Book 4 Chapter 20.5: Rubbing Elbows
Book 4 Chapter 20.5: Rubbing Elbows
++Recent years have brought a more varied opinion of magicians to the noble class of Garamon, largely down to the fact that several of the younger noble families have begun to find use for them. It is no longer strange to find nobility who are on good terms with the magically inclined. Though it is still not expected.++
- From ‘Magic and Mundanity’, a commentary on the role of the arcane in an advancing society.
Several hundred eyes turned to me the moment I stepped into the ballroom. It was a big place, expansive. Large enough that even with the thousand or so—nine hundred and seventeen, exactly, my lich’s mind helpfully told me—guests, there was room to spare. Myself and Blakely scarcely took up another molecule of the room’s capacity.
Despite that, I realised, more people were turning to stare at me and Blakely by the moment.
No, not me and Blakely. Just me.
I heard whispers, saw lips moving, and felt the palpable sensation of many dozens of conversations striking up all at once, each one centred on me.
I had known, intellectually, that my wealth was bringing a level of general fame that even my talent had not quite spread among the nobility and business classes of Garamon. Now I was being given the opportunity to see and feel that effect in full force.
And it made me smile. I resisted the urge to announce myself with some grandiose declaration and just headed deeper into the room, Blakely in tow. My bodyguard continued grumbling as we went.
“Don’t like this.” he whispered to me. “Look at those clothes, those big, baggy dresses. You could hide a rifle under there. Can’t hide a rifle in this fucking suit, it’s bullshit.”
He still had not forgiven me for depriving him of the chance to bring an anti-yacht weapon.
“If they were using them to smuggle weapons, it would likely be the men with baggy clothes rather than the women,” I pointed out. Blakely blinked at that, and immediately calmed down. The best way to smooth over his fraying nerves in any situation, I had found, was always to provide a rational reason as to why a perceived threat was no danger.
My ruminations were interrupted when someone stepped in front of me, a tall man smiling broadly as he ran his eyes rather pointedly up and down me.
“Lady Isabel Vornholt,” he beamed. “I’ve heard so much about you, and you’re just as beautiful in person as you are in a newspaper. Perhaps more so. Care to dance?”
“Who are you?” I asked him.
His smile faltered a moment. “Andrew Pilwit,” he sniffed. “You may know me from—”
“I am not interested, go away,” I cut in as I walked past him. He looked for a moment like he may say more, perhaps bark out an insult in an explosion of anger, but a quick glance at Blakely, who was currently sniffing the air like he was memorising Pilwit’s scent to track down later, deterred him from such a foolhardy course of action.
“You sure that was a good idea?” Blakely whispered as we went. “Making enemies can be fun, but it also gets you stabbed in the back.”
“That was Andrew Pilwit,” I told him. “I have heard of him. He is the owner of a chain of gentlemen’s clubs operating in Yir, and a rather vocal opponent of the Women’s Property Act. He has spoken quite a lot about his general distaste for the fact that Bountiful Oil was managed as much as it was by me, though my success had quieted him down somewhat.”
“You’re hoping to make a few friends by snubbing him in public,” Blakely guessed. “Figuring that anyone who’s likely to side with you anyway will enjoy watching you bollock him.”
“Precisely.”
Ordinarily, being so dismissive to a fellow noble was utterly unconscionable.
Ha! Perhaps in a fairy tale. I had personally experienced more than my share of just this sort of behaviour. In actuality, like with all other things about Garamon society, social politeness and courtesy was all about power. Those with wealth and influence were simply allowed to talk to those without it more harshly. In fact, doing so was, itself, a demonstration of that wealth and influence.
I looked around and saw that few of the gazes aimed at me had become any harsher. Those that were not bright with amusement and approval—likely Pilwit’s enemies—were still holding a good deal more respect than before.
It had been a hastily calculated social move on my part, but apparently my calculation was good.
This set the general tone for my time at the party. Far from the outcast I had once been, wealth and success had, seemingly by magic, altered the very fabric of Garamon society to ensure that, on top of being merely tolerable, all of the deviant behaviour I had once been looked down upon for was now the very height of fashion.
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Women asked me about getting into magic themselves, seeming to consider it as an interesting pastime, while men appeared repeatedly baffled at my still being unmarried. And of course, everyone had questions about my business. Mostly revolving around the true extent of its wealth, which did not need exaggerating to leave the room awed, but invariably falling into not-so-subtle inquiries about how they might become involved in it and get some piece of the action.
If only they knew what I planned for it, they would all be even more eager to affiliate themselves with Bountiful Oil.
One topic that did not come up, I noted, was my still-forming Vornholt Institute, which was just fine by me. I gauged that most in Garamon considered that to be a vast impulse and likely a waste of time, but did not especially look down on me for it. By common consensus, those with tens of millions of crowns were entitled to waste their fortunes on whatever they wished.
Provided my social class was not compromised by the endeavour, I would continue to enjoy all of the prestige that sheer wealth afforded me.
Blakely was enjoying it too, I noticed, albeit in rather a different form than me. I was having fun picking out the names and faces of those who I knew had slighted me in the past and making them, in specific, squirm for it. A dismissal here, a barbed remark there, all subtle and deft and all measured perfectly to show my contempt in such a way as to make it clear that the other party-goers would remain on my good side only by mimicking such disdain.
My bodyguard, though, was rather less subtle. Whenever someone drew near too quickly, Blakely would waste no time in positioning himself between me and them. If someone took offence to this, he would inform them that, as the bodyguard of Bountiful Oil’s founder and owner, he would be taking no chances with my safety, and would consider any further arguments to be a potential danger.
To some extent, I knew, the man was doing it on purpose, simply enjoying the opportunity to torment the people who had once tormented him, similarly to me.
But there was a genuine streak in it too. I suspected somewhere around his fourth accusation that someone was ‘a demon in disguise’ that the sheer volume of people present was starting to take some kind of toll on the Cadnichan, and was forced to extricate him and myself from the wider mass of people as we headed to the end of the hall.
“Cunts,” Blakely growled as we walked.
“I do not disagree,” I noted. “But connections with these people are ultimately necessary if I wish to grow my business.”
Most of them had nothing to offer me, speaking only out of self-interest and the vague hope that I would be stupid enough to accept lopsided deals that benefitted the other party while doing scarcely anything for me. A few, though, had been interesting.
The ones I was keeping most clearly in mind were those owners of large cargo fleets. If I could arrange some cheap way of transporting my oil in bulk, then expanding my refineries and properties would become far more viable far more quickly. I was not the only player in the oil game at the moment, but I intended very much to achieve that status. The product’s demand was rising by the year, after all. If I had my way, I would be the only one increasing its supply to match.
Blakely and I ended up perched at a far wall for a moment, snacking on the little fancies trayed around the room and sipping some of the wine they were paired with. I still had not acquired a fondness for alcohol, but drinking socially was considered a vital part of Garamon high society.
Blakely, for his part, accused the servant of attempting to poison him when a drink was offered his way, and then sent the poor man scurrying away with the threat of riddling him with bullets. He did this quietly enough not to disturb the wider party however, so I did not really care.
As entertaining as it was to simply drift around the room, soaking up praise and torturing imbeciles, I had come with a very particular goal in mind, and was still waiting for the chance to act on it. I needed to meet with Earl Elqarth himself, the owner of this private collection. In a few hours the tour of his works would begin, but I would sooner deal with him personally and lay my own eyes on everything without a gaggle of idiots present to distract me.
Fortunately, I need not have worried, because barely an hour after I arrived the Earl made himself known in his hall. I saw him first as an effect on the crowd. People gathering around a larger knot of bodies and drifting along the hall at roughly walking pace, dragged in the wake of a single luminary who was so engulfed by gossiping hanger-ons that I could not even catch sight of him at first.
By the time I finally saw him with my own eyes, it was already clear that Elqarth was making his way towards me directly.
He was a short man of middle age, balding and round-faced, not especially striking in any way at all. His wealth seemed to have a palpable aura, at least going by the dregs still clinging to him as he moved, but I could see nothing notable about him even knowing of it. He was just a man, and not even one possessing any great magical or martial power.
And he was making a beeline for me.
“That is Earl Elqarth,” I told Blakely. “Do not behead him.”
My bodyguard muttered something under his breath as the Earl approached. Elqarth smiled at me, paused, then turned over his shoulder. “Would you all give us some room, please?” he asked.
Instantly the tidal clot of sycophants redistributed themselves back across the hall, leaving an empty space around myself and Elqarth that a small cloudscraper may have been able to park in.
“Sorry about all the buzz,” the Earl smiled. “But then I suppose luminaries like us tend to attract that sort of attention, don’t we?”
I had become one of the few hundred wealthiest people in Garamon with an oil business I had founded merely a year ago, and possessed a talent for magic that was more categorically akin to a natural disaster than anything on the human scale.
Elqarth, on the other hand, inherited several million crowns from his father and managed to turn it into half a billion after finding the lands most of it was tied up in randomly appreciate in value a few decades ago.
Not only were we not the same, but the very idea of comparing us was so offensive to me that it came as something of a physical challenge not to burn him into a stretched shadow across the ballroom floor in response. I controlled myself. Barely.
“It is fine,” I replied, then resisted the urge to kill him all over again as he reached out a hand.
“May I have this dance, my lady?”
The urge returned.