Maelias hardly thought of the girl who'd paid off her debt. While she was in trouble, she knew that she should find a way to repay that girl. However, there was something about her that seemed… off. Maleias wasn't sure what it was, but there seemed to be something different about her compared to those with her.
It might be nothing, but she was confident that it was there. Yet, while she couldn't quite say what it was about, she had a hard time truly trusting that this 'Jenn' was worth her trust. Especially when she had her family to consider.
Maelias swung the hammer on the metal she was shaping while holding it with a pair of tongs, feeling the sweat drip down her body from the heat as she worked on the project she had been commissioned to make. It wasn't anything special, just a decorative hilt for a sword. She hadn't quite reached the point where she'd attach the blade to it, but she was confident that she was nearly ready to.
Once she finished, she'd be done with all the current work that had come her way, though she was hesitant to offer the amount of money that Jenn had used to pay of Maelias' debt. Part of it was that she'd already allowed Jenn to stay with her as well as the fact that she'd fed the girl and her companions. A fact that she knew that she didn't have to. Though, it did make it easier to locate Jenn in the event she needed to find the mercenary.
A knocking at the open door to her shop alerted her to company she hadn't been expecting.
A quick glance told her that it wasn't a potential customer, but rather a friend she had who'd had similar hard times with finances and was in the same boat Maelias had been in with a debt to repay. Although, she doubted that's what had brought her friend in today. Not when her friend had plenty of time left for her debt.
"Quality workmanship I see, as always," her friend commented about her project even as Maelias returned her attention back to the project and struck it with her hammer to get the bend just right.
"Did you need something?" Maelias asked conversationally. She didn't mind conversing with others while she worked. At least so long as they didn't require her attention to leave her work. If they did, she'd either start ignoring them or eject them from her workshop altogether.
"Not really. Just came to see for myself that you hadn't been taken away by the collectors. I mean, I did see you running from them in the streets last night."
Maelias sighed. She couldn't say she was surprised that word would come around about her run from the collectors. She had hoped it would have gone unnoticed, but she had a feeling that it would have been asking for too much to have those she knew be unaware of just how close she'd come to getting taken away.
"Yeah, I got lucky."
"You mean you got away from them?"
Maelias knew her friend wasn't serious about that. Anyone they knew who managed to get away from the collectors would be picked up by them when they tried returning to their home or work after they managed to escape from them. So, the fact that Maelias was working here wasn't because she'd just managed to get away from them.
"In a way."
"So, did you rent out your home to the mercenaries? Was that how you got the money to repay what they'd come to collect?"
Maelias glanced at her friend, not fully buying that she actually thought that that's what had happened. Although, she had to admit, it would be a potentially good way of getting coin if she ever got pregnant again. After all, she wouldn't be able to continue her smithing work after she was so far along with carrying a child, which meant that she'd need to find a way to find a way to save up the money she'd need in case of that happening or of another dry spell of business.
"I guess that's close enough to what happened," Maelias admitted as she started tapping the metal with her hammer instead of striking it hard.
She'd gotten the work in almost the right position, but she still couldn't risk hitting it with all her strength. Instead, she needed to work it into place with smaller strikes so it would have just the right appearance. Then she could work the gemstones into it to complete the setting.
Once she'd accomplished that, then she could work at attaching the blade to the hilt. It was work that she estimated another two weeks to accomplish with it taking up most of her time during the day to complete.
"Though, it wasn't exactly what happened," Maelias added after she paused in her work to ensure she was giving the bend the attention it needed.
"Well, why do you have guests staying with your family then? Everyone's dying to know that."
Maelias chuckled. Of course they would want to know. It wasn't everyday someone managed to narrowly escape the collector's grasp. Especially in a way that kept the collectors from continuing to come after them and drive them into ruin if they didn't have the coin to repay them.
"Actually, I have the guests because they paid my debt."
Maelias didn't have to look at her friend to know that her friend was staring at her in shock. Even as she worked at another bend, this one a little more intricate than the one before, she could feel the unasked question, almost as if it had a physical presence of its own.
"No, I don't know why they did it, either," Maelias answered the unspoken question. "All I can say is the collectors caught me when I collided with one of the mercenaries and was about to be taken to the auction house when the mercenary I collided with offered to pay my debt in full."
A charged silence filled the smithy after that statement. One that Maelias couldn't say she was surprised about. Not when she knew that her friend was just as shocked by that development as she had been.
"Yeah, I know. It shocked me too. Though I'm sure the collectors were shocked as well."
"I doubt your debtor was happy about that," her friend remarked, making Maelias stop in her work. She hadn't considered that fact. Though, she supposed it was likely accurate as well. Especially with how her debtor had been about to cash in on selling her as a slave, which would probably netted her more than just the two ziks she'd still owed.
"Might also be why so many of the debts are being called in early."
Maelias turned to stare in surprise at her friend. "Debts are being called in early?"
Her friend nodded. "Yeah. Many of us are being offered generous terms as to what we'd owed if we repay it right now. Though, if we can't, then we'll end up slaves as well." Her friend sighed, sounding like she was in the latter end of her statement as well. "I mostly came by to see if whatever miracle helped you out might help me out."
Maelias returned to her work, trying to shape the metal in just the perfect way to maintain balance but fulfill her client's specifications. "I'm not sure if the mercenaries will offer you to pay off your debt as well, but you could at least ask them. I'm not sure where they are right now, but I'm sure they'll return to my home tonight."
"You mean they should be returning any minute, right?" her friend asked, making Maelias stop working again, this time to look at the light outside, shocked at how late it already was.
"I'm not sure if they'll be back in any minute, just that they'll likely return when they conclude whatever business they had at the auction house," Maelias answered, not sure if she should tell her friend about what she knew about that business they had.
Though, she supposed it didn't matter when it came to repaying the debts that were getting called in early. After all, that fact alone was a rare enough occurrence, and one that Maelias wasn't sure had ever happened on such a large scale as her friend was implying.
"Well, if they aren't, I doubt that I'll be able to come up with what I now owe by the morning. Which means this would be the last time we'd be able to talk, my friend."
Maelias nearly threw her hammer down in frustration. There was no way she'd be able to continue working with this news in her mind. She'd been distracted all day, but had been able to get a lot of progress down on the project even still. Yet, now she knew any work she did with what she'd just learned would likely need to be redone at a later time. Which meant that she'd be losing time if she continued working on it. Even with the hard part nearly completed.
"You can stick around to ask them yourself or I can talk with them if you want," Maelias said after carefully setting the project down before putting her hammer away where she normally stored it. "I can't make any promises of if they'll be able to pay off your debt, but we could at least ask them to see if they would."
Maelias saw her friend nod, making her wonder what the mercenaries' reaction would be. After all, it's not like they were expecting this to be waiting for them when they returned from whatever it was that they were doing in the city. Especially since whatever their business was, it was taking them longer than she had been anticipating.
How long did it take to purchase slaves or even look into whether there were slaves with the skills that they were looking for?
"Though I can't do anything if they decided to leave the city without telling me," Maelias added as she started closing her smithy for the day. While she didn't burn the coals at night, she liked to keep them warm at night so it wouldn't take as long to warm them up in the morning and she'd be able to start with less effort at that time.
"Well, I guess I'll just have to hope that they'll either be waiting for us at your home or will return before they settle down for the night, wherever they are now."
Maelias couldn't help but chuckle at her friend's optimism. She supposed that the position she was in, she needed to be positive or she'd end up wallowing in despair like Maelias had found herself a few times when she had been in debt and seen when the time her entire debt came due when she couldn't pay it all as a time to panic. Though, this was the only time when she'd had been unable to pay her debt off entirely. She wasn't sure what she'd have tried if the mercenaries hadn't paid her debt off. It just felt like her world had been about to come to an end when suddenly it wasn't. She kind of still felt like she was in shock about that fact.
Maelias turned towards her friend as finished her final tasks for the day, mostly wiping down the surfaces of the tables so any soot that happened to get on them would have been taken care of long before it became noticeable after putting all of her tools away.
"Still worried about those last specks of dust, huh?" her friend asked with a smile when Maelias started walking towards her.
"Even if I was going to leave this smithy tomorrow and let my landlady rent it out to someone else, I'd prefer to leave it clean so it'll look better than it did when I first started working in it."
"I still say it's a waste of your time. Especially with the way the climate in this city is going."
"Yeah, you've been advocating moving out while we could, even though none of us have been able to raise the money that we'd need to establish ourselves in another city or even out in the country where we'd be having trouble getting any kind of work for our trades."
"Even if I had to start over on a new trade, I'd rather do it away from the debt collectors hanging over me like they were wild animals ready to pick my corpse clean the moment it looked like I'd died."
Maelias arched an eyebrow at how her friend had phrased that statement. She wasn't sure that she liked the visual image the words evoked in her mind, but she couldn't say that she disagreed with the sentiment. The debt collectors did seem like wild animals at times, and she couldn't say that she didn't feel a little trepidation at the idea of having to deal with them sometime down the road again if her business dried up again.
Which made the discussion she had with her husband the night before come to mind. Would it really be better for her family for her to swallow her pride and move somewhere else? To take a risk on the strangers who had made outlandish promises of living in a place where slavery was outlawed?
Even though she was starting to feel her resolve to stay here crumble, she wasn't sure she really believed the claims that had been made. She was suspicious of the mercenaries and the claims they made, but it wasn't like she had many options. Sure, she doubted that it would be pretty as they painted the picture to be, but she couldn't say that being here would be any better than the worst case of what things would be like wherever they were taking her.
Besides, what would the difference between being a slave here and a slave there be? She wasn't going to argue about what the difference would be, since either way she'd be a slave. Which she could see happening sooner or later in this city with everything going on in it.
Though, she did feel that chances were that she'd be able to leave the worries of having her family taken away from her if she did accept the mercenaries' offer to join them. After all, with how she was struggling to make ends meet here, she had a feeling that she might be better off in another location where she might not have the same struggles. Especially if the claims that the mercenaries made actually turn out to be true.
"Well, if you want, you could listen to the claims the mercenaries made about what working with them would be like. I'm sure you wouldn't believe it any more than I did."
"What kind of claims? Like the streets where they'd take you would be coated with aluthium?"
Maelias found herself rolling her eyes as she heard her friend's question. She'd heard a few people saying that of late, as if that would make anything worth any more than it was. After all, it wasn't like you'd be able to detect aluthium unless you knew precisely what to look for. She didn't care for the statement, but she wasn't going to comment about it. Especially with how she suspected that her friend only said it to get a rise out of her. Which was something she frequently did.
"Actually, that there aren't any slaves where they live, that their leader, or whatever, has outlawed slavery there, for one."
Maelias felt her friend staring at her as they left her smithy. She couldn't say that she wouldn't have the same reaction as her friend had, since she recalled how she reacted to the mercenaries when they'd made that claim themselves.
"Are you sure you understood it correctly? That you didn't misunderstand what they were actually saying?"
Maelias shook her head. "It would be easier if I did, but I'm confident that's what they meant." Maelias look at her friend out of the corner of her eye before adding, "I'm not sure I really believe it either, but even if it isn't true, I'm getting the feeling that it can't be any worse than our situation in this city is."
"You mean you're actually considering leaving with them? Did they offer anything to you to join them?"
Maelias shook her head. "Only to take me to where they have their base or whatever. That they'd be able to use my skills there, even though they're looking for people like you who know masonry or others who know carpentry."
"Is that what they came to the city for? To try and find people with skill in masonry or carpentry?"
Maelias found herself chuckling as she shook her head. "Not really. They were checking the slave markets to find a slave with those skills."
"Wait, how is it that they're buying slaves when their boss outlawed that very thing?"
"Wish I could say. All I can tell is that they were serious about both things. Though, I suppose that it would be easier to get someone to accompany you if you buy them as a slave rather than trying to convince someone else to join without the fact that they have no choice in the matter hanging over their heads. It would be easier that way, I'm sure."
"It sounds rather contradictory to me. Like they're making promises that they don't keep themselves upfront."
Maelias shook her head again, this time feeling helpless as to what she should say exactly. As the more she talked with her friend about it, the more she believed the mercenaries with their claim about there not being slaves wherever they would be taking her. She wasn't sure why, just that she was willing to accept that they were serious about that matter.
"Well, if nothing else, I'm sure Hiliash will be happy to have you over. Even if we can't get any help for you on your debt."