12. TWELVE
TWELVE
FANKALO
Location: Rollard Isles
Fankalo stood between Mitek and Drogus, her first and second Hands, in the dim Dreiden warehouse.
Dreiden’s consultant arithmetist, Cosaile, had taken nearly two weeks to arrive in response to her emergency summons.
The broad-nosed man was as strongly built as he was gifted with numbers, but he shifted nervously in their presence.
His brown eyes flicked between Drogus—even more imposing than he—and Mitek, who kept a line of daggers on his belt and had a penchant for looking at people like he might bite.
After the rolling tides and swaying palms outside, the sparsely lit interior of the warehouse was less than welcoming.
The air was stale with the scent of their headquarters: metal and oil, freshly turned soil and sea.
And, of course, the sulfur of Mount Vespeyan.
There was just enough breeze to make the room feel like it wasn’t an elaborate tomb, though the walls of unadorned adobe and the floor of compressed earth might have argued otherwise.
Fankalo appreciated that: a tomb was a reminder of what faced them, should their economics fail in the short months ahead.
But Cosaile did not hold that same appreciation.
“Here?" he barked. "Surely there is a superior space for our discussion? I imagine it will take significant time to reassess, following this mishap.” That certainly was a cordial word for the utter fucking disaster of Calver’s demolition failure, yet it struck the one nerve she’d never been able to properly sheathe.
“Are you suggesting these accommodations do not suit you?” In the culture she had cobbled from dust into dynasty, conference rooms were an unnecessary flaunt.
Cosaile’s tanned face hardened as he thought a circle around a rebuke. “No… White Flower. I wish only to make suggestions related to the finances of your operation.”
Fankalo sighed. “Then let’s begin. Yes, here. What are we looking at for total loss?”
“Roughly five million silver notes.”
She fought to keep her expression from revealing the way her insides shrank. Mitek’s warnings were an echo in her mind. Blinded by her faith, she hadn’t accounted for what it would do to them if Calver’s demolition didn’t go through.
“And that’s after salvaging materials. Total loss would come to seven million, four hundred thousand.”
“Where does that put us with Pazirian repayment?”
“Considering projected distributions? An additional five months.”
Kretch. “We don’t have that much time.”
A corner of Cosaile’s mouth drew down, revealing his wooden lower incisor. “You could raise the cost of your technology.”
She crossed her arms. “The whole point is to undercut Aetech by seventy percent. You gave me that number, and it’s the one I’m sticking to.”
“Or lower your internal wages.”
“That isn’t happening.”
Drogus butted his elbow against hers. “Peace, Queen,” he rumbled. “We think three circles before giving reaction.”
Cosaile frowned. “If you still intend to make your repayment before the Tera’thian coronation”—and she would have to if she wanted Pazir to fight beside her—“you’re going to need to adjust.”
In eight years, they had yet to encounter such a significant hurdle.
But this was why she shelled out funds to recruit the best minds.
There was no need to waste time deliberating.
Cosaile, she was sure, already knew the worthiest solution.
“Cut to it. What’s my magic number? Where can we undercut Aetech and break even? ”
Cosaile laced his fingers and looked at the ceiling. “Sixty-three and one half.”
“Percent?”
“Yes.”
That wasn’t so bad. Her hand found her chin. “Will it affect buy rates?”
“Most likely. These are all only predictions, of course, White Flower.”
And if they asked the Pazirians for an extension? She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. “Done. Inform my scribes and bring the numbers to production.”
“Yes, White Flower.” It was the term by which Groundlings who had benefitted from her—rather, Mitek’s—philanthropy addressed her. “But there are a number of contingencies for us to review. And another item I’d like to address first…”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Ahm. Greeny”—he said the name with such distaste his tongue practically strayed from his mouth— “relayed that his holding rates have raised to six hundred silver a week. What do you want to do with the existing plates?” The ones they’d intended to sell to the Red Wing when the first batch was destroyed.
Fankalo pinched the bridge of her nose. The Chira’nanian moss lord proved to be a continual pain in the ass.
“Drogus, arrange a small team to retrieve them from Chira’na.
They’ve been enough of a loss as it is. Strip them for their cores.
We can still use those when the Dreiden corporation unveils. ”
Drogus offered a small bow. “Yes, my queen.” He made off without need for further instruction. She lifted thanks to her father for rescuing him, all those years ago. Brilliant, efficient, and endlessly loyal, Drogus and his counsel was the only reason she’d made it as far as she had.
“I want a breakdown of your numbers prepared for my review this time tomorrow,” she instructed Cosaile.
“Yes, White Flower. Please take note, there may be slight alterations after reconfiguring the recent inflation of…”
Her mind proved incapable of focusing on Cosaile’s indefinite spouting of nuanced variables.
They had been rubbing noses with the belief that they would no longer be in debt—that the Pazirians would become a willing ally instead of waiting to cash in on their lien.
Albeit a lien they might never conclude, due to the fear that the Shadewalker would wreak havoc on the rest of their royal line should they stray.
Convenient, that, but not necessary. The point had always been to pay them back.
Allies would be more valuable to her than investors in the long run.
As her thoughts spun, a swell of indescribable sensory input flooded her with such force, it threatened to replace the very blood within her veins.
Her Luck rarely came on like this, without her being in a meditative state.
But the fire surging through her now was insistent in the way her magic had only been on few occasions before.
Like when she’d finally found Calver.
Cosaile’s words became unregistered noise, blending with the continual barking of seals and shrieking of cockatiels outside.
Fankalo walked absently in the direction of the tether and closed her eyes.
This feeling… was not Calver. She could still feel him in the direction of the Jiradesh, as he had been for weeks. But it was close. So close.
A chill traced her spine. The feeling beckoned to her. It was as though her magic was listening to her. Like it wanted to meet her.
“Brat?” Mitek asked, stepping after her. “The arithmetist—”
“There’s something—” She paused, moistening her lips. “Out there.”
His face pinched. “Bad Luck?”
“I…” She faltered. “I don’t know. It’s just—” She’d never felt more compelled by anything in all her life. What if this was the breakthrough she’d been looking for? The one that would take her from reading Luck to wielding it like a true distortionist? “It’s significant.”
And it was only a half day’s journey toward Solutium. Toward Cul’Mon. Her teeth clenched together as she meditated on her Luck—only to find it absent, overwhelmed by whatever this was.
“I have to go.” The words surprised her as they left her lips.
“Where?”
“Solutium.”
“Solutium?” Mitek’s eyes widened. “So you’ve decided to play cat and mouse with a starving fucking lion, then? Great. I’ll go prepare both of our funerals.”
“I’m not trying to stand toe to toe with Cul’Mon,” she argued.
Mitek forced a laugh that sounded more like a bark. “Then don’t go to Solutium. It’s bad enough that his fleet is at our Chaos-cursed threshold as it is.”
“Well, I’m not strictly going to Solutium, just closer to it.
Trust me on this. It’s important. I’ll be back before anyone realizes I’ve left.
” That, and she wanted to be alone when she finally distorted for the first time.
“You help Drogus get a ship and crew together to retrieve those distortion cores. Or, better yet, run a review of the sex worker report to be sure we’re adequately staffed.
” She flashed a grin. “I know you love knowing everyone’s business. ”
Mitek shook his head. “No, no, no. Brat, listen to yourself. You’ve waited for this meeting for weeks.
” He gestured toward the arithmetist, standing awkwardly in the center of the warehouse like he might still be longing for a chair.
“You’ve been unraveling since Calver stopped responding.
I knew this was going to happen. You’re distracted.
You’re impatient. You’re acting like me.
Those are fated warning signs. I need you to refocus because whatever’s cracked you between the ears, I have a bad, bad, bad feeling about it. ”
“What, you have Luck too, now?”
“You’re telling me there’s good Luck around this idea?”
The truth was so frightening she didn’t dare speak it: there was no Luck around it at all.
It was like Luck, but not. She listened again, tuning into the flow of fortune around her.
The beckoning blocked all other sensation except a rough impression of Calver, so far away.
She was blind to all the probabilities that usually vied for her attention.
Like every other mortal.
That hollowed her, but did nothing to quell the allure of the beckoning.
And she was not any other mortal. She was the Queen of the Raiders.
The Hand of the Shadewalker. The White Flower.
Her Ghost army would topple the Tera’thians.
She would take up her birthright on the Nelfinden throne.
She was invincible: a legend. She had to believe that first or no one else would.
A legend would not ignore her destiny.
“What do you call it when you have an idea you aren’t sure about?” she asked.
Mitek scowled. “A hunch.”
“That.” She started to leave toward the skiffs docked on the far side of the isle, opposite the Rogue’s Rapture.
Mitek inserted himself between her and the door. “I’m going with you. And we’re taking a squad.”
“A squad”—she pressed a hand to Mitek’s bicep to push him aside—“is superfluous. If I just go now, we won’t need to waste the personnel.”
Cosaile cleared his throat from behind them. “Ah… I’ll just be off, then,” he said. “We can talk more another time. Tomorrow, perhaps?”
They watched as he made his uncomfortable exit. Fankalo might have stopped him if she could think sensibly. But there was nothing more important to her in the moment than the overwhelming need to answer this summons and—
She shivered. Mitek had every right to be concerned. This was not like her.
“You aren’t going anywhere near the Tera’thian amassment on a hunch, which, for all you know, could be some kind of trap,” Mitek argued.
“The Tera’thians can’t read minds.”
His lip curled. “And yet Cul’Mon finds his little prodigy every single time he catches a fucking whiff of him.”
“That’s different. Calver’s a Destruction Conduit. I’m not.” Though that didn’t make her any less terrified of Cul’Mon finding her. Surely he’d love to have her help complete his set. Moving towards Solutium was risky. Too risky.
The feeling came in another swell, pushing her towards the door. She would not—could not—ignore it. “See you tonight, Mitek.”
He grabbed her arm. “Do you remember when you asked me to serve as your Hand? I told you I would follow you across any ocean. That includes oceans divided by a fated ‘hunch’.”
She chopped at his elbow to break his grip. “And I warned you then what I had planned. So stop trying to stop me.”
Mitek released her, but jogged around to place his hands on her shoulders. “I won’t stop you. Just take me with you. I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
The statement was absurd: as if Mitek could fight off Cul’Mon any better than she. Still, her lips twitched. “Then who will be in charge?”
Mitek shrugged. “Leave Cam to it. He never gets to be in charge of anything.”
She laughed. It felt good, breaking the knot of tension in her chest. “Yeah, with damn good reason.”
A note of ease returned to Mitek’s voice. “A front’s about to come through. I’ll prepare the pinnace?” The safer vessel for choppy water, but slow.
She could see his reasoning—twice, now, superior to her own. But preparing a squad was already going to take more time than she was willing to give. “I want to move quickly. You can source a squad, but we’re taking the gig.”