Lich for Hire

Chapter 392: Ariel's Growth

If Ambrose were around, he would have been quite impressed by Ariel.

She had already learned to negotiate! The last time he had seen her, she had been a barbarian who resolved problems with her hammer.

Experience really did change a person.

Hastin kept his composure and his smile. "The Ragetide Kingdom is unmatched at sea. You're right that you don't need these products, but others do. The Lyon forces, for instance—I imagine they would find our airships very useful."

Ariel's hand moved to the hammer at her hip. Sparks of electricity began crawling up her forearm.

"You're telling me you intend to sell your equipment to my enemies? Do you understand what that would mean?"

Hastin did not back down. "Your Highness, my master is a merchant. You know he will take what profit he can. I am nothing more than his servant. Your hammer could certainly reduce me to scrap, along with the Blacktide, but then you would face my master's wrath.

"You've surely seen what happened to the githarks. I would ask Your Highness to consider carefully whether the Ragetide Kingdom wishes to position itself as his enemy."

During the battle with the githarks, Hastin had been in the Ragetide Kingdom as a guest. He had produced a magic mirror and given the kingdom's entire senior leadership a front-row view of the engagement.

When the meteor shower had fallen, those who styled themselves the Stormborn all went quiet.

If a meteor shower like that were to fall on the Ragetide fleet...

The memory of those falling meteors did its work. The electricity receded from Ariel's arm. A faint, forced smile appeared on her cold face.

"Ha! I was merely testing you. Only the brave can find a way through a storm. Your courage deserves respect, and I expect the Lord of Storms would agree. Since we understand each other, why don't we go somewhere more comfortable and discuss the details properly? A transaction of this scale deserves people who deal in finance, not soldiers."

Hastin exhaled quietly. He kept smiling. "Of course, Your Highness's approval is the greatest of honors. I'm sorry my brother isn't here—he's considerably better at keeping the mood from getting too serious.

"I'm more of a coarse fellow myself, and my manners leave something to be desired. As a personal gesture, I'd like to offer a buy-ten-get-one-free deal and two magic mirrors as a complimentary gift to Your Highness, regardless of whether we reach an agreement."

He had good reason to soften his stance. The princess was a legend. On his first day in the Ragetide Kingdom, he had watched her lead a party out to hunt sea monsters.

The lightning she had called down from that hammer of hers could reduce the Blacktide to smithereens.

If she had been even a fraction less composed a moment ago, there would have been very little of Hastin left to continue the negotiation. Unlike his master, he had no phylactery to fall back on.

That said, his backing was considerably more substantial than his personal combat capability. The name of his lich master carried more weight than the Blacktide, and it had been enough to make the Ragetide princess step back.

The goodwill cost him nothing: the mirrors were always supposed to be distributed freely, and Ambrose was willing to accept, at maximum, a thirty percent discount. Hastin had opened the negotiations at double the price, so the buy-ten-get-one offer still cleared that threshold comfortably.

Ariel appeared very satisfied with the concession. "Thank you," she replied, smiling.

The Blacktide turned toward the Ragetide Kingdom. Ariel's expression turned back to ice.

Only Ariel herself knew how much effort the last few minutes had required.

By natural instinct, the moment Hastin had issued that threat, she should have hurled that hammer toward his head. She had never been good at resolving things through words. The hammer had always been the more honest option.

But she was the only person in the Ragetide Kingdom who could handle this right now. If even she couldn't control her own reactions, the kingdom would have no future.

She reached inside her armor and drew out a necklace of rough iron wire attached to a small crystal pendant, with a careful collection of ash within: the remains of the man who had given everything for this kingdom until there was nothing left of him to give.

"Damn you, Monge," she cried out inwardly. "You told me you'd come back. Get back here! This is exactly the kind of thing only you can deal with. I'm losing my mind. If you don't come back soon, I am going to find whatever's left of you and hammer you to death!"

Her anger settled, she tucked the pendant away.

The world was about to become very unstable. Ragetide had to be ready. She had to make Ragetide ready.

The Blacktide descended toward the palace. Its sheer size, mobility, and obvious power always drew reactions from the people below.

Ariel returned to the palace. Hastin settled in aboard the Blacktide to wait for Ragetide's negotiators to come to him.

She had barely walked through the doors when the old king came to meet her. "Well? Did the Lyon forces actually go to sea?"

She nodded and handed over the memory crystals.

The king watched the footage and burst out laughing. "Thanos be praised! Such landlubbers dare take to the sea? Ariel, the time for revenge has come. The Lord of Storms will be very pleased with this offering."

The ship was slow, and its tactics laughable. The only reason the pirates had lost was that they weren't especially formidable opponents. Against a real Ragetide fleet, those Lyon soldiers would have been in serious trouble.

But Ariel shook her head. "No, Father. We shouldn't attack directly. Didn't you notice? They have too many legends."

"Legends?" The king hadn't paid attention to that detail.

"General Cyril Roland, the Shield of Glory Lucas, and the Hammer of Justice, Taric. We'd struggle against those three paladins alone, and that's not even counting the others."

The king's enthusiasm reasserted itself. "But we're at sea! The storms and the waves are our allies. At sea, it doesn't matter how good a landlubber is. Put them in the water and they're all just fish."

"How do you intend to put them in the water, Father? Did you watch the whole recording? That ship is packed with Lyon soldiers. There's no room for supply stores, which means they're using teleportation arrays to receive their provisions each day. If they come under real pressure, what do you think happens? The arrays will send them home.

"How many of our people would we need to sacrifice just to push them to that point? And in the process, how many Ragetide soldiers would those legendary paladins kill? Trading our people's lives so they can retreat safely back to land isn't worth it."

"Teleportation arrays for daily supply runs?" The king stared. He roughly estimated what that would cost.

The construction of any teleportation array required enormous quantities of magical gemstones and materials. Each use degraded the arrays, requiring specialist mages for maintenance, and ongoing investment in repair.

As a logistical solution, it was convenient—and it would have bankrupted the Ragetide Kingdom within a season.

Lyon simply had that kind of money.

He had been too entertained by the footage to register what the details meant. But his daughter had grown perceptive in ways she hadn't been before.

"So what do we do? We can't just let our enemies sail past like they own the ocean."

"Pointless aggression results in pointless casualties." Ariel had clearly already thought this through. "My recommendation is to push the pirates to harass the Lyon forces, to drain their nerves rather than their numbers, and to try to maneuver them toward the Sea of Storms. Let the creatures in there do the real work."

The Sea of Storms was a region in which storms never fully dispersed, and was home to heavily mutated sea creatures and at least one legendary-rank behemoth. It would give the Lyon force a serious problem without costing Ragetide anything directly.

The king felt this kind of revenge unsatisfying. Herding some pirates and hoping the Lyon forces wandered into a bad stretch of the sea wasn't exactly a reckoning. But one look at his daughter's face and visible fatigue, and he set aside his objections.

"All right. We'll do things your way. But Ariel, find some time to rest. You're pushing yourself too hard."

She was already turning away. "I'll rest when there's time. The lich's representative is still waiting for our response. I've seen what the Blacktide can do firsthand. It's completely different from anything in our fleet. It could change the shape of naval warfare entirely. We need to find a way to acquire it even if we can't afford the price right now."

She left, heading toward the treasury minister's office to find out exactly what Ragetide could actually afford.

The king watched her go and shook his head slowly.

She had changed ever since returning from the Emerald Dreamwood. The Ariel before had been loud and straightforward, always in good spirits, her every emotion worn openly.

The Ariel who returned was quieter, more careful, and paying attention to things she had never noticed before. She had started identifying problems inside the kingdom that no one else had bothered to look at. While solutions weren't always immediately available, at least the problems were now exposed.

And the Lord of Storms had blessed her in an unprecedented way: that hammer at her hip was a divine artifact, a personal gift from Thanos.

A deity's favor was a wonderful thing. But the old king thought his daughter was working too hard, and Ragetide had no one skilled enough to share the burden. If Monge Greywater had still been alive... The king had immediately known that that man was exactly whom his daughter needed beside her.

If only someone could deal with all these matters on Ariel's behalf! How much happier she would be if all she had to do was focus on the affairs of a stormpriest!

"Perhaps I should find her a husband," he muttered. "Surely Monge Greywater wasn't the only clever man in the world."

He crossed to the statue of the Lord of Storms and knelt in front of it with genuine devotion. "Lord Thanos, I beseech thee! Let your thunder carry a message, let your storm be a ship. Guide the right man, a man of real intelligence, to Ariel's side."

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