Chương 300: After Burn

Exultation. I blasted across the sky, leaving wakes of blaze. I cut a channel through the sky and left roiling flames swirling in the turbulence I left behind. For a year I've flown, and when I add some levin essence, I can fly fast. But there is no better test-drive than roaring across the sky ahead of a contrail of combustion. The ground flickered along beneath me, without the eagle's essence I could never navigate this. Fields, road, fields, river, pasture, forest, fields.

And beneath the high blue sky, I launch myself from one end of the kingdom to the other, with every feature of the ground just a passing fancy and then gone again. I barely notice a city beneath me before it is over the horizon again. And those people are going to point upwards and marvel at the line of flame that stitches across the sky, from horizon to horizon, gleaming cinder-orange in a thread against the blue. I'm not flying at random, I'm cutting a path to Byeview.

I could have just stepped out of a portal directly to the city, but I just really felt like taking to the sky, feeling the speed for myself. And as soon as I crested a hundred miles per hour I needed to show off my new powers. To nobody's surprise, I like to play with fire. I should probably get that out of my system before I get too close to anyone. But the length and breadth of Hearstwhile's skies gives me ample opportunity.

Nothing matches my speed, even without instant teleportation I'm the fastest thing in these skies. At least, until someone else figures out levin affinity. Someday it'll happen. Until then, I can enjoy my singular status. I tuck my shoulder slightly, and my path shifts, angling slightly more to the south. I start cutting speed, letting the lightning out of my system and coasting down, bleeding speed into the atmospheric drag. I'm nearly at normal flight speeds when I approach my destination.

But now that I'm not concentrating on speed, my thoughts turn deeper. I've been distracting myself from the revelations of the temple. I hovered over Byeview, yet my thoughts were even further away. All the way back in Meadowtam and several years ago. Ever since I learned that fire is thing that has, if not thoughts, then awareness, I have had a thorn in my skin.

I traveled the kingdom burning down buildings, poisoning inns, assaulting harbormasters and exploding people, all in revenge for the arson of my family home. Revenge against people. But learning that fire has awareness meant that fire has culpability. On some level, for the past few years, I've been treating the element of fire as if it were a co-conspirator against me, an accomplice to those attacks. I folded my hands behind my back, and let out a long, thoughtful, wistful sigh.

Maybe it's not fair, but feelings often are not fair. If emotions were strictly rational they wouldn't be emotions. So this is probably why my pursuit of the affinity has always been a bit aggressive, or even confrontational. I have felt like I was owed for my losses. I was blaming the fire for its role in hurting me and my people. But that wasn't the only time I cast my blame the wrong direction. I've also been punishing myself, for years. Blaming myself. My failure, my complacence, my unwariness.

My refusal to get ahead of danger, my decision not to engage with the world's events before I had to. I chose a reactive role because I thought I was a support character. And people died. There was a line of wagons stacked up a block away from the foundry. Hmm. They should be moving more smoothly than that, something must be holding them up. Healer Licard has tried to tell me that I need to respect my pain more. But sometimes when I get hurt, it feels like this is what I deserve.

Injuries, frustrations, insults, exhaustion- especially that last one. It's been a while since I have not worked myself to exhaustion five days a week. This is probably why I second-guess myself so much. Why I feel responsible for every aspect of every event around me. I am still sorting out the impressions and emotional jumbles that are left over from my exchange with the fire, but I'm processing it through. There's thoughts I need to organize and understand.

But, I think that I need the thoughtfulness and reflection to stop blaming fire for the work of evil humans. And I need the courage to stop blaming myself, as well. There's a crowd outside the warehouse, slowing things down. The wagons are having trouble getting into position because the bystanders were underfoot. I suppose nothing ever goes to plan. I tip forward, and drop into a free-fall.

Wind howls past my ears in a gale, and I pull up out of the dive with only twenty feet to spare, before bleeding off all that momentum in a big whoosh of displaced air. Flying is fun if you do it right. Maybe I would have preferred to spend more time reveling in the new mysteries of the fire essence. Really explore what channeling it means, how it reacts, right?

I have just come away from the temple of fire at long last and this is cause for celebration, and instead I'm going to be involving myself in whatever this is. Well, I came to Byeview to make sure the loading was going according to plan. So I guess I had to be prepared for seeing everything not going according to plan. By the time I'm at roof level, I've already got the crowd staring up at me.

"Afternoon," I said, and my voice sounds odd to me. Too calm.

"What seems to be the trouble?" Now I can tell that I'm distracted because I know better. I know damn well that asking an open-ended question in front of a group of people, especially if there's any degree of conflict or sides-taking, is just going to get you a big babble of overlapping voices as everyone tries to talk at once. I know this, but here we are.

I hold up my hands for silence, and back up my gesture with overlapping layers of solid and thin air to cut sound down, insulating the whole region for a few seconds. Cutting most of the sound in an area is a good way to make people stop shouting, it makes them feel like they're the only ones yelling and their awareness of the social contract kicks in. So the trick is to control attention.

"All right, I see Vaneth Wagon Services, the company I hired," I said, glancing at the signs on the sides of the wagons. I turned to the foreman who seemed to be in the middle of this, wrangling the situation.

"And that makes you Jaggen, the lead teamster?"

"That's right," he said, planting his fists on his hips, shoulders back. He had a doughy face that seemed to be made out of creases and scowls, with a cattail reed dangling like a cigar from his mouth.

"And we're trying to get this show on the road but someone's gonna get their fuckin' foot crushed to jelly if these damn rubberneckers don't get outta the fucking way!" I turned an amused glance at the stilled crowd of bystanders.

"I'm sure all of you learned long ago not to stand too close to moving wagons, yes? What is all this?" While I addressed questions to the crowd, I also drifted with the wind, easing over a few feet. They had to turn their heads to follow my movement, and then take a couple steps. Gently and subtly I led the motley mob away from the warehouse entrance.

"Wull wot, we just wannad to know wha-was goin' on," said a middle-aged lady near the front. Her accent renewed my awareness of my own posh articulation. She had something in her face that made me immediately label her as a lifelong meddler, nosy-parker and ringleader. Probably an eavesdropper too. There's a certain glint her eye that just casts her in that light, to me. I gave a second of silence after she spoke. I let my voice carry skepticism and confusion.

"They're... wagons? At a warehouse? That's all. I don't know what mystery you're trying to solve here. There is nothing more normal than wagons at a warehouse."

"Well that warehouse was empty!" she piped back.

"And now there's all-uh this strange stuff in there'n that we never seen before." Her tone did not express curiosity. She was suspicious and almost angry.

"I live a block over'n I gotta right to know if there's strange goings-on!" Now I'm not going to just say 'so what' even though that's my first impression. These people mustered up a mob and got so near to this that they half-barricaded the building, and made it hard for my employees to not injure them. Because they decided, or more likely this one ringleader spontaneously decided that everything is their business. Partly because there is a potentially dangerous edge to this crowd for some reason.

They're disgruntled and grumbling, there's a lot of muttering and elbow-nudging among them. Dark looks and seething faces, all gathered behind one loudmouth. That's always a volatile situation, and I can pick out a variety of implements in the crowd that could be used as weapons by motivated people. Nothing major, but the kind of belt-knives you might keep in a rough neighborhood, some lengths of wood that would fit well in the hand and make a decent club.

"They're not strange goings-on," I said plainly.

"Those are iron rails. They're part of new road project headed north towards Anquarry."

"Well they weren't there afore, and I think there's sumthin afoot!" she said triumphantly, which brought up a round of supportive grumbles, a lot of "yeah!" and "that's right!" She nodded firmly, glaring at me.

"And maybe now that we know that some fancy-castle witch is behind all this, well now we know sumthin's afoot!" One of the hard things about being me is that I am constantly running into problems that I can solve by conjuring the void and vacuum a crowd of people into a black hole and then exploding what is left. And I have that temptation hanging over my head all the time.

"... Are you blaming me for the fact that you did not see anything get loaded into that warehouse?" I asked, slowly, balancing a little bit of amusement on my face. That slowed them down somewhat.

"That is real thin, don't you think?" Now, I am working to dampen the anger here. A crowd of angry locals with table-legs and boot-knives is not too dissimilar from the antagonism I had stirred with my trial-and-hammers ploy in Hearstcliff. Because notably Princess Natalie Harigold does not have a good reputation in Byeview, especially this district. Here, I'm not the savior that rained gold or the friend to all people or the darling of all the noble Houses.

Here, I'm the boogeyman that showed up several years ago and killed dozens of husbands, fathers and uncles in a single night of terror and flames. And after these years, nobody remembers or cares that Kudder's thugs and extortionists were terrorizing the neighborhood and bleeding the residents dry. Epitaphs for the dead, arraignments for the living. So unless I want to tip this local sentiment so that my wagons and warehouses start getting burned up with no witnesses, I need to disarm this resentment.

"Listen little missy bird-about," said the spokeswoman, "we keep an eye on goings-on and in this neighborhood people take care of their own! An' we're not fond of outsiders bringing their troubles into our streets." More rumbles and sounds of agreement, they're not happy at all and this biddy is playing the not-in-my-back-yard card. She was very quick to insist that her proximity gives her a vested interest. That can be a powerful tool of motivation, when they call on hometown solidarity.

These days my Charisma is up to 10, high enough to sway most situations, but this could turn against me if I don't play the right cards. Fortunately, I hold a lot of cards.

"A block away?" I repeated.

"Aye," she said. Someone spat onto the roadway.

"And the rest of you? About the same?" The sounds coming back were more confused now. I was off of their script and throwing them questions they didn't expect. I'm supposed to defend myself when someone accuses me of being a danger to the neighborhood.

"I have bought and restarted the foundry," I said.

"I am going to need it running all shifts, full production. More rails just like those you've already seen. This time, as a real industry, not just a front business for a bunch of thugs and blackmailers. I need reliable people, and I find the most reliable employees are the ones that have the shortest commute." That's a good card to play, dumping dozens of new jobs into the neighborhood. After all her play was "the good of the neighborhood", and I can beat her head-on with that play.

I had noticed that this is an awful lot of able-bodied men and women with nothing better to do in the middle of the afternoon, and most of them looked angry, and none of them looked prosperous. I put two and two together, and they added up to 'this neighborhood needs a source of income'. I dipped lower, hovering just enough to keep my head higher than the general crowd, and started working out details. I was going to need a lot of groundwork done very quickly.

And hiring a reputable management company because I'm not just turning these strangers loose with their own supervision, not when our first interaction was then blockading the work with their own bodies. This will be a lot more expensive than the terracotta manikins I've been using, but ultimately using free magic labor was never going to be sustainable. Production needs to be part of the local economy or friction like this will only get worse.

Kurumi and I will have to go over these changes, adding employee wages to this end of production is going to add a lot of bleeding to the balance sheet, after the huge investments I've already put in, and we're still months away from seeing a profit. Endeavors like this are difficult, even if I am far more than merely 'wealthy'. In the end there just was not time to get the arrangements made.

I offered what information I could, but ultimately I had to tell them all that the foundry is happening, priority hiring goes to those nearby, and I will be contacting a hiring agency to take care of my Byeview affairs because I cannot be here full time. I can be the owner and the investor but I cannot be the foreman or the floor manager. For five days a week, nearly every hour is scheduled. I live in a boarding school and it is probably an actual crime that I get to spend as much time as I do away from the place.

In the background, the teamsters loaded materials and cleared out to make room for the next. The iron rails went out, headed for the first depot, the land that would represent the southern-most leg of the railroad network. And as everything worked out, I had almost no opportunity to really play with fire until the weekend. Instead I spent the rest of my day trying to incorporate a dozens of new employees and an officially-operating foundry into the business arrangements that I've established in the city.

And frankly way too much of that was spent appeasing the complaints of a crowd of Byeviewers who acted like I owe them something, and far too little actually getting formal proceedings begun with the local finance establishments. When it was dinner time, I called it all off. I assured them I would be back to finish setting things up, and I went back to Hearstcliff to sit with my friends and tell them about my big success today. Byeview still left a sour taste in my mouth.

I felt far too much like I had been spotted by a pack of self-entitled malcontents that subtly threatened, guilt-tripped and demanded that I stop what I'm doing to spend my money giving them jobs that I could do for myself, with not enough supervision and not enough trust in their motives.