Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

”Of course you have.” Kara moved on. ”Item three... Emotional distress, sleep deprivation and acute nutritional neglect. Have you looked at her lately? When I found her, she was living in a cellar that smelled like stagnant river mud and chewing burnt grain-cakes... One bowl of soup broth at the Upper Tier pavilions costs a lot of credits. We’re billing your guild five years of backdated executive meal vouchers, plus pain and suffering... Call it ten million even.”

Over by the wall, Solenne had stopped poking a gold-plated cogwheel. Her ears shot up and all nine tails puffed into one quivering cloud of fur.

”T-Ten million?” the kitsune whispered to herself, golden eyes crossing as she tried to count how many noodle bowls that was. ”Ten million credits, for soup?”

”Soup is a basic right of the working artisan,” Number Five noted, scratching something into her ledger.

”For soup,” Kara confirmed without looking at either of them then she leaned forward with her palm flat on the oak.

”And Item four... The executive consultation and judicial dispatch fee. The World Council doesn’t mobilize an revered Council Head to look at common thievery for free... We have to reimburse the Fifth Seat for her time, her travel, and her profound moral grievance at breathing the same air as an unwashed corporate scout.”

”Think of it as a surcharge for dignity,” Kara finished.

”Billable,” Number Five said with a nod of her head then she turned her masked head toward Kara, very slowly.

Her silver cuffs clicked once against the ledger, like a trigger being thumbed back, and the temperature in the room dropped another five degrees for good measure.

Behind the narrow slits of porcelain, two dark eyes lit with a faint dangerous violet shimmer.

”Kara White,” Number Five said, and her dry monotone cracked with a razor edge. ”I did not give you permission to list my name as a billable service on your extortion docket...”

”You walked through the door, didn’t you?” Kara replied without looking at her, smooth as silk. ”You wore the formal robes... You brought the iron ledger... The Council has an institutional reputation to maintain, and prestige doesn’t pay for itself.”

”You intercepted me during an officially sanctioned observation walk!” Number Five’s voice hitched and climbed into a grating glass-splitting shriek that set the chandelier pendants ringing. ”You blocked my path! You dragged me four miles through the mud of the industrial quarter like a hired bailiff! I survived the First Apocalypse! I have watched several royal dynasties fall! I am not a line item on your grievance form!”

”You’re doing wonderfully, Council Head,” Kara murmured under her breath, with an appreciative smirk. ”That faint glow behind the porcelain is brilliant... Keep that exact pitch, it’s doing wonders for his blood pressure.”

Number Five’s small hands curled into fists inside her midnight sleeves, and the platinum compass-roses on her wrists shivered with suppressed rage.

”I am going to compress your vocal cords into a lead pellet,” she hissed.

”Later.” Kara waved her off with her right hand. ”You can always say that but you love me too much to mean it~”

”...One day I will mean it.”

”I look forward to it.” She turned back to the quivering wreck behind the desk. ”Where was I? Ah, the Council’s consulting fee... A modest one hundred and five million Spirit Credits. That brings the total of Blessed Land’s initial claim to eight hundred million, it’s payable in certified bank drafts from the Grand Reserve.”

She smiled, cold and radiant and beautiful, and the guildmaster’s teeth began to chatter.

”Give or take a few coppers for filing fees...”

Thump!

His legs gave out as he fell back into the crimson leather chair hard enough to send the mahogany casters skidding across the floorboards.

His jaw hung open and a thread of spit gathered at the corner of his mouth.

The ruddy, self-satisfied glow he wore like a second doublet drained away and left the dull gray of a drowned man.

’...Eight hundred million.’

By the bookshelf, Solenne mouthed the number silently, tried it again with her lips, and decided to sit down on a stack of certificates before her knees chose for her.

’Too big... all for Titan...?’

That wasn’t only the quarterly budget, or the Centurion contracts...

It was every asset the Brassbound Guild owned in Central City.

The smelting tracks, the foundry leases, the warehouse reserves, the carriage lines, every copper coin in the high vaults.

His townhouse on the terrace, his summer vineyard in the eastern valleys, every speculative bond he’d bought since the theft.

...It was more than the entire net worth of the guild and its board combined.

”That’s impossible,” he wheezed, clawing at his ermine collar until two golden buttons popped off the velvet.

”It’s quite possible,” Kara said. ”I did the math... Twice...”

”We don’t have that much liquid capital! Nobody in the Capital keeps that much on hand... Even if we surrendered the tracks and liquidated the foundries and sold every patent in the vault, the guild would be dissolved! I’d be ruined!”

”Ruined?” Kara tilted her head and tapped her chin as if she were considering a mildly interesting weather pattern. ”That does sound inconvenient but the Sovereign Realm keeps very thorough penal facilities in the fourth drainage basin... The debtor’s pits, I believe. I’m told the masonry is historic and very damp, featuring excellent ventilation from the sewer runoff... You’ll have all the time in the world to ponder dual-stage hydraulic valves while you break river boulders with a four-pound hammer.”

”And the Council would sign the transfer decree immediately,” Number Five added.

Slam!

She brought the ledger down on the edge of the desk with a crack like a rifle shot.

The petrified oak jumped and so did the guildmaster, a good six inches out of his seat.

”The paperwork is already sealed with the Fifth Seat’s emergency mark,” Number Five droned, back in her cold monotone. ”I require only one signature to authorize the immediate seizure of this tower, the freezing of all secondary accounts, and the remand of the executive leadership to the labor pens...”

He looked at the blue runes glowing on the ledger.

He looked at the small masked Council Head, whose eyes burned with pitiless violet fire behind the slits.

He looked at Kara White, tall and relaxed in her midnight-blue suit with her left sleeve pinned across her heart, watching him with the detached curiosity of an executioner checking the edge of an axe.

And finally, he looked at Solenne, who’d drifted over to a mahogany bookshelf and was humming a cheerful little tune while twirling a brass caliper around her finger, totally unbothered by the destruction of an entire corporate empire.

There was no second cousin who could make this disappear... There was no bribe big enough to turn aside a Council Head who’d walked the earth before the oceans had their current names...

The last thread of executive arrogance snapped in his chest.

With a wet ragged sob he lunged over the desk, ringed hands scraping the wood, velvet sleeves soaking in the wine, reaching in blind pathetic desperation for Kara’s coat.

He stopped an inch short when her empty left cuff fluttered in the draft, and he yanked his fingers back as if the silk were white-hot iron as tears cut clean tracks through the sweat on his cheeks.

”Careful,” Kara said mildly. ”It’s tailored.”

”A settlement,” the guildmaster begged, his voice breaking into a wail. ”A settlement. Please. What do you want?”

Kara didn’t answer right away.

She stood there with her lone hand resting on her hip, looking down at him the way a scholar looks at a pinned beetle.

The wine on the desk had stopped dripping and the fireplace flickered its sick violet.

”A settlement,” she repeated softly, rolling the words around like heavy silver coins. ”You’d rather talk terms than spend forty years breaking ballast stones in the fourth basin...That shows remarkable survival instincts, guildmaster. It’s very practical.”

”Y-Yes, my Lord. Anything... Whatever it takes to preserve the guild’s standing.”

”Good.” She stepped half a pace closer. ”Then listen closely, because I’m only going to say this once, and every second you spend hesitating adds a zero.”

She raised her right index finger.

”Term one. Liquid asset surrender... The eight hundred million claim stays on the docket, but to spare your manufacturing yards from immediate liquidation, you’ll transfer ninety-five percent of all current earnings into Blessed Land’s reserve account within the hour. That covers every Centurion sold in the last eight weeks, every advance deposit from the excavation syndicates, and the liquid reserves in your private vaults...”

An iron band snapped shut around the guildmaster’s heart.

Ninety-five percent... That would hollow out the treasury down to the price of coal for the furnace tenders.

His payouts, his bonuses, his private acquisitions, everything he’d stolen and hoarded and celebrated for three months, torn out of his hands in one sentence.

”I’m leaving you five percent,” Kara added. ”Be proud of it.”

”Term two,” Kara went on sounding brisk and utterly merciless. ”Production doesn’t stop... It expands. Your assembly tracks keep building golems, but the name ’Centurion’ is struck from the registry. From today they’re registered under the Directorate as the Blessed Titan Golems as every blueprint, mold and hydraulic cylinder carries the crest of Blessed Land.”

”Blessed Titan Golems?” the guildmaster croaked. ”That’s... an awful name.”

’You dare?’

”I workshopped it on the way over,” Kara said.

Beside the bookshelf, Solenne’s ears snapped upright. Her golden eyes went round and she hugged her satchel to her chest.

”Term three... Revenue.” Kara’s violet eyes narrowed into sharp crescents. ”Eighty-five percent of the gross on every Blessed Titan Golem goes straight to Blessed Land... You keep ten percent for pig-iron, coke fuel and line maintenance as the last five goes to marketing and logistics. You’ll run on a razor-thin margin... You won’t cut corners, you won’t simplify one valve, and you won’t pocket a stray bit.”

”Eighty-five percent of the GROSS?” The guildmaster dug his fingers into the soaked vellum. ”My Lord, after the foundrymen and the furnace leases there won’t be a speck of profit left for the board! That’s slave labor!”

”You’re welcome to decline,” Number Five chimed in.

She stood perfectly still under her midnight-violet mantle with the black and silver mask tilted at the angle of a cat watching a bird.

The violet pulse behind the eye-slits looked almost hungry.

”She means it,” Kara added helpfully. ”She has the warrant drafted already...”

”I drafted it in the elevator,” Number Five said. ”If corporate restructuring offends you, the spatial compression pens in the lower sector have twelve vacancies... The atmospheric density is three times normal mortal tolerance, but I am told the convicts develop remarkably sturdy calves within the first decade. Shall I draft the transport warrant?”

”No! No!” he screamed, flailing at the desk. ”I accept! I accept term three!”

”Excellent,” Kara smiled, entirely unbothered. ”Term four... Public restitution. Before sunset today, the Brassbound Guild publishes an unconditional apology in every trade gazette, dispatch board and commercial exchange in Central City. You’ll also walk out onto the grand marble steps of the Directorate in front of the merchant syndicates, the press couriers and the common citizens, and you’ll announce at the top of your lungs that the Centurion chassis was an act of theft, that the engineering belongs to the territory of Blessed Land, and that Kitsuna Solenne is the sole genius behind the kinetic architecture...”

”At the top of my LUNGS?”

”Stand on a crate if you need the height,” Kara said. ”You’re quite short for a man you know.”

Every drop of blood fled his head as his ears rang with cold static.

...A public confession, on the Directorate steps no less.

It was social death. His name would be dragged through the mud of every commercial ring in the Sovereign Realm.

The merchants who’d toasted his health would spit when his shadow passed, and from the northern rifts to the southern oceans he’d be known as the grasping thief a Lord forced to his knees... He almost preferred the pits as at least the pits had no audience.

A poisonous wave of hatred rose from the pit of his stomach.

’You idiot,’ he cursed himself, grinding his teeth until a molar cracked. ’You miserable greedy short-sighted idiot... Why did I ever set foot in that gutter cellar? Why didn’t I just bury the blueprints in a vault? Why did I have to parade the machines in the Grand Arc where the lords could see them?!’

His bloodshot eyes slid sideways.

Solenne was standing by the display cases looking radiant and innocent with her golden eyes wide and her lips parted in quiet vindicated awe as her fluffy silver tails swayed behind her and brushed the shelves.

’I should have slit your throat,’ He thought. ’I should have hired three cutthroats to drown you in the canal the night you handed over those journals... I should have burned your workshop with you inside it... You ragged filthy sewer-dwelling little vixen—’

He wanted to lunge across the carpet. He wanted both hands around her slender neck, to wipe that look off her furry face forever but he couldn’t move an inch.

Between him and the kitsune stood two figures who could snuff his existence like a candle wick.

Kara White’s violet eyes had locked on his face with a chilling omniscient stillness, as if she were reading every foul thought scroll across his skull.

Beside her, Number Five tilted her mask a single degree.

The violet glow behind the slits flared, and the air around his throat grew so heavy he could barely whisper past his teeth.

He swallowed his rage and it went down like burning ash.

Somewhere behind the display cases, a very small voice whispered.

”Is it bad that I’m enjoying this?”

”No,” Kara said, without turning around.

”No,” Number Five agreed, and turned another page just to hear the guildmaster flinch.

Solenne’s tails fluffed with guilty delight.

”Now,” Number Five said, and stepped forward.

From under her mantle she drew a thick sheaf of parchment bound with platinum rings, stamped with the celestial compass-rose of the World Council’s judicial branch.

Slap!

It landed square on top of Kara’s scroll and glowed with a soft azure resonance that made the air filters in the walls hum.

Kara glanced at the platinum rings.

”That looks fancy...”

”They are standard,” Number Five said.

”The formal restructuring covenants,” Number Five recited, her voice back to the dry clatter of falling stones. ”Read them. Sign them... Or do not, and we shall conclude this matter under the penal code.”