Chapter 22: The Oakwood Faction

Chapter 22: Chapter 22: The Oakwood Faction

The viscount family, Arclight had requested his presence.

Three hours later, Allan was shown into a high-ceilinged study lined with stacks of sealed documents. At the head of the room, Lord Arclight sat behind a large black-wood desk. Amelia stood at the window, watching him as he spoke.

"You’ve been busy," the older man said.

"Yes."

"Six of his companies have been purchased by yourself. Twenty-three of his merchants have been absorbed by yourself."

"Twenty-four," Allan corrected politely.

Amelia’s mouth twitched.

"These many different ventures of yours have been interconnected—grain, leather, rope, caravans, warehouses, and alchemy," Lord Arclight explained without lifting his eyes from the document before him.

"That’s the idea."

The lord leaned back in his chair. "Do you understand what you’ve actually done?"

"Simple. I bought businesses."

"No," Arclight said, tapping another document. "You haven’t simply bought up lots of businesses. You’ve bought up a whole host of dependencies. All of those merchants are going to be reliant on your warehouses. All of those caravans are going to be reliant on your rope and leather. And all of those adventurers are going to be reliant on the potions you make in your alchemy lab. A year from now, almost all of the trade in the eastern regions is going to pass through your hands."

Amelia turned from the window. "And Emberwind house knows it," she said.

Allan nodded. "That’s why his other family members tried so hard to buy the grain warehouses back while the main man rots in jail."

Lord Arclight’s eyes sharpened. "You knew. That’s good."

"His plot was transparent. I suspected all along that house Emberwind was trying to buy back the grain warehouses, but I left them just as they were. And I allowed him to try to put pressure on the surrounding houses."

The room was quiet for a long moment.

"You have been allowing him to retaliate," Lord Arclight said.

"Indeed. Why wouldn’t I?"

The man turned to him. "Oh, do tell."

"As the saying goes, never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

The old man, who had been stern from the very beginning, smiled ever so slightly. But it was small, and then it was gone.

"I see. Every retaliation has given you another reason to take his people."

"Yes."

Amelia burst out laughing at this. Lord Arclight turned to her, a look of curiosity on his face. "What?" he asked.

"Nothing. He’s enjoying this, and so are you."

Allan smiled weakly. "Business is so much more interesting when someone is trying to kill you with ledgers," he said.

Lord Arclight almost smiled. Almost.

"Emberwind is trying to siphon off support from other houses," he said. "He’ll tell them that you’re a destabilizing influence in the region, that your contracts are predatory and unfair. This is no longer just about trade. This will be about politics."

"It had already become political when I found the knife," Allan agreed, his gaze turning slightly toward Amelia.

Arclight slid a single sheet of paper across the desk. "Read it," he said.

An official declaration recognizing all current Lord Oakwood commercial contracts and guaranteeing free and unhindered passage across all roads under House Arclight control for all registered Oakwood caravans.

"Don’t get me wrong," the older man said, his eyes glinting hard. "I’m protecting my house here. I’ve decided to back you, Lord Oakwood. He made a mistake. It wasn’t a personal attack on you; it was far worse than that. It was a challenge to the standing of House Arclight, and I won’t allow that to happen."

Allan folded the declaration carefully, very carefully, and gave a simple bow.

The System appeared without sound.

[Investment Network Updated.]

[Political Investment Detected.]

Target: House Arclight.

Current Return: ???

***

Allan stood at the end of a long table in the biggest warehouse of Oakwood. His finger rested on the map of the roads to all the holdings of Oakwood as he studied the yellowed pages.

Clerks scurried about marking crates and alleys as caravans arrived with the day’s haul of grain, leather, rope, monster materials, and alchemicals. Other wagons were loaded up for the next leg of their journey.

The merchant before him was a big man. Allan had to look up at him. He had stubble on his chin and was almost as wide as he was tall.

"Towards the Muddy Road? The one that floods every spring? My lord, that belonged to the emberwind household."

"yes, that one, House Arclight has already granted registered Oakwood caravans passage and the right to use their warehouses. That is enough for now." Allan said.

He shifted his finger farther east.

"Find out who the small landholders are along the route of the Muddy Road and offer them supply contracts for grain, rope, leather, potions, and transport, delivered better than Emberwind’s currently does.

I’m sure they will be happy to protect the roads of Oakwood’s caravans once they are making a good profit from them."

"Why help landholders my lord, they are just peasa--"

"Partners, not peasants" Allan corrected, trying to contain a smile at the dawning realization. "It looks better on the books."

The merchant swallowed, already calculating.

Allan knew all too well that with great money came great risk of it all being taken from him in an instant, whether his warehouses burned down, his caravans got attacked, his contracts were nullified, or his titles to land were forged.

The network of suppliers and partners he was now building would be far more resilient to such attempts at destruction.

The farmers he transported would want his caravans to come back and forth between their farms. The blacksmiths he bought leather from would want him to continue buying from them.

The adventurers he sold potions to would want more of them. The minor nobles he traded with would want to continue making more from trading with him than they currently did with Emberwind.

He leaned back.

"Okay, start with three solid contracts this week. Ones that stick. After that, every other road.

Through the gates, another caravan from Oakwood passed. The leader greeted Allan, who nodded to them.

It had taken only a few months to go from a crumbling manor and a pocket full of gold to having the trade and commerce of a large portion of the population flowing through his warehouses, supply houses, and adventuring suppliers.

All of the politics and intrigue surrounding the Hollow Root had been ripped apart by the actions of others, leaving him to deal with the merchants, the nobles, and the various factions of the Guild. All of that was behind him now.

He would play politics for the influence of the nobles and make a profit for the merchants. And if anyone decided to attack House Oakwood, he would make sure to cut every thread that connected them to himself.

A young merchant scurried over, a sealed letter in his hand, slightly out of breath.

"From the western trade office. Nobles who usually hide behind Emberwind’s name."

Allan read it. His eyebrows rose.

"House Arclight has formally recognized our contracts, and they believe we are now capable of challenging the influence of Emberwind."

Allan almost chortled. No, they weren’t. They were already trying to supplant Emberwind for influence. This timing was curious.

"Tell them I will meet with them. All of them. Bring their ledgers. I want to discuss figures, not speak around the issue of influence."

Allan leaned back. He wanted to stay calm, but the thoughts came back again and again. It wasn’t about the Lord of House Arclight, but the Lady.

Is she already showing signs? he thought, the report from Kael still jarring his mind.

Seris and Lira stood quietly near the back of the room, watching him. The crate Seris had been hauling all afternoon was now sitting on the floor by her side.

She seemed to be staring at him, trying to make sense of what he was doing. Lira seemed to be following her example. Sometimes Allan asked them if they had eaten or told them to run errands for him. Sometimes he even smiled at their jokes.

But those little glimpses into free time had been fleeting, disappearing as soon as he was drawn back into his contacts with Amelia, Diva, and the lesser nobility, or lost in the details of his accounts.

Seris gently touched Lira’s elbow. "We’re not helping by standing here."

They quietly exited the room. Neither of them felt the need to say anything to the other.

Later that night, Allan sat in his study surrounded by piles of contracts and maps of various warehouses.

It was approaching one in the morning, and there were three meetings the next day, plus a long list of various possible investments to discuss. He felt he was finally making progress and building a lasting edifice in this strange new world, House Oakwood.

He glanced at the clock. "One more hour."

Lira waited patiently in her room for Allan to come up to bed, but as the hours ticked by and no Allan appeared in the corridor, she knew he was working late again, staring at his many maps of the less traveled roads of the world that he was rapidly coming to understand.

"Maybe tomorrow," she whispered. The words did nothing.

He made so much of Oakwood. For so long she had been happy with what he had done. He went around with a smile on his face.

He fixed things that were broken and made them valuable. But lately there was a growing list of people who needed him first. Amelia with her influential house, Diva with her A-rank strength, loads of merchants, the Guildmaster, nobles, and so on.

She should be happy for him, but she wept silently.

"Maybe not. He wouldn’t leave me behind."

The thought had been at the back of her mind ever since. He had rescued her from a poor life as a maid in a manor house. She had never heard him utter a single cruel or nasty word to her. The thought that he might simply forget she existed was painful.

Her shoulders shook.

The door creaked open, and Seris stood in the doorway for a moment before stepping inside.

"Lira."

Lira scrubbed her face. "I...I wasn’t crying."

Seris sat on the edge of the bed, her eyes not leaving Lira’s face. "You’re a terrible liar," she said after a few moments, before turning to lie on her back.

"Maybe he is going to leave us," Lira said to Seris, her voice shaking.

"No, why would you thin--"

"That black haired witch is a noble. And that red head, Diva is an A-ranker. I’m sure he’ll want to bring them along on all of his adventures to help him with whatever it is that we can’t do."

Seris looked out the window. The same fear had been there for her once too. She weighed it, though, and never spoke of it. That made her different from Lira, who felt her fears first.

"With the things Allan is currently building, the number of people he’s going to need to help him will increase as he increases in power," Seris said.

Lira’s fingers clenched into a fist. "So then we have to become more useful. So that he won’t forget us."

"Screw that," Seris said finally, turning to face her. "He needs to remember why he needed us in the first place."

Lira stared.

"Your reading is wrong," Seris continued, standing in front of her. "He isn’t abandoning us. If he wanted to, he would have already. Allan is a man who spends an inordinate amount of time, money, and trust on people. If he wanted to ditch us, he would have done so already.

Right now, he is completely and utterly obsessed with things he believes will change his life in the future: money, politics, Amelia, Diva, the Hollow Root Dragon, and so on. If we sit around and wait for him to remember us, that is the time when we lose."

"Lose? No, no I don’t want to lose.."

She smiled faintly at that. "Yes. She walked to the door. "So we stop waiting," she said, and went out.

"What are you going to do?" Lira called after her.

"I haven’t decided yet."

It was a lie. She had already decided.