NOVEL NEXT Ch. 11: Binding Arbitration
“Uh, did you–” She trailed off, after blinking a few times. Had she been imagining a small glow from the scroll?
“Was it something I said?” Clarke asked as he took off a small seal, colored gold, that kept the paper loosely wound. She pondered if he’d seen what she’d seen. Or maybe it was the morning sun, flickering in? She swore she saw the paper glow for a split second.
“I–never mind.” She decided that maybe it was a trick of the eyes.
“So, you’ll be adding a class to your existing ones?” Clarke asked as he unfurled the paper, and pulled out a small metal case from the desk. The paper was blank, except for a single word written on it, in a language she couldn’t read. But she knew what the word was.
CLASS.
“Class?” she echoed. She’d heard Bonnie mention her class as a mage or some kind of enchantress, and Greg had said his class was ‘Analyst’, but had she missed something?
Something else was bothering her. She swore she could hear a ringing sound in the room, now. Clarke raised an eyebrow. “You have selected a class before, correct?”
“O-oh, of course! I chose to be a businesswoman before! Well, that’s what they call it where I came from, a career,” she added hastily. She wasn’t sure what the significance was–class meant career, maybe? Something strange was afoot here, but Clarke continued as if this was routine. He opened the case, and pulled out a silver quill.
The quill point itself was unremarkable, but the feather seemed to be every color imaginable, depending on what angle she viewed it. “It’s just been a while, you know?” Did I miss a memo somewhere? she pondered internally. She’d heard a few mentions of classes, but they also had some unusual sayings. It was an entirely different world from Earth, after all.
“I’ll never forget my signing. Few do,” Clarke said with a contented sigh. “Everyone gets a class, if they don’t pick one. I picked mine to be a scribe, I loved the feel of paperwork, being the important cog that no one else sees. I get paid decently, but visibility is low. They wanted to make me an administrator. So, I agreed to pick it up. Not a high-ranked one, but it means I get to do stuff like this on occasion.”
“Wait, your career is picked at birth? Man, that sounds lame, people had free will to pick what they wanted, where I grew up!” She pouted at this idea, and Clarke chuckled in response. She kept trying to ignore that feeling of unease, in the form of stomach butterflies and tensed nerves. I think I’m just going to play along with this one. They seem to be steeping this one in some kind of routine. I’m just going to get this thing signed, and then, I get to go sell stuff and finish setting up that shop. And dumping a steam automaton’s worth of coppers on Barry’s doorstep! She vowed silently
Clark interrupted her delightful idea of malicious compliance for her tax burden. “Come now, that’s not true! We have a destined one from birth if we don’t choose, so no one is left out. Like a destiny of the gods,” he added with a smile. With a swift motion, he pricked his finger with the quill. Her eyes widened and she wanted to say, ‘Don’t stab yourself with metal quills’, but he took the bead of blood on the quill, and started writing.
“Uh–okay.” She continued to stare at this arcane spectacle, and he was doing it like he was doing a regular office routine. His cursive was quite legible and elegant, and the blood seemed to seep into the page–and disappear? No, it was very faint. The gold trim also glowed slightly.
“When did you know what you wanted to be?” he asked her as he continued to write.
“I dunno. I still wonder about my choice of career,” she shrugged. “What was the uh, class that was your default?”
“Ah, no one can ever truly know. Some people roll the numerically marked cubes on it, so to speak, and hope for something better than their lot in life,” he added with a pause. “I thought you would know that.”
“Oh! I meant the career that stood out to you!” she lightly deflected. No need to make poor Clarke realize that her ‘not from around here’ spin was a gross understatement.
“I wanted to be an investigator, beforehand. Ah, I tried, but the exam wasn't for me. Or, the Administrator of the exam was raising the bar just a little higher that day,” he said with a shake of his head, and pursed lips. “Failing an exam is an utter failure. You’re locked out of pursuing that class ever again. What about you? Businesswoman sounds like a bolder version of a merchant.”
“I figured it out late. it was a career of necessity,” she deflected lightly. “You really should get some rubbing alcohol to clean that, you know, that isn’t sanitary. Also, we have this thing called ‘ink’ that everyone else uses. Or pens.”
“Miss Swiftheart, I can assure you, nothing has changed since you picked your class. It’s still the same process,” he offered in an assuring manner, and dipped the quill tip into a bottle marked ‘antiseptic’, and wiped it clean with a cloth, also in the case. He offered it to her. “Just sign your class, for ‘merchant’. If it's been a while since your last class, you might feel a little woozy. It’s perfectly normal.”
“Uh, sure!” she replied with an anxious smile. Her ears were twitching, this now seemed like a monumentally bad idea. Maybe she should just take the loot and run, as Greg had said. Tax evasion, or possible infection, with people doing weird voodoo rituals? Great. I hope this is just a formality, and not me about to dive into something I’m in no way prepared for.
She made up her mind, and Barry was going to lose out, period. She’d pay off this debt and then rub it in his face, no matter what it took. If she had her plan all set up correctly, she would make sure a lot of this loot went to good use, and not sit in a vault with some rich dude in a fancy overcoat. She reached for the quill, and held it hesitantly over her index finger on her right hand.
And then hesitated a little more. “It’s quite alright, Miss Swiftheart–”
“I just hate needles and sharp things–ironic, considering the number of monsters I’ve dealt with. So this is fine, it’s fine, we’re all fine,” she added with a nervous laugh. She jabbed down to seal the deal…
She drove the quill tip deep into her finger, and she let out a strained whimper while still trying to keep a smile. Clarke went wide-eyed, and his mouth gaped for a second. “Uh–haha–is that good enough?”
“I don’t think you needed to do it quite that hard, it’s usually painless–”
“Nope, it’s fine, give me the paper, before I get blood over everything. Do I need to write neatly?” She winced when she pulled out the quill, but the blood pooled on the tip of her finger and sat there; none of it dripped at all. Clarke quickly slid the paper to her, and she started signing her name.
Fiona Swiftheart.
The only thing I brought from my world. The last thing that’s mine. She narrowed her eyes and ignored the throbbing pain in her finger. Why had she kept it? Was it because she wanted to keep that connection to Earth? She could have picked any name. No one would have ever known.
But she kept it. No one was going to take it from her. Her mother had picked it well.
She winced as she wrote with her own blood, and it faded into neat strokes on the paper, and that ringing sound was getting louder. Was she about to faint from one little pinprick? That would be lame. She traced her name in elegant strokes, and Clarke stared at the paper.
“Don’t forget to write the–”
“Class, yep, got it, not my first rodeo,” she answered with a laugh that was bordering on panic. Why was that ringing getting louder? Did Barry just totally own her, and was she signing her soul to him? Barry’s a wizard from Florida. An overpowered wizard, he’s doing this to mess with me or something!
It was, of course, absurd.
She focused on the task at hand. She wrote ‘MERCHANT’ on the paper, and finished with a quick flourish. Then, deciding that wasn’t dramatic enough, she added ‘OF FORTUNE’, and gave the quill a twirl. The gold traces on the paper glowed–as did the traced blood, and a low breeze built up in the room. “Okay, all done! So, does this go to a wizard?”
Clarke shook his head, and tapped the page gently. “No, the contract is self-actuating, I believe everything is in order.” He took the quill back after sanitizing it–then offered her a cloth. “Nothing to worry about, it should activate in a few seconds, sometimes there’s a delay. I once had to sit for five whole minutes with someone who thought the contract was rejected.”
“Wait. I thought you said that only Administrators can reject it,” Fiona countered. She ignored that throbbing pain in her finger that seemed to be radiating through her whole hand now. Great. She got heavy metal poisoning from whatever exotic material that quill point was made out of. Clarke shrugged lightly.
“Eh, you know sometimes, the gods will override the Administrators. Doesn’t happen very oft–” he halted his words and his gaze was drawn back to the contract sitting on the desk.
Something was wrong. Something was horribly, world-endingly wrong. Even Clarke knew it, based on the way he fearfully looked at the fluttering contract on his desk, and that breeze built into a gale, inside a building. She felt her hand almost being pulled in magnetically to the paper, which was glowing visibly now, and ringing like a choir of angelic voices. She tried to resist the pull, and found that it was like trying to move the whole earth–her body wanted to go in that inconvenient direction of a glowing, probably ominous piece of paper.
“Um, hey, I know the fanfare is a little cool, but tone it down a bit! I mean it’s just taking a job as a merchant, right?!” she called out. This was so not cool to haze a newly made merchant.
“No, it is not! Miss Swiftheart, what was your first class?!” Clarke shouted out, and had to grip the desk to keep from being jostled by the wind.
“I told you, businesswoman!” Her voice sounded a little muffled from the miniature hurricane building in this room, and Clarke shook his head in disbelief.
“Before that!” he yelled out over the gale. She braced herself against the desk, and errant papers were now floating around this one scrap of demon paper that was glowing bright white now.
“I was–a warrior!” she answered. Technically. It was the truth–if you counted the National Guard, fresh out of high school, as anything resembling warriorly.
“No, Miss Swiftheart, what was the class given to you at birth?!” She frantically tried to claw at his meaning–everyone had a class? Did that mean that she–
“You said no one ever knows what it is!”
“Not true! Once your class is picked, you do learn what the gods had in store for you, which is why I need to know!” Clarke was looking fearful now. Not a good sign, while they’re sitting in the middle of a hurricane of papers, inside a wooden and glass snow globe.
“I–I didn’t have one!” she shouted out and tried to hold her hand away from the paper. “I wasn’t born here!”
If there was ever a sign to indicate someone soiled themselves, it was etched on Clarke's terror-struck face, and his eye practically twitched at this statement. Or, maybe it was the hurricane brewing in the room. Either way, it spoke of bad news of the worst kind.
“Oh, dear gods.” His words of dread were uttered the second she touched that blinding paper, and scratchy whispers filled her ears, indistinct, but strangely comforting.
The world exploded into burning bright white light, and then instantly clicked to darkness.
