Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

Richard keeps looking at me for too long.

The factory works around him. Vials washed, caps sealed, amber mixture running through the tubes, Maela noting every loss on the clipboard as if recording a small crime. Each scratch of pencil on paper makes a Drowned shrink his shoulders a little.

I glance at Jori and catch him trying to pretend he isn’t listening. His hands have slowed down on the sealing table.

Richard is still pale. His eyes quickly scanning me to see if anything he looks at is a lie

"You’re a monster," he says.

I try to hold it back.

I can’t.

The smile comes before the caution. "Me?"

Richard points at the finished crates with two fingers. "You pay above the government, lock the price to stop gouging on resale, leave margin for the merchant, keep cost low, and still turn the whole thing into a consumption habit. That isn’t charity. It’s a siege."

"A siege usually comes with a catapult..."

"You built one out of little bottles."

Oliver lets out a short laugh through his nose, then stops when Richard turns to face him. There’s irritation there, but calculation too. Richard isn’t complaining about the factory. He’s trying to measure the size of the thing before it swallows him along with it.

"Good," I say. "Then you’ve understood enough to start."

Richard frowns. "Start what?"

I look at Oliver. "The docks gossip. That red-bearded man, scar on the chin, charging workers Scales to ’guarantee a spot.’ Hand it to Richard."

Oliver raises his eyebrows. "Now?"

"Now. He knows counter men, stevedores, middlemen, drunks who talk too much, and the kind of liar who charges old people a fee to stand in a free distribution line. And he’s a Diver. He can handle it."

Richard stares at me. "Did you just hire me to run a factory or to hunt rats?"

"The two usually live in the same building."

He breathes through his nose, heavy, but doesn’t refuse.

Oliver takes the spare clipboard from Maela’s table and signals Richard to follow him to the corner near the stock. Richard goes without hurry, still eyeing the machines as if each one were a question grown too expensive to ask out loud.

I stay near the line for a few seconds, watching the flow reorganize without me. Maela returns to the batches. Jori corrects the wax pressure on the left side, the way Richard pointed out. Zoe watches it all carefully, half hidden behind a column, but less frightened than when she walked in.

Then the System opens a message window in front of my eyes.

[Guild Vault Updated]

I stop.

Another line appears right below it.

[First Contract Payment Received: 2 Plates]

The factory air seems to get a little cleaner.

I open the full message.

[Contract: Red Squid Slums OXI Duct Cleaning][First automatic payment processed.][Guild Vault Deposit: 2 Plates]

For a moment, I just look at it.

Two Plates.

Not a promise, not one of Veric’s projections, not math scrawled on a tavern napkin. Real money, deposited in the guild vault for a service that has already started working.

Right after, another message comes.

[Message from Leona Hartwell]

I open it.

My dear Disaster,

The cleaning started in the Red Squid Slums. Just the first stretch, and I already want to tear the head off whoever let those ducts turn into that hell. Half the team came out coated in OXI sludge up to places I’d rather not put in an official message.

The automatic payment should have landed in your guild vault. That’s one part of the city. We still have too many blocks ahead, and I intend to scrub every one of them until Red Squid remembers that poor people breathe too.

I know this is business. I know the contract handles the numbers, and that you probably calculated everything before you opened your mouth to me. Even so, thank you. You gave paid work to people who were being treated like leftovers. You gave my men a reason to walk into the streets with their spines straight.

I won’t forget that.

Now don’t get sentimental, or I’ll deny I wrote this part.

— Leona Hartwell

I read it twice.

The first time for the money.

The second for her.

Leona has a dangerous way of making a message feel like a punch to the shoulder and a hug at the same time. The absurd part is that she’d probably find it offensive if anyone said so out loud.

I close the window and go to the guild vault.

The runic chest sits in a side room, bolted to the floor by three ownership seals and an access lock tied to the Safe Harbor contract. Oliver did good work with the runic mage. I touch the metal surface, let the System recognize my mark, and open the panel.

[Scales: 72,015 → 92,015]

The number rises without ceremony.

Twenty thousand Scales more.

I look at it long enough to feel something strange in my chest. Satisfaction, maybe. Not clean joy. Clean joy is for people who don’t know how many ways the world has of charging interest. But my plans are leaving the page. The duct cleaning has started. The LDP is being produced.

Small things, compared to the future.

Enormous things, compared to the day before.

I close the vault and go back to the factory floor.

The finished crates are piling up near the stock, arranged in simple rows. Each one holds twenty vials, enough to change the behavior of an entire street if placed at the right point. The problem is choosing the point.

The answer clicks in my head too easily.

The team event at Rahul Sharma’s Oathring.

Too many eyes watching. Divers, merchants, sponsors, smaller houses, cadets trying to look bigger than they are. Sharma wants an audience, control, spectacle. I can give him all of that.

And sell the medicine at the door.

He won’t like it.

Which is exactly why I’ll have to make sure he gains something. Sharma is greedy, dangerous, and vain, but he isn’t stupid. If the LDP pulls crowds, consumption, and arena fees into his Oathring, maybe he swallows the offense before trying to bite me.

But it’s only a maybe.

Time passes fast while I turn the idea over in my head. Plans spring to life.

When I notice, Oliver is already coming back with Richard beside him. The two are talking low about something I don’t fully catch. By the tone, Oliver is explaining process; Richard is already asking questions as if he’d worked there for a week.

"I covered the basics," Oliver says as he gets close. "Shifts, contracts, payment, stock control, material intake, cash outflow, who answers to whom. Told him about the docks fee too."

Richard crosses his arms. "I’ve got three likely names before lunch."

"Good. If you have trouble with Ranks, just show them this." I hand him my crest of Azurea. "Return it to me when everything is finished."

He nods as he takes it.

Zoe comes closer slowly, looking at her father before looking at me.

"Richard, find a place for the two of you near here. Something decent. No stupid luxury. Safe."

He nods. "I’ll look."

"Zoe can work here too, if she wants. Records, simple stock, checks with Maela, nothing near the dangerous machines. Eight Shards a month, same as any worker."

Zoe’s visible eye opens wide, and she flashes a bright smile.

"She’s sixteen," he says.

"I know. That’s why I said if she wants."

Zoe looks at the crates, then at Maela, then at her father. "I want to."

Richard goes quiet for a moment. Then his expression gives, just a little. "Then I’ll be supervising."

"You will," I say. "And you’ll be paid by production volume. The better the factory runs, the more you earn. We’ll settle the numbers later."

Richard lets out a short breath, almost a laugh. "You really want me to get rich growing your money."

"I prefer that to hiring cheap incompetence."

He accepts it with a slow nod.

I turn to Oliver. "We need to train."

His expression changes at once. The factory leaves his eyes. The hammer comes in.

"What do you have in mind?"

"The fight’s coming. And I’ve decided where the LDP launches."

Oliver holds a pencil between his fingers, ready to write something down. "When?"

"At Rahul Sharma’s team match."

The pencil slips from his hand and hits the floor.

Oliver doesn’t bend to pick it up.

The sound of the pencil hitting the floor was technically quiet, but psychologically so loud that everyone in the factory stopped making noise, and only the background hum of the machines could be heard.

The atmosphere became so heavy that Zoe instinctively ran behind her father’s legs

Oliver just stares at me, mouth half open, as if I’d suggested using Sharma’s stage to sell rope for our own team’s hanging.

I smile.

"It’ll be good training."

"Or a good death." Oliver says.

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