Chapter 011: Matters of Classification
[Money is something you've gotta make in case you don't die.]
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{TURDAS, SOLYRA 19, 999 – 10:40}
{ROYMAN MARDEEL}
The Guild's upper conference chamber smelled of ink, dust, and the faint oil that kept its enormous door hinges from squealing. Royman Mardeel sat at the head of the table like a tired god surveying lesser bureaucrats. The chair had been made for someone narrower, but it fit him through long habit and stubborn will. His hands—soft, manicured, jeweled in discreet ways that shouted restraint more loudly than opulence—rested upon the stack of documents before him.
"Item seven," he said, voice dry as old parchment. "Gilford General Store. Inspection conducted by Rose Fannett, confirmed at zero-seven-twenty-five."
The clerk on his right scribbled the words as though they were scripture. Quills scratched, paper shifted, and Royman exhaled through his nose. The room's light came in slanting from the tall windows behind him, catching the dust motes that floated like lazy bureaucrats awaiting direction.
He flipped open the folder, skimming Rose's tight, elegant handwriting. Source uncertain but plausible. He hated that phrase. Plausible was a word used by people who feared being wrong. He preferred profitable, containable, or, at the very least, taxable.
"Fannett," he said without looking up. "Your assessment implies ignorance of the supply chain. You saw no trace of a Familia source, no magic certification, and yet you allowed the merchant to retain inventory."
Across the table, Rose Fannett inclined her head, posture crisp, ears tilting slightly backward—werewolf heritage restrained beneath professional poise. "The goods posed no immediate hazard, sir. Containment was unnecessary. The merchant complied with all requests."
Royman finally raised his eyes. Green met gold. "And you judged that on scent alone?"
A pause. "Partially."
He made a noise between a grunt and a sigh. "Elves rely on arrogance, wolves on noses. Perhaps together we'll form something resembling competence."
One of the junior clerks stifled a laugh; Royman didn't need to glance in that direction for silence to return. He leaned back, the chair creaking under his weight, and steepled his fingers. "Continue."
Rose's tone didn't waver. "The product is water. Bottled. Sealed in clear material not of glass nor any known resin. The merchant claims wholesale access through a warehouse network. The term is unfamiliar to me. He produced records—self-contained, itemized—displayed on a flat device that emits light but no magical signature. The Guild has no entry for such an artifact."
Royman turned a page, squinting at the neat notation: Device maintains internal power. Responds to touch. No mana flow detected.
He murmured, "A miracle without a god."
Eina Tulle cleared her throat softly from two seats down. The half-elf looked uncomfortable, as she usually did in his presence—whether from conscience or species, Royman neither knew nor cared. "Sir, if I may… the merchant appears harmless. His goods provide clean drinking water to civilians. There's been no complaint, and his prices are fair."
"Fair," Royman repeated, savoring the word as if testing a wine. "Fairness is irrelevant, Miss Tulle. We regulate order, not ethics. Orario thrives on predictability, not purity." He closed the folder with a dull snap. "Still, clean water attracts attention. The people will call it divine soon enough."
He tapped the folder once, letting his ring click against the wood for emphasis. "Which means someone will come claiming ownership of the miracle. Perhaps Ganesha. Perhaps some self-proclaimed water goddess I've forgotten exists. And when she does, we'll be expected to adjudicate her claim, process import taxation, and pay reparations for unauthorized blessings. It never ends."
Rose's tail flicked once beneath her chair—annoyance, perhaps, or simple instinct. "Permission to speak candidly?"
"You already are," Royman said.
"The merchant doesn't strike me as a zealot. He's pragmatic. If he intended to spread divine influence, he'd have chosen a more theatrical medium than bottled water."
Royman allowed himself the ghost of a smile. "Then we must thank him for his restraint."
He rose slightly in his chair, enough for the fabric to groan beneath him, and reached for the silver pot of tea that sat cooling on the sideboard. The porcelain cup looked comically small in his thick fingers, but his movements were precise, careful—he prided himself on never spilling. The aroma calmed him, even as his mind catalogued possibilities.
Unregistered merchant.
Unidentified technology.
No divine aura.
No mana signature.
He had dealt with worse: smuggled potions from Rakia, counterfeit Orichalcum filings, even a Familia that once tried to bottle dungeon mist and call it perfume. Yet this felt different. The lack of origin gnawed at him like an itch behind the eye.
"Tell me," he said, lowering the cup. "Did he strike you as educated?"
Rose considered. "Yes. His speech patterns suggest formal learning. Not in our tongue, but structured. Methodical."
Eina added quietly, "He seemed… detached, sir. Observing everything. Like someone who's studied people more than places."
Royman's brows lifted. "A scholar, then. Wonderful. The last one of those built a golem that ate half a street."
A murmur of nervous laughter passed around the table; Royman ignored it. His mind was already moving three steps ahead, weighing rumor against regulation. If the device was harmless, he could bury it under paperwork and taxation. If it wasn't… well, that was another matter entirely.
He turned his gaze toward the grand map of Orario hanging on the far wall, the ink lines marking trade routes, Familia holdings, and the Guild's inspection zones. Somewhere in that sprawl, one small shop was quietly selling bottled water purer than any spring blessed by the gods.
It irritated him. Not because it was dangerous, but because it was unaccounted for.
He took another sip of tea, eyes narrowing. "We'll need confirmation from the School District," he said finally. "If it's an artifact, they'll want to dissect it. If it isn't, they'll still dissect it out of spite."
Rose spoke again, calm as ever. "And if it's neither?"
"Then," Royman said, setting the cup down with a decisive click, "we'll make it something. That's what the Guild does best."
The silence after Royman's declaration stretched until even the steady scratching of the clerk's quill faltered. Rose was the one who broke it, her voice low but carrying enough authority to still the room.
"Sir," she began carefully, "am I to understand that you intend to… seize the artifact?"
Royman didn't look up from the file. He turned another page as if considering the matter in passing. "Naturally. Unregistered artifacts fall under Guild jurisdiction until their provenance is confirmed. That device meets the criteria. It glows, it records, it clearly performs functions beyond mortal craftsmanship. The Guild will secure it for evaluation."
Eina shifted slightly in her seat, her knuckles whitening around her folded papers. Rose's eyes, by contrast, remained steady. "And the merchant?"
"He may apply for reclamation," Royman said, waving a hand dismissively. "After paying the appropriate fines for unlicensed artifact handling, importation, and trade."
Across the table, a soft throat-clearing preceded the voice of Rellen Torvus, one of the senior clerks — a human man who'd spent twenty years buried under administrative law and looked all the more haunted for it. He leaned forward, brow furrowing over his spectacles. "Sir, with respect… there are no fines for that."
Royman arched a white brow. "Then there will be."
"Not yet," Rellen said, the words coming out in the careful tone of a man trying to stop a landslide with parchment. "The proposed licensing statute for artifact custody hasn't cleared subcommittee review. The draft is still under Ouranos' advisement."
Royman's eyes glinted with irritation. "Then we'll expedite it."
"With due respect again, sir," Rellen pressed, "you can't. Even if it cleared the internal review this week, it would take another month before it reached the Council floor. And no Familia will back it. The Freya and Hephaestus delegations already protested the first draft—they called it bureaucratic overreach."
Royman's lip twitched in a semblance of a smile, though it carried no warmth. "They call everything overreach. That's what makes them predictable."
Eina inhaled softly. "Wouldn't confiscation create more problems than it solves? If we seize something the man depends on for trade, the Guild risks damaging its reputation with independents."
Royman turned his gaze to her, the look heavy enough to quiet three secretaries and a page at once. "Our reputation, Miss Tulle, is that we regulate. That we keep the Dungeon contained, the gods appeased, and the market balanced. This city does not run on goodwill — it runs on order. And order," he said, gesturing idly toward the ceiling, "is purchased by precedent."
"Precedent built on fiction is still fiction," Rellen muttered, barely loud enough for the table to hear.
Royman's head turned slowly, like an executioner's blade aligning with its target. "I wasn't aware I'd asked for your moral commentary, Torvus."
The man stiffened. "Just stating procedure, sir."
"Then state it quietly," Royman said. "Before I find someone less passionate about rules and more appreciative of employment."
The room went still again.
Rose, unfazed, adjusted her gloves. "If I may, Director," she said evenly, "I don't dispute the need for classification. But the merchant's cooperation is—so far—complete. Seizing his property could provoke resistance, and if his methods truly are harmless, we gain little by turning him hostile."
Royman studied her for a long moment. She was calm — too calm. He respected that in theory and despised it in practice. Calm people didn't panic; they negotiated. "You seem unusually sympathetic toward this human, Fannett."
Her expression didn't change. "I'm sympathetic toward efficiency. Conflict wastes it."
He leaned back, the chair creaking again, and exhaled through his teeth. "Efficiency," he said softly. "Yes. You and I share that much."
The tea on the sideboard had gone tepid. He poured himself another cup anyway, swirling the surface until the steam barely stirred. "Very well. The seizure can wait—temporarily. But I want eyes on this Gilford. If the man has more of these… devices, we'll not let them slip beyond our reach."
Rellen scribbled a reluctant note. "Filed under artifact observation protocol, Section 4-B."
Royman didn't thank him. "Rose, you'll handle continuation of oversight. Eina, you'll act as liaison. Keep him cooperative, but make it clear the Guild is watching. If he so much as opens a second store, I want notice before the nails are in the frame."
"Yes, sir," they both said, though Eina's tone was quieter.
Royman sipped his tea and stared at the map again. "Good. I'll have the School District review your report. If they find merit, they'll draft an assessment request. If not—" his gaze flicked toward the folder, "—we'll find a use for him anyway. Orario doesn't waste novelties. It monetizes them."
He placed the cup back down with careful precision, as though ending a sermon. "That will be all. Send me updates by morning."
Chairs scraped, papers shuffled. The meeting dissolved into murmurs, the smell of ink and anxiety hanging in the air as they filed out. Only when the door shut did Royman allow his composure to loosen.
He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, muttering under his breath, "Unlicensed artifacts, divine water, wolves who argue philosophy. This city will be the death of me long before the Dungeon manages it."
He leaned back again, glancing at the faint shimmer of sunlight playing through the glass panes above his desk. "But if it kills me," he murmured, a thin smirk tugging at his lips, "it will at least make me rich first."
Royman remained long after the others had left, the echo of their footsteps thinning to a low rustle in the Guild's corridors. The chamber smelled of cooling tea and old paper; those were the honest comforts of his office, the small certainties that compensated for the city's endless appetite for surprises. He folded the report closed and let his thumb rest on the edge, feeling the weight of Rose's neat handwriting beneath his skin as if it were a tactile argument.
He opened the folder again, not because he needed more facts—there were plenty of facts—but because the habit of rereading calmed a part of him that hated loose ends. The page smelled faintly of ink and dust; the margins bore Rose's brief, exact notes. Cooperative proprietor. Device emits light but no mana. Stock verified: 86 units. The numbers were honest, unembellished. They invited arithmetic.
He let the arithmetic begin.
If the merchant was new—if the man wasn't someone who'd grown up in Orario and already drank the market's bitter tea—then he hadn't learned the city's rules yet. Newcomers came with two sins: ignorance and hunger. Ignorance was forgivable; hunger was exploitable. Royman ran small sums in his head while his other hand toyed with the cup's delicate handle. Two cases were eighty bottles. If they sold for, say, a conservative seventy Valis apiece—less than the hawkers' fevered guesses but more than a well bucket—then a single morning's crowd could turn a tidy profit. If the man hadn't pegged his price properly, well, the Guild could step in with "advice." Advice that came with implementation fees. Advice that required marking and monitoring. Advice that, in practice, rearranged profit margins in favor of the institution that wrote the rules.
He felt the familiar itch at the base of his skull: possibility. It was a small, dangerous thing, a green spark that had fueled more civic projects and less savory schemes than he cared to count. The city itself was a ledger that never balanced unless someone kept adding lines in their favor. Royman loved that truth. It made the world orderly—like a map you could still redraw if you had the patience and the right pen.
But there was work attached to opportunity. He thought of paper, stamps, the careful choreography of officials nudged into place, the polite but insistent letters to Familias that politely suggested cooperation. He pictured late meetings where men with better reasons than he would insist on their slice of whatever novelty the Guild corralled. He imagined Eina, small and earnest, dutifully writing letters while Rellen argued the wording until it made his teeth hurt. He imagined Rose watching the whole charade, quiet and contained, not because she approved but because she understood how the machinery ate people who rattled its gears.
And it was, by his own calculation, a lot of work.
He flipped the page to the purchase log reproduced from the merchant's device. Numbers aligned in neat columns—dates, quantities, what looked like a method of payment that didn't match any coin code he knew. The device's handwriting, if one could call it that, was cleaner than many clerks he'd paid to translate foreign ledgers. Whoever sold this man his goods kept immaculate records. That was both a mercy and a threat. A mercy because tidy ledgers were easy to tax; a threat because tidy ledgers could be traced and, therefore, could point to something larger.
A very small smirk came to his mouth. A man who sold tidy ledgers and didn't understand Orario's price psychology could be nudged into helpful habits. The Guild's "advice" could be offered as training: seminars on municipal trade law, invited Familia involvement for "security," a licensed distribution arrangement if he agreed to certain terms. The words in his head wore official jackets. They smelled of revenue forecasts and municipal grants.
But then came the counterweight—slowness, friction, virtueless expense. To capitalize properly would mean starting a machine. Machines demanded committees, and committees wanted precedent that would stand up if some loud god or louder Familia took offense. The School District would demand a look at that device if he said the word artifact; the Familia would ask for profit-sharing; the press—if such a thing could be called that in a city where rumor was the primary medium—would crow. He would have to balance profit against headache and, more importantly, against the minute-by-minute risk that meddling would turn the simple human into an enemy.
Royman set the report down and folded his hands, the gesture finishing the thought exactly as he wished it to appear on paper. The Guild could exert pressure gently, softly, in ways the merchant might not even notice at first: slight suggestions about price matching, an inspection team that "helped" him mark goods, or a recommended certification program that mandated fees and made his product appear more legitimate to cautious buyers. Each nudge would come with a ledger entry—expenses, invoices, penalties—that, aggregated, belonged to the Guild.
Yet he felt a trace of laziness bloom like a pleasant, expensive fungus. The work would be tiresome, and the reward, while certain in theory, would require him to dig into hours he'd rather spend on larger projects—an elevator shaft in the Dungeon, an architectural tweak to the market that would show his name on a plaque, something that would be remembered. He was not cruel so much as economical with exertion. Why lift a crate when you could write a note and have a clerk move it instead?
He rolled the idea around, tasting it like a fine, small wine. Maybe, he thought, we'll step in if it becomes worth the fuss. Let the man live under watch for now. Let Rose and Eina keep their little eyes on him. Let Rellen fret about statute and procedure while the Guild accumulated data without acting. The law would eventually bend if the opportunity brightened, and when it did, Royman would sign the order that made the bend profitable.
He imagined, idly, dropping in one morning—unexpected—to "inspect" personally, the way a landowner might wander through a tenant's holdings. He pictured the merchant's surprise, the polite explanations, the tiny rearrangements of price as he suggested a new list that tutored the public into paying more for perceived purity. He would leave as if by chance, his coat brush a gesture of approval that would be recorded and repeated. People liked being visited by authority because it made them feel important, and importance could be regulated.
"Maybe I'll stop by," he said aloud to no one, and the sound of his own voice surprised him with its casualness. He leaned back and allowed himself a small, private amusement: the idea of his bored, bureaucratic personage wandering into a tiny shop to check bottles of water. It was so petty—so deliciously petty—that for a moment he almost wanted it to be true.
But he did not move. He folded the report one last time, placed it in the exact spot where clerks would find it, and tapped the margin with a fingernail. The action was a seal, a quiet mark that both authorized and deferred. He rose, the chair sighing behind him, and dressed the part of a man who could be called upon at any hour without warning. The city outside kept its pace; the Guild's engines started up again with the careful, inexorable sound of cogs catching.
On his way to the door, he glanced once more at the map on the wall, at the lines that divided market from warehouse from Guild jurisdiction. He allowed himself a final, lazy plan in the margins of his mind: if the merchant learned the city too quickly, then they'd tax what he knew; if he learned slowly, the Guild would have the pleasure of guiding him—with a fee attached, of course. Either way, Royman told himself, Orario would not lose. And if he got a wild hair and dropped in for a visit, well—some mornings were more profitable as surprises.