Lich for Hire

Harvey had only met Mr. Misfortune once. In all honesty, they hadn't been close. But looking at the knowledge recorded in that notebook, he couldn't help feeling a deep gratitude toward the old man.

He had genuinely left everything he knew to Harvey.

"Master," Harvey said, unable to help himself, "you specialize in crafting souls. Couldn't you use that fragment to bring Mr. Misfortune back?"

Ambrose looked at the glass jar containing the soul fragment and shook his head. "Bring him back? How? That fragment has lost all of its original will. All I'm doing right now is keeping it from dissolving on its own. I could use my abilities to reconstruct it, filling in the gaps with my memories and impressions of Vladimir, and producing something that resembles him.

"That's simple enough. But you and I both know it would simply a copy built from my recollections. It would have none of his abilities as a diviner, none of the memories of the centuries he devoted to the Unholy Kingdom, and none of the resolve that drove him to sacrifice himself.

"My creation would be an insult to who he was."

It was the same problem he had faced when the captain of the Silent Sea Pirates had asked him to bring back her father. The most he could have offered was a fabrication based on memory—no resurrection at all, just a comfortable lie.

Harvey pressed further. "What about the Chairman of Alkhemia? You said he has unlimited access to Wish. Couldn't he—"

"Forget whether a Wish could even bring back a diviner who just reshaped the world," Ambrose said, not looking up. "Gary Watts wouldn't do it."

"Why? Is it the cost?"

"No. He simply doesn't want Vladimir alive. Vladimir sacrificed himself for the Unholy Kingdom. If he came back, he would naturally enter the chaos realm to continue watching over the tiflings. But Gary Watts needs the tiflings' faith. If a hero who saved the kingdom through self-sacrifice suddenly appeared in their midst, who do you think they would be praying to?

"Human devotion can't be engineered. As long as Vladimir existed, the tiflings would gravitate toward him instinctively. Gary Watts would end up with very little faith to draw on, and he would have to spend considerable effort minimizing Vladimir's influence. That would inevitably turn them against each other.

"Gary Watts and I didn't spell any of this out as part of our arrangement, but we both understand it intuitively. The tiflings' survival depends on the faith they provide. If they can't deliver that, Gary Watts won't hesitate to discard them—actually, knowing Gary Watts, he would more likely process them as alchemical materials without a second thought. The man makes the undead look compassionate."

Ambrose had never doubted Gary Watts's capacity for coldness. The man had used the entirety of Alkhemia as raw material for his own ascension, causing untold deaths in the process, and that was before accounting for what he had done to his own family. He was the most ruthless person Ambrose had ever encountered.

That said, Gary Watts was absolutely rational.

Several million tiflings and a kingdom's worth of territory were the foundation of his formal ascension to godhood. He wouldn't abandon them, and he wouldn't be stingy about their care. An alchemist always kept his test subjects healthy and well-fed, after all.

Harvey still wasn't ready to let go. "What about the time dragon's power? Couldn't time be reversed—"

Ambrose looked at him. "I've known Vladimir for several hundred years. My attachment is understandable. But you only met him once. Where is all this urgency coming from?"

Harvey thought about it. "I'm not entirely sure. I think I genuinely admire him. And when I'm reading, what I hate most is when the hero dies. I always prefer stories that end well, even if the logic has to be stretched a little to get there."

"A personal preference, then," Ambrose said, without judgment, and continued his explanation. "Time is immensely powerful. Time reversal looks simple from the outside, but it has strict limits. I've taught you that the power of fate is like pushing dominoes. One falls after another. Reversing time means standing those fallen dominoes back up. The cost of time reversal requires far more energy than that of the original push.

"In this case, Vladimir knocked over far too many dominoes. Every thread of fate he severed for the Unholy Kingdom has bound itself to him in some other form. Even the Dragon Tyrant at full strength wouldn't be able to reverse time sufficiently to pull Vladimir back. The chain of cause and effect involved is simply too vast. And the Goddess of Fate would never permit someone to exile an entire kingdom to the chaos realm without a commensurate price.

"That it took only one legendary diviner's body and soul is already an exceptional bargain. To then want resurrection on top of it would be treating the Goddess of Fate's generosity as inexhaustible. People who think like that tend to find her kicking their legs out from under them and finishing the job with a heel to the skull."

Harvey felt a phantom ache in his head and quickly changed the subject. "Understood. I won't ask again. So what do we do now, Master? The Unholy Kingdom is gone. You just said the dragons may be returning to the continent. We can't just continue doing business as though nothing has happened."

Ambrose leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, and spoke in the tone of someone explaining something obvious. "Why not? Business has always been my primary occupation. And now is exactly when we should be expanding. Do you know what's most valuable to sell on the continent right now?"

Harvey considered it seriously. "Setting aside the war, the Unholy Kingdom is gone. If I recall correctly, it was known for spices and high-quality weapons and armor."

Ambrose nodded. "Better. You're improving. Tifling smiths are renowned throughout the world. Unlike the City of Alchemists' standard production lines, they specialize in bespoke magical equipment, in custom armor and weapons of a quality that even Alkhemia's techniques can't match. As for the spices, that's largely a question of geography. The same varieties grown elsewhere never quite reach the same quality."

"So you want to grow spices and set up a bespoke equipment workshop?"

"Don't be dense. If I start growing spices today, how many years would it take before the first harvest? And where exactly am I supposed to find the master smiths now that the tiflings are gone? And to think I just praised you for improving! We don't produce anything ourselves—we're middlemen. That's the point."

Harvey felt something click into place. "Master, can you still communicate with the Unholy Kingdom in the chaos realm?"

"Of course." Ambrose looked pleased with himself. "My master gave me such a useful artifact. The least I can do is help spread the word about it. I left a magic mirror with Gary Watts. It works through the God of Alchemy's divine realm as a relay, which means it allows for crossplanar communication. With that mirror, small-scale crossplanar transfers are possible as well. The spice trade is only profitable in bulk and there are plenty of substitutes, so it isn't worth our time. But all those orders for custom magical equipment that the tiflings used to fill? We can take every one of them.

"And it doesn't stop there. The tiflings themselves will have needs. The chaos realm is barren, and Gary Watts can't cover everything. In such a wild, chaotic place, if they get into conflicts, they're going to need ranged weapons badly. Magitech cannons, sniper rifles, jetpacks—we can supply all of it.

"An exclusive trade route to a plane no one else can reach. Turning a profit will be the easy part."

Before Harvey could stop himself, he asked, "Master, I hope this isn't rude, but did you plan this? Did you set your senior up deliberately? Have you been intending to turn that kingdom into your private market all along?"

"Nonsense." Ambrose's tone was dismissive. "I'm not a god. I can't predict everything. If I were that capable, I wouldn't have anything to fear from the Lord of Dawn. I'm just making use of what's available. I happen to own a great deal of land in that kingdom, and I'm certainly not going to let it sit there doing nothing."

The contracts the Impure had signed over to Ambrose were still valid: written agreements, legally sound, granting him title to that land. He was simply expecting a reasonable return.

Ambrose gave Harvey the details for the magic mirror in the chaos realm and left the rest in his hands.

He had grown comfortable establishing the big picture and handing off the details to Harvey.

Harvey sighed. "Master, I'm already stretched thin. Business in the desert has stabilized, but there's no shortage of work every day. Now I have another trade route to manage, and I'm supposed to find time to study that notebook as well?"

"Hire people. Do I need to explain something this basic? Even your junior Isabel knows to find someone to help manage the estate. You should—actually, come to think of it, get the drow to help you. They have better business instincts than you do. And while you're at it, plan out the airship transport routes. The dwarven kingdom and the Court of the Silver Moon should be the priority.

"It's also time to give the elves something to look forward to. I'd rather not have the elven god-king Choralan coming after me with a sword."

The idea of drow running airship transport routes had been something Ambrose had promised Catherine in passing. By now, it was actually workable.

Whether the drow could be trusted was not something Ambrose spent much time worrying about. A few failures here and there were part and parcel of innovation. You corrected course as you went.

Harvey wrote everything down. Belatedly, he realized, as he looked at his notes, that speaking up had substantially increased his workload. The transport routes alone were going to cost him considerable sleep and hair.

He was going to need help. He resolved to post a notice immediately: there would surely be no shortage of talented applicants if he posted a recruitment notice under the "God of Alchemy" brand they had built up together.

"Good. If you've got all that, I'll leave things to you." Ambrose stood.

Harvey blinked. "Are you going somewhere again, Master?"

"You were just talking about the dragons returning as though it's the new crisis of our age. Don't you think I should start preparing for it? I'm going overseas to pay a visit to my good friend Gareth, and to find out what's actually going on with the dragons."