While dealing with the troublesome figure called the Yad didn’t exactly leave me in my comfort zone, I was more shocked as to what I found when I returned to the smuggler’s compound.

  A great cornucopia of various supplies, tools and travelling gear was laid about in various crates which surrounded my employer, Qaton, whom I was surprised to see doing the packing.

  “What is the group preparing for?” I asked Qaton, approaching from his back.

  He seemed to have heard the sound of my footsteps, for there wasn’t a hint of surprise in his face when he turned around to address me.

  “We finally found the source of the disturbances, we’ll be gone for a while.” he responded, as matter of factly as I’ve heard him speak.

  “So you’re leaving?” I asked him.

  “We found what we were looking for, half of us are leaving to deal with the threat while you and the others are staying here.”

  “Aside from me, who’s staying and who’s leaving?”

  “Well.. Darat and I are leaving while Piyan, Ishata and the others are staying.”

  “What about Shur?” I asked.

  “He’s not technically in the smuggler’s group, but just assists us.” he explained, surprised that I hadn’t known this already.

  “Oh, I didn’t know that. That’s interesting.” I admitted.

  “Yes, so just maintain your regular duties here while we leave.”

  “Alright… when will you and Darat be leaving?”

  “In two days, so we’re not leaving immediately.”

  “Alright.” I acknowledged.

  As we wrapped up, he grabbed an oddly familiar wooden pipe with a hole that ran through its entire length and began trying to fit it inside a nearby crate. I felt like I’d seen it before but I was unsure as to where I did.

  I thought for a while until it finally hit me, that it was the blowpipe that he used to knock Zi and I out all those months ago.

  “Isn’t that what you used when I met you?” I pointed out.

  He held up the blowpipe, “Oh this thing?” he asked.

  “It’s only really useful if someone’s clad in alham since the darts that are used with it have special alham which can puncture through armor that uses the stuff.” he said dismissively.

  “It doesn’t look too menacing.” I noted.

  “The pipe itself is just one you can find anywhere, but the real magic is in the darts that I told you about. I have them in a small pouch so they don’t get damaged and I have easy access to them when I need them.”

  “If it’s only useful for alham armor, why are you bringing it?” I wondered out loud.

  “You can’t be too careful after all” he stated, “Better safe than sorry.”

  While someone who’s occupation had inherent risks couldn’t be too careful in regards to their safety, his

  What kind of people did Qaton expect to meet at his destination?

  I didn’t think he was going to meet with the friendliest of people but I was unaware as to just how much risk he was taking by going there. Perhaps I needed to look for alternative lodging in the future so I had somewhere to stay if something ever happened to the whole smuggling ring that he worked for.

  While I could do this in the future if I had more funds and more time, ultimately I couldn’t afford to make preparations for a worst-case scenario which could divert my attention away from my current priority, starting the insurance company.

  I only could hope for their safe return and make sure to do my very best while Darat, Qaton and the others were gone.

  I passed the remaining time by making matches to sustain my project, until the sun had just started to set under the horizon. I didn’t see this happen of course, seeing as I was in the storage room that had neither any windows or grates to see sunlight with. So when I emerged from the stairs seeing Qaton leave from out the door, I was intrigued by how he was going to prepare.

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  “Where are you going?” I asked him, which prompted him to face the other way.

  “I’m going to do some errands before I leave.” he explained vaguely.

  “I see.” I said, not entirely satisfied with the response but aware that it wouldn’t do me much good to pry.

  He put his hand to his chin and stared at me as if gazing deep into my soul, until he eventually seemed to arrive at some conclusion in his mind.

  “You should join me. It wouldn’t hurt for you to know more people in this town.” he suggested.

  “I can do that.” I said.

  We walked to the part of the town that was near the old merchant square that Shur brought me to a few months ago. It seemed to be the most busy part of the town as it was bustling with merchants coming and going with their wagons. However instead of going inside the square itself, we walked a street adjacent to it which led to a quieter, more residential part of town.

  We walked until we stopped at a rather ordinary looking house for this town, its walls were the regular sandstone-like materials seen throughout the whole of Murgi while it had a simple wooden door that one couldn’t distinguish from the rest of the community.

  Once we were at that doorstep, Qaton knocked thrice before someone answered the door. Out came an elderly man who looked like the man beside me in more ways than his build, his dark hair and sunken eyelids reminded me heavily of Qaton which to the extent that I would believe that he was his father.

  “Oh, why are you here?” the elderly man asked.

  “I’m here to meet with you both before I leave for work, can you call her?” Qaton asked.

  “Sure.” the other man replied.

  Just as he said that he walked away into the reaches of the house, and seeing the opportunity, I decided that now was the time to ask Qaton what I needed to know.

  “Who are we even visiting?”

  “My *******”

  “What does that word mean?”

  “The two people who raised you as a child?”

  “Oh those… parents.”

  “Did you have them?” he asked.

  “No. I didn’t need them anyway.” I said, not wanting to seem like a lost child to him.

  “A shame, for someone so young.” he remarked, with a look of pity in his face which I abhorred.

  “I-”

  I tried to go against what he was saying but before I could complain, his mother arrived alongside his father. She was a kind-looking woman who seemed roughly the same age as her husband.

  Qaton introduced me as the child of a merchant who they were working with and while that comparison irked me somewhat, I saw that it was the most obvious excuse for why he knew me that was feasible. In addition to that, his hesitancy to tell the truth led me to believe that his parents might not have known about his real profession but that was something that I would have to ask later on.

  I greeted them, then Qaton asked for me to wait for him just outside while he said his goodbyes to his family. I obviously agreed, since I didn’t stand anything to gain by knowing more about his relationship with his family.

  I waited around thirty minutes until I watched as he was sent off by the couple with smiles, which made me a bit irritated probably since their cheery demeanor contrasted with my general unhappiness with waiting for well… anything. I still smiled at them to give off a good impression, and then we left to run whatever errands Qaton had left for us.

  “Do your parents know that you’re in your smuggling ring?” I asked, as we walked down the small road which led back to the center of town.

  “No.” he admitted, “Most people don’t even know that it exists in this town.”

  “Strange. I didn’t know that you had parents in the first place.” I revealed.

  “Well… most people don’t see the need to share all their irrelevant personal secrets.” he said with a sardonic smile.

  “Alright then, tell me something that I don’t know.” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows, “Why would I do that?”

  “Well I’ve been around you long enough to trust me, do you not? You know that I wouldn’t do anything too rash.”

  “If you insist. Darat, for example, isn’t from this town.” he gave as an example.

  “Where’s he from then?” I asked inquisitively.

  “The near north, where he ******* from *******.”

  While I wasn’t that well-versed in the languages of this world,

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well in this world, some people are born free and others aren’t. They must work for their masters until they die or they earn their freedom. Darat was one of them until he escaped from his owners.”

  “Didn’t he have parents?” I asked.

  “He probably did, but it’s too risky to back for them.”

  “Because his captors are looking for him?” I asked.

  “Exactly.”

  Since I didn’t have a map of this world, I could only guess what he was referring to. When somewhere north came to mind, the first place that came to mind was that Qarqadim place Hasbel was referring to.

  “When you mean the north, you mean somewhere near Qarqadim?”

  “Somewhere like that.” he said, vaguely.

  “Why aren’t there slaves here?” I wondered out loud.

  “There very much are, but more in the cities and less in the countryside since the people who could afford slaves don’t live in places like this and even the people who could here, find it economical to just pay people to work for them since they don’t have to feed them, clothe them or find them shelter.”

  I let out a deep sigh, for even this world wasn’t without its evils.

  He noticed this and said, “Some people are slaves and some aren’t.” he said, his eyes staring into the distance. “That’s just how it works, and how it will always work.”

  Back in my world, slavery had been largely abolished apart from some fringe cases like giant mega-corporations using children from developing countries in their supply chain for example. But other than that, we were lucky for it to be eradicated for most people in most countries. However for most of our history, slavery was the norm rather than the exception.

  In my case, I absolutely detested the institution since it represented oppression from the ruling elites which was something my old revolutionary comrades and I worked hard to remove from our government. However, without the connections that I once had and limited resources, I couldn’t do anything in the moment but maybe in the future, I would be able to do something given enough time.

  Anyway… after we met with his parents, Qaton visited many merchants to purchase supplies that he needed for the journey and by the end of the day had so many crates that I needed to help him carry half of them. After I helped him bring everything back to the compound, I visited Hasbel once again to encourage him to make another go at selling insurance.

  “How have the sales been going?” I asked him.

  “Not great. They’ve somehow gotten lower.”

  “I’m working on fixing that, so make another run tomorrow?”

  “How?” he asked with suspicious disbelief.

  “I got the Yad’s word that he would support the business in exchange for a few concessions, so tell people that the payment that they would receive has the trust of the Yad which surely would surely boost demand.”

  “I’m not sure something as simple as that would fix it, but I hope it does. Just make sure you know what you’re doing, I actually want to get paid for the work I do.”

  While it was perfectly logical to not believe in my success after the loss of sales, I knew that the Yad’s word would make this time different.

  “It will work.” I said confidently to Piyan while thinking internally,

  “It has to work.”