Chapter 589: Chapter 589 - The Unsung Stewardesses Of Mercantile Health Could Also Be Profit Assassins Depending How The Scales Tip

It had taken him a lot of time to grow the Silversky group into such a comfortable position - one where he didn’t have to keep *traveling* so often himself. Meeting with an unceasing flow of strangers to try and network with, all for the slim chance of inviting new business contracts that would then need even more work to sustain when longer established groups could offer all around better rates and service. That was if any cultivator families - where the real money was - even chose to ply their contracts outside familiar circles.

"I don’t recognize this metal."

Measuring the small, shiny bar’s size-to-weight ratio made him say so - again. It wasn’t the only one which he’d had to declare this for... as the rucksack seemed to contain various highly pure samples that had been cast in the continent’s half-cube style traditional dimensions for assaying purpose. Truthfully, Elua had originally tooled her constructs for pouring ancient triangular touch-pieces instead, but pivoted at some point after storing away a few crates full of different metals.

"Iridium. It’s fairly rare, very resistant to corrosion, but it’s also very heavy and very hard to work with. Buyers will be limited, but the ones who can think of uses will *crave* it."

When asked why she moved away from her original choice of storage by the Exclave’s freeloading Metal Element cultivator, she had told him it was because the people of the world currently didn’t respect the Trinity of Aspects enough to force it down their throats with old symbolism. Especially when they would just melt, chip, or do other expected things to what she was bringing back, when the craftspeople were turning them all into goods.

’Besides, I can turn the shape into part of my trademark later instead. I still haven’t talked to Qat about what she is thinking with her family name... it feels more right to let her bring it up, if ever. But maybe she would be open to a half-dozen or so interlocked triangles forming part of a new emblem between us?’

She was already designing it in her head - and how it would look on a copper pauldron - as the older man finally found his words.

"This is the stuff that pen makers fight over... just a bit of it as tipping material onto the nib turns a piece into a lifetime product."

"Well, that’s one of the more mundane uses but you’re not wrong. Easy sell, then?"

The group’s additional growth the last decade was largely built from playing along with Elua er Goltbred’s unique offerings and insights. He was not foolish enough to tell himself otherwise. But it was one thing to know that and another to experience it again after five years. He was truly moved!

"Even this much here would make so many of them. You know how low the ore purity on the market is and how excruciating the process to get rid of the slag? It will be a real bloodbath at the auction..."

"That smile is disgusting. However, good pens are indeed more valuable than good swords. Or so it is true of times between Descent cycles more than not. Still, I must say, if you are so interested in mundane uses of precious and rare metals, then you rather might like this that I prepared while I was gone."

While everything to sell today had been put in Onya’s new bag, there were a number of things that were not to be sold, but given away, that had been brought through the Gateway. Items which Elua kept on her person... or rather, in a bag pinned onto her essence field by Adhesion and hidden by illusions so well that the merchant was very confused *where* the carved little box had just come from. But that exact wonder of his didn’t last long at all when ’wonderment’ hit, as she deftly opened the book sized case to reveal the beautiful contents.

"I..."

"Don’t sell these. Which is to say, I usually don’t care what people do with my gifts, but I’m ordering you to use them yourself and keep them in the group even if you some day retire. Understood?"

His eyes flicked from new shiny metal over to well-worn brass. His own measuring weights were getting on in years, but he had been too miserly to replace them when business was not doing as well. As loath as he was to admit it, he was also quite attached to them sentimentally. He didn’t replace them during good years either, specifically because he had purchased them after his first successful solo-venture contract signing decades prior.

But that age and heavy use during that first ’boss is working as hard as employees’ phase alone had left marks... literal ones from tweezers gripping on the softer metal, rounded-edge bottoms where once they were flat and sat well on the scale, and overall a *used* look to them all - even being meticulous with cleaning. An appearance of history that he was sure only appealed to his own ego, when dealing with other merchants.

Other customers would likely much rather see being placed on the scale next to their precious goods... the beautiful, shiny, extra *valuable* platinum with a bit of iridium alloyed in for extra resistance! He knew he would love seeing them in use himself, even if he could buy a different brass metrologist’s set many times over. And use the rest as seed money in other ventures.

"I’m touched. I think. Thank you."

A flicker of confusion swam across the merchant’s face as he stared at the various pieces of finished metal as they sat in their perfectly sized spots on a velvet weave of white spidersilk. All in their different sizes and shapes... to help quickly identify the weight being measured, rather than relying on any attempts to imprint lettering on them. Then there was the wide spectrum of more colorful metals and alloys he’d already weighed and written down in his ledger... that he would now need to weigh again to see how precise they were!

Or how badly *off* his old ones were. Which he innately trusted was the case if the Goltbred heiress had actually crafted them herself. When he looked up at her with eyes that wanted to start filling with actual tears when the same supposed weight tested *against his favor* with his former set, the heiress reached for Onya’s hand and began to lead her to the doorway.

No one her age needed to see a grown man cry about a mere few pounds of lost material profit across the course of the years. Elua certainly didn’t need to see it again, in this lifetime. Not after having already once experienced it when she calibrated the scale itself better for him, when she first was hired on and noticed the discrepancy.

"You’re welcome. Now maybe with highly accurate, untarnished weight on your side... you’ll lose a bit less profit in the long-run than you have been? Good luck. Don’t rip me off."

"I wouldn’t dream of it!"

Pushing her sister out of the door, mint eyes then turned and leveled a look on the man. To which he sheepishly scratched at his neck before looking to the side and muttering-

"Okay, I dreamt of it, but that doesn’t mean I could do it, does it? Not with our contract."

"And this is why I say these things. Do you think I go around with this sort of attitude to every common street vendor? Don’t answer that. It is not conducive to our business relationship that you speak the truth about your faulty understanding of what I am actually like in public."

"Hey, can we *goooo*~?"

With Onya tugging on the Silver hem of her dress, the heiress finally turned her back on her boss-underling for the last time today. Though she did not get far or close the door before she loudly greeted the man’s new, actual working secretary. By *name* - with an obvious history between them and some good-hearted womanly banter about working for the man. A situation that made the tea that had been tasting better and better to the Silversky leader...

Taste like long-term business infiltration betrayal!

(And of a sprig of gently clapped mint that the mortal orphan had been practicing with, that made it all much easier to digest.)

⟠ ⟠ ⟠

"Why are we still here..."

Tucked away in a little side office after leaving a message for the secretary, the pair of sisters waited. A fact which put a bit of sour face on the youngest of them.

"Catching up with someone - are you in that much of a rush?"

"No, just hungry. And kind of sleepy. Is this what being adult is like?"

"...I can carry you if you want to take a little nap, but food and adulthood will have to wait."

Looking amused at the intensely serious consideration the girl was giving that prospect - replete with tongue out and hand holding chin - she almost missed the other woman finally waving and stepping closer through the doorway.

"Lady Elua, were you waiting long for me?"

"Yes. But it’s fair. I’m sorry I didn’t say a proper hello to you when we came through this morning. I was a little focused on intimidating our boss."

"It’s alright. I was handling some last minute paperwork filing. Oh, will you be visiting and perhaps drinking tea with us more often?"

The woman he hired was fairly average in many respects, but she was still a kind and hardworking person. Elua had built small profiles on many of the orphans that received funds from her dealings, which helped keep them alive and well... with thoughts about how to help them slot themselves into society when they came of age, should they be amenable to it. After all, paying for things did make them kind of ’hers’ which meant they had to be taken a bit care of.

Or so the thoughtline went which Qat told her never to tell the people themselves. Even if, as the swordswoman actually *knew*, many of them would be far less upset that they were viewed as any kind of property and instead far more ecstatic to be seen as anything like a retainer to the heiress. These were people missing entire family structures that they had to reform amongst each other - the pretty young girl and mother combo that visited so often, treating them so fondly even if they felt like a mythical upper class, was bound to create attachments.

"No. I do not think I will. Actually, if I do come back, he is probably in trouble again. So you shouldn’t want it."

"I see... so not a good thing today."

"No. How has preparing his medicinal tea been going?"

One of the reasons she had nudged the woman into aiming for this position had been because she was also a passable cook, even among the people taking turns to help in the kitchen at the orphanage. The tincture mix of gentian root, hawthorne, and celery seed prescribed to deal with some onset problems that Elua had noticed him developing was not a simple ask. Especially since neither of them ever told him they were dosing his ’awful tea’.

"Unfortunate. He doesn’t seem to enjoy it if I follow your recipe to the letter, so I think I may be doing something wrong."

"Probably not. He never enjoyed it when I began dosing him with it, either. My little tricks are not applicable to you, though the mint was a nice touch. Should hide the herbal bitters nicely."

"Thank you. I have to say, it was still wonderful to see you looking so well, even if you came here for bad news. I truly can’t believe how much you’ve grown up."

"Oh, the meeting turned out alright. And I could say the same, you have turned out quite mature already. How old is he?"

Blinking confused, her mouth opened to ask what she meant when the brunette beat her to the punch.

"Your son."

"Did you already see my husband? That... wait, he should *know* how old-"

Laughing and shaking her head, El interrupted her again - physically this time - before she could turn the misunderstanding into a full crusade. While she did have a little grudge with the man spoken of for once calling her *ugly*, that was an easy enough thing to forgive, considering it was only because he had tunnel vision eyes for his future wife. It was hardly any reason to *make* that woman think he didn’t remember their offspring’s age!

’Right? It isn’t, right? Qat? Oh, she’s not around~ I have to be my own conscience...’

The fragment in her chest pulsed with the series of feelings that El liked to think was a certain someone ’begging’ her to *be good*. Just as it had been doing at so many turns this morning, delivered from the former Yecine sitting across the city in the Ironclad Order. A swordswoman who had repeatedly said to internal investigators and visiting Void Defense Society liaisons, with a straight face, that her Goltbred wife always had ’the best of intentions’ in everything she did.

"No, I’ve been back in the city a very short while without any time catching up with people. Just call it a cultivator’s intuition, if you must. I can tell you’ve had a child and assumed it was a boy for... reasons." 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

"I see... sorry, I got a little heated. It was just... he did just forget. That it was the week of his third birthday. Last month."

"What a cad."

Finally breaking out of her thoughts about sleeping and making her sister carry her to their next destination, Onya turned her attention at the perfect time to interrupt their flow of conversation. And introduced a new problem, with another request for utmost civility from a growing-irritated-by-the-distance-to-skull-clamp Qatrand.

"What’s a cad?"

"Something you should call father, preferably while others are around. Bonus points if mom hears. Extra special bonus if it is after she was just getting onto him about something."

"Okay! I can do that! Wait, what do I get?"

"You’ll see what you get."

"L-lady Elua..."

"What?"

Raising an eyebrow and delivering a grin at the mortal woman, the secretary really couldn’t tell if she should be mortified to hear the scheme or to feel amused and in on the joking.

"Were you always... like this?"

The grin froze for a moment before increasing. Just a bit wolfish, just a bit smug. With only a single answer available to be given out. An answer made possible by a blonde haired cultivator more precious than anyone, though with a precious bit more annoyance at the droning of officials than the swordswoman usually bore.

"Yes. I have always been like this. Aren’t I worth cherishing?"