The Hand We're Dealt - Chapter 14

“What happened last night... it doesn't bother you?” I asked Hector as we ate bread and jam outside, the morning air crisp and damp.

My friend snorted and shook his head, casting a short glance around us to ensure no watchers as he bit into his loaf. “Not the slavers, if that's what you mean. Disgusting practice, and people who'd drag a little girl back to a monster... no, that doesn't bother me. I've had a run-in or two with bandits or thugs while traveling. It... surprises me a bit that you'd... escalate like that, I guess. But...”

I remained silent, enjoying the thin apple cider as he worked through his thoughts.

“I guess I'm kind of glad I wasn't born into magic,” Hector finally stated, looking away with a slightly ashamed tone to his words. “It... you've told me stories, Henry, but your world is kind of...”

He made a vague motion with his hands.

“The words you're looking for are, 'fucked up,'” I replied, the coarseness of my language making him seize with a snort, ducking his head as he flushed.

Part of me still came from a more casual time, after all, and my tongue occasionally cut a bit too deep for my own good.

“Yes, that,” Hector nodded, now smiling. So I'd at least cut the tension. “I know why you did it and, in my head, I get that they were under one of those magic contract things-”

A subject which Hector understood well enough, having insisted on signing a binding one between him and myself for our business venture. The man was a good friend, a trusting one, but he was also correct in that he just wasn't cut out for living in the moonlit world.

“-but snapping to violence like that, just straight up killing them with no chance to back down? Rubs me the wrong way. And that business with...”

I held up a hand and nodded. “I understand, but... there was no better way to handle the matter. And given van Beek's stance on the matter, he'd burn down half the town rather than live with the knowledge of one of them breathing the same air as him.”

Hector grimaced. “I figured you had something of a reason for the whole thing. I guess I don't have to wonder why he'd go to such lengths.”

“Most of that type,” I replied carefully, attempting to avoid using the word 'ghoul' in public for however little it mattered at the moment. It was still good practice to keep words like that out of your day to day vocabulary when dealing with the average person. “Most of them aren't as well-behaved as the one we met. They tend to... ah, prepare their own meals, if you understand my gist.”

Hector blinked, then grimaced, openly disgusted as he dropped what remained of his loaf onto the napkin he was using as a plate. “Absolutely vile.”

I simply hummed in response, not directly condemning the ghouls. As much of an atrocity as murder and cannibalism might be to a human, ghouls weren't human. Ghouls had to eat, and they were obligate humanitarians.

“Anyway... I think we need to talk about something else. The girl, Emerald,” Hector offered as a change of topic.

“As you probably gathered, her father's some big-shot voodoo lord down south, a school of magic which heavily relies on sympathetic effects,” I rolled my eyes at his confused and inquisitive look. “One of the fundamental laws of magic is that 'like affects like.' If you have a piece of someone – a lock of hair – you can use that to affect them magically, for good or ill.”

“Wouldn't think you could use that type of thing for good,” Hector hummed, resuming his eating as he took a drink from his own cider. “So, what's going to happen to her?”

“The Professor is providing refuge, but he's said that I have to deal with it personally,” I replied with a sigh. Partially relief, partially aggravation. “Given the fact that he's going to die in a few years-”

Hector opened his mouth.

“-which, no, he still won't tell me about,” I preempted, and he made a motion of surrender, “he wants to use it as a test of how I interact with other practitioners. If I manage to get what I want out of it – Emerald's nominal freedom – then I'll be given a bit more freedom myself, room to grow and develop my skills.”

“And if you screw it up?” He asked, leaning back on the bench.

“Emerald gets sent home with her father and I get put through remedial training and probably have a very bad time of it,” I stated grimly.

“That's about what I'd expect from Old Dutch,” Hector nodded, popping the last of his bread into his mouth.

The silence hung between us for a long moment, neither heavy nor uncomfortable.

In the distance, the sun was fully cresting over the trees now, a new day dawning.

“I'll be heading back to New York today,” Hector finally stated, sighing. “I'm going to miss this place. Especially the clean air. The city just stinks of all manner of filth.”

“Remember to boil your water,” I warned him.

“I know, I know... your little germ theory idea,” Hector waved me off. “I've been working on those projects you told me about, getting this cripple to take notation of every little bit of it. And I've got that instrument you wanted ordered. They broke the first attempt or I'd have brought it with me.”

“A binocular microscope,” I stated. “It’ll have much higher magnification than what’s currently available. And it will help prove germ theory along with the work you’ve got those people in New York doing. Proving the contagion is the key.”

“Which will let you kill miasma theory,” Hector finished with me, “I know, I know.”

“A microscope,” I stated. “Like a telescope to look at the-”

“-small things,” Hector finished with me, “I know, I know.”

“It's going to change the world more than the steel we're already making,” I promised him fervently.

“Probably not our bank accounts, though.” Hector paused. “Or, at least mine. Your mattress must be getting pretty stuffed with all the gold you've shoved under it.”

I snorted. “Yeah, you'll still be saying that when the next banking crisis hits.”

There'd been one just before I was born, in this timeline. It was a testament to how intertwined the American and British systems were, still, a decade after the former's independence, that a crisis in England had spread to the United States right before the turn of the nineteenth century. Thankfully, I'd grown up in the first decade of the eighteen-hundreds, a time which was... fairly consistent with economic growth.

“You are such a pessimist, you know?” Hector asked. “Things are looking up. The war's coming to a close in Cuba, we've already gotten Florida, and trade with Canada's up. What's to be worried about?”

“Indian attacks in the Great Lakes region,” I replied pointedly. Even if the War of 1812 hadn't happened due to my actions, there was still a series of brushfire conflicts between settlers and natives in the region that couldn't be prevented.

And, yes, I did mean couldn't.

There was nothing I could do to stop it, which burned, but was also something I was used to.

The United States had, after all, already fought a war to expand beyond the Appalachian mountains. That being one of the many causes of the Revolutionary War. The War of 1812 was just a natural extension of that fact. The current war with Spain over Florida and Cuba would ease tensions in the region as settlers moved south of Georgia and began moving into Cuba as well, but...

“What's that got to do with anything?” Hector asked, a bit petulantly.

I sighed and didn't roll my eyes, no matter how much I wanted to. “The land they settle may be – effectively – free, as long as they can defend it, but the tools they use to make their houses aren't. Nor is farming equipment. Nor is seed. Or a loan to get through a bad harvest.”

“Okaa~aay,” Hector nodded slowly, still not getting it.

“The national bank,” I explained, referring to what would be known as the Second Bank of the United States, historically, “is funding all of that through mortgaged properties and providing currency without gold backing it. This makes the current financial boom very, very fragile. If something shocks the system, there will be runs on the banks and the banks don't have enough gold to exchange for the currency they've printed.”

“But you're still just speculating,” Hector waved me off, shaking his head. “You're looking for a problem. There's nothing to say that something will shock the system.”

“Even if something doesn't, that still means that the banks are just going to continue to overextend themselves through unbacked currency,” I replied, bringing an open hand down on my knee in a cutting motion to emphasize the point. “And that's putting aside the point that, when Europe stops setting itself ablaze for five minutes, people are going to go back into the fields and start farming again. When that happens, crop prices are going to take a big hit – maybe even crash – and that-”

“-that will mean farmers can't pay their mortgages, which will make banks foreclose on the properties, people will see the headlines and start to panic, trying to withdraw their money,” Hector groaned, palming his face. “Jesus, Henry... you know how to spoil a man's entire day, don't you?”

“You forgot the part where the native attacks on farmland are going to compound everything,” I interjected ruthlessly. “Burning harvests means there's nothing to sell, burning the farm itself means there's nothing for the bank to sell even if it forecloses and seizes the property, and that's not even going into all the dead people.”

Hector made a disgusted noise. “The savages should just let us have the land. They're not using it anyway.”

I grunted, my feelings complex on the matter.

On the one hand, what the United States was doing was unquestionably a genocide. It might not be explicit, it might not be intentional, and it might not even be the desired outcome for most people to see the natives culled, but... it's what was happening. A natural result of the settlers' desire for farmland and the nation's desire to expand territory to provide for tax-paying citizens.

Indians, as one might imagine, didn't pay taxes or vote.

So their opinions weren't considered all that valid.

On the other hand, there was a lot of bad blood by this point. On both sides. Both the white man and the red man had unilaterally broken treaties, killed women and children, burned settlements to the ground, and seized land that the other side held as theirs. No one wanted to listen to a reasoned argument when they had friends or family who'd been murdered in their sleep by the opposing force.

Again, not something I could change, even if I wanted to.

The various tribes of the continent routinely went to war with each other and several were mortal enemies. Any treaty signed by one could and would be ignored by another. And 'treaties' didn't mean the same thing in their cultures as it did to European sensibilities. A treaty, by native standards, was an agreement that was good until it was broken.

And it could be broken, at any time and any place.

That breaking, then, would essentially serve as a notification that hostilities were back on. So if a group of young Miami or Shawnee braves decided it was time to blood themselves, come back with scalps, brides, and slaves... they'd break a treaty and their chief would back them up on it.

No declaration of war, no exchange of diplomats, no arbitration of terms to the prior treaty to keep the peace.

Many people, in fact, argued that the way settlers and militia conducted warfare against indians was an adaptation to the ways indians conducted warfare amongst each other. I wasn't entirely onboard with that idea. Angry mobs of people deciding to do violence onto outsiders were a grand tradition among Europeans and they could just as easily provoke a conflict as indelible cultural differences.

Regardless, though, the native peoples' lack of an overarching government, lack of official recognition of treaties, absence of a legal code for land ownership, and generally unsettled lifestyles meant that blood was going to be shed until someone came out the winner.

And that was just how it was going to be.

“-you want to do?” Hector asked, and I blinked.

“Sorry, I was lost in thought,” I replied with a shake of my head. “What was that?”

“I was asking what you wanted to do about the financial crisis?” Hector asked, slightly exasperated.

I grimaced, feeling dirty at the thought of profiteering something like this, but... “Start setting aside funds. Not in the banks, obviously. Hard currency. Real gold, or even better, silver. Napoleon's bleeding out in Spain, but he's still got fight in him. We've got time. Maybe a year or two. But the first harvest after whatever peace they sign is going to be a rough one.”

Hector pulled out a pad and started making shorthand notes, his own unique variety. “Alright, I can start reducing deposits and have a vault put in once I get back. A bigger one, at least.”

I nodded absently, most companies had some kind of safe room to keep liquid cash, important documents, or other things of a sensitive nature. But what I was talking about would need a substantially larger kind of secure storage. “When the harvest hits, we'll send people out to start buying up paper currency issued by the banks at... say, seventy-five percent of their face value.”

“That's pretty generous,” Hector noted, but didn't disagree.

“You remember what I told you about your mess with your family last night?” I asked, making him grimace. “It's the same type of thing. We have money. We have a successful business. We don't need to squeeze them for all they're worth. These are the people growing the food the country eats and fighting off attacks on the frontier. It's enough to buy useless paper at a profit, bandage the wound, and let them keep their dignity.”

I paused, then snorted. “Besides, if we did it at full face value, they'd be suspicious of what we were trying to pull.”

Hector chuckled. “Okay, so I've got a plan to turn gold into wastebasket liner and paper for our bums. What then?”

“We take all of the notes issued by the National Bank that just got passed last year, the one Nicholas Biddle got put in charge of. We're buying up those notes specifically,” I pointed at him sternly.

“What about people coming up to exchange notes from state banks?” He asked in reply. “Once word gets out we're doing this, you know they'll show up, too. If things get as bad as you're saying they're going to.”

I frowned, stretching my memory to try and pick out what had happened with state banks back during the Panic of 1819. “Buy those at... sixty percent. Higher risk.”

Hector hummed, nodding. “And then?”

“Then we have a team of lawyers show up at the headquarters of the bank in Philadelphia with all of our worthless paper in tow,” I smiled at him.

Hector whistled lowly. “You really don't pull punches, Henry. What if they refuse to cash us out?”

“That's what the lawyers are for,” I replied bluntly. “If they refuse, we take them to court. Same as the state banks. It's one thing to shut the doors on a barely-literate farmer from the back-country. It's another entirely to do the same thing to one of the biggest and most well-connected companies in the country.”

Hector chuckled while shaking his head as he looked down at his pad. “Let's see... how to I write that? 'Piss off everyone in government'? That sound about right?”

“They'll be angry, yes, but they won't be able to do anything with the public on our side,” I informed him, making him blink. “We'll have just stabilized a bank panic, after all. We helped farmers keep their land, gentlemen keep their businesses; we'll be heroes of the common man. That we bought the bills at the rate we did? Well, that's just taking the risk on us. After all, the government might welch on the deal! Like they're trying to right now!”

“Words cannot describe how thankful I am we're friends, Henry,” Hector stated, laughing as he made more notes. “Okay... and what if the bank can't pay?”

“We settle for payment on a plan, with interest, of course,” I replied with a smirk. “In fact, that'd be preferential. Stable line of income for the next... however many years it takes them to pay us off.”

“Alright... that should do it,” Hector nodded, then made to put away his pad, before I put the tips of my fingers on it and widened my smirk.

“Oh, Hector... I'm just getting started,” the older boy's throat worked as he took a deep breath. “If we're doing this... we're doing this whole-hog, my friend. Let me tell you about a little idea I had called the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission.”

Hector put his pad back down and resumed furiously taking notes.

I'd already changed things beyond recognition. If I wasn't going to hide away from the possibility of shifting the timeline, then I was going to embrace it. And one thing I could head off at the pass were the dozens of goddamn bank panics the United States had suffered through during the nineteenth century.

…

I sighed as I dropped into my chair, the air cushion beneath my ass and along the back of the chair taking my weight much more comfortably than the hard wooden surfaces they insulated.

Beside me, sitting on a stool and watching me anxiously while she was trying to pretend not to, was Emerald. Normally, I used that stool to put my feet up on after a long day, but due to the lack of seating beyond my own chair, I'd had to improvise.

“I need to get another chair,” I noted, a task nowhere near as simply as it would be in the twenty-first century. If the general store didn't have anything I could get the local furniture-crafter to repurpose, I'd need to have something commissioned.

“Please don't bother yourself,” Emerald replied, her voice barely audible. “You've already done so much. Put yourself at risk.”

I grunted, promptly disregarding her request. “We need to talk about your father.”

Emerald winced, her red-eyed gaze having none of the desperation or fight in them of last night. “Must we?”

I nodded. “They called your father the 'Voodoo Man,' last night. He sounds like a fearsome man.”

Emerald nodded in agreement. “He... does horrible things to people, at the behest of others. For gold or favors. All of New Orleans is under his thumb.”

I nodded slowly, removing some paper from a pile. Thankfully, ever since Hector had gotten started making money I didn't have to bug van Beek for his supply. Instead, I could buy my own from the general store or the university's surplus. “Alright, you want to be free of him, yes?”

Emerald nodded vigorously, her fingers intertwining and clenching.

“If you want that to happen, I'm going to need you to answer all of the questions I ask you as truthfully and completely as possible. If your father is capable enough to have his men follow you here, I have no doubt he'll show up eventually-” Her eyes widened, the beginnings of panic flaring.

“-but I put that trinket of his on an outgoing mail cart wagon this morning, so it should take him some time before he manages to realize where you are and why his men aren't reporting back,” I assured her, the full explanation doing quite a bit to calm her down.

Honestly, I didn't know how effective all of that would be. I'd taken a lock of her hair while she slept, utterly exhausted, and had confined her to the house for as long as possible. I hoped that the house's wards would mean that whatever spells he was using to follow Emerald, the spell fixating on the hair instead as the easier target.

It was my hope that the continued motion of his beacon and Emerald would give the illusion of an ongoing chase northward, into Canada.

“His name is... Jacob Facultier,” Emerald began, her voice tired yet resolved.

I made my first notes. “Good, now... describe his spellcasting school.”

Red eyes blinked at me in confusion, and I sighed. “Teach me the basics of voodoo.”

She jerked, looking sickened. “I won't. I won't use his art. That's why I ran away. Never again.”

She trembled at the confession and I wanted to reach out to comfort her, but... I didn't know how she'd react. “If I'm going to help you, I need to know everything I can about him. How he casts his spells, the theory he uses, the powers and loa that he invokes, the texts and books he's fond of referencing-”

Especially that last part.

“-but if it helps set your mind at ease, I'm not going to be casting voodoo spells myself. I just need to understand what I'm up against, how to protect against it, and what I should expect should it come to blows with your father,” I explained at length.

Emerald stared at me for a long moment, her eyes piercing my own, searching for a lie.

She wouldn't find it. Voodoo had some neat theory that I'd flipped through, but I was much more partial to classical African shamanism than the blended school of magic that had manifested in the new world. And even then, shamanism wasn't a top five in my go-to spellcasting methods.

“A-alright,” Emerald nodded, eventually. “Here's how he taught me...”

I listened and took copious notes as Emerald walked me through her father's methodology. The man was a voodoo bigshot, alright, and partial to invoking Baron Samedi, the voodoo loa who governed death, the dead, and resurrection.

The loa weren't a pantheon, at least not by the traditional definition, but they were powerful spirits who held sway over the fates of mortals. A blend of deity and ancestor spirit, they were often invoked or bargained with to secure luck, fortune, favor, and success. Or to drain the aforementioned virtues from another and make them fail.

Although voodoo and its more malicious counterpart houdoo didn't use traditional curses, their effects could be the same in practice. It was less 'a curse of misfortune' and more of a 'rearranging of fortune itself,' in other words.

Emerald also told me that texts for the pseudo-religion were exceptionally rare. Although it had long been intertwined with traditional Catholicism, much like belief in the Faerie Folk of Ireland with people of that isle, formal Catholic dogma and the church itself condemned the practice of it. Which meant that, as was often the case, any codex or book found discussing the subject was burned.

Which meant the majority of the teachings were passed on by folk tradition instead of written word.

Given that it was a system of superstitions created by slaves in the African diaspora, both the lack of literature and the focus on oral tradition weren't all that surprising to me.

Later, I left Emerald to cleaning. Normally, I'd have just allowed her to rest, but she wanted to earn her keep. No doubt feeling that, if she proved her usefulness in some small way, we were less likely to simply hand her over.

With that done, I sought out my master.

Professor van Beek was in the laboratory basement, as he usually was, my own plagiarized spell for orbs of light surrounding him and providing neat, clean, and constant illumination. He'd appropriated it a few months prior and rarely bothered with a candle since.

I'd honestly love to give the old man a bit of shit over it, but I knew he'd thrash me for the disrespect.

“So, how is your latest fool's errand, Boy?” The Professor asked without looking up.

“I think I have an angle to work to get her free, but I'll need some time to prepare. Possibly a week, maybe two, depending on how my experiments go,” I replied.

He snorted. “And what then? Use her to warm your bed? You are getting to that age.”

I grimaced, then decided on a non-answer. “It's a waste of time to formulate plans until I know that there will be a future for her with me. I'll cross that bridge once the current trouble abates.”

“Hmm... very well, but keep her out of my way in the meantime. She can take up some of your baser duties while things come to a head. Now, enough time wasted on useless matters. You had something else you wanted to speak with me over,” van Beek ordered, sliding his gaze from his book up to me.

“You're due to die in six years, Master,” I observed.

The old man refused to flinch. “Still wasting my time, boy. Don't think you're too old for me to teach you a lesson.”

“From what you've told me, a traditional sorcerer's apprenticeship lasts twenty years,” I continued, as if he hadn't threatened me. “Since I'm to move at an accelerated pace if I want to be awarded my mastery before you pass on, I'd like to propose my mastery project in rough draft.”

Old Dutch, as Hector was so fond of calling him, straightened at that, rising from his bench and looking me over properly. His gaze was inscrutable. “You think you're ready for that, boy? Four years of study and showing your hubris?”

I shook my head. “No, Master. I'm not ready for my mastery, yet. But the project I have in mind will take years to finish. Possibly half a decade. If I'm able to accomplish it-”

“-then, and only then, would I recognize you,” van Beek nodded slowly, his right hand reaching up to pull lightly at his neatly-trimmed beard. “Not the worst idea you've had, I suppose.”

Which was high praise, coming from this bitter old bastard.

It was also an implicit argument for Emerald's presence. As much of an asshole as the old man might be, he wouldn't settle for anything less than excellence from his student. He might dislike the idea of getting involved in another practitioner's dealings on general principle, but if Emerald was to take over my basic cooking and cleaning in the long-term, it would mean I'd have more time to devote to developing the art.

Which, in turn, meant I'd make faster progress towards a mastery.

That was of paramount importance, if he was to leave behind a properly-trained pupil who could represent his legacy.

Even if I have no idea what that legacy really represents, in and of itself.

It was a recurring problem for me, one that I was perpetually-tempted to use my sacred gear to resolve, once and for all. The man had private papers, after all. Likely, he'd kept a journal or diary at some point, even if it was only to catalog research. Or I could look up the organization he'd been apart of. Even if he'd lived a life without any documentation at all, someone in the guild he'd been a part of would have written something down.

But, I was eternally busy.

Or so I told myself.

Really, I was worried what I'd find. And of the consequences should Marteen van Beek ever find out I'd snooped where I shouldn't. He'd never explicitly forbidden me not to, but he'd made it very well understood that an apprentice did not question the master, for any reason. Which included looking into his past.

My thoughts filling my head, I was nevertheless quiet as he obviously considered my offer further.

“Do you have an initial rendering of your project?” The Professor finally asked, reaching out and snapping his fingers as if expecting to be presented with the document promptly.

Thankfully, I'd come prepared. Underneath my arm was a slim stack of papers, which I handed over at his request.

He opened the folder.

And released a grunt.

Another page.

A noise of consideration.

I tried not to shift anxiously in place.

“A spell that can cast itself,” he murmured, weathered fingers sliding over the page. “To what end?”

I took a breath and began to explain. “The practicality is that a sorcerer's spells take time, resources, and effort to cast. They are, by necessity, more comprehensive formulations of magic than a magician's applied metaphysical mathematics. My project is an attempt to create a series of spells, of sorceries, that are effectively pre-cast, but held in stasis until they are required. At that point, they can be activated with a minimal exertion of magic, and resolve their effect.”

A magician could cast whatever spell they knew, whenever they wanted to, presuming they had the fuel to power it.

A sorcerer needed a fully-equipped laboratory or ritual site, reagents, and an amount of time varying between minutes and hours.

The trade-off was efficiency, precision, and a limited area of effect.

So if one front-loaded all of the preparation and simply pulled out a spell-in-a-box that had been stored after casting...

“How do you intend to prevent degradation of the matrix?” The Professor asked, frowning as he looked through my notes again. “You aren't the first to have thought of this, Apprentice. In the old days, we referred to it as the Agrippan School, the last sorcerer to have made a substantial advancement to it.”

“What did he do?” I asked, frowning. The name rang a bell for some reason.

“He was – supposedly – capable of storing spells within ceramics, to be shattered upon the casting of the spell inside. However, they were only good for a week before the spell destabilized and shattered the object containing it, releasing the magic; often to disastrous effect,” van Beek explained absently, his eyes still locked on my research proposal. “Little of his work survives, though. Damn traitor.”

I opened my mouth to ask about the insult, but thought better of it.

“The solution I'm toying with is containing the spell matrix within a living entity,” I stated, earning a sharp look that made me hurry to elaborate. “A spiritual entity, not a physical one. I'd hoped to use a contracted spirit to 'store' or hold the spell until such time as it needed to be cast.”

Van Beek hummed, then nodded, handing me back the documents. “I want you to elaborate on your design. It's a novel idea, at least, even if the Agrippan School never amounted to much in practice. Still, I suppose it is a good enough idea to earn you a mastery – if you succeed.”

I hid my relief and nodded. “I'll get to it, then, sir.”

A grunt was my only response as the professor waved me off, returning to his own reading.

~~~

Here's the next chapter of my 1800's Highschool DxD story!

...which still strikes me as an odd thing to write about, fourteen chapters in.

Anyway! I'm weathering the storm alright. We have power, our internet is down, but I'm tethering through my phone to post this. Streets are very closed under an inch of snow and schools/government offices are likely to be shut down through Tuesday.

Fun times.

I will... probably get to work on something else. Not sure what. Can't go anywhere, so I might get started on that SAO chapter I wanted to do this month. Or more pokemon. Dunno. We'll see what cabin fever brings out.