PATRIARCH FOWL
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Casual Heroing, Chapter 66
🕑 Added 2023-02-22 19:44:33 +0000 UTCClodia's MOM?! 💰💰💰
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Also, thanks to Aaron, Hearthawk, and TheMerchant for being little Goblins and helping me tinker with this chapter.
Chapter 66 - Futures
An old woman with a long tunic woven with gold thread around the edges sits at Clodia’s desk. She is tall but not nearly as bulky as her daughter.
From what Clodia told me, she’s currently looking at Happy Bakery’s books.
Oh, yeah, Clodia said she’s not allowed in the room while her mother and I talk.
“Luciani,” she speaks like a high school principal, not taking her eyes away from the numbers. “Take a seat. I will be with you in a second.”
A power play right from the start.
Ok.
“Sure thing.”
I sit down, stretching on the chair and yawning loudly. I proceed to stretch every single muscle I have, trying to be as loud and obnoxious as possible.
Look, I don’t like power plays, alright?
Being uncomfortable with contracts and bureaucracy doesn’t mean I’m uncomfortable around people.
After two minutes of theatrics, she slowly closes the accounting reports her daughter compiled and stares me straight in the eyes.
“Why should I give my money to you?”
“You are giving the money to your daughter, Miss,” I say with a smile. “And I don’t think I have caught your name.”
I extend my hand over the table with a sneaky smile.
“The name’s Luciani, Joey Luciani.”
She is quick to grab my hand and give it a tightsqueeze.
“Marcella,” she replies, strangling my hand.
Oof. She’s Clodia’s mother, alright, I think as I get my hand back and cradle it, trying to nurse it back to normalcy.
“My daughter asked me for so much money I can’t understand what she needs to do with it. Bread, when I was young, was still bread. Is the specific flour going to make so much of a difference?”
“Have you tasted the bread?” I reply with a question.
“The one in which my money is supposed to be sunk? Or perhaps, were you referring to the Pigfeed my daughter wants to slip to her customers?”
Marcella looks at me with a slight smirk. She has an imposing disposition—she’s the kind of old lady who probably could have you killed with half a phone call back on Earth. What am I talking about? Oh, once you work with rich people, you’ll understand.
Again. Bad with paperwork. But with people?
“The bread speaks for itself. And I make chocolate from what you call Pigfeed. You look like an experienced businesswoman. I trust that Clodia gave you samples of both. I don’t think I need to advocate for anything if we are being honest.”
“Oh, and why do you think you don’t have to?” She joins her hands together and places her elbows on the desk. “Do you think you can just take my money without giving me a good explanation? What if you just want to bankrupt my daughter’s business? Who’s going to be stuck with the debt if that happens, Human? Is it going to be you?”
“Miss Marcella,” I sigh, “you took a decision long before entering this room. Your daughter might not have realized it, but I have. I have worked with cutthroat businessmen, and I know exactly how this is supposed to go.”
“Oh, do you now? Why don’t you enlighten my green ears, then?”
“Sure. You took a decision as soon as you sampled the products, right? Like…” I sigh, “Do we really have to do this?”
“We do, young man. We do,” she says with a gleam in her eyes.
“Alrighty,” I crack my neck. “You might have even tried a piece of my Cassata, from the looks of it. You realized the product is flawless—and not just that, but you know it will make your daughter the most prominent [Baker] and the fastest-rising businesswoman in Amorium. You are not here to test the product. You are here to test me.”
“Go on,” she says when I pause.
“Really? This is all overly dramatic, Miss. But… whatever. The point of any business partnership is trust. You need to be able to trust the person working with you, no matter how good they are. At the end of the day, you can only put your money in people’s hands, not mouths. You are currently evaluating whether I’m a safe bet—and to that, I’ll say what I told your daughter. I am not moving an inch on the amount of money I’ll be owed for this. In exchange, she is guaranteed to have me work with her for one year. After that, I’ll consider what to do next. But again, for one year, I’m all Happy Bakery. Perhaps even after that. If you are a good [Merchant] like your daughter says you are, riddle me this, ok? Imagine I got out of this room and started a bakery; then, how long will it take before I put every other bakery in this city out of business?”
Marcella doesn’t say a word for a good minute, just staring straight at me and probably using a bunch of skills to evaluate how good our deal is. I understand that’s what a [Merchant] does, at least.
“Clodia!” She suddenly shouts. “Come here, you blood-sucking child!”
Faster than a leopard, Clodia slams the door open and has her wooden spoon in her hand.
“What is happening?! Did the deal fall through?! Joey, what did you say?!”
“Silence, petulant child,” Marcella waves a hand and gets up.
“You have twenty-five thousand golds. Double down your investment. Invest the rest in any weird ingredients and recipes this Human might have. Buy the land. On top of my investment, I will loanall the money for the land at a 5% rate. Prices are weirdly rising, but we’ll secure enough crops to cover all the bread expenses for what you’ll be able to sell. I’ll draft a few contracts for you later.”
“W-what—”
“Shush,” Marcella comes over to the other side of the desk, and I get up as well.
“Luciani,” she says with a nod, “you and I will talk more about these recipes of yours. I might not be a [Baker] or an active [Merchant] anymore. But keep up the good work, and I might come out of retirement.
“Now,” she says to Clodia. “Move out of the way. I’m going to get some food for myself.”
...
“How did you do that?” Clodia asks as we look at her mother going around the half-empty bakery and sampling some of the stuff Flaminia is bringing her.
“I was just very straight with her. She’s not the first person with a lot of money that I have done business with, you know? I used to have very rich clients. She seems to be the ‘no-BS’ type of person.”
Clodia sighs.
“My mother’s retirement came out of boredom, Joey. The fact that she’s threatening to come out of it worries me.”
“Why?”
Clodia turns and pinches the bridge of her nose, a headache clearly brewing behind the scenes.
“She smells blood like a predator. If she’s giving us so much money, it means she has great expectations. If all goes well and we fulfill or exceed those expectations, she might decide to come back and start selling our services throughout the whole region. Do you understand what that means?”
“More money?” I frown.
“Yes. But most importantly, working with a ruthless woman. Trust me; we don’t want that.”
...
“Sup’, Stanimal?” I say with a yawn as I pass through the Pratus, followed by Quintus, Tiberius, Lucillus, and Antoninus.
Yep, I finally got my personal [Guards]. And apparently, they are going to follow me everywhere.
It’s pretty cool; I’m not going to lie.
But what’s cooler is that I’ll have a lot of cash soon. And not because of how cool money is, but because of what you can do with it.
“Friend,” Stan nods at me. “Tiberius, Quintus. [Guards].”
He nods at everyone with a smile. The man is calmness and happiness personified.
“Yo,” I bend on my knees and lower my voice, “I’m going to get some cash soon. I would like to help more, Stanimal. I know you don’t want to work as a [Baker], but can you help me figure out the best way to help the guys back at the camp? I don’t want to be too nosy. I know some of them are very proud. But no matter who’s involved, I’d like to contribute and get them out the streets.”
Stan raises his eyebrows at my sudden proposal.
“Joey,” he says cautiously, “I try to stay out of disputes and matters. I only—”
But then, he looks up at [Great Prince] Vespasianus, his own shade-maker.
“I will try and help you,” he nods after a beat. “But I will caution you—I can only do so much. And the problem you are trying to tackle is much larger than you imagine.”
“I know, I know. A few gold coins will not be the ultimate solution. But we can still try and make a difference, can’t we? You have some natural managerial skills, Stanimal.”
“Joey, I appreciate your spiritedness, but I don’t know how to feel about this name you are using. Stan is my name. Stanimal is... ill-suited,” he says while looking at Grigio.
“Well, Stanimal,” I say with a smile, “you know—”
Wait a second.
Grigio?
That’s... ‘gray’ in Italian.
“Stanimal, a very important question. Why is your dog named Grigio?”
The old man stares at me, uncomprehending.
“It just came to me,” I smile. “That’s not your ancient language, right? It sounds very foreign.”
Still confused but willing to respond, Stan nods.
“It’s not. It’s the name the lady who helped me gave to my companion. She said it means ‘gray’ in her tongue, like Grigio’s fur.”
Goddamn.
So, the hot chick is either Italian or a middle-aged American white woman who drinks a lot of Pinot.
Well, suddenly, this monster of a dog became much more interesting.
…
Stanimal and I stare at Tiberius and Quintus as they dish out loaves of bread with a smile on their faces. Since the pair started working at the bakery, I’ve noticed that the guilt has been affecting both—that’s also why I’m upping the amount of bread we are distributing and trying to spend more time with the people here.
“You know,” I tell the tall Elf, “I ran the numbers.”
“What numbers?” Stan is asking a question, but I feel there’s already some understanding on his part.
“How much money to get all these people back on their feet? Not that I have to turn every single homeless person in Amorium into a [Baker], heh. But even then, with the current production rates, it would take yearsif I wanted to pay off all their debts. And if new homeless people come around, it’ll be an even bigger problem.”
Stan turns to look at me with a sad frown.
“Even helping a couple of them, like Quintus and Tiberius, is more than most people will ever do in their entire life, Joey.”
I don’t agree, but I understand what he’s trying to say. A semi-decent house is worth, at the very least, two-hundred golds. However, most ex-[Soldiers] have a much bigger debt than that. Tiberius and Quintus had a couple of hundred each, but I found out that it can vary by quite a margin. If you were an officer like a [Sergeant] or, God forbid, a [Captain], you might have taken a lot of debt from the military for your equipment and resources. The military didn’t give things for cheap, it seems. It’s cool that there was no interest on those payments, as someone had pointed out to me, but it still sucked. If everything is grossly overpriced, the military doesn’t really need the interest to make the money back.
“I want to do more,” I suddenly say. “Much more than this.”
When Stan’s deep eyes turn to me, they have some melancholy etched into their irises. Whatever this man has gone through, it must have been quite painful.
“You might get hurt,” Stanimal says. “Not everyone will like what you are doing. Those who try to help the hardest are also the ones who get the harshest punishment.”
“Nah. Don’t go so biblical on me. What’s the worst that could happen anyway?”
In response, Stan turns toward a little group of people who are looking at Quintus and Tiberius with disappointment on their faces. They are barely a handful, but in their midst, one sits with the darkest face. The tall Elf points straight at them with one of his long fingers.
“Yo, don’t point. Yo, what the hell?”
They look back with hate at Stan and me.
“They are the people who fell the hardest,” the gigantic Elf says, “they have lost all hope. There’s nothing in their future. They were all Officials. Their debt amounts to several thousand each, Joey. And what they think is that you will corrupt every other Elf here by giving them an easy escape from this terrible condition. But they also know they can’t be helped. Arminius is the one with the highest debt in the Pratus. That’s one of the reasons why he hates you so much. He will never accept your food, your goodwill, and, even less, your outstretched hand. The life you want to promise to others is unattainable for him.”
“What? I can attain that life for him if he wants. He looks very strong. Tell you what, let me just go—”
As I step forward, Stan suddenly grabs my shoulder and shakes his head.
“Don’t engage. They will hurt you, friend. They won’t stop at anything to deprive others of the happiness they think will never be available to them. Even if you try, they will rather sink the boat you are desperately trying to bring across the sea than paddle with you. Some people, Joey Luciani, are lost forever. You might not see it now because you are young, but not everyone can be saved. If you try, you will be doing a disservice to every other person who needs you. Do nottempt fate.”
Comments
Mario Nunez
I'm gonna guess that the hot babe that gave Stan his name is Joey's reincarnated mom.
