To Secure a Vault Part 1

To Secure A Vault occurs almost exactly a century before Mage Errant. Part 2 should be out pretty quick next month, it's already half-done now! (I really wanted to release the whole thing this month, but I'm really only just recently getting my brain functional again after finishing book 5.)

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There are endless tales of unbreachable vaults filled with treasure on the continent of Ithos. Some of them are even true. 

The fabled Vault of Skyhold, filled with devastating weapons that should never be allowed to see the light of day. I know it exists, but I don’t know how it is secured. Nor have I pursued the matter, for fear of catching the Crystal Sphinx’s attention.

The Silent Oubliette, a prison built deep in the heart of a mountain, which contains only a single immortal and indestructible prisoner, who was locked there by the Ithonian Empire after they destroyed a provincial capital. None know where it is, save that it is in a deep mana desert that leaves the prisoner nearly powerless. The prisoners of war who dug out the heart of the mountain and the guards who watched them were all sealed in the vault with the prisoner. Only the mighty archmage who led the project ever returned. Whether the workers and guards were alive when it was sealed is unknown, but after all these centuries, the question is academic.

The Root’s Grasp, the vault of the Sican Council of Elders. Buried a league or more beneath the ground, deep into the bedrock, and endlessly wrapped in the impossibly strong roots of the great tree city. It is said the Root’s Grasp contains the means to reliably create a great power, and it is how they grow a new Sican Elder when one of the old ones dies or is destroyed.

Then, of course, there is the prison of the Sleeper in the Sands- but that largely consists of sand and sleeping spells. Magnificent in scale, but fairly pedestrian in design.

Other great vaults of legend are merely that— legends.

The Wanderer’s Last Trick, in Ctesia, is said to be buried in a vault also of the Wanderer’s making. There is no such vault. Whatever the Wanderer’s Last Trick is, it is carried always by a member of the royal family. (And, of course, there are ten thousand theories as to what the last trick is— I’m personally quite fond of the idea that it is a way to summon the Wanderer back to aid the city, but that is almost certainly childish nostalgia on my part— the Wanderer hasn’t been seen in many centuries, and must have died on some faraway shore. It’s honestly more likely that it’s some horrific weapon or other.)

The Burning Heart, a treasure vault or prison supposedly deep inside Alikea’s restless volcano, is a myth as well— the Alikean Parliament and their volcano mages have enough of a struggle merely controlling and redirecting its eruptions, preserving a magical vault inside the mountain as well would beggar belief.

The Heart of the Web, a supposed treasure hoard of Tetragnath, is merely a folktale— the arachnid hive mind has no interest in gold, jewels, or other magical treasures. Tetragnath wants nothing that would attract even more attention to their forest.

What all of the truly impenetrable vaults, both real and legendary, have in common?

None of them are bank vaults. 

There’s no such thing as an impenetrable bank vault. It’s impossible. Each and every bank vault in existence shares one inescapable flaw.

Banks have to make withdrawals and deposits. Frequently. This means there needs to be an easily accessible entrance to any given bank vault. An entrance, to a bank robber, is just a gaping weakness.

Worse, each and every one of those bank transactions are carried out by people. 

And no matter the species, people are always the greatest weakness of a bank vault.

I should know. I’ve designed a dozen bank vaults.

And I’ve robbed dozens more.

My name is Drysa of the Vault, and I’m the greatest bank robber to ever live.

Bankers love me for it.

At least, the competent ones do.

After all, I work for them.

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One of the most puzzling Tsarnassan customs, to outsiders, is the way in which Tsarnassans deal with unwanted infants. Other nations have orphanages, hospitals that accept infants without questions, or cults that are always happy for new members of any age. 

Let’s not speak of the poorer nations, or the city-states that trade rulers every year, where unwanted children are simply abandoned. It makes the wealthy and powerful uncomfortable to speak of them, and considering how much time I spend moving among the upper layers of society, I know there is no greater sin in life than discomfiting the mighty.

Tsarnassans, unlike any other nation, deposit unwanted children at the bank.

Unwanted children like myself. 

The custom arose in the last decades of Ithonian rule, when they began seizing children for their horrid mass experiments. It’s said that, in the early years, when only orphans and the children of refugees were taken, a soft-hearted dragon shepherded many of a city’s orphans into his bank, and claimed them as his employees, saving dozens of lives.

The part of the story that is told less often is that the dragon died in one of Ithos’ purges only a few years later, his defiance never forgotten.

The story lived on, though, and in the years after the fall of Ithos, as the province of Tsarnassus began to rebuild themselves into a kingdom, it became a tradition, and then a custom.

There aren’t many orphans in Tsarnassus. Tsarnassans families all live in tightly knit clusters— mothers and grandmothers, uncles and great uncles, cousins, everyone. Four generations at once, in many homes. So when parents die, there’s almost always plenty of family already there to raise the child instead.

So when an orphan shows up at the vault, it implies an even more tragic backstory than usual. An entire family, multiple generations, orphaned. A young couple banished from one or both of their families, dead to illness, leaving behind a new child.

No, the bulk of those children weren’t orphans. Just unwanted, for one reason or another. Even with contraceptive cantrips, there are unwanted pregnancies. Especially from the mind-blind, often trapped in poverty by the stigma they face in some nations. 

And, unfortunately, Tsarnassus can be one of those nations. Some families don’t care, and would never think of casting out a mind-blind member. Many other families are less kind.

Regardless of the reason- if you leave your child at the bank, they will take it without question. Individual banks vary in how they tend to the children— some raise them in group homes, others are raised in the homes of the bank’s employees as their own children. 

There are only two things all these children have in common. First, they are all raised well and given the best educations, lacking for nothing. Second are their names.

They are all, like me, Children of the Vault. 

Many, if not most, of us, go into work in the very banks that raised us. There are even a rare few banks where every single employee, for generations, have all been named “so-and-so of the Vault.”

I was, when I was young, utterly forgettable. Always precisely average height for my age. Precisely average weight. A face so average you’d forget it as soon as you saw it. You’d never be able to pick me out of a crowd of girls my age.

The only thing that stood out about me was my family. The bankers who adopted me were gorgons, so I pretty quickly picked up the nickname of “world’s shortest gorgon.”

No one bullied me, other than that nickname. Partially due to my sheer averageness, but mostly due to the fact that both of my sisters topped nine feet tall by the age of thirteen. 

I was always smart, but there were smarter children. I always studied hard, but there were children who studied harder.

Really, only three things stood out about me. I was unusually observant. I never acted without thinking. 

And, most unusual, there were my affinity senses.

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I was having a picnic atop Tsarnassus City with my eldest sister and her sons, one of whom was a child of the vault like myself, only with the tail and scales of a naga, when a messenger arrived from headquarters, saying that I’d been hired to rob another bank.

Rob it, then rebuild it even better.

If you’ve never been to Tsarnassus City before, I promise you, it’s not what you’d expect from the greatest city on the entire continent. 

If you were to approach from the land, you’d see nothing more than a great grassy field in the distance. A few scattered trees, lots of children flying kites, couples strolling through countless flowers, and painters with canvases. The field stretches nearly two leagues in every direction, almost perfectly flat. It ends before the horizon, though, where it runs straight into the sea-cliff, and the ocean beyond.

You’ll only notice two things odd at first. The weirdly-shaped birds far overhead, and footbridges that seem bizarrely out of place, sticking up off the plain.

Get a little closer, and you’ll realize that the birds are the famed gryphon patrols of Tsarnassus. I can assure you that you won’t pay much attention to them, though.

Because you’ll have noticed what the bridges are for by then. You’ll have noticed the massive, impossible chasms running through the great field. The immense canyons and pits plunging hundreds of feet down into the limestone below.

Most people’s thoughts after that, I’m told, immediately jump to the children playing, wondering how the parents can trust their children next to such sheer drop-offs.

Wards, mostly. A handful of people fall from the city’s top every year, but the vast majority of them are suicides who have deliberately broken the wards. You’re at far more risk of falling below, where railings are more common than wards.

We’d already long-since finished lunch when the messenger arrived. My sister Ulla and I were chatting while the boys played when the messenger arrived. He flew up from the nearest chasm, spun about in midair looking for me, then darted over my way.

“Drysa of the Vault?” the messenger asked. He was holding a small silver sphere in one hand. 

I waved idly at him, and Ulla rolled her eyes.

“Your services are needed at the Central Branch,” the messenger said.

I gave him a once-over. Young, earnest, spine as stiff as a board. Handsome, but too young for me.

I’m could see him doing the same, surely doubting that a forgettable middle aged woman like myself could be the legendary Vaultbreaker, the greatest thief alive. 

“It can wait,” I said. “I’m spending time with my family.”

The messenger scowled. “It’s urgent, and you are needed at once.”

I sighed, and gave Ulla an apologetic look.

Then I made the messenger wait a few minutes while I said goodbye to my nephews. I can’t lie, I resented my job quite a bit at that moment. The boys had just turned six, and they were gratuitously adorable.

I hugged my sister goodbye as well, which was an undertaking as always— even sitting down, she was taller than me. Ulla was by far the tallest person in the family— not counting her snakes, she was almost closer to ten feet than nine, so she was considerably taller than me even while sitting. Her husband was, amusingly, not an inch over eight feet, so they made quite a pair. 

Of course, her height was the lesser difficulty in saying goodbye. The greater difficulty, as always, was the lowest snake behind her left ear, which, as always, wrapped itself around my arm and refused to let go until I’d pet it and given it enough attention.

My fault, really, for spoiling it so much when we were younger. It had always been my favorite of Ulla’s snakes, just a tiny bit more yellow than the other deep green constrictors on her head.

The messenger took all this with ill grace. I noted, to my amusement, that he never once set foot on the ground, always hovering just a few inches above it. New to his job, I imagined, and never wanting to hold still.

I’d known quite a few over-eager fliers like that. They either learned to start walking more places, or they quickly got out of shape. Flying doesn’t give most mages much in the way of exercise.

Finally, I strode over to the messenger, pulled a silver marble out of my belt pouch, and tapped it against his. 

It hummed, sending a pleasant tingle up my arm.

I always had to carry the damn tracker with me when not on a job, in case the bank needed me in a hurry. It wasn’t just me, though— every high-level bank officer in Tsarnassus had to carry them. Always had to confirm that the messenger was the real deal, though, so the tracking spheres also served as authentication enchantments.

Seven times out of ten when I was summoned outside of my regular work hours, it was just some idiot behind a desk who thought he’d come up with a new way to rob one of our vaults, and wanted me to think of a way to secure them from it. It was always something I’d already long thought of, though, or that one of my predecessors had thought of even farther back.

Two times out of ten, it was just a routine heist they wanted me to test.

One time out of ten, though, it was something interesting.

I wordlessly tucked the silver sphere into my belt pouch, then took off towards the nearest staircase.

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The messenger caught up with me on the stairs.

“Ma’am, I’m supposed to fly you to headquarters,” he said. “It’s urgent.”

“It’s never that urgent,” I mutter.

I ignore his earnest arguments as I descend the stairs, looking out over the depths of Tsarnassus.

I never get tired of this view.

Tsarnassus City is carved entirely from the monolithic limestone of the seacliff. There is no mortar, no cement, no seams at all— every building, staircase, balcony and railing has been carved and sculpted entirely out of the off-white limestone, by hand, claw, and spell. Tsarnassus City is a single, solid piece of stone. Immense chasms were dug deeply into the depths of the cliff by the city’s founders, the city’s entire population living within the cliff-dwellings lining every surface of the chasm.

Those who have never visited Tsarnassus City often imagine it as a grid, of even, straight chasms intersecting it at right angles. And there are neighborhoods this is true of, but most of the city is far messier than that. Some chasms curve, others cut past one another at angles, there’s even a huge spiral in the far northwest of the city. There’s no grand design behind it— the mages and laborers who carved the city over centuries followed the strengths and weaknesses of the stone, the faults and the natural caverns.

The early afternoon sun filtered deep into the depths of the city’s chasms, reflecting warmly off the limestone. It never gets dark in the chasms— the moment direct sun leaves them, countless glow crystals light up the chasms. I’ve been taken on flights over the city at night a few times, and it’s a sight like nothing else, as though a thousand veins of light were erupting from deep within the continent.

The chasms vary wildly in width. There are some narrow crevices you can jump across, if you’re a fool, but most of the larger chasms are wide enough for four ships to sail abreast in the water at the bottom. If I were to leap over the staircase’s railing, I would plummet more than a third of a league down to the seawater below, which washes into the chasm bottoms even at the lowest tides. Even so, of course, ship’s captains always prefer to dock and unload at the high tide docks— the low tide docks are wet, miserable places that never dry out, being submerged more often than not.

After several minutes of the messenger’s earnest pleading, I finally let the messenger fly me there. Less due to any of his arguments, more due to the bustling crowds out today, for some reason. The hour’s walk to Central Branch would have likely taken half again that long today.

As the messenger’s magic lifted me off the ground, I noticed, to my surprise, that I could feel both winds wrapping around me, as well as the familiar stomach lurching from gravity magic. 

Rare, to have wind and gravity affinities. Very rare. 

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The flight to Central Branch cut the travel time down to twenty minutes. It could have taken ten, if I’d let the messenger fly us above the city, rather than through the chasms— but the gryphon patrols hated it when fliers raced above the city, and, more importantly, I enjoyed the view inside the chasms too much.

Not to mention, going as fast as we were now was already giving me a headache

My gold affinity senses automatically started tracking the coins in the purses of passerby as we flew down the chasm, and my restrictor tattoo struggled to suppress the sensory input. It could never suppress it entirely, but it was generally more effective when stationary or moving at slower speeds.

If I’d tried to take this flight without my restrictor tattoo active, the resulting migraine would have knocked me out or left me useless for hours.

“So how long until you try for a force affinity?” I ask the messenger. My voice carries easily— any halfway decent wind mage could keep the air near them still, so passengers could speak with them.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked.

“You’ve got a gravity affinity along with your wind affinity. Most everyone with both tries for the third, attempts to become a Thunderbringer,” I said.

“I’m not,” he said.

“Really?” I asked. “So you naturally have these two specific affinities?” 

He shook his head. “No, I just finished developing my gravity affinity a year ago. And I am trying to become a Thunderbringer— just not with a force affinity.”

“Wind and gravity aren’t enough on their own to get you up to the necessary speeds,” I said. 

I didn’t blame him for trying, really— even though the vast majority of those who attempted to become Thunderbringers died horribly, pulling it off was a guarantee of fame, wealth, and power. There had only been a handful in history, but being able to fly faster than sound itself pretty much guaranteed you a spot among the great powers.

He didn’t respond for a moment, as he flew us down below a covered bridge.

Maybe covered wasn’t the right word— it was more of a tunnel that had been left in place when the chasms were carved out of the limestone, with a few windows added in.

“You’re right that you can’t do it without all three,” the messenger finally said, “but force is also the least important of the three. And there was at least one known Thunderbringer who replaced it with an inertia affinity, so that means it is definitely possible with different combinations of affinities.

“Have you figured out how to develop an artificial inertia affinity then?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, but I have found several methods for artificially developing a pressure affinity, and I think that could work as well.”

I raised my eyebrow at that, and gestured at him to continue. 

Half of what followed was technical jargon that likely didn’t make a lick of sense to anyone outside the community of high-speed aerial mages, but I did my best to follow it. You never knew what tidbit of magical knowledge might come in handy in my line of work.

The flier actually slowed down the trip a little, and took a more scenic route— for all his earnestness, he clearly cared even more about his magic than his job. I wasn’t complaining— the central branch had dragged me from my picnic, for something that was almost certainly not time sensitive, so I was happy to make them wait. 

We passed through dozens more channels as we flew— past great ledge-parks, past cliff-tenements holding countless thousands of Tsarnassus’ million souls, and past the great market-bridges spanning the widest chasms. The greatest city in the world, and not a single solitary drop of mortar used in its construction. Every single structure had been carved from the stone, or sculpted like clay by stone mages.

Tsarnassus City had started as a quarry centuries ago, before the Ithonians had conquered Tsarnassus. There were few cracks or flaws in the limestone, and its position right by the sea meant that it was easy to ship wherever was needed. Tsarnassan limestone could be found in Lemannen, in Alikea, in Ctesia, in half of the hundreds of city-states scattered across the northeast of the continent. The Ithonian Empire had vastly increased the demand, and over the years, the quarry workers quarters, built into the cliff walls, multiplied throughout the chasms and took on a life of their own, until Tsarnassus had become a vast economic and cultural power in its own right, supplanting Lemannen centuries ago. 

The limestone wasn’t even close to running out— the chasm quarries were still expanding and growing at the edges of the city, and stone was still the city’s largest export.

We finally reached the First Chasm, and turned seaward.

First chasm was the originally quarry, and was absolutely massive. It was no deeper than any other chasm, but it was three times as wide as any other chasm in the city. Immense palaces, opera houses, museums, and government offices lined the walls along the league and a half of its length.

Central was near the sea-entrance, where ships sailed underneath the cliff and out into open waters. The entrance to the central branch was carved in the shape of an immense coiled ammonite, but with one major difference— the coils grew thinner towards the edges, rather than thicker. The entrance was a vast circular tunnel in the dead center of the palace-sized spiral, and it was only accessible to those who could fly.

Few better ways to keep out the commoners and the riffraff than to literally make it impossible to walk to a place. If you couldn’t afford a mage, dragon, or gryphon to fly you in, you were too poor to be there.

The two of us darted inside the immense tunnel, filled with dozens of others going in and out, without feeling crowded in the least.

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Half the security measures we passed through were absurd and unnecessary, which delighted me, since I’d designed them.

The most important security measure was really just about the only one we needed, and we bragged about it to everyone.

After all, having the world’s only captive kraken to protect our vault was a damn fine deterrent.

Not a perfect deterrent, though. I’d figured out at least a half dozen ways to cross the pool and rob the vault, and if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that there are always more ways to rob a bank than even I can imagine. 

But I figured out a way to protect our gold even if someone does breach our vault. If someone breaks into the security, through the dozens of layers of wards, enchantments, and good-old fashioned steel walls? 

Well, they’ll not come away completely empty-handed. We do keep a week or so of normal transactions in there, after all. But that’s hardly the motherlode of treasure most thieves would expect. 

We don’t put most of the gold in the vault. We throw it all in the huge saltwater pool with the kraken.

Who, by the way, isn’t captive, and the pool isn’t actually a pool— it’s a tunnel. One that leads out to sea, and over a dozen leagues north, to a massive undersea sinkhole, a pit in the limestone hundreds of feet deep. Said sinkhole is the den of a dozen krakens, the largest of which push nearly four hundred feet in length. Tsarnassus has a peace treaty with them, and it was surprisingly easy for me to negotiate one on behalf of the bank as well. They keep the bulk of our gold reserves hidden deep in their den, transporting it back and forth through the tunnel as needed, and we pay them in beef and other land meats they can’t acquire easily on their own. We don’t even have to hide the payments, since everyone already knows we need to feed the kraken.

Of course, it does mean we need to keep healers and poison mages on staff to make sure no aspiring thieves try to poison the meat we bring in, but that’s hardly the most absurd security expense in one of the vaults I’ve designed over the years.

The office the messenger flew me to wasn’t one I’d been in before, and I sighed in irritation when I saw its occupant. I recognized the type immediately— young, ambitious, willing to risk anything to get ahead. And by risk anything, I meant make other people take risks for him, of course.

The messenger, probably wisely, chose to stay outside the office.

“You made me wait longer than I’m accustomed to,” the banker snapped.

“Inconvenience builds character,” I offered. 

“I don’t need character, I need reliable employees,” he said.

I just smirked at him. I pumped mana into my restrictor tattoo momentarily to weaken it, and reached out with my gold affinity senses towards the banker’s signet ring.

Solid gold, marked with the house symbol of a very prominent city family. Not one known for its involvement in banking, however, so I was guessing he was an ambitious younger son with no role in the family businesses, for one reason or another.

The banker looked away first, disguising it by reaching for a folder.

“We’ve got a job for you,” he said.

“Really? Here I was, thinking you wanted to offer me something to eat,” I said.

He ignored my snark, sadly. I was more valuable to the bank than he was, and he knew it. 

“What’s the job?” I asked, ignoring the folder in his hand.

“Are you familiar with Corb’s Bet?” the banker asked.

“Not in the slightest,” I said.

“Mining town northeast of Sica, in the eastern foothills of the Barren Range,” he said.

My eyes narrowed at that. “Gold mining?” 

I had a very strict policy against visiting gold mines. Nasty places, involving a lot of even nastier alchemical processes. 

The banker shook his head. “Natron mining.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “What in the name of the great powers is natron?”

“It’s a compound of salt, soda ash, and a few other things,” the banker said. “Used for all sorts of things. Soaps, dye, glassmaking. Most of all, though, alchemists use it in massive quantities. Enough that the miners of Corb’s Bet could afford to open their own bank, in a city of less than five thousand people. Nasty, harsh life, in a nasty, harsh place, but it’s made them wealthy.”

“Enough that they’re worrying about being robbed,” I said. “Who’s backing their bank?”

“Up until now? No one,” the banker said. “The miners just built an underground vault to keep their gold in.”

I blinked at that. Independent banks were rare— building vaults strong enough to withstand direct attack by mages intent on robbing them was a pretty extreme expense, and so most banks were just branches that shipped the bulk of their gold to central vaults, in cities well-defended enough that roving great powers weren’t a concern.

“And they’re reaching out to us instead of Sica beacause…?” I asked.

“There are certain… tensions, there,” the banker said. “Both political and cultural.”

I groaned. This was going to be a nightmare, I knew it.

“What sort of timeframe are we working with here?” I asked. 

“The vault needs to be secure three weeks from tomorrow,” the banker said.

“Are you insane?” I demanded. “I’d have trouble even assembling a proper team in two weeks, and it’s got to be, what, at least that long to sail there? Not to mention, securing a vault usually takes months on its own.”

“More like three to a month weeks to sail there, this time of year,” the banker said. “And you’ve already met your team. And the way you’re going to get to Corb’s Bet in time.”

He gestured out of his office, towards where the messenger was still waiting.

“This is insane,” I said. “Not a chance. You’re setting me up to fail, and I’m not about to waste my time just to boost your career.”

The banker smiled at that. “Oh, you’re absolutely right, it is insane. Moreso than you even realize.”

I gave him a suspicious look, unsure what he was up to.

“The reason we need to move on such a fast timeframe? It’s because Corb’s Bet is only thirty leagues from Thursa.”

I frowned. There was something oddly familiar about the name Thursa.

“What’s in Thursa?” I asked.

“Dorsas Ine is,” the banker said. “And he’s started melting his armor again.”

On second thought, perhaps insane was too weak of an adjective for this mission. 

Suicidal seemed more accurate.

Though…

Maybe there was an opportunity in all this.

“You want me to proof a small mining town’s bank vault against a monster individually powerful enough to go to war singlehandedly against nations,” I said. “A phoenix who has personally looted dozens of the most secure vaults in the world. And you want me to do it in just weeks, with only a single mage to back me up?”

“I know, it’s a bit much,” the banker said. “It’s not quite as bad as it sounds, though— Corb’s Bet has promised you the use of their mages, wardcrafters, and alchemists. And they have a surprising amount of those. Anyhow, there are quite a few potential targets in the region, and Dorsas Ine is unlikely to exert too much effort against any one target, especially given the fact that it’s at the edge of Sican territory. He’s no match for the combined might of the Sican Elders, after all.”

I rolled my eyes at the banker. Counting on Ine’s relative sloth was far from a safe strategy. He spent much of his time in pseudo-hibernation, absorbing looted gold into his armor, but the phoenix was more than capable of rousing himself and remelting his armor in a hurry if irritated. As for avoiding fights with the Sican Elders… well, Ine would usually withdraw from battle with other great powers if it dragged on too long, but that would still leave landscapes devastated and burning for leagues in every direction first.

“Besides, this is a valuable opportunity for you, Drysa,” the banker said. “There have been… quite a few complaints about you and your fellow Vault Children in recent years. A lot of my contemporaries in management are… less than pleased with that quaint custom. They feel like it encourages an unambitious, overly cautious culture that ill-suits a modern banking organization like our own.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, but didn’t say anything. That was a veiled threat if I’d ever heard one. There were always complaints about the Children of the Vault from management, who largely came from wealthy and prominent families. The tradition was, in my admittedly biased opinion, more than worth it— Children of the Vault like myself were far more loyal than other employees, far less likely to steal, and were, in general, exemplary employees. 

Any overall accounting would surely come out in our favor, even ignoring intangibles, but it wasn’t really about the money— no, it was the fact that the wealthy didn’t want the children of the poor alongside them, with access to positions of power. Whether a wealthy family had earned their money or not— and, to be fair, there were some families that had achieved their wealth through hard work and ingenuity, though most got there from vicious backbiting, exploiting the poor, and corruption— they still resented the presence of the poor. It is inevitable in any society that the wealthy will grow to see themselves as morally superior, simply due to their wealth. After all, if they weren’t morally superior, they would be poor, wouldn’t they?

It was vicious, stupid, and circular reasoning that I had to deal with on a daily basis. 

The jerk sitting in front of me was right, though. This was an opportunity to help the other Children of the Vault.

“Fine,” I said. “I can leave the day after tomorrow.”

I had a lot of research and preparation to do. I needed to learn everything I could about natron and its uses in alchemy, I needed to figure out the political situation in the region, and a lot of other tasks. Most of the research and actual reading, I could do on the flight to Corb’s Bet, but much of the rest of my prep I needed to do before we left.

Most of all, I had some important letters to send while I was still in Tsarnassus.

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Fun science notes:

- Natron was immensely prized by the ancient Egyptians for dozens of different uses- most notably preserving mummies, and for the production of the pigment Egyptian Blue. Natron is less used today, but it does still have one incredibly important use- it’s a key ingredient of pretzels, and gives them their distinctive taste and brown color.