《Otherworldly Chronicles of A Chronic Capitalist》 1. The Principle Of Competitive Advantage Is Only Common Sense, Right? In the end I couldn''t entirely condemn the grim reaper. Dying saved me from a highly embarrassing situation, even made me a pocket martyr for the Sunday obituaries. Late morning: my little cousin Ada was tromping around in his long green socks, bouncing a soccer ball on his knees, his arms locked behind his head as if to say, as the devil may please. My aunt had warned him; my uncle too, and the way he was drifting towards the edge of the road left me ill at ease, but since the highway was empty, I let him be. But when a truck turned a corner and came roaring in, a tanned brown arm hanging out its side, my fingers grabbed the back of his collar. He kicked at the air, flailed his elbows and nearly hit me in the shins with his soccer cleats, forcing me to sway backwards, and somewhere in the tangle of flying elbows and arms, the ball was hit, and it fell, rolling forwards. He tried grabbing at it, but I yanked him back, maneuvering my forearm across his ribs. "I want my ball." He said. "Calm down. I''ll go get it in a sec." "I want it now." He said. "That truck''s going to--" His arm hung behind me and I knew what he was pointing to. "If anything happens, I''ll buy you a new one." "But I borrowed it from Andrez--" "Ada, I don''t care." He slumped. I rotated my grip and turned him so he could slip his hands about my neck. I''d seen this kind of setup too many times in movies to let it play out in front of me: kid goes after ball, man goes after kid, truck hits man, splat, the road gets a new tattoo. I''m sure this Andrez will write a soccer ball off his ledger if I give him twenty bucks. "Balt! Behind! Behind!" Lord, now he was wriggling. What, did he think I was going to-- yeah, I was. Wouldn''t cost me anything. I shifted my grip upwards, to his shoulders, and turned. "Did you really think that--" It was noontime, July 12th, 2017, in West Bay, in that strip where the scrubby mountains fall onto the yawning Pacific, and as we stared at the white eyes of the truck it was as if a hook had yanked out our spirits and left them stranded in a place without weight or time. I threw Ada. That is all I remember. I threw him. I tried. No reasonable spirit, god, devil, demon, or flying culinary abomination could blame his death on me, and if turned out that I had hesitated, overwhelmed, thinking at a moment that demanded action...really, it was aunt and uncle''s fault for volunteering me as free labor. Extended families were such troublesome economic structures... I woke up in a sea of light. "How disgusting. How incompetent. How utterly scummy. Tell me, how can you stand telling yourself such convenient lies?" said the woman in front of me. She slouched on a throne, her six arms all well-armed: truncheons, rifles, swords, spears, arrows, and bows. At the center of her brow, north of her glabella, burned a smokeless fire. Any reasonable being wouldn''t blame me. This one? Her slouch, her slack features, the little white pillow she''d snuck in between her back and her throne...the picture of a bored salarywoman. As for me, somehow I sat on a wooden(?) chair. Ada sat on my lap. His small hands held the web between my thumb and forefinger, and the thumb itself, and no more; curled up as he was, he resembled a baby rhesus with a bigger nose and less gummy eyes. The American comparative psychologist Harry Harlow had thrown many such monkeys, three to thirty-six months old, into a totally isolated pit to study the anatomy of despair. After ten weeks even the happiest broke. And like splintered china, the pieces could be reassembled, the gashes sown with gold, but a broken pot was a broken pot, even if it shone. "Oi, don''t ignore me." She said, the weapons disappearing, the six arms folding into two, and the little flame winking out. "I''m Korrawi, the goddess of heroes, though many also call me the mother of heroes. Heroes! Gorgeous brown hunks who seized the world with khopesh, chariot and javelin; foxy older men who could, with a handful of crane feathers, overturn destiny..." "Modern heroes must be a letdown." "Are they ever!" She said. "Firefighters, policemen, high schoolers, the occasional Good Samaritan...bleh. Would''ve thought you fell into that last category but the mandatory review flagged some seriously unheroic last thoughts." With that she wiggled her fingers, and a mandala blossomed from the tip of her finger. "Have fun in purgatory!" Ada pushed up against my shirt and I felt my shirt grow wet. "Balt", he said, "I wanna go home. I don''t wanna be dead." "Oho?" She said, leaning forwards. Her mouth opened and a pink tongue slid around marbled teeth. "Blame your cousin over there. If he wasn''t such a conniving, cowardly wretch, both of you would get an all-blessings granted, high-birth-ensured reincarnation into another world. But instead you get to wait in a line until the end of this yuga! That''s 1,260,003 years, give or take a few months." [TRANSFER INITIALIZED] rang an old man''s voice. [COMPLETION: TEN PERCENT]. I hugged him. "Be brave, Ada. Please." Then I faced the goddess. "You''re enjoying this." Informed cold reading made wonderful bait. Come on, bite. Give me something to work with. Don''t make me a liar. "Of course I am. This is the most entertaining display I''ve seen in at least the last fifty years, and that''s including the lives of heroes I''ve reincarnated." [COMPLETION: TWENTY PERCENT]. "I find that difficult to believe. Don''t reincarnated heroes fight goblins, ogres, griffons, and seek glory and adventure?" Alternate challenge and concession, never let the other party remain in one place. Meanwhile, Ada had stopped sniffling. Atta boy, he could be a handful but he was surprisingly reliable sometimes. She snorted. Her nose was rhinoplastic; the sort of effortless perfection that other women might spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to recreate. I bit the corner of my cheek. I was a man, after all. "See for yourself," she said. All around us, a dome of white rectangles appeared, resolving into images. A hero slaughtering goblins by the dozen...another hero slaughtering ogres by the dozen...a third reclining on a backless sofa, being fed grapes by three beautiful girls...yet another one naked atop a pile of-- I clamped a hand over Ada''s eyes. Too late. "Balt, what was that man doing? And those girls?" "They were, uh, wrestling!" Early exposure to such topics could prevent Ada from becoming an economic asset to society. Who knows, he might even tread the dark path of a NEET: a parasitical creature who spent all day ****** off by exploiting friction inherent to the sociobiological underpinnings of the nuclear family.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. "Wresting naked?" [COMPLETION: FIFTY PERCENT] "It''s a...a new form of wrestling. Struggle wrestling. The ancient Greeks used to wrestle naked, but it fell out of--look, Ada, I''ll explain it to you later." The goddess laughed, and I took the moment to scan through the other panels; then, I understood why she was so bored. These modern heroes all had ridiculous powers-- I was guessing that was what she meant by a cheat skill-- and their goody-two-shoes approach to life must have struck her as blandness incarnate. Gilgamesh, Cao Cao and Napoleon would have gone on a conquering spree; Lenin or Pancho Villa would have stirred up the farmers to everlasting revolution; even Hercules and Karna, the most noble of the heroes of yore, would have overturned the world, and all that by the force of their personality and innate might. [COMPLETION: SIXTY PERCENT] As soon as I understood that, I realized that I had underestimated her. I mentally slapped my past self for being an idiot. Her harsh words, the loud countdown, and her lengthy exposition...this was a test, had to be. Otherwise, why bother explaining anything? Even if I ran with her nominal reason-- that she was doing this for kicks-- surely she wouldn''t have gone into such detail about other heroes...right? Law of least resistance. Also, most mythologies bound gods to their domain. Poseidon was stormy, Hades dour, etc. A goddess of heroes-- a mother of heroes-- couldn''t be a sadistic b**ch, right? [COMPLETION: SEVENTY PERCENT] Proceeding on that assumption raised several questions. Was a test standard for every would-be hero? Or was it only for borderline cases? The second seemed more likely; again, the law of least resistance. So if it was a test, how could I pass it? Do something suitably heroic? What? A kind man would beg the goddess to reincarnate Ada even if the cost was personal damnation. A brash youth would yell at her, maybe even charge over and attack her. A ruthless man would offer to feed Ada to hell without a second thought. A Cicero would debate her regarding her duties, using words as weapons. The common thread: in the face of adversity, act. And act I would. [COMPLETION: EIGHTY PERCENT] I stood up. Ada fell off my lap and squeaked, but midway through his fall I caught him and pulled him up by the armpits. "Tell me, o'' goddess of heroes, why my final thoughts were deemed unheroic?" Her eyes narrowed. "At the moment of your death, you blamed others for your own failings, including your hesitation. You justified your inability to keep your cousin safe with convenient excuses and--" [COMPLETION: NINETY PERCENT] I took a belly breath, pulling air into my diaphragm, and drowned her words in laughter. "What primitive reasoning! What absurd condemnation! The market rewards specialists who develop skills in their niche and trade the value produced with other specialists; this is the principle of competitive advantage. To condemn me for not possessing soldierly instincts-- you may as well condemn a giraffe for not knowing how to hunt underwater. Furthermore, as unpaid and uncontracted labor employed in contravention of the free market, I had neither duties nor responsibilities that ought to have compelled me to intervene in such a situation. Thus, the actions I took involving my peripheral competencies should not be judged on the basis of result or intent, but relative to my nonexistent obligations! If an electrician rewiring a house for free is kind, and a doctor treating patients without means to pay saintly, then my actions must be heroic!" [COMPLETION: ONE HUNDRED PERCENT] My hands held my knees as I panted, my face red. The mandala in front of me grew until it towered over Ada and I; it spun, and Ada gripped the pockets of my pants, but I stared at her. The glowing lines of the mandala hid her face from me as effectively as a fence, but I stared into that bright light even as my eyes burned. Had I guessed wrong? My assumptions had stacked atop each other like a Jenga tower. Was this her way of pulling out the bottom brick? The mandala grew and grew, the central hole expanding until it had pushed away all is petals to the fringe. We stared at the pupil of an expanding eye wrought from light and in that smooth darkness I saw myself, but distorted: my ears buzzed by my chin, my eyes floating about my forehead and nose. I saw a failure. "Ada, come here." And he did. I wrapped my arms around the crook of his legs, my hands on the shadows of his knees. It wasn''t easy. He was heavier than he had been a year ago, taller too. But not taller than the pupil, which was as tall as me. Above the pupil was a small gap, maybe three feet, abutting the the delicate filigree of the petal. Too big but maybe if he crouched? It struck me that he was never going to grow to be as tall as the pupil. He would be his four feet and seven inches forever. My lazy summers in the West Bay, where I''d watch him dribble a soccer ball or talk about how he was going to be the next Pele? Gone. All because I had failed, not once, but twice. "I''m going to throw you on the count of three." I told him. "You need to hunch your body together and pass through that gap there. See, that one." He looked at me then frowned. I felt his hand on my cheeks. "Balt bro, you''re crying." "What?" I lifted a hand to my eye, and it was as he said. My hand came away wet. "I''m sorry, Ada. Must be the light; that''s why they tell you in school to never look at the sun. One." "Balt--" "Two." "Bro!" Clapping. The mandala shrunk and faded away. The goddess was visible again, and so was her throne, but gone was the pillow and the slouch. The smokeless fire burned again, and her two arms had become twelve, her one head three. "BALTHAZAR AHU-VAIRYO," she spoke from three mouths and three tongues. "YOU HAVE BEEN TESTED AND FOUND WORTHY." I dropped to my knees, letting Ada go, and even pressing the bridge of my nose into his shoulder. I stayed like that for a minute or two. I knew the goddess was saying something, but Ada was so warm and I was so tired... "Bro! Wake up!" When I came to, the goddess was back to her slouch, and the extra body parts were gone, but she was smiling. Before, she had elegant features: high cheekbones, a pointy chin, eyes with long lashes to compliment her dark skin; while her smile didn''t change any of those features, it dragged dimples around her chin, crinkled the skin beneath her eyes and did something to her lips that I liked. Maybe she was a kind goddess forced to be cruel to test would-be heroes...? "Wakey-wakey, Balty," she said. "Congratulations! You passed! Now jump into the portal and stop wasting my time." I renounced my former thoughts. This abomination was sadistic and cruel, definitely not cute. Lord Mazda, I knew I called you a figment of Zarathustra''s soma-laden delusions, and intimated that you needed to be washed away by the power of the free market, but I would appreciate a heavenly smiting at my position. Broken arrow! Broken arrow! "Balt, the lady told me about all the cool things we could pick," Ada said. "And you picked one for yourself?" Without asking me? Why were my hands clenching and unclenching? "Yep! I''m going to be the best soccer player ever. Better than Pele, Messi, or Ronaldo!" A soccer player. In a fantasy world where ogres, goblins and worse roamed. Ada was my cute little cousin but I was losing hope for him ever being a positive economic asset. The path of the starving artist is even darker than that of the NEET; while a NEET is a parasite, he at least understands the truth of his nature. The starving artist receives from the market an objective evaluation of his worthlessness and yet rejects its holy dictate in his arrogance. No greater evil can there be. I glanced at the goddess but she was smiling. Somehow I didn''t like her smile anymore. "Congratulations," I said. "You manipulated a prepubescent boy into choosing a worthless perk." Her smile didn''t waver. "Pick a power, any power! Come up to my throne, and take your pick, Balty." "It''s Balthazar." I said, but complied. As I neared her throne the panels from earlier popped up, but instead of the lives of different heroes, it displayed the name of a power and suggested uses. Faster learning in any field of study. Invisibility. The ability to become a shadow and effectively teleport short distances once a day. Flight. Becoming a kung-fu master but only if blackout drunk. Being able to invoke an minor astra once a year. Innate prana manipulation. More godly attention if performing rituals and austerities. Being able to transform into a naga. Unnaturally good aim. The panels went on and on. But... "Why are all these powers so weak?" "Budget heroes get budget perks. Balty." She said. "Now hurry up and pick one, then jump into that portal there." I made my pick. Ada grabbed my hand and looked at me. I nodded. We jumped together, falling deep into a sea of endless light, and on an impulse I looked up. My eyes met Korrawi''s and we studied each other. Then all was light, fury, and the groans of a birthing bed. Thus began our new life in another world. 2. The Peter Principle Is Absolutely Pants The late Lord Agnellus'' mother did not get along with her daughter-in-law, the lady of the house; this the servants knew. At her last visit the old mistress took up a Sinian vase, the one that once sat on the pillar by the foyer, and despite her sagging muscles, threw it at the lady with such force that it took three different healers to give the lady back her face. Even then a finger-long scar remained, meandering along the cusp of her jaw before terminating at the corner of her lips. Before the solar chariot had trod even a jot of celestial loam, one of the maids would be at the lady''s bedchamber, dabbing a concoction of powdered soapstone and yellow slime onto the scar, for the days where the mistress caught sight of her blemish were grim indeed. Today that duty fell to Leontia. This was not usual. Normally, Basina took Wednesdays, but the older maid had come down ill, complaining of a stiff throat. In the maids'' quarters, seniority separated the hens from the chicks and so Leontia rose and donned her rough cotton clothes alongside the collar that marked her as an indentured servant of the Skantarii familia. Between the central courtyard of the Skantarii estate and the servants'' quarters lay a large garden, rich with marigolds, roses, orchids, and peonies, and organized by a system of hedges, though this early in the morning she couldn''t appreciate any of its beauty. As she walked, she heard chewing sounds. She slowed. There, behind that hedge and through its leaves, she saw something move. "Sorry the soup''s a bit cold." She knew that voice! That was Adagios, the lady''s second son. The young master of the Skantarii now that Sir Demetrios was on campaign. She had cleaned his room once or twice, and he had struck her as a bright and cheerful boy who loved kicking around an inflated boar''s bladder. So what was he doing hiding behind a hedge so early in the morning? Leontia pressed a hand to her mouth. Maybe the young master had a little paramour; a peasant girl from the surrounding farms who he''d taken a fancy to. He was getting to that age, after all. The slurping sounds that filtered through the hedge, and the subsequent burp, reinforced the idea; certainly, none of the clientes of the Skantarii family-- from the dourest blacksmith to the crudest cavalryman-- had a daughter who did not know proper manners and etiquette, especially in front of the young master. The lady would need to know about this. Leontia made to get up. "Preindustrial societies don''t have microwaves, Ada. And the more important thing is hitting caloric requirements and consuming a balanced diet rich in vitamins and nutrients to ensure proper growth." That was unmistakably a boy''s voice, but rough, deep. Leontia crouched, pressing her ear against the hedge. "Even if you say that, Balt, I still feel bad when I''m eating warm food and you''re not. I''ve been trying to get the cooks to save a portion for you, but most of them are too scared of mother to hear me out." "You call her mother?" The wind whistled through the leaves. Leontia''s breathing hitched like a carriage on a pothole-ridden road. This voice...wasn''t it the Bastard? The young master and the Bastard were talking? The mistress-- she needed to know-- but if she learned more, maybe her reward would be greater? She fingered the leather of her collar. "Sorry. I''ll not do it again." Said the young master. She stuffed the cotton sleeve of her dress into her mouth to stifle the gasp that would otherwise have come popping out. Subversion! This was absolutely subversion! "Ada, what did I tell you about that woman?" A pause. "That she is merely the implement that birthed me and nothing more. That I am to squeeze her for as many benefits as possible before she suffers a disfortunate accident." Leontia fell to her knees, her head spinning with the words the young master had said in his still-high, boyish voice. She couldn''t comprehend them. Each syllable had been proper Izmirian, and the words themselves of the right order, but together...she had heard all sorts of foul rumors about the Bastard, but to think he...she felt a new appreciation for Basina, being the maid tasked with taking care of such an evil creature could not be easy. At the same time, a certain glee began bubbling up in her guts, churning them all round. This was it! If she hadn''t been up so early, and so curious, who knows how much poison the Bastard could have dribbled into the young master''s ears. The lady had to reward her. Oh, how much would it be? Five years off her contract-- no, Leontia, she told herself, she was being too timid. Ten, or fifteen, or maybe the lady would commute the contract entirely, and give her a pouch of silver for her troubles. She gathered up her skirts and ran for the Skantarii courtyard, unaware of the pair of eyes that watched her from a gap in the hedge. --- POV: Balthazar: --- "Is she gone?" Ada asked me. "It''s ''unfortunate''. Not ''disfortunate''." "What?" "You did a great job memorizing your lines, Ada, but disfortunate isn''t a real word." "Oh," he said, biting his lip. "It''s tough, Balt." I grabbed his hand with my own. It fit palm-to-palm, the tactile feedback jarring when pitted against an entire lifetime''s worth of memories. Ada''s hand had curled up, his thumb pinching the web between my thumb and forefinger; he too had assumed that my hand should be much larger than his own. Being as old as Ada was weird. We both let go. "Umm, Balt, I didn''t ask but why are we doing this? That maid...she''s going to tell moth-- that woman and then she''ll get really angry at you again." Ada said. "That is precisely my goal. The angrier she becomes, and the more she gives herself over to that anger, the better it is for our purposes."If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. I expected Ada to say something like "What? I still don''t get it" and then I would''ve said, "A feigned retreat is an essential maneuver in both business and warfare; the more tangible we can make her hatred and resentment towards me, the more stuffing that scary retired-adventurer granny will beat out of her," and he would''ve said something to the effect of "Sasuga Balt-onii-sama!" and I would have held his hand and looked off into the distance and said, "All according to keikaku." Ahem. Before I read Atlas Shrugged and subscribed to MarketWatch, learned about how glorious passive revenue streams were and dipped into the sludge-pool that was trading on margin...I was a weeb. May the invisible hand forgive me, because sometimes it leaked. "Our purposes..." Ada said, as he turned to me. "What''s our purpose, Balt bro? Is getting that scary grandma to beat up that woman until she gets super hurt really what we''re going to do? Aren''t we supposed to be heroes?" I stared at him as if I had just seen a cat fly. "Sorry." He said, "I trust you. Forget I said anything." I stared at him. Let me put it this way: if your cat apologized after it flew around your room, using its paws to wade through the air, you wouldn''t go, oh, what a silly cat, and return to your routine schedule. No, you''d stare too. His thumb rubbed his forefinger and middle-finger, making a sktch-sktch-sktch sound. "I''ve always listened to everything you said about stocks and bonds and the other stuff too, Balt bro. When you came to visit, I used to keep a notebook where I''d write down things you said. Umm, a lot of it didn''t make sense to me, but I looked up some of it on the internet. And, I''m, you know, not as smart as you but since we got here there''s a lot of tutors who''ve taught me stuff." That''s right. Ada was ten when we reincarnated, and he''d spent another thirteen years here. That made him twenty-three(?), but I couldn''t picture him as a twenty-something; every time I tried, I kept seeing his child-like face plus one of those joke mustaches and a long grey beard. I stared at him. "You going native on me, Adashir Ahu-Vairyo?" I said, without thinking, and then shut up. Now Ada stared at me. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out, not even air. Despite being (half) brothers this time around, our circumstances couldn''t be more different. As our ''father'' Lord Agnellus Skantarii had gallantly impaled himself on a pig-sticker during a failed cavalry charge, and thereafter died like a pig, grunting and moaning, Sir Demetrios, our elder-brother, had inherited the household by Izmirian law; he promptly rode off to war with the remainder of our levy. Total control of the Skantarii household then fell to the Lady Skantarii by simple elimination. And as a bastard child, my existence bothered her. She dared not poison me, or have the butcher cut me to pieces, but if I hadn''t been a reincarnator, I would not have survived those early days. Which, I suspected, was rather the point; even in this fantasy world, infant mortality was rather high. The nurse played all sorts of tricks: she didn''t breastfeed me for three days, left me in the coldest corner of a barn without more than a ragged blanket, and even once dumped me in a thicket of poison ivy. Meanwhile, Ada enjoyed all the luxuries that a family of border nobility could afford, and some that we couldn''t. Six tutors, one for each subject, servants to feed him and cloth him, chefs hired from the capital to feed him. Balls, playmates, extravagant gifts like sapphire Faberge eggs. I didn''t mind the difficult circumstances of my new birth. The role I was playing-- this sign stapled to my forehead-- this sign that read BASTARD-- had narrative conventions, and every action that the lady took fell within my expectations. No, if she had been kind and caring, I would have been much more spooked; but she hadn''t been, and a tragic backstory was a prerequisite to any great hero. We did have a goddess to impress, after all. Despite this, I had multiple ulcers by the age of six, though for a different reason. Saying Lady Skantarii spent money like water would be to devalue water! A special occasion? Ball. Dresses? Oh, clearly, she needed one for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, all exquisite embroidery and imported Sinian silk. The tableware was pure silver and every sweet served wrapped in thin gold foil. We were border nobility-- emphasis on border. With each passing year I could see the juicy Portobello mushroom that was the Skantarii familia dip further and further into liability-land. Our ability to secure loans nose-dived, and the day where peasant tithes managed to pay off only the cumulative interest on all our loans was fast approaching. A psychologist might have concluded that her spending habits were a symptom of the depression that had been seeded in her by the grief of losing her husband, and watered by anxieties over losing her eldest son, but I didn''t give a shit and the creditors wouldn''t either. I needed the Skantarii estate intact for Ada''s sake and mine. A cardinal rule of capital: you need money to make money. If Ada and I went and sighed up for the Izmir Kingdom''s army, we would be spear-men, or, at best, light cavalry, the gristle of war. But if we could raise and outfit our own company, we would receive a Captain''s Command Tally, the associated prestige and income, alongside a share of the spoils proceeding a battle. To keep Ada and myself safe-- and to entertain the goddess watching the show-- I''d put my plans into motion. So I''d gotten to work at the age of six. The benefit of indentured servitude was that it ameliorated the downsides of slavery, with servants toadying up their masters in the hopes of shortening their contracts or receiving gifts to the same effect. But an estate like the Skantarii had hundreds of servants, and the lady was known to favor the maids and a few house servants, so the majority lived in a state of frustrated hope. I acquired capital by having Ada steal for me. Knick-knacks mostly, small items that wouldn''t be missed. It took some convincing, but I managed to persuade one of the younger servants to fence it for me, and though he took things seventy-thirty, earned my first gold. Expanding outwards was easier. The key was getting on the right side of their cost-benefit analysis, using principles common to both resistance organizations and terrorist cells. Take my dinner, for example. Ada and I had pretended that it came from him, but I''d never do anything so stupid. I paid Basina. Basina paid a messenger boy to pick up the meal from a certain corner of the kitchen. Ada paid Humboldt, a carpenter''s boy. Humboldt paid the chef to make the meal and leave it there. Neither Humboldt nor the messenger boy or the chef would have agreed if they had known the meal was for me; the mistress was the preeminent power, and it was too much risk for a paltry reward. But by quarantining information, I could tilt their cost-benefit analysis in my favor and have food to eat that wasn''t rotten or riddled with worms. Getting a letter out to retired-granny-adventurer had involved a longer and more expensive chain of people, but the results had been satisfying. Our expenses (aside from the healers) had dropped, and the old mistress had even been kind enough to pay off a good chunk of the debts. Given all I understood about Ada''s probable cost-benefit calculations, his hesitation should have seemed natural to me. I was a dubious asset, and my marginal value worth less than the affection of that woman. Rather, toppling that woman would hurt Ada''s quality of life and cause his share of the estate to dwindle. I was his cousin, but gold was many times thicker than blood. In the first place, it was fortunate that he had aided me at all. So why did it hurt? "I''m not," he said, finally, his face struggling with some emotion I couldn''t name. "I just-- we''re heroes, so...I-- I''m sorry, Balt. I don''t want to get in your way. I won''t. But," Tears fell and I embraced him. Feeling the warmth against my arms...yes, this is what I wanted to protect. From the goddess, from this world, from all troubles...my little cousin, you''ve grown so big... "Fine," I said, surprising myself. "If my little Ada doesn''t want me to do it this way, I''m not barbaric enough to force it." "But--" "No buts." Undoing this chain of events was going to be like snatching an arrow with my bare hands the moment it left the bow. But that was an interesting challenge, too, wasn''t it? O'' Goddess up in heaven, I hope you''re watching. Because I''m going to give you a hell of a show. 3. Tale Of Two Women (Part I) Whomever had carved the chair upon which I now sat must have been a rube, a know-nothing villager, who, upon their first visit to a city, decided that arches were so great that henceforth all furniture should consist of arches and nothing but arches. Onto this abomination he had carved tigers, lions, leopards, and various birds of prey, with snarls that were meant to project fierceness but succeeded only in making the animals appear as though they had the runs. At least the facial expression on the lady sitting across from me matched her taste in decor. "Hello, mother mine," I said, smiling. The servants had been sent away. What a shame this Lady Arianites did not pay her seneschal a decent wage. Securing this meeting had cost me three-fourths of the money I had stockpiled from Ada''s stealing, and after setting everything up, the seneschal had hopped on a horse and gone on the run, but I considered it all an investment. Not for the last time did I thank myself for picking a cheat skill that gave me information I otherwise had no business knowing. "No." She said, shaking her head in such minute movements that she reminded me of a minnow. "No. No. Aunt...she, you--" "Yes," I said. "Me. The son you tossed away. What did you tell Lord Arianites on the wedding bed? That you rode a stallion and broke your hymen dismounting? Or that the stallion rode you, and left you with his get?" That late Lord Agnellus was a pig through and through, rutting with his own cousin. She looked at the floor. I glanced down. A mosaic. Was this an appropriate time to admire art? "I''m sorry, Balthazar. I-- Aunt-- the family, I couldn''t--" "I understand." I said. "But that was then and this is now. And now I need your aid, and you will give it to me." Her head jerked up. "I can''t. Please, Balthazar, I have two daughters and Aunt won''t allow it. She said I couldn''t ever see you or speak to you; if the other noble families even guess that you''re my son, the harm it could do to the Skantarii--" I stood up. Took a step, then another. Belted to the side of my waist was a longsword meant for an adult man; on my vertically-challenged frame, the scabbard scraped my ankles. Lady Arianites flinched. A thirty-two year old woman flinching at a thirteen-year old boy; why did my heart fill with such disgust? Disgust was unproductive. Yet..."You disgust me." I was playing a role. A role. The angry, angsty teenage boy. It was just a role.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. "Balthazar-- I''m sorry, don''t kill me-- servants! Jody! Jody! Help!" She yelled. Pointless. This entire wing of the castle was empty. Stupid, it was Jody, your seneschal, who betrayed you. I drew the sword. A longsword, as the name suggested, was a long sword. It came equipped with a crossguard and a pommel. Unlike a katana, a longsword in this world wasn''t usually pattern-welded, the flat instead polished steel. Which is why I could see the dawning horror on her face: her shifting eyes, that pale-faced stare I had previously only seen in slasher movies. She screamed. Made sense. Lord Agnellus the pig, Lady Arianites the sow. Could two pigs give birth to a man? I stopped a step away from her and knelt down, swinging the sword about until it rested at my throat. She shut up. "Kill me." I said. Crickets. "You gave me life. Spent nine months nurturing me in your womb. Do you not find it appropriate that our tale should end where it began?" She stared at me, but with a different kind of fear. "You''re mad. Some Asura or-- or foul spirit--" Nonsense. The Avesta told the followers of Zarathustra that Asuras were beings of good. It was the Daevas who were evil, but in this world everything was topsy-turvy. Not that I cared. My god was the almighty free market, his apostles Keynes, Smith, Friedman, Hayek, Sen and Marx. "If you don''t aid me, mother, Lady Skantarii will see to it that I am dead within the month. Poison or beheading, a hunting accident or a manure explosion, and it will be as good as if you did the deed yourself. So why pretend? If you wish to condemn me to death, here I am! Kill me and set yourself free. Bury me under the floorboards and plug your nose to the stink." "Balthazar..." The floor, when wet, deepened from brown to a proper red; I had seen bark like that before, in the giant redwood trees that gave Redwood City its name. One in particular was among the tallest trees in the world, a goliath with a hollow belly that Ada and I had scampered about in, a boy and his toddler. At the time I saw it as a corpse substituting granduer for life...would it have taken even three-dozen strokes of an axe to topple it? Yet life was strange, for once again we had found ourselves in the belly of a giant rotting tree, this family called Skantarii. "Put the sword away." She said, her voice so quiet and high I thought it the squeaking of the floorboards. "I''ll do it. I''ll help you, my Balthazar. My darling son." Her fingers ran across my face. I resisted the urge to bite them and noted that something about this woman set me out of sorts. I was playing a role, after all. "Thank you," I said, rising and sliding the sword back into the sheath, but not before missing and slicing the cloth of my pants. I yelped. Then: "Er, you didn''t see me slice my own pants." "Of course," she said, her eyes red. Giggle, woman, and I''ll-- I''ll-- ugh. I turned for the door. Without looking back, I said, "Good. Remember what you have promised me, because if you forget, then I too might forget. About keeping your secrets, that is." Ada, Ada, my sweet cousin. I won''t hurt that woman you insist on calling mother. For your sake, I''ll even slip white gloves over my bloody hands. I''ll let you live your dream of becoming a hero. And if this world opposes it-- this pre-industrial, parasitical and inefficient society, I''ll recycle it and everything in it tofertilizer so something better can grow in its stead. If the Lady Arianites said something, I didn''t hear it. I left that castle and rode a pair of borrowed mares overnight to the Skantarii estate. 4. Tale of Two Women (Part II) Margin call. Two words to spook any veteran investor. Have you ever traded on margin before? It''s a wonderful concept: trading on margin. Instead of investing only your money, you can go to a smiling friend called The Broker and borrow his money to gamble too! Of course, our friend The Broker is taking on quite a risk by lending his money, so he charges interest on his loan. And if your investment does too poorly, he can margin call you: you can either throw down more of your own money or watch as he sells your investments to pay off what you owe him. Simple enough, except here the investment was me, the broker was Lady Arianites, and being margin called meant losing my life. Politics and business: not that far apart. "Balt, why are you staring at the soup?" I sat on a bundle of hay, Ada by my side. Something rarer and rarer these days. "Oh, nothing much. Just wondering if it''s poisoned." Ada stared at the soup and then sunk his head into his hands. "This is all my fault, isn''t it?" "It is." I tilted the bowl of soup, skimming a finger along its surface. "That mother of yours hates me. But does she hate me more than she fears her, I wonder?" I licked my finger. Cinnamon. Ada groaned. I put my mouth to the bowl and gave my Adam''s apple some overdue exercise. "You know," I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. "today is yesterday''s tomorrow." "Huh?" "The fears, worries, and hopes that motivated our decisions lead us to this particular future. And they''ll shape the new concerns that will lead us to the next future, and the next. Are we skipping stones across the sea of time? If so, how lonely." "Why are you getting so philo-- philo--" "Philosophical? I suppose it is out of character." I looked at the bottom of my bowl. "I''ve been feeling out of sorts since I met that Arianites woman. I let myself get angry then. Angry and angsty and betrayed. Why? This body''s backstory-- I-- we have nothing to do with each other. So why? I''m a man, an adult. Balthazar Ahu-Vairyo, future billionaire. Not a precocious thirteen-year-old bastard with a grudge." "You, I can understand." I continued. "You were a child. Clay. Not fully formed--" "Hey!" "--it''s not surprising that you grew attached to that woman whom you call mother, even though you had a mother, and a father, who loved you, who fed you lavash, sangak, and kebabs, who took you to the fire temple every second Sunday." I don''t know why I wanted him to get angry. To yell. "...You sound sad." I smiled, or tried to, but wasn''t sure if I''d succeeding in tugging my lips any which way. "Tell me, Adashir, am I dreaming? Am I a mentally-ill thirteen year old who dreamt up an entire past life to save himself a shred of dignity?" "All I know, Balt, is that you''re my brother. My Balt bro. The coolest dude I know, who is super smart and knows everything about, uh, everything." "You''ll get cavities saying things like that." Despite myself I smiled, for real this time. "You''re right. I''m being silly, letting some middle-aged lady get to me." And when Ada leaned in for a hug, I hugged him back, so hard I could feel his heartbeat through his shirt.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The store-room door had a busted lip and lay ajar. It being noon, the sun''s arrows fell thick and fast, but over the floor the dust danced faster still, and yet everywhere the dust was whirling. We watched as it settled atop itself in the cracks below like so many heaped corpses. The unmistakable cry of a conch. Then hoof-beats. Yelling. "Stay here." I told Ada, and crept up to the door. Men were rushing about with spears, and in the distance I could see a moving cloud of dust. In minutes it would be at the courtyard. "What is it, Balt?" "I''m not sure." I said. "Maybe an attack." We were border nobility, after all. "Get ready to run. And I''d better not hear one word about being a hero or doing something stupid, reckless, and unprofitable." "But I wasn''t going to--" "I hope so, Ada." We didn''t pay guards to just stand around and look tough. Come on, earn your pay you dopes. Distract them. Die. Do whatever, but buy me five minutes. "Ada, stables. Now." "But won''t they hit the stables first?" "Good question." I queried my cheat-skill: [All-Seeing Eye]. Once a day, I could ask it any question and get an answer-- but sometimes the answers were vague or non-nonsensical. E.g., asking "Will Lady Skantarii will try to kill me within the next month?" got me a haiku about Autumn toads. Damn goddess hadn''t mentioned that in the skill description! Though I did notice that the answers got clearer the more I knew about the circumstances. "Hooves will thunder to where they have first been shorn," said the skill. That was a yes, I think. But "first been shorn"? What, did they steal horses from this stable? And if they did, was the stable-master in on it? "They''ll hit the stables first." I said. "Logical, but ugh. Let''s go grab two horses before they get there." Ada nodded. See, surprisingly reliable. We sped through the gardens, sometimes cutting through hedges as we made for the stables. The pounding hoof-beats echoed the rampant beating of my own heart, and I was grateful for the dust-clouds that hid the enemy from sight. If we were spotted... But while the riders drew closer and closer to us, we could not see them, and hoped, with a childish logic, that that meant they could not see us. Soon we sped through the servants quarters, with its sketchy wooden buildings, and arrived at the stables. Down the road we could see the outlines of horses and men on a cloud canvas that was drawing closer. Much closer. The stable-master sat in a wooden chair by the stables, chewing, and as we arrived, he spit. "Young master Adagios." His head bent in the parody of a bow and he made no attempt to get up. "An honor." "Saddle two horses for us, Sen," I said. "And hurry." Good thing I memorized the names of the most important personnel working for the Skantarii estate. His thick grey eyelashes whisked over towards me. "Bastard." The hoof-beats sounded off so loudly that they drowned out the sound of my heart. My hand moved to my side, to the handle of my longsword-- a longsword I had bought with the remainder of my money. This was the only thing I owned in this world. A hand came to rest on my wrist. I glanced to my left. Ada shook his head. "You heard what my brother said. Saddle the horses and hurry." The man''s arms rested on the handles of his chair, and with a yawn, he rose up, patting his knees. If he didn''t hurry up, I was going to make sure he never walked again. The dust was getting into my eyes now and I grabbed Ada''s arm and pushed him behind me, towards the stables, and somewhere that goddess was smiling at this stupid situation-- with my free arm I drew the sword-- damned if I knew what to do with it, becoming a swordsman in the modern era was inefficient allocation of time resources to say the least-- A rider trot through the dust, his conical helm framing a dark brown face, a serious, sad, and somehow familiar face, the sort of face one expected to see atop a statue in the national cemetery for the war dead; the sort of face that whispered, hearken, you men of today, and remember that even your most fanciful tales were spun from a kernel of truth-- Alright, enough abusing Tolkien. He had the face to be an actor for major Hollywood studio.The sort of actor they might hire to play a virtuous, brave, and unfortunately average-looking hero, so the public could admire that hero''s actions without having to put up with his crooked nose, weak jaw, acne outbreaks, male pattern baldness, or any other sign that he had been, you know, human. But as the dust cleared, I saw that behind him were other riders. One of them held a banner in his hands: three arrows, on a green-and-white field. That was the sigil of the Skantarii familia! So these riders were Skantarii troops? ...so that was why I had found the lead rider''s face so similar. It resembled, in some aspect, Ada''s face, and even the face I saw in ponds and on the bottoms of quality silverware, even as it outdid both. But why had he come back now? Was it her hand that had commanded this? Was this her answer to the angry old grandma? The air was cool. Sweat stapled my tunic to the small of my back. "Sir Demetrios," I said, forcing a smile. "Welcome home." 5. There will be blood That night we ate together. Sir Demetrios insisted. Why, he said, it was unseemly for brothers to not dine at the same table. While, yes, while the circumstances of my birth were peculiar, and certainly father ought not have done what he had done, I was still an Skantarii. An Skantarii! He said the word with his lips so wide and spread that I wondered if they would run off the edges of his face. So dinner it was. I asked All-Seeing-Eye if Sir Demetrios was planning to kill me at dinner, or before dinner, or shortly afterwards, or if he''d ordered someone else to do it, like a soldier, or, perhaps, a whore. All-Seeing-Eye said no. Maybe arsenic was more his style. Maybe I was being too paranoid. I had half-expected Lady Skantarii to object, but she took it with surprising grace. Maybe she didn''t want to cloud her son''s triumphant return with our petty quarrels. I could understand that. If Ada came back from something arduous and dangerous, I too would be too happy to bother. The sun set. We sat there. Long dinner table, meant for fifty, now filled by five. At the head was the conquering hero himself, Sir Demetrios, and to his left Ada, and to his right the Lady Skantarii. To Ada''s right, though, sat the messenger boy. He was here at Lady Skantarii''s insistence. Something about being an exemplary servant and worthy of reward, and Sir Demetrios bought it. I couldn''t decide if he was truly that thick or just good at pretending to be. I was seated to the messenger boy''s right, even further from the head of the table. So this was her ploy? Why did I ever give her the benefit of the doubt? As I sat down, someone giggled. One of the maids. Bitch. At that moment, Lady Skantarii swept her eyes towards mine and smiled. She raised her spoon to her glass and tapped it. Once, twice. The room fell silent. "Who laughed?" She said. I could hear skirts rustle behind me. A few whispers. No-one came forward. "Who laughed?" Again silence. Then a yelp. I turned and looked behind me. Two maids pushed out a third, a chubby girl. Her eyes darted from face to face to face. "My lady, I--" Lady Skantarii clapped. An older maid emerged from behind the red drapes to our left, and pushed them apart revealing a storeroom. Large metal cans heaped, no doubt, full of spices, sugars, dried herbs and other things that the Skantarii family absolutely couldn''t afford. I let myself breathe, and took my hand off the dagger tied to the inside of my shirt. Within expectations. Everything was proceeding within expectations. Of course then the older maid strode up to three large cans, pulled up her skirt to her ankles, and kicked the cans with her foot. Silence. Then the lids rose, rose, then fell off, revealing three helmeted heads. The soldiers clambered out, their chain-mail jingling and clanging against the inside of the cans, and then assembled. To a man they were stunted, short, and the one in the middle, their apparent leader, was shorter still. The lady bade him to approach. He did, removing his helmet and passing it off to his subordinates. His white hair and eyebrows, his pale skin so unlike our own, marked him an albino, or else a serious eccentric. I felt a pain coming on. Sure, whatever, an albino dwarf, why not. What was this, Snow White? Not that I watched old children''s movies. "Deal with this" Said the Lady, sweeping her hands. Her eyes were staring at me. And here I thought only men engaged in dominance displays. "As you command, my lady," said the albino. "You two, take this disobedient wretch out and cane her. I will have Sabida examine the wretch. If her buttocks do not resemble an overripe persimmon--" "Milady, please, milady--" The soldiers dragged the shaking girl-child out, dragging her by her clothes, arms, and hair. Ada stared at his plate. I stared at Demetrios. He was staring at the albino dwarf with a queer look on his face, as if he''d seen his father, gored belly and all, come scratching out his grave. "Balthazar." said the Lady Skantarii, smiling. "Did I not give you justice?" What was her game here? Maybe I should push a little. I smiled. "Oh, this was wonderful justice...mother." The word hit her like a glob of thick, wet spit, dredged up from the hate bubbling at the bottom of my lungs. She stiffened, her smile looking dead and stapled to her face. You could see the wrinkles pile up around her eyes. Then she glanced at Sir Demetrios, dug up that stapled corpse-smile, and stretched it across her skin. "Quite. I''m glad."This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Stranger and stranger. Something was afoot, but I might as well push this as far I could. Pushing off the chair, I stood up. "This was such wonderful justice, mother, that I can''t help but ask you to rectify another injustice." "Another injustice?" "This seating...it snubs me." Sir Demetrios decided to remind us that he did in fact exist. Clearing his throat, he said, "Yes, mother, I''ve been meaning to ask, but why is that messenger boy here? Shouldn''t Balthazar be seated closer to the head of the table?" Lady Skantarii stared at me, then turned to her eldest son. "Ah, my dearest Dmitry, I was meaning to raise the same point." The Lady called out the older maid, the one who''d pulled apart the curtains. "You were in charge of the seating arrangements, were you not?" The maid''s eyes could have come popping out her skull. She looked left and right and down and the wild motions tugged clumps of her hair out of its tie. "My lady, I-- you--" she began, then realizing something, bowed. "My wretched self has displeased you, my lady." This maid knew how the game was played. "Ten lashes," said the Lady, and wow, wasn''t it raining lashes today? Ada was staring at me but I ignored him. Self-defense was a valid legal defense in much of the world, be they capitalist or no. He needed to do a little growing up. The messenger boy went away. I sat in my new seat and watched the remaining maids troop about. Food came. Duck noodle soup from our new Sinian chef. We ate in silence; silence that ran on, amok, unhindered by anything but slurping, and the cane''s crack, and the miserable shrieks that came from the outside courtyard. Between the duck soup-- delicious, of course-- and the constant screaming, it would be a wonder if the estate had any birds left! I said as much. No-one laughed. Then came the second course, the main meal. Something more traditional. Imagine a giant turnip, all red and white and the size of a man''s head, but hollowed-out and filled with soup. And not a thin watery soup, no, but something thickened with flour and served alongside a soft flatbread. Somehow I liked it better than the noodles even if it was simple fare lacking the pizzazz and sophistication of Sinian cooking. Ada was too young to remember, but I was two when our family left Iran. Father was a veteran of the war against Saddam; during the war, he picked up a bit about computers and then got a degree. It was the Nineties and American companies were taking on anyone who knew anything about computers. Life was still hard. We lived in an apartment, me, mother, father, my uncles (including Ada''s father), and all sundry. We had one bathroom, one kitchen. We washed and put up our clothes on the patio to dry them and the one time I got a bike it got stolen. I used to look across the street at the big brown houses where the rich kids lived. The kids with clothes that weren''t bought at Goodwill, who could pay to go to the fancy soccer camps with their brand new cleats. I know, I know, forgive and forget. Let the past be the past. I swished the turnip soup around my mouth. The screaming was dying down. Mother made soup like this. Not Lady Arianites, but my real mother. I could almost hear the chop-chop-chop of her cutting tomatoes. She had a bad habit: she would drag the knife across the chopping board once she finished chopping a tomato. We''d lost three flea market knives that way. No, who was I kidding? I couldn''t forget. Money...the things it could bring-- the things it cost us-- there was no greater sin than to be poor, powerless. I knew this the way those tomatoes knew the knife. Better to cut then to be cut, better to lie, cheat, steal, than to be lied to, cheated, or stolen from. Better to kill than be killed. A distant part of me smiled. Working up your nerve, eh? Promised Ada you''d do the right thing the right way but secretly you''re hoping that it all falls through, aren''t you? I told that part of me to shut up. Lady Arianites had lent me fifty cavalrymen, even now hidden at a nearby farmstead. Their captain had given me the command whistle when we met. I need only blow on it, and they would come, ready to burn and loot and kill. But I wouldn''t do it, not if I wasn''t forced. I wasn''t that kind of person. If I let them loose, they would kill anyone they liked, would ride high and free, halfway out their saddles. Besides Ada and I, no-one would be safe. Not Basina, not Humboldt. I was being too pessimistic. Demetrios hadn''t impressed me with his intelligence, but he seemed kind and reasonable. And Lady Skantarii, she knew where the line was. She wouldn''t cross it. And, of course, Ada was there to keep things from getting out of hand. Yeah. A door opened. The jingle of chain-mail. Muffled sobs. Startled, I looked up from my plate. Basina lay on her knees, yanked forwards by a hand clutching her thin grey hair. A hand covered in steel; a soldier stood there, clad in conical helm and at the table Lady Skantarii''s thin lips looked ready to take flight and my head was pounding and pounding. "My lady, I''ve captured the villain Basina," said the soldier, puffing out his chest. "She''s a real cheat, this old coot, though she acts so harmless. Caught her pilfering from the vaults, me and Jordy did." Lies. Lies! I paid her so much. Why would she couldn''t stoop to scooping up a few silvers? This was all lies. "Is that so?" said the Lady. "Shame. My dearest, hmm...my dearest son Balthazar, what is the penalty for stealing from the vaults?" Death. I stared at her. The pounding was beginning to coalesce, beginning to form bands of concentric pressure running round my head. "Death." She said. "The penalty for stealing silver is death. How tragic. I suppose we''ll have to execute her, won''t we?" "Legally, that is the penalty, mother." Demetrios said. "But Basina has served our family for so long. Wouldn''t clemency be in order?" "You''ve seen how shamelessly the maids behave," she said. "Mockery, mischief, and now even theft. Something must be done." "Tomorrow morning," Demetrios said, and Adashir turned his distraught face to mine, but for once that failed him. So that was why. Everything strange about the night-- she''d been planning this! Her eyes met mine for the final time this night. I knew she knew and she knew I knew. Her smile grew impossibly wide. Everywhere in my head was an incredible droning, a locust''s symphony, and the crooked part of me shook his head. There would be blood.