Chapter 25

A Handful of Good Deeds

I spent extra time on my appearance that morning, as we were going to look for a buyer I needed to look my absolute best. For a grade 2 spell, the disguise spell could do a lot and I wanted to take full advantage. I settled on a male form, indeterminate race but with pale red skin, and red horns sticking straight up out of my forehead. One was broken off in a jagged way. My eyes were a pale yellow, my hair nearly white. My clothes were in the latest style, seemingly made of the finest material, and freshly pressed. Of course they were in the style of a wizard and so more long and flowing than a three piece suit because while I also changed my bulk to look like I bench pressed boulders before breakfast, I was still a spell caster and not to be trifled with. I made myself a long staff out of stone with a dragon curled around the top to complete the look. Malachite of course scrambled for his sword when I came into the room until I told him the agreed upon "safe word" we had always used to identify me.

He always snickered when we talked about the "safe word" but I could never figure out why.

"That's new," he finally managed.

"The better I look, the less questions will be asked about how we came into so much wealth. Men will be questioned less than women, so I threw that in there. Sad but true, and I want every advantage. Don't worry, it's still just me under here as always. You want to feel to make sure?" I put a hand on my chest and squeezed playfully while wiggling my eyebrows.

"No!" he answered quickly, looking away.

"And yet I'm hearing a yes. Come on, bodyguard."

We headed outside and I cast my ally spell twice, getting two copies of Athame. Naturally my persona wouldn't simply walk about the city like some kind of plebeian. Perish the thought. Malachite wasn't exactly thrilled about riding but I told him Athame was very kind spirited and would never, ever, ever, no matter how funny it would be would she ever try to buck him off. Say into a nearby fountain or pigpen.

"I can walk just fine."

"But seeing these two obviously magical creatures being ridden will further discourage trouble."

"Or attract it," he countered. "Because you're obviously making a show of how powerful you are."

"Would you steal from a mage?"

"I'm not stupid! Many people in this city are!"

"Well it's up to you but just think Lord... Lord... Anglebright wouldn't want even his bodyguard to walk around like a commoner."

"Ankle blight?"

"Anglebright."

"Whatever you say." He swung into her back and we were off.

Our first two inquires were a bust. The first wasn't buying anything at the moment, and the second claimed the haul was too much for his humble shop and he couldn't give us anywhere near the true worth of the pieces. This was frustrating, but at the same time a good sign that Snarly's estimation of the gems' worth was correct. I'll have to remember to tell him, so he knows he did a good job. We were standing there wondering where next to try when an older woman, human, came up to us.

"The flower and the rock!" she exclaimed, looking us over. "I found you after all!"

Malachite went into protector mode, stepping between us, but I leaned around him.

"Can we help you?" I asked.

"Why, I believe so. You are the right pair, aren't you? Those horses, there can be no mistake!"

"If you're talking about a flower and a rock, that could apply to us, yes. How do you know us?"

"Last night I prayed for guidance for my troubles," she explained. "And I received a vision. A lonely field, and in that field two horses grazed, next to a flower and a strange, green, stone. I knew that I had to travel to find you, but that I would know you when I saw you. And here you are. Please, can you help me? I don't know where else to turn."

Malachite relaxed a bit. "Is it far? We've got things to do today."

One thing. Turn gems into coins. Two things, count the coins. Again and again and again and...

"My house isn't far, no! So you'll help, then?"

He looked at me. "It's fine with me. Let's hear her out."

"Oh thank the angels! My prayers have indeed been answered. This way, this way!" She beckoned us on. I had the horses follow us, it wasn't good for my 'image' but whatever.

She led us to a poor district, and there were far too many of them for my liking in town but what could you do? Lord Anglebright wouldn't normally be caught dead here but maybe he was picking up his laundry or something. Lord Anglebright was a believer in giving the poor opportunity to better themselves, after all. And she could be the best washerwoman in the city. You don't know. Her house didn't suggest it, it seemed sort of tilted and she indicated it was hers. "I'd invite you in to show you the problem, but that's part of the problem itself. Please, take a peek."

We traded a look and cracked the door open. Many, many tiny eyes met ours, as the place seemed to be infested with all manner of rats, and the smell was tremendous. They went back to doing ratty things, convinced we were no threat to them after their surprise wore off. "I see what you mean," Malachite said, staggering back from it. "You've got a real problem here!"

"Yes, they've eaten a lot of my stock," she explained. "If this goes on I'll be ruined. Simply ruined. Oh I hope you really can help."

"Can you?" he asked me. "They can't really hurt me but I don't fancy doing battle with a bunch of rats."

"It seems like tutorial stuff anyway," I muttered. "I had thought we were far past this sort of thing." He looked at me like I had lost my mind.

"Wha?"

"Never mind. Do? Yes, I can probably clear this out, but..."

"But?"

"But?" the lady echoed.

I sighed. "It's the guild. Despite it costing me nothing I would have to use a spell to do it. Thus, I have to charge you, even if I wouldn't mind helping out as an act of charity. Or just doing my good deed for the day, say it however you wish." I looked her over. "No offense, but even the lowest level of spell can be quite costly for those of, shall we say, lesser means."

"Oh I can pay!" she quickly assured me. She dug around in her pockets and pulled out four moons. "Is this enough?"

"Come on Orchid, really?" Malachite chided me. "You're going to take this poor woman's life savings away from her? I mean there's greedy and then there's just plain mean. Do the magic already!"

"My hands are tied, you know I would in a heartbeat! Remember the guy in the woods? I healed him right up despite the risk. I also swore him to silence. I figured the guild wasn't patrolling the forest or whatever. This is the city." And I made the argument against them being here just recently, to try and sell my spell token idea. I can't have it both ways. But at the same time- "I do too much and it'll add up. They'll find out and want to know what's going on. I don't need that kinda hassle in my life, believe me."

"I would rather give up the coins and have my product, honestly," the woman said. "And my house back, to be honest."

"Still..." he hedged.

"Look, I can see why they insist on it. They don't want some Lord abusing mages and not paying them fairly. Throwing them into prisons and whatnot if they don't do as he says. Unpaid magic thus is asked about by diviners and investigated. I mean what else does the guild have to do? They're not out helping people like this, are they? Look around!" I spun, arms wide. "You think a couple of mages couldn't radically transform this street in an afternoon? All new stone buildings? Smooth roads? Nice yards? Of course they could. They choose not to. Because of greed! And now they're making me be greedy too!"

"How much are we talking here?" he asked.

I sighed. "For a mage of my experience, the standard cost for a grade one spell is 17 embers. Almost two moons. Getting rid of the rats is just the first step. We have to figure out where they came from."

"We'll take that as it comes," the woman said. "The angels led me to you and I trust you. The fact you didn't just snatch the coins from my hand and not tell me the exact amount says volumes about your character. Do what you need to, please."

I let out a breath. "Okay. Let me think about this." I turned to the house and looked it over. Could use a lot of work, and it was definitely leaning a little. I walked to the sides, trying to estimate the size of it, but it wasn't as big as our place. On my way to sell gems worth more than this lady will ever see in her entire life, and I have to take the only money she's got to rid her house of rats the city shouldn't have let get this bad in the first place! This sucks!

"What's the problem?" Malachite asked. "You're the one that floated that whole ship around just yesterday. This one spell you're thinking of can't be harder."

"Here, let me give you a little lesson. You too, miss?"

"Mrs. Teak-Ettle. Of course my husband, Mat has been gone these five years, God rest his soul. But you can call me Edna."

"Edna then. You may also find this interesting if you have any interest in magic." I picked up a rock and drew in the dirt. First a line with two ends on it, then numbered one end 1 and one end 10. "The guild has a system of cataloging spells, it's fairly arbitrary because it's magic and magic comes from chaos but we work with it. At one end of the scale are grade 10 spells. These are the kind of spells that can seriously reconfigure the landscape, like creating new volcanoes or conjuring a flood out of nowhere. Naturally I don't know any spells of that magnitude. On the other side are grade 1 spells, like making a light, healing a scrape, or undenting someone's armor a little. I know a lot of that type. Most spells are in this range," I indicated the middle area. "Flexible enough in range and power to be useful day to day. Now, Malachite saw me use a spell yesterday in this range," I stuck a point a little past the halfway mark on the line. "It was meant to move things. I was showing off a bit-"

"A lot!" he tried to disguise as a cough.

"A tiny bit!" I insisted, "And I moved something fairly big. Because that's what a spell of this grade," I tapped the line, "is supposed to do. Move things. It was created to exert pressure equally across an area such that all points receive the same amount of force and the object holds together during the duration of the spell."

"I love it when you talk dirty," he whispered to me. "I mean shop, when you talk shop."

"Ahem. The spell I want to use here," I pointed to the house, "is grade 1. It's on this side of the spectrum." I tapped the 1 side of the line. "It's meant to be cast on a single person, and all it does is create a magical 'ick field' if you will, that drives away vermin. You're supposed to use it before you go into the forest or whatever, so bugs don't bite you. I want to use it on a house, which as you can guess is a slightly different proposition. Basically I have to take the magic normally sized for a person and manually smear it, if you will, across this entire structure. It's not meant for that. But I think I can do it anyway."

"Why, that's wonderful!" Edna gushed. "I have faith in you!"

As well you should, I'm great, I didn't say. "Let's just hope it works," I did instead. "Look, I'm going to drop my disguise spell," I told her. "I don't normally look like this. I look... worse. Don't be alarmed. I need all my concentration for this. Sadly Athame will have to go too." I snapped and one of the horses went away.

"Why just mine!" Malachite complained. "Uh, not that I wanted to ride in the first place."

"My necklace holds one copy of the spell, remember?" I gestured across myself, again totally unneeded but one must keep up appearances, mustn't one, and dropped my spell. Edna didn't react too much, just looking me over. "My name is Orchid. That's the flower part you were probably confused about this whole time."

"I do get it now!"

"And this is Malachite, your 'green stone.' Okay then, let's get this party started. Malachite, we'll open the door wide, you need to get in there and open all the windows. Let's give them plenty of avenues to escape, shall we?"

"Why me?"

"Who was just bragging about not taking harm from the poor little dears? And be careful not to step on any either, you'll hurt the poor things."

"Fine, fine," he muttered. "The things I do for you..."

"Appreciate it!" I called to him as he went inside. A moment later he was back, and the windows were open.

"Stand back," I commanded dramatically. I took mana out of my core and cast. The effect was immediate. The rats shrieked in confusion and distress, and there was a mass exodus and a slow trickle after that. Some had run in circles, unable to understand what was happening but finally got it together and made a break for it. Others simply jumped immediately out the doors or climbed the curtains to leap out the windows. After a moment I decided they had all scampered and we went inside to look around.

We found the problem, or rather I did, in the basement. It seemed the house was sinking, and it was going to be a real problem. Part of the foundation had collapsed and the house was now low enough to actually connect directly to the sewer system. As Edna made preserves the smell must have attracted the rats which simply climbed up through the hole.

"Oh dear," she cried, "what are we going to do about that?"

"Move?" suggested Malachite. "This place needs to be torn down. The whole foundation redone. Hey can you lift the whole house?"

"And do what with it?" I scoffed. "I wanted that ship to sink, I didn't care what happened to it after I let the spell go. I can't float this house around the neighborhood, redig the foundation, line it with stone or whatever... I'm a mage, not an architect. I don't know what's involved. A group of mages and some city planners could do it. All I can offer is short term solutions."

"This place will last longer than me," Edna insisted. "Whatever you can do for now is good enough."

Is it though? I shook my head. Thousands of years, and we still haven't figured out how to keep people from living in squalor. We have magic, for God's sake. It's stupid! I mean we don't all need to be on floating islands but there must be some happy medium we could strive for?

"Your stone spell?" Malachite asked, as I was scowling at nothing.

I came out of it. "Huh? Oh, yeah. Thankfully it's also grade 1, so it really is your lucky day. Knock more of those bricks lose and make a roughly square hole. I'll do my stone creation spell and simply plug it up. I can make it any shape, including thickness, and seal it up by attaching 'wings' on either side. I'll see how far to the sides I can go, they shouldn't be able to get through. I can make it pretty tight."

"Oh, you can make it pretty tight, that's good to know," Malachite announced, clearly not looking at me for some reason and scratching his chin with a claw. I had no idea what he was talking about now so ignored him. He got to clearing the hole and I sealed it up.

"Thank you so much!" Edna gushed. "Take the four, please!"

"I can't take all your money!" I protested. "How about two moons and a few jars of preserves?" Looking around there were a lot of jars, mostly clean.

"If that's acceptable to the guild, I don't want to get you in trouble because you wanted to be nice to me."

"As long as I can say I was fairly compensated for the spells and a truth spell will back me up, it's fine," I told her. "But seriously, have an expert look at your house. I don't want it falling over with you in it."

"Oh pish posh, it'll be fine. It'll take me days to clean up all this mess though. Rat poop everywhere!"

"I didn't notice," Malachite deadpanned, shaking his foot.

So we walked away with some jars of jam and two moons, and I told her we would return the jars as they must be expensive to produce. She said that would be a big help, and to spread the word about her product. She had a booth in the market and we said we would. Walking back down the street towards the shops I was seething. Stupid guild. Stupid having to charge for doing a good deed. Angels, an actual prayer, led her to us.

"Uh, Orchid?"

And I had to charge her. Was that her life savings? Will she be able to buy jars now? Some of her stock was destroyed, they got into everything. I suppose they didn't break the jars.

"Orchid?"

Couldn't offer cleaning magic, oh no, that would up the cost. A couple more grade 1- grade freaking one! spells and she would have been beholden to me for-

"Orchid!"

"What?" I yelled.

"Your disguise?"

"Huh?" I stared at him, and then around me. People were looking at me and edging away across the street. Athame stopped at my side, having followed me without any specific command on my part. "Oh! Right. Forgot. Sorry, yes, thank you."

"I could hear your teeth grinding from here," he told me, as I cast again. "We did good, don't worry about it."

"It's just," I looked around, now solidly a cambion looking dude again, "the wealth we're carrying around? I didn't need her two moons anymore. I'm set for months- years maybe! But that's not good enough for the guild. I had to take more. It makes me so mad!"

"I noticed. I guess start your own guild?"

"With card games and scantily dressed people that appeal to a broad range of tastes?"

"I mean you might as well make it nice..."

We resumed our mission to liquidate the assets, and another jeweler said that we hadn't heard it from him, but a famous, wandering, kobold that doesn't ask too many questions and pays top dollar for the sort of thing we were looking to sell was in town. His current "office" was down by the docks, which sounded a little shady, but finding a quiet place and doing some divination magic showed he was real and would treat us fairly. We headed there and showed the goods to the guards, who let us in. There were tough looking people all over the place, a number of races, so honestly the two of us fit right in, and the kobold, who gave no name but sat at a desk with ledgers of all types motioned us forward and gestured to the empty spot. We dumped out the goods, minus two Malachite was interested in keeping, and he nodded in appreciation. He pulled out various lenses and started looking them over carefully, writing things down on a fresh sheet. He took his time too, which wasn't suspicious or anything, and even cast a few spells of his own on them. The measure spell, by the looks of things. I know that one! Hope he's not going to charge us for it, we'd walk out of here owing him money. Stupid guild!

Finally he slid a number over to us, on a folded over piece of paper, and I lifted it up. The number was pretty close to what Snarly had estimated, I had actually figured we would lose more to fees but this guy was pretty near to my own heart and didn't seem to be jerking us around. I nodded once. He nodded back. Malachite held up a hand, and two more gems were there.

"We think these are the best," he announced. "I'm keeping the better one, please add the other to the total on that paper."

He peered closer to them, taking them, and giving them the same treatment. He handed back a very black, well cut stone and kept the other. He gestured and I slid the parchment back. He wrote another number, which was 63 moons higher, and again I nodded. He gestured to a nearby tough, who went and unlocked a large chest, pulling a smaller chest out of it. A different person came over and unlocked it after he set it on the table. The kobold started pulling gold bars, laying 5 down, then silver bars, 10 of them, then 3 suns, another 35 moons, and a pile of embers. He pushed them all forward and started placing the gems inside. The goons around us tensed a little.

Ah, time for math. How much is a trade bar worth? Screw it. I swept the lot into the chest that originally had the gems in it. If he's really going to use math to try and cheat us, he deserves it after all that effort. I'll trust him. That looks like a nice enough pile of silver and gold, silver and gold, to me. "Nice doing business with you."

Everyone relaxed, he smiled and nodded.

"This way please," said a guard, and we followed them out.

"That was a bit surreal," Malachite reported once we were some ways away.

"Yeah, not how I saw that going," I agreed. "Of course now we have all these bars to deal with. What huge thing do we want to buy we can use them for? I guess we could take them to a bank and get coin a little at a time but there's probably a fee for that."

"A boat? Another house?"

"We could rent the house out," I agreed. "Make this money work for us? Splitting it up is going to be tricky, we could just keep track on paper for now."

"Maybe you can!"

"Maybe I can."

"What's up with our financial system anyway? All this one coin is worth so much of another, but a different amount going up again. Makes it hard to figure out how much you actually have."

"You know, I have no idea," I told him with a shake of my head.

When we got home the others were waiting for us, and said they had picked up another job for us. Apparently a Lord Graymane had heard of our exploits (somehow) and had come to the house looking for us. Snarly (of all people) had impressed him, and had hired us for 10 moons to protect a shipment traveling from a warehouse (yes where we had just been) to the outskirts of town. Easy money. And speaking of money we showed the fruits of our labor to the others who were impressed, and I thanked Snarly for his good work in estimating the value of everything.

"Of corth!" he replied.

I bundled the money up into our "safe" and got busy on another disguise for myself. I went with a gargoyle, at least a small one, but not something you would mess with, and we headed back to the docks. I wanted to turn Snarly into a dwarf but he said the man wanted our group specifically which of course meant if he didn't look like himself what was the point? I had to agree, if he really was gaining reputation around town people would need to see him with us to cement it. On the way I refreshed everyone's spell symbols, as I hadn't gotten a chance to do it yet. This mission actually went quite well. I had all my allies out, riding on Athame and both Besom and Boline were visible and scanning for trouble. A bunch of tough looking thugs were waiting along our route, but they took one look at us and decided it wasn't worth dying over, and we got left alone. At the gates we collected our fee and went back home. We were pretty rich! It was a good night to celebrate our newfound wealth and soon head to the meeting of the minds as specified on the token I felt I had gotten ages ago. I couldn't wait.