullied.

That would only make him unpredictable, and I needed to predict him now of all times.

“This is your chance to truly save our family,” I told him evenly. “Not just to slow our decline or maintain our status quo, but to reverse the last century of ill-fortunes and see us restored to prominence.”

“I’ve done that already,” he told me. “I sent two of my children off to be trained as magicians.”

“Then make the most of that decision,” I countered. “Because you had us educated in the sciences as well, and that education is what has highlighted this opportunity.”

I was slowly convincing him again, winning him over.

“Give me a plan,” my father demanded after a moment. “An applicable, practical, actionable plan.”

He had taken on the tones of a military officer, barking orders and demanding a report. He often did that when he was nervous and unsure.

Which meant that this truly was my chance to convince him. I took my time, explained carefully, and gave him a plan.

My father actually listened, too.

He listened as I told him my desire to found this oil refinery in North Poloira, bordering the former colony of Gulnira. He listened as I went over how I knew the crude oil could be more efficiently used to fuel its own extraction and have its waste products used as industrial lubricant. He listened even harder when I began to describe projected profit margins.

When I was finally finished, and had made every point I had as well as I thought I could make it, my father’s face grew lined with thought and deep consideration. That was promising at least, there were not many forces in Arwyna that could induce thought in Baron Vornholt.

“You seem to have given this a lot of…consideration,” he said at last.

In truth, I had taken maybe an hour at most. Almost everything I had just suggested came to me within that time, and my additional thought taken to refine the idea was just caution, making sure I did not misuse such a financial investment.

My father was now seeing what a lich’s mind could do. It had been before him all my life, of course, but he did not understand magic enough to realise. He understood money though, and I saw his shock.

“You’re asking me to put the family’s future in your hands,” he told me brusquely. “You understand that?”

“I do,” I told him. “But do you think that will end in anything other than our success? Look at what Agrian and I did in Orapathaqi already, father. Give us this chance and you will benefit for it, I promise you.”

Mentioning my brother had clearly done wonders to sway the Baron.

He did, however, take another drink. “Will you be staying here for long?” he asked me.

“I was planning to leave for North Poloira when I had the necessary funds,” I said honestly. He sighed.

“Stay for a while,” my father told me. “Six months at least.”

“I can do that.”

I did have things to do here, in any case, and I had not been expecting him to take much less than six months to provide me with the required capital anyway.

My father relaxed at my answer and nodded. “Okay, good. Good.” He paused, a fresh drink in his hand and swilling around as he toyed with the glass. He had something more to say, that much was obvious. I was halfway tempted to flee before he could drag me into the mental anguish of yet more conversation.

“Do you love us, Isabel?” he asked at last.

The question surprised me. I do not like surprises.

“What?!” I asked, humiliatingly taken off-guard and scrambling for words as I spoke.

“It’s a simple question,” my father pressed. “Do you love us? Me, your mother, your siblings. Because sometimes I wonder, I really do. Sometimes I realise how you never say it, how you talk to us, how you only ever come calling when you need something.”

It was a simple question, and that was what annoyed me so much.

“Does it matter?” I asked him. I thought I saw a light die in his eyes.

“How can you ask me if it matters?”

“Because you seem to love mother, and you used to hit her,” I snapped. “Love has never seemed to prevent people from hurting one another or do anything else they liked. Why would I care about something as useless as that?”

He bristled and glared at me, eyes suddenly hot with an emotion too idiotic for me to possibly feel, empathise with or imagine.

“Get out,” he demanded.

“Gladly,” I replied, turning my back pointedly towards him and heading for the door. I half-hoped he would try to strike me from behind, and find out the hard way how powerful my new barrier amulet was, but instead he just let me leave.

Apparently, some things did change.