Old Man caught Timmy’s gaze and reached over to pass his bowl of cereal to Spot. The dragon devoured it – including the bowl. “This reminds me of something an old friend of mine used to say to me: may you live in interesting times.”
“What happened to your friend?” Vicky asked.
“He was a monk. The last I had heard, he had become a chef. As he said, interesting times.” Old Man peered at the glowing map in front of them. “And bloody times too, perhaps.”
Chapter Fourteen
Timmy savoured the hustle and bustle of Chesterton. The city was built right on the sea, and it was famous throughout the world for its wide, deep harbour that was sheltered from bad weather by a combination of fortuitous geography and powerful magic. It had been a while since he’d last been here. He wasn’t averse to water, but his earth magic was simply less effective in the middle of the ocean than it was on land. Even if he could reach the rock, stone, and sand that made up the ocean floor – which was by no means guaranteed – it would take forever to bring them into battle. Zombies also tended to be less effective since only the better ones could swim although he could always use his necromancy to reanimate aquatic creatures. However, there was one thing he was definitely looking forward to: having his own fleet of ships crewed by zombies. It had been a dream of his, and if he had a chance to tick one more thing off his to-do list while earning his pardon and saving Everton, then he wasn’t going to complain.
They’d arrived in the city yesterday, and he’d already spoken with the leader of the task force that had been assigned to help them. It had been grim stuff. If they were captured, Everton would disavow them. There would be no rescue attempt or even acknowledgement from the Council. But the task force was also made up of some of the finest sailors, warriors, and mages that Everton could spare. Timmy wasn’t certain they could get it done, but they would definitely have a decent shot at it. The leader of the group had listened to his ideas, and the two of them had settled on a rough plan they could amend as they learned more.
They would take the ships they already had and make their way to the island where Timmy had asked Vicky to bring some captured pirate ships. Timmy would use his zombies to crew those ships, and the entire fleet would then sail to the island where the Eye was being kept. His plan was to use those ships as diversions and weapons to clear a path if there was a strong naval presence around the island. His zombies were largely expendable, but the men and women who were helping him were irreplaceable. In the meantime, while they waited for the Council to give the order to proceed, he and the others were free to wander the city. And since Chesterton was one of Everton’s busiest ports, there was plenty to see and do.
Timmy was happy to roam the marketplace with Katie. His precocious apprentice had not had the most normal upbringing – necromancers seldom did – and it wasn’t often that she got to visit such a large marketplace without having to worry about being arrested or otherwise pursued. He was content to let Gerald handle Avraniel and Amanda, both of whom were eager to explore the city. Old Man was keen to walk through the seaside gardens Chesterton was famous for with Spot and some of the rats. They’d have to stop here on their way back, so Old Man could buy some of the plants he was interested in. Yes, Timmy thought. That was a good idea. He could even let Old Man decorate the other courtyards in the castle, and he was confident the swordsman could handle whatever Avraniel threw his way when she found out. After all, teleportation was one of the best answers to ridiculous amounts of fire.
“Remember to haggle, Katie,” Timmy said as the two of them walked through the marketplace.
In typical fashion, the girl went straight for the area that specialised in magical artefacts and other knickknacks of a magical nature. If there was anything good about Everton compared to Kargahd, it was that they didn’t have to worry about petty crime too much in this marketplace since law enforcement took their duties very seriously here. Law enforcement mages were second only to the mages of the Everton Tax Enforcement Agency in their zeal. They’d also been heavily pressed for time in Kargahd. They could adopt a more leisurely pace here.
Unfortunately, Katie was unlikely to find anything impressive here. There certainly wouldn’t be anything here to match the artefacts and relics they kept in the castle. However, Katie liked to collect things and take them apart to see how they worked. It was a hobby he encouraged because it reduced the time she spent plotting against him and the time she spent sewing bright pink and purple jackets for the rats. Admittedly, it was hard for the rats to look fearsome and intimidating, but those jackets did not help.
Tinkering was also a useful hobby for Katie to have. Consider something like magical lighting. Magical lighting had been, by and large, the same for the past century or so. Any advances had been incremental in nature – a minute tweaking of the runes and seals here, a small shift in the composition of the crystals involved there – but what if his ingenious apprentice stumbled across a major improvement? Well, given how much magical lighting they used since the castle was far too big for standard lighting to be affordable, it would mean substantial savings and the possibility of massive profits if they were able to commercialise the discovery. They could then reinvest those profits into necromancy and general malevolence.
“Look at this, master.” Katie pointed to a small stall that sold crystals that had been enchanted to provide heat when held or placed near the body. He’d seen many similar crystals over the years. “Hmm…” She went forward and picked one up carefully before setting it down again.
“Do you know how it works?” Timmy asked as the merchant at the stall shot them a glare. Few merchants enjoyed having the inner workings of their wares explained. This one was in for some tough luck. Timmy had faced far sterner glares from far more dangerous people.
Katie pursed her lips. “It feels like the crystal is designed to absorb magic and then release it slowly over a long period of time.” Her brows furrowed. Rembrandt, who was perched on her shoulder, looked distinctly unhappy as he too examined the crystal. “But I don’t see any runes or seals on it, and this type of crystal isn’t very high in quality…”
“Correct. And what does that tell you?” Timmy continued to ignore the merchant’s glaring. The man needed to be careful. He might give himself a stroke if he kept this up, and his eye had begun to twitch quite alarmingly, so it might already be too late.
“It won’t work for very long,” Katie replied. “The magic will leak out. If you want it to work for longer, then you need either a higher-quality crystal, or you need to use runes and seals to keep the magic intact. You could also design it to absorb magical energy from its surroundings, I guess, but it would be a lot harder, so it would have to cost more.”
“Ah.” Timmy held up one finger. “Not bad, my young apprentice. But you’re forgetting something very important.”
“What?” Katie huffed. The irate merchant looked like he was about to lunge over the stall at them, but Rembrandt vanished in a blur of motion and reappeared on the merchant’s shoulder with his sword drawn. Needless to say, the merchant decided that discretion was the better part of valour. Rat or not, Rembrandt’s sword was clearly very sharp.
He poked her forehead. “Not everybody is as fortunate as you. Someone without a lot of magic won’t be able to fuel the runes and seals you would need to use, and not all areas have a lot of magic freely available. Someone who could afford a high-quality crystal or the other things you mentioned wouldn’t spend their money on something like this. They would get something more sophisticated. This crystal is a cheaper product aimed at those who simply need help keeping warm, and the magic it contains is simple enough that almost any village should have at least one mage skilled enough to restore it for a reasonable fee.”
The merchant had finally had enough. “Are you actually going to buy anything?” He gulped. “And… tell your… rat to put its sword away before I do something about it.”
“I’d like to see you try. That rat would
drop you before you even got halfway through your quickest spell.” Timmy tossed the merchant a few coins. “But we’ll take two, so stop complaining.”
As they walked away with their purchase, Katie nudged him. He was usually careful with money, so she was probably curious about why he’d bought two of the crystals. “Why did you buy those?”
“Yes, why did I buy those?” He laughed at her scowl. “The truth is that these crystals can be quite useful if you know how to use them. Because they’re low quality, they can become highly unstable if they have to hold a lot of magic. If you put too much magic into them, especially if that magic is naturally volatile, you basically have a grenade that sends bits of pointy crystal flying everywhere.”
“And we’ve got Avraniel and the demolition rats,” Katie murmured as understanding dawned on her.
“Exactly. I’ll let our favourite pyromaniac charge these up and have Gerald keep them. If worse comes to worst, I’ll be happier knowing he’s got something he can throw at whoever is trying to murder him. He can always run away afterward, or he can pull out one of those shields of his.”
“He is good at running,” Katie observed before she tugged on his sleeve. “Come on, master. You’re walking too slowly. We still have lots to see here, and then we have to go look at what the rare-book sellers have. It would have been great if we could have picked up some books while we were in the desert. I bet they had a great library.”
Timmy strongly suspected that the Nameless Citadel did indeed have a great library, but they’d been somewhat preoccupied with rescuing Amanda. Freeing the ancient vampire and robbing the citadel’s library would have been asking for too much, even for them. “And how do you expect to pay for all of this? I hope you don’t expect me to pay for everything. If I recall correctly, you have your own funds – funds that I’ve encouraged you to cultivate and manage carefully.”
Timmy had learned the hard way that sound financial management was an essential skill for a necromancer to have. Gone were the days when a powerful necromancer could simply extort tribute from terrified villagers and weakened kingdoms, and the number of tombs worth robbing had declined alarmingly over the past century due to a lack of wealthy rulers dying and a vast increase in the number of people robbing tombs. The only tombs worth robbing nowadays were truly ancient tombs from long-forgotten kingdoms. Unfortunately, those tombs also had a tendency to be filled with all sorts of magical traps, legendary monsters, and a host of other things that could very easily kill even a skilled tomb robber. Taking out a loan was also not a good option. Most reputable banks hesitated to deal with necromancers, and many of the people who were willing to lend money to necromancers were not the sort of people Timmy wanted Katie to associate with. Pirates and bandits were one thing, but loan sharks and shady banks were another story. More than one kingdom had fallen after going into debt with the wrong people, and it wasn’t a coincidence that most loan sharks and shady banks had strong links to various mercenary groups and assassin guilds.
Nowadays, it wasn’t uncommon for necromancers – particularly the ones who weren’t considered very dangerous – to rent zombies out for manual labour. Timmy had tried it years ago, but the local villagers had been too terrified of him for it to be profitable. Trust his master to continue making life hard for him even after he was dead. On the upside, things had begun to change.
Perhaps Vicky had put in a good word for him, or perhaps the villagers were grateful for the lake that was now within easy travelling distance. It could also be that actually employing living servants and paying them very generously was beginning to change people’s minds since most of those servants had come from local villages, and he treated them well too. Or perhaps the villagers had finally realised that the only reason they didn’t have to worry about bandits, monsters, or the occasional rogue mage messing up their lives was because Timmy dealt with all of those threats before they could become problems. To be fair, Avraniel also helped. The only thing that pleased the elf more than setting someone on fire was being told she’d get paid handsomely to do it. It was also possible that Gerald’s outreach campaign, which largely consisted of him writing letters of recommendation to every village official in the area, had begun to pay off.
Whatever it was, Timmy had recently gotten several inquiries from locals about renting zombies to do onerous tasks, like digging ditches, carrying heavy loads, or dredging out irrigation canals. The zombies wouldn’t be paid as much as normal people – the whole point of using them was that they didn’t complain and were much cheaper to use – but it cost Timmy virtually nothing to deploy them. If things went well, the castle’s finances would only continue to improve. And if access to more labour allowed the villagers to become more productive, then they would be even happier to hire more zombies, which would in turn lead to even greater productivity. It would be one big, happy circle, with Timmy pocketing a handsome profit.
“Well…” Katie began, fiddling with her cloak. “I might have spent a lot of my discretionary funds recently.”
“Is that so?” Timmy allowed Katie a lot of freedom when it came to ordering things. It was the only way she’d ever learn, and she was very clever. She rarely made the same mistake twice. Of course, he’d also laid down some simple but important rules. She couldn’t order anything that she couldn’t kill if it turned against her. She also couldn’t order anything that might damage the castle’s magical defences or cause property damage exceeding one year of her estimated income since he wanted her to be responsible. Even if he occasionally made mistakes that damaged the castle, he always paid for the repairs out of his own pocket. “What exactly did you spend your money on?”
Katie fidgeted again. He’d have to warn her about that later. She was a horrible poker player because of her tells. In fact, if the rats didn’t let her win a few games whenever they played, she’d probably never win at all. It was just good fortune that the rats were only interested in playing for fun. They’d learned through their years of wandering and hardship that betting food or money never ended well. “You know how the kraken hunt this season failed?” Timmy nodded. “Well, I heard about an expedition that was heading out to somewhere near the Isles of Tears.”
The Isles of Tears was an archipelago that was famous for the ferocity of the sea life that made its home in the nearby waters. Almost everything that lived there was enormous, possessed a taste for human flesh, or both. There were also constant storms, which had led to countless shipwrecks. That was actually how the place had gotten its name. He’d only been there once. His ship had been attacked by three krakens and several tribes of man-eating merfolk, not to mention several sea serpents and some other oceanic monstrosities that had felt the urge to join the fun. He’d gone through four shovels on that trip. Four. And he’d still barely managed to make it out of there alive. If he ever went back there, he’d make sure to bring Vicky along.
“Go on,” Timmy said.
“I have a few contacts amongst the sailors who led the expedition.” Timmy smiled fondly. Ah, his apprentice was already building her own network. How adorable – and useful. Although most of Timmy’s contacts had no problems dealing with Katie, he doubted that all of them would remain loyal once he retired, was deposed, or otherwise left Katie to her own devices. “They told me something very interesting. They found a giant shark. It was much, much bigger than any shark they’d ever seen. They weren’t even sure it was a shark until they hauled it in.”
“How big is this shark?”
“Fifty feet long.”
Timmy stopped mid-stride. “That… is a big shark. No, it’s a giant shark.”
“I know, right? And the best thing is that they found it washed up on a reef near one of the islands, and it was completely intact! They were going to carve it up for food since they’ve been struggling to make ends meet, but then they remembered I was looking for something to turn into an aquatic zombie. They sent me a message after using magic to preserve the shark. They wanted to know if I’d
buy it. The price they wanted was quite high, but I’ve never heard of someone catching such a big shark before. Plus, it was fresh and intact –”
“Tell me you bought the shark.” Timmy almost rubbed his hands together in glee before simply giving in and adding a cackle for good measure. He could already imagine it: a giant shark with magical armour terrorising his enemies while they were at sea. “Please, tell me you bought the shark.”
“I bought the shark!” Katie nodded quickly. “With such a big shark…” She cackled too, and the people next to them tripped over in shock. It was a truly menacing cackle for a ten-year-old girl. “There’s no telling what kind of modifications we could do. We could have a zombie shark-hydra, a zombie shark-drake, or –”
He ruffled her hair. “We could do a lot of things. Good work. You made the right call. Sometimes, you have to spend money to make money, and I’ve never heard of anyone catching a shark that big before. Still… they wouldn’t lie to you, would they?”
Katie shook her head. “No, master. I’ve done good business with them before. If they lied to me, they would be losing out on a repeat customer who would be willing to buy from them for years.” She paused, and her shadows stirred ominously. “They also know that lying to a necromancer is a very bad idea, especially when that necromancer has loyal ninja rats who are experts in sabotage.” She reached up and stroked Rembrandt’s fur. “It would be a pity if something happened to the rigging of their ship or to their supplies.”
“That’s the spirit.” Lashing out was rarely a good first option, but people needed to take Katie seriously and honour their agreements with her. “I’ll help you out with the cost this time since that shark isn’t something we can pass up, and you do deserve a reward for developing some useful contacts. But next time –”
“Yes, master. I know.” She tugged on his sleeve, more insistently this time. “Come on, hurry up.”
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