The Height
Mrs. Chandler's Healthy Syrup was going to take off. And he was going to be a rich man.
A middle-aged man with vivid red hair — Professor Bobby of the Magic Department at the Imperial Academy — had muttered those words to himself for the hundredth time. Ever since he had sunk his money into Gordon Lennox Joint-Stock Company, the firm that manufactured the Healthy Syrup, thinking of anything else had become impossible. At meals, in lecture, sitting in his laboratory: the Healthy Syrup, and nothing else.
Can't be helped. If this fails, I'm finished.
Professor Bobby was the very man who had written out a pledge to support the Third Princess and taken five hundred shares of unlisted stock at par. The sum invested was one hundred thousand thalers. He had wanted to stake more, but this was the limit; a long string of failed investments had left him short of cash. He had once bought into a trading company and lost one million four hundred thousand thalers when the ship went down. He had taken a fancy to art auctions, snapping up this and that in high spirits, and after a loss of nearly one million two hundred thousand thalers had been forced to sell his mansion. That was why one of the Empire's foremost mages lived so modestly. Lately even his wife had walked out, declaring she no longer wished to share a house with him.
And yet the world, it seemed, was not bent solely on seeing a man dead. The investment he had scraped together by emptying what remained of his accounts was beginning to show favorable signs.
Had they not said that Allan Madoff himself had moved to check the Healthy Syrup? Professor Bobby could guess well enough what that meant. From the moment he had crossed paths with the man at Minster Palace, something had smelled wrong. Before long, people frantic to invest would be lining up.
But I got in ahead of them, didn't I?
To enter a step before the rest was to claim a profit that much larger. The thought alone made him smile.
"Um, Professor. Aren't you going to teach?"
The joy must have reached his face; the students were looking his way. Bobby Duncan stood there blankly for a moment, then cleared his throat a beat too late.
Ah, right. I was in the middle of a lecture.
Embarrassment, however, lost out to the urge to boast of this happy news. It was far too much to keep to himself.
"Gentlemen. Are you curious?"
"No."
"I shall tell you regardless. Are you familiar with Mrs. Chandler's Healthy Syrup?"
"You... invested."
"The company that produces it stands on the verge of a listing. Of course, a listing is no simple matter. To offer shares to the public, one must render a payment up to the imperial house and submit to examination. But the owner of the company is a princess. That, surely, is no cause for worry."
The students' response to Professor Bobby was the familiar one: here he goes again. A few, however, began to brighten. The Healthy Syrup's recent fame was, in itself, a fact, and those welcome reactions put a spring in him. Professor Bobby launched into an enthusiastic praise of the syrup, seasoning it with boasts he did not even notice himself making.
"I had not meant to say even this much, but the Healthy Syrup does possess a rather uncanny quality. Shall I put it that, in the course of casting, one's attunement to mana improves by a fine degree? It wants verification, yet it is a most intriguing phenomenon."
"Professor, is that really...?"
"I speak because I have experienced it myself. At the very least, it merits research."
"Whoa."
Little by little, more students began to listen. The brand of a squandered fortune clung to him, but Bobby Duncan's renown was the genuine article: an eighth-circle mage, and within the bounds of fire magic the undisputed first. No student could let the words of such a man go in one ear and out the other.
In the end Professor Bobby talked of nothing but the Healthy Syrup until the lecture was over.
"I fear my digression ran long. You have my apologies."
"......"
Most of the students looked hollowed out. A few, however, slipped quietly from the hall — chiefly those suffering for their poor marks.
That same afternoon, Academy students were scattered through the line drawn up before the Healthy Syrup stall.
Students of the institution that stood for the Empire's higher learning, going so far as to queue for the syrup. To anyone weighing an investment, this too was a signal of no ordinary weight — proof that it was no medicine the common folk reached for only in desperation.
In the end, certain personages whose patience had frayed began to act.
The standing of the Healthy Syrup was soaring in real time.
So the pair of them really were rattled.
A spotless, crystalline smile rested on the face of the Empire's Third Princess, Anais Carlyle, thanks to glad news that had come in from the stock exchange and the Military Ministry alike. Conscious, it seemed, of the syrup's sharp growth, Allan Madoff and Sienna had committed serious blunders in both places. Nothing was more foolish than letting one's impatience show in action. They must have wanted very badly to put a spoke in the venture.
"It is reported that Allan Madoff remained on the floor of the stock exchange for more than five hours, openly maligning the Healthy Syrup. He even met the heads of department in person and warned that any favor shown them would not end pleasantly."
Allan Madoff had obstructed a public offering she had no particular mind to pursue.
"Her Highness Sienna did much the same at the Military Ministry. She is said to have described the Healthy Syrup to the generals as though it were some deadly poison. She even sought an audience with the minister, and withdrew only with difficulty when the First Princess dissuaded her."
Sienna, they said, had made a scene in a military whose mood these days was grave. While meetings on countermeasures were underway over the disputes with the elves — disputes grown markedly more frequent of late — she had stooped to that sordid business. It amounted to taking the reputation she had only just restored through the morphine trade and driving it into the dirt with her own hands.
She really can't smother that temper.
She could understand how the two of them felt. Even at this moment, Mrs. Chandler's Healthy Syrup was climbing, step by steady step, toward a greater output. They had arranged to lease the works of two factories, and the procurement of the most vital raw materials was advancing just as methodically. Those two had surely obtained the same information. They seemed to have judged that they must do something before the Healthy Syrup covered the whole of the Imperial Capital.
But every effort of theirs had, in the end, done nothing but advertise the syrup.
"Ought I to thank them properly, later on?"
Recalling the pair dashing about to block a rival drew nothing from her but a hollow laugh. She was nearly sorry not to have watched the disgrace with her own eyes.
Even amid the pleasure, a small suspicion did stir. She hated to grant it, but Sienna was no fool. Neither was Allan Madoff. If they were fools, then Anais herself — so wretchedly beaten by those fools — would be the only one who looked ridiculous, and what had to be admitted would be admitted.
Could they truly not have seen that it would come to this?
They might simply have loosed people to spread a malicious rumor. Why they had insisted on stepping forward themselves and courting their own shame, she could not tell. It might be nothing more than an excess of caution, yet the thought brushed past her that the two of them might have some other mark in view.
It doesn't sit clean. Not a hundred percent. If only I could know what they intend.
Anais's worry did not last long.
"Your Highness. There are persons requesting an audience."
The swift-footed, having caught the smell of money, were already milling in the reception room. They numbered twenty and more — and these were only persons of a weight that dared apply for an interview with a princess. A commoner with a little money could not so much as set a foot inside Minster Palace. They had already waited six hours there for a meeting with Anais, going so far as to miss a meal for it.
"I suppose I ought to show my face, at least."
She could hardly starve them to death; a suitable greeting, and then send them on. Thinking so, Anais went to the reception room herself.
But the state of the room was not suitable in the least.
"Your Highness Anais—!!"
Men and women shot up from their seats, crying out as if their lives depended on it. Anais's escort knight flinched and even moved a hand to his sword-hilt.
"Compose yourselves, all of you. To begin with."
"Your Highness. We have not come swarming because some idle rumor seduced us!"
"What?"
"Nor do we mean to demand, without preamble, that one so exalted parcel out equity. That would be begging, would it not? Only... we would make one small petition. It may strike you as sudden, but what would you say to changing the firm's name?"
"......"
"We are given to understand that the company producing the Healthy Syrup is styled Gordon Lennox Joint-Stock Company. Yet if the shares are ever to be opened to the public, a more intuitive name is required. Might you not replace it, simply, with Chandler Syrup?"
Calmer than she had expected, all of them.
Finding them unlike her anticipation, Anais took her seat, and at the same moment plausible proposals poured forth. Many explained how they themselves might be of use, and offered their cooperation. One wished, without fail, to take part if she meant to enlarge her capital by an issue at a premium. Another offered to arrange that the Healthy Syrup be sold in the great general emporia that nobles themselves frequented. There was even an offer to help secure sugar, a raw material more important than opium.
Worth hearing?
Her worries over Allan and Sienna began, little by little, to lose their color. The chance that Allan Madoff nursed some insidious design was great. But whatever calculation he was making, the potential of the Healthy Syrup, at least, was real. The proof lay in the number of people who longed to buy it and yet turned away bitter, unable to purchase any because the supply fell short.
Then growing her strength quickly was the prudent measure, so that even if her enemies played at trifling tricks she might break through by force. Curl up in fear, and she might instead be caught by Allan Madoff's attack. Thinking of it now, that seemed to have been their aim from the first.
Yes. A frontal breakthrough is the answer after all.
Anais resolved to set her mind firm. The attention now gathered upon Mrs. Chandler's Healthy Syrup, she would not go out of her way to refuse.
As a declaration of that resolve, she would begin by changing the company name — from Gordon Lennox to Chandler Syrup. And she would permit investment and collaboration as well. As it was, raising production by her strength alone was already somewhat beyond her.
"A wise decision!"
Praise poured out at Anais's swift resolve. It was the moment a standing broken beneath a bad name recovered at a rush, and Anais felt something swell tight in her chest.
