From Slave To Ruler

"Good for you." Replied Z with a little bit of a c.o.c.ky tone, sarcastic too. But internally she had a lot of satisfaction, at this point Dalerus sounds too good to be true. She saw many men in her life, and only few respected her boundaries like he does. She felt proud of him. Well proud isn't the best word to describe it, but she did feel more calm thanks to such replies as if she didn't just kill a man.

But she snapped out of her thoughts, and started working towards the minor task that fell upon them. By work I mean she ordered Dalerus to do it. "I don't want to touch that dead man's body, so grab him and stuff him down the bas.e.m.e.nt." she ordered as she gestured for the body to be dragged away from her as soon as possible. Even though she can simply stand up and walk away from the chair if she wished to stay away from the dead body. 

"You're the boss." he replied to her with a high pitch tone. It was rather unintentional, he was still a bit nervous and he never handled a dead body before. Unconscious maybe, but dead no. However, it was still nice to see and hear his nervously high pitch tone, at least from Z's point of view. It was a result of Dalerus being very nervous, but also because he was trying to sound more manly, but it clearly didn't work out.

"By the 3 Gods just get the body down there." She replied to the salute a bit rudely, she didn't exactly aim to be rude towards him. Actually, she meant to let out a joking tone but it just didn't come out right. She just enjoyed the salute and it got her little bit shy, just a little. Which explains why her tone sounded rude, she doesn't know how to react to shyness. She enjoyed his company a lot come to think of it.

Finally having the opportunity to think about this situation even further since they managed to put this small problem behind them(for now at least), Z or as she is known by everyone here who asked as "Ursa". thought to herself. "What exactly is he doing here, I don't think I called for him?!" Letting out a slightly stressful sigh afterwards, she proceeded to think. "This idiot either messed up the situation hard or he has some more details to talk about the sh.i.p.s! Let's hope it's about the sh.i.p.s, yes it has to be about the sh.i.p.s." She hoped but still expected the worst.

Transporting that body to the bas.e.m.e.nt wasn't such a big hustle, for Dalerus at least. To spare his clothes and and an hour worth of cleaning the floors and stairs to destroy the evidence, he first grabbed a low quality cloth from surprisingly underneath the transaction table. Perhaps they are there since they are commonly bought due to of course being cheap, way easier to reach while keeping watch at the transaction table where a lot of Coins are usually stored, be it Bronze Silver or even Gold(less likely). The fact that there are so many people in this Kingdom suffering financially, proves that it isn't exactly the wise decided to leave the transaction table unsupervised. You can't expect everyone to be holy and fair.

He used the cloth to wrap the dead man's throat where all the blood was coming out of, uncontrollable to simply hold that blood off with his hand. Even if he managed to for the moment, when he goes back to the bas.e.m.e.nt at midnight to finish the deed, he will find the man in a pool of blood.

Which isn't exactly easy on the nose, the blood and stench with attract many bugs or basically any living organism that feeds on dead bodies. Dalerus could be really walking into a big mess which could scar him for quite a long time, depending on how well he can handle this situation. And the blood will take forever to wash off of the planks. If blood dripped on his shirt, might as well throw the shirt away.

As soon as he wrapped the Cloth around the dead shop owner's neck, lifting the body off of the ground felt considerably easy for him. He barely broke a sweat, placed him over the shoulder and started walking towards the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Thing is with a dead man on his shoulder, he struggled to find the bas.e.m.e.nt door at first, even tangled his legs with some wooden buckets and almost fell down. Seeing him struggle to find the bas.e.m.e.nt door, Z snapped her fingers to catch his attention and then pointed towards the door, showing him where it is at. 

A short giggle followed right after she directed him, that was probably the first time Dalerus ever heard Z laugh, even though it wasn't exactly a laugh.  It filled his heart with warm even though he was carrying a Dead man on his shoulder, but his face was boiling red in embarrassment. Is this what love is like?

Coming back a couple of minutes later, he didn't bother removing that quality dagger from the wooden door's casing. Which signified that he indeed has a lot to talk about. He doesn't want for strangers to walking on such s.e.n.s.i.t.i.v.e information that indeed can be sold for around 100 Gold Coins, with such coins the family is set for at least a decade or even two depending on their spending habits. Gold however wouldn't be the issue, they would both lose their necks. Even the Zamerians wouldn't be able to save them. Even the Zamerians from this Kingdom's Chapel.

"So..." She broke the silence with a rather straight face, while gesturing for him to reach for a shorter chair located on the top left corner of the shop, telling Dalerus to sit on that chair. A chair which doesn't exactly have back support and is very short, commonly used to reach for topper shelves in the shop. Although hesitant at first to sit at such chair, insisting to stand on his feet, he didn't take long to obligue when her facial expressions transformed into angrier than usual. She was just stressed and nervous.

"Why exactly did you search for me here? I told you to come here only in case of an emergency!" She asked while trying to hold in her laughter after she saw Dalerus looking so short once he sat on the Chair. Only his c.h.e.s.t and head could be seen from her point of view.

"I know." Replied Dalerus as he rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment and rather strong nervousness, right before he was about to tell her to the first issue. "A very perceptive merchant is on my tail. He acts like a fool most of the time, but it is just a mask covering a brilliant mind."

Sighing in rather strong diss satisfaction, she didn't like what she was hearing, at all. Dalerus is the only person she could rely heavily on this project, because they worked long enough to not be considered strangers. But she also knew that Dalerus can make this problem go away, which is why she was keeping patience by her side for once. "I'm just going to ask you one question which can define how we should approach the situation."

at such response, Dalerus already became very nervous but his skin was itching to ask, "What could that question be?" His curiosity was at peak.

"What can this merchant be considered friend or foe?" She replied, with her face as serious as ever. This nosy Merchant really be a threat to the master plan. So she had to be extremely sure. She can't risk for the plans to have gaps, or people creating gaps on it either.

Being puzzles with his own thoughts, Dalerus was left speechless. Because even if he doesn't know what to consider this man. Sure him poking his nose around Dalerus' private business is very risky for Z. But again he did prove very useful at providing information about such a professional matter. Specifically the sh.i.p.s. 

Sitting in quiet for a while, giving this question quite a strong thought. It wasn't exactly the best trait to bring into a conversation, but Z liked the way he made his face look while he was thinking. It looked like he swallowed something very sour. He even almost caught her giving him a big smile. At the end, he finally decided to reply with, "Well I don't know how to respond to that. He could either make our tasks a lot easier, or bring us a shitload of trouble."

"Your point being?" 

"He is the one who provided me with all the information I needed about the sh.i.p.s for me to bring to you before I depart for my big task." After giving it a little thought, he proceeded to say. "The bad thing about him, is that he is trying a lot to get this s.e.n.s.i.t.i.v.e information out of me. So I don't know exactly how much I can trust him."

"So he is a foe!" Replied Z feeling quite sure of her words. 

Still not feeling sure about that, Dalerus answered. "His qualities can be used at our advantage, so a foe isn't likely the best description to dump upon him. I will have a talk with him again and see if I can talk my way to him being of use to us."