Chương 199: Book 4 Chapter 1:

++Production is in full swing and efficiency is on the rise. The experimental machinery used in the first site has proven too expensive to maintain, and been phased out for remaining refineries, but the new recycling methods have proven effective in cutting down on coal costs, and the oil is flowing well all the same. Projected profits are at an all time high, and there hasn't even been any murders among the workers. ++ - General report on the running of Bountiful Oil, placed upon Isabel Vornholt's desk. 1, 882 A.

E. Evyn Breckit was not a good businessman. He wasn't a bad one, to his own credit, but if you picked a thousand landowners, he imagined half of them could manage his assets just as well as he did. That didn't explain this recent string of failures, though. Magical storms had started surging more recently with each generation, and one such event had struck his largest refinery. The machinery was mostly intact. Mostly.

That small measure of damage, though, that tiny destruction of its total mass, was enough to render the whole thing inert and useless until repaired. So big, so heavy, and so fragile. Modern machinery seemed to get easier to destroy in direct proportion to the technological wonders it was able to render into being. And today, that had doomed Evyn. He didn't have the funds to repair his machinery, nor was the bulk of it still functioning.

Without those funds, his machines wouldn't work, oil wouldn't flow, he couldn't sell it and his income would plummet. No income meant no funds, which meant the machinery would remain useless, the income would remain dead. Only the expenses would survive. Expenses, it seemed, could survive anything. Evyn had sold off his family silver.

He'd sold off great tracts of land his father had wanted to develop, he'd even sold off half the munitions once used to keep the damned natives from barging onto that hard-bought land and demanding they "be given it back" and that he "stop expanding it", as if it was any business of theirs what he did with his own damned money on soil they were too stupid or lazy to use for anything in the first place. Now he was out of options, and the reaper was closing in on his business. Gods, Evyn's life was so hard.

So unfair. Why was this happening to him!? Was there no justice in the world? He was interrupted from his manly brooding by the door to his office opening wide and abruptly. Evyn's workspace was a large room, an inheritance from wealthier times for the Breckit family, and so he had quite a lot of distance separating himself from the newcomer as they entered, giving him quite a lot of time to examine them. They were, to his considerable surprise, a woman.

More of a girl really, young and pretty with hair as black as the oil awaiting extraction under their feet. It took Evyn all of a second to figure out who she was. Isabel Vornholt was a fairly distinct figure, and at this stage there was hardly a man in Poloira who didn't know her. He might have recognised her by arrogance alone from the way she sauntered into his office and took a seat without asking permission first.

"I am here to buy your refinery," she told him.

"What is your asking price?" Evyn took even less time to decide he disliked the girl than he had to figure out who she was.

"Now hold on there," he snapped.

"I don't know who you think you are, but we do things a little differently here than in Garamon, alright, ma'am? I know people over the pond don't care about anything but how thick your blood is and how many generations back it can be traced, but in Poloira you don't just walk up to a man and demand his property."

"I am offering to buy it," Vornholt told him evenly.

"And I am letting you name a price you think is reasonable. Given the circumstances, I would expect you to be pleased with the opportunity. How many people do you think will wish to purchase this land given the recent storms it has suffered? Not many, believe me." Evyn was not the most intelligent man, but he fancied that he at least had the wits to see an obvious correlation when it was hovering right before his eyes.

"The mana storms," he frowned.

"They came so quickly and suddenly, so unrelentingly, that…was that you?" Vornholt was unmoved as she eyed him. If she had done it, it had been without even the slightest glimmer of guilt. That scared Evyn almost more than the deed itself. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. Almost.

"Whatever it was that caused you to enter into this situation, I cannot comment on," the girl added evenly.

"I am simply noting that you have essentially no options besides accepting my deal. Your refinery will continue to depreciate in value the longer you wait, your costs will continue to shoot up, and before long you will have lost far more than you will gain by selling. The machinery is already damaged, but if you do not maintain it then it will only degrade further and lower in value. If you do maintain it, then that is just an additional cost for you to weather, without your usual income.

Do you really think there is any other way out of this than what I am giving you?" Evyn didn't meet her eye and he didn't say anything. He feared that if he did speak, he would lose control on the spot, perhaps even strike the girl. If half the rumours about what had happened when the Vorets themselves tried to strong-arm her were true, that would be a big mistake indeed.

"You're asking that I turn over my father's legacy," he said at last.

"His father's legacy. His father's father's. My family's work, fed one life after another going on generations, entrusted to me. Do you understand the sacrifice you're demanding here?" Vornholt eyed him, sighed, then leaned forwards and placed a hand down onto his shoulder as she answered.

"I do not care," she said flatly.

"I am going to turn this region into the world's foremost economic powerhouse, and will be using your refinery to do so. If you were too stupid or lazy to work out a way of modernizing it and taking advantage of the ridiculous natural resources your family plundered their way into then that is no concern of mine." Evyn recoiled and the sheer cruelty of it all.

"How can you say that?!" he snapped.

"How can you say it in that damned tone, do you feel nothing?"

"What I feel is none of your business," Vornholt replied evenly.

"But I will sweeten the offer slightly. You may remain on my land as a foreman, managing the refinery and retaining some influence in how it is run. I will, of course, control the product and any resulting assets that it generates, but you will be paid a good wage and have to meet no expenses. Shall we say… three hundred crowns a year?"

The truth was that such an income was practically nothing compared to what Evyn's revenue had been, but then, as Vornholt said, it would go a lot farther without it being him who shouldered the expenses. Three hundred crowns a year, and no expenses. So three hundred crowns' profit. It was far more than he'd made this year even running the business, and infinitely more than he seemed likely to make in subsequent years. Vornholt was still just watching him.

Her eyes didn't waver and she never so much as shifted in her seat, showing none of the boredom or casual distraction that most might when made to wait so long. She reminded him of a praying mantis. Those strange, eastern creatures with blades for limbs, able to pose as a leaf on the end of a branch and lock themselves into immobility for hours on end. They never so much as twitched until their prey walked by, and then, the moment it was within reach, they lunged like a spring uncoiling.

Endless patience and blinding motion. Evyn hadn't seen the motion yet, but the patience alone was unnerving. Enough that he found himself speaking almost just to keep from having to continue watching it.

"Fine," he agreed at last.

"Fine, I accept, you win." Vornholt didn't even look pleased, she just started moving to her feet with that samewooden face like this had all been pre-arranged and the whole conversation had merely been her waiting for him to catch up. That irritated Evyn more than anything else to have happened so far.

"You can't think to really control all of Poloira's oil fields like this," he snapped.

"Not everyone will let themselves be ensnared. There are people wealthier or more secure than me, as well as ones who simply won't let themselves be done away with by a damned woman." Isabel Vornholt smiled for the first time since their conversation began. It felt wrong, like Evyn was looking at something that wasn't human and had never quite learned how to convincingly pretend otherwise.

"You are the sixth to accept my offer so far," she told him flatly.

"I expect to make an income of some hundred thousand crowns a week, once I have finished certain renovations to my new properties." He didn't know what to say to that, so he just stared as she took her leave. A hundred thousand crowns a week. Not a year, not a month, a week. So she'd be a millionaire before the year was out, no matter how he sliced it. A millionaire within mere months.

And then, of course, there was the fact that she very clearly didn't plan to stop, had already enjoyed success in sweeping up the nearby competition, and would apparently be enjoying ever more funds to do it with as time went on. Evyn Breckitt watched the door close as Isabel Vornholt took her leave, and he replayed the conversation in his head to try and figure out how he might have handled it differently, how he might have done things better. Nothing came to mind.

She'd simply had him by the balls, and it was just his luck that she hadn't chosen to squeeze. He leaned back and poured himself a drink, thinking about what would come next. No doubt the girl's lawyers would be around shortly, waving a contract under his nose and demanding he decorate it with his signature. No doubt, he would do so. Everything Vornholt had said about him and his lack of options had, after all, been true.

But what was worse was that the way she'd said it, and some other, ephemeral quality about her, just left him unwilling to weather her presence again. Evyn would sign away his family's fortune mostly because he had no choice, but he'd be lying if he said that part of the reason wasn't simple fear and unwillingness to do anything that might bring him face to face with Vornholt again. He finished off his glass and felt the spirits burn his throat. It did little to distract him from the conversation.

"Who the hell are you?" he muttered to himself.

"And when exactly do you plan on stopping?"