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The finances were a mess. A well-documented mess, but a mess nonetheless. I wasn’t even caught up before I needed to help prepare dinner.

I just didn’t have enough of any meter to imbue the food to my usual standard; the ingredients were... substandard. Not rotted or bad, but lacking in their normal nutrition. I knew now this was because after the devastation of spa month, we were cutting corners everywhere. In general, the nutritional value was ten to twelve, anywhere from three-fourths to half of what it had been before our visit to Lavin Buscala.

This meant more servings per person, or that we were only saving money at the cost of our crew. So THAT would soon be fixed; I just had no clue where we were getting the budget for other things. No wonder Gamilla was having problems finding crew.

Noodles contain eggs (protein), flour (grain), and dairy, and so usually are nine nutrition, even without imbuement. Properly imbued, that could go up to thirteen. With substandard ingredients, my noodles were only six. Throw in chopped meat and vegetables, and no matter how you flavored it, the end soup was eleven nutrition per serving. The bread being similarly lackluster, and every member of the crew needed three or four servings instead of just two.

It just tore at my heart to serve that. Tomorrow, I needed to gather mana to do this properly. I think what was even worse is that this fare actually seemed to improve morale. What HAD they been eating?

I saved my tears for afterward. Not immediately afterward, when I explained to Kismet and Madonna that we needed to increase our recruitment efforts, but later, in my room that still smelled like an outhouse. Ostensibly, I was at the window to tap energies from the night, the moon, and the stars.

The cruelest part about this is that it could still get much, much worse.

My meridians were stiff from lack of use, but they took in mana without too much additional effort. Lacking the mana to properly conduct my mystic regimen, I decided to conduct the physical and get to bed.

.....

I couldn’t even do that, as it turns out. My neglected muscles rebelled, refused to complete a third or so of my exercises. I checked my Might and Agility, but found no reduction in statistics.

Regardless of what my System indicated, my body was all kinds of messed up.

Ignoring my growling stomach... wait... I reset the toggles that fed nutrition from my System into my physical body. They snapped back.

WHAT? I started moving the nutrition manually.

[Warning. Moving this nutrition from your System to manual use may disrupt your healing process. Focus here to confirm move.]

Looked like I was going to bed hungry tonight.

#

Have you ever noticed that things look better after a good night’s sleep? Not in my case; my problems were the same, and I’d done little enough to fix them. Breakfast was a little better, but only because my fatigue meters were each one day’s healing higher.

In spite of their insistence that they were doing the exact same thing I was, the innkeep and his wife were not imbuing the food they cooked. I lacked both the energy and the willpower to train them again.

For every two servings of food that went into my System, I made sure that one went into my stomach. Neither was happy with the reduced portions, but that was something I could fix later.

Neo Leonen only has public benches near the public squares. Expending fatigue every five minutes or so rather than each hour, just the walk up river was tiring.

Perhaps I should explain. I could go downriver, to the port, but the water and thus the mana pulled from it would be less pure. My water meridians stuttered, as though afraid I was going to pull for another day straight. I started slowly, making certain not to make the problem worse.

Either they were stronger, or I’d become more skilled at gauging how much they could take. I had time to do a bit of Earth tapping before...

“Mister Hissyname! Mister Hissyname!” called a small boy, running up to me.

“How may I help you, child?”

“Mister Spiro would like to see you sir. At your earliest convenience.”

I released the threads of mana. “I suppose that it is convenient now, then.”

I am sorry not to have mentioned him before. The Spiro were an important family of the Lavinian Empire, who managed to escape the sack of Lavin Buscala by the Norvik. They had made themselves successful financiers, and had branches in both Neo Esteban and Boadicea’s Girdle. By no coincidence, his wife had been willing to finance our refitting of the Outrage.

It was her husband Hadrian that we answered to, though. He made no secret of questioning our financial stability, and constantly demanding access to our financial records. For the most part, he wanted to speak only with Gamilla, and only with enough of her records that we needed to hire a porter for the day.

What did he want with me?

As we approached the two story house at the corner of Vina and Haya, I supposed that I was about to find out.

The boy stuck his hand out. “Mister Spiro said you’d give me a copper.”

“I doubt that he did so.” I replied.

“Can’t blame a lad for trying, can you?”

“I could, but would you learn anything from it?”

“Nope.”

“Off with you, then. You’ve done your job and gotten me here.”

With a smile, he sprinted off. I wanted to sprint.

I wondered if I could, with my leg wound. I’d need to test that.

I let myself through the gate in the fence, and walked to the door. Where another house might have had a lawn or a flower bed, the front of the Spiro house was neatly organized rows of vegetables, alternating with nuts and fruits, some of them planted for the mild winter season.

Rather than a waiting room, the maidservant who answered the door showed me directly into the dining room.

His wife absent, Hadrian was eating at the end of the table. “I hope you don’t mind if I finish lunch as we talk.”

“Of course not.” I said.

“Now, your woman has shared with me certain facts and figures,” he said, “that make me believe that you are no longer as stable as once you were.”

“The ones she shared with me last night show that while the winter will be harsh, we will survive it.”

“Yes. IF nothing else goes wrong. Deny it.”

“I cannot deny that if our ship catches fire or a tornado sweeps away your entire dry dock, then we are ruined. Are these the manner of events that are worrying to you?”

“My WORRY,” he said, “is that during this time, your... women... took off for a month at the spa. On coin which, properly speaking, is still my wife’s.”

“To be fair, we had just lost one of our five champions, and endured other hardships. Letting them spend some of the coin we expected to regain when the silks arrived from the Khanate seemed prudent at the time.”

He snorted. “It seems reckless to me. And the loss of said silks has called into question whether or not you can even repay our loan.”

“No, it doesn’t. You’re trying to leverage our recent misfortune to extract some manner of extra financial insurance from us.”

He put down his fork, piece of fish still speared upon it.

“You’ll get your money, and probably on time without the penalty for late payment. Are you just upset that the dragon has denied you an early conclusion to the loan?”

“Trades are not certain things.” He said. “There is a risk inherent to this plan of yours, a risk that was much less when there was the possibility of a large sale of valuable silks.”

It was my turn to make a noise, so I chose to smack my lips. Just once. “True. Piracy has robbed us both of that sale.”

“Piracy has robbed YOU of that sale. I don’t think you understand how much money your companions are worth should we claim them as debt slaves.”

I recounted the numbers, since he seemed interested in them. “Which is still less than your family makes when we sail in the spring.”

He resumed eating. “With what crew? Under what captain? You can see how that is a concern, especially with your funding cut.”

“We may not be AS profitable while the ship is being repaired, but we have made money even stranded in port as we are.”

“Not. Enough.”

“If you know of a way to make more money than we currently are, I am willing to hear it.”

“Don’t try to turn this on me, on us. We own your ship, and your very persons.”

“Only if we fail to repay the loan, which is due next fall.”

“Or when we determine you are unable to repay.”

I Eat Stress activated, along with a fear-specific ability called I’ve Seen This Before.

“Have you or your wife made this determination?”

“Not yet.”

“Then unless you have anything else, we are done here.”

“There is one more matter.” He said.