“You got me, Mose,” Jason said. “I guess I always knew this day would come. This whole thing is an elaborate ruse. I’m actually a failed actor using an array of magical devices to fake being an adventurer from another world.”
He shook his wearily hanging head.
“Nothing for it now but to walk off into the desert, alone.”
“What is happening right now?” Mose asked. “I have no idea what’s going on.”
“Don’t worry about him, Mose,” Humphrey said. “Just remember that if you’re talking to Jason and you get confused, he’s probably up to something. If you’re talking to Jason and you’re not confused, then he’s definitely up to something.”
“Well that’s just hurtful,” Jason said.
The walls of the spirit coin farm were five metres tall, made from yellow desert stone. The gates were small, clearly not designed for a lot of traffic. Outside the gate was a fairly large area of tiled ground, scattered with desert sand. The sole feature of the tiled area was a gazebo, providing shade for adventurers to wait in.
It was around an hour after they arrived that Phoebe came back through the gates she had entered alone. She had another person with her as she exited, plus a trio of wagons running behind.
These wagons were the non-magical, heidel-drawn variety, and were longer, wider and definitely heavier than other wagons Jason had seen. They were all constructed from sturdy metal, to the point of looking like old-timey train cars. Each wagon took eight heidels just to move at a crawl. The narrow wheels looked like the exact wrong thing to take onto sand, and the wagons seemed generally useless for desert travel. They stopped in the middle of the tiled expanse and the adventurers left the gazebo for a closer look.
“You’re going to like this,” Humphrey said to Jason.
Each of the wagons had two people on it, who got off and moved around behind them. The back of the wagons folded down into a ramp, down each of which slid a vehicle. They looked a lot like the airboat Jason had ridden on with Clive, and Jason’s face lit up with glee.
“Some kind of sand boat?” he asked.
“We call them sand skimmers,” Humphrey said. “They operate on magic, obviously, so they have to be wagoned out of the farm before charging them up.”
“Don’t want any loose magic in your spirit coin farm?” Jason guessed.
“Exactly,” Humphrey said.
As they drew closer, the people unloading the wagons paused to greet ‘Young Master Humphrey.’ Jason opened his mouth to start off about disproportionate class systems, then stopped himself, shaking his head in self-recrimination.
“What is it?” Humphrey asked him.
“It’s nothing.”
“Really?” Humphrey asked. “Since when do you hold back an opinion?”
“Humphrey, opening my mouth wide enough to fit my foot in it already cost us a healer. It’s past time I learned to keep it shut.”
“It wouldn’t be you if you didn’t go into a rant about something,” Humphrey said. “Just let it out.”
Jason looked at Humphrey, warily.
“Look,” Jason said. “It’s just that you were born as the employer of these people, and they were born to work for you.”
“Just so you know,” Humphrey said, “these men earn more money than an iron-rank adventurer.”
“Really?”
“They work in a giant money workshop,” Humphrey said. “That makes loyalty important. Also, they have to work in the middle of the desert, which deserves fair compensation.”
“Do they live out here?”
“While they’re working, yes,” Humphrey said. “They do stints out here, then go back to their families with all the money they made. After working the farms for a few years, they gain a small part ownership. In our farms, at least. The Mercers don’t do it that way.”
“That’s the rub, isn’t it?” Jason asked. “If your family decided to screw these people over and leverage them into working for cheap while using draconian measures to keep them in line, what would stop you?”
“Basic decency,” Humphrey said.
“And there’s the real problem,” Jason said. “The line between benevolence and oppression falls wherever your family says it does. That’s real power. What happens when Thadwick Mercer is running his family operations?”
“They wouldn’t put him in charge.”
“His father is grooming him for exactly that. Doesn’t say much for his father.”
“What about Cassandra?” Humphrey asked.
“She’s going full-time adventurer, like her mother,” Jason said. “Like you, for that matter. Once the next monster surge is done, she’s out of here.”
“How do you know so much about the Mercers?” Humphrey asked.
“I may have been spending some time with Cassandra. Socially.”
“I didn’t think she had much time for young men,” Humphrey said.
“Of course she does,” Jason said. “She just doesn’t have time for boys.”
The workers finished sliding the sand skimmers down from the over-sized wagons. The three vehicles were larger than the airboat Jason had been on. They were all flat bottomed, with a large ring at the back for magic propulsion. There were five seats at the front, one front and centre for the driver, with handlebar controls like a jet ski. Behind were four passenger seats, two by two. Between the seats and the propulsion ring bringing up the rear was a flat area for cargo. This space was already filled on all three vehicles with stacked metal crates.
The person who had come out of the farm with Phoebe on foot was the bronze rank adventurer taking charge of the team. It was another member of the Geller family, named Ernest. The resemblance to Humphrey was clear, with the same height and broad shoulders. Jason didn’t assume a close relation though, as all the Gellers looked like that. Phoebe was an Amazonian goddess almost a full head taller than Jason.
“If we have these things,” Jason asked, looking over a sand skimmer, “why did we walk all the way out here?”
“Because picking you up would be an extra trip to the city for our drivers and we don’t care if you have to walk all the way,” Ernest said. “We use the skimmers to take coins to the city and bring back supplies. If you want to use one yourself, go buy it.”
“That’s a fantastic idea,” Jason said. “How much do they cost?”
“You need the right essence ability to use them,” Humphrey said.
“Boo,” Jason jeered.
“Are you a child?” Ernest asked.
“Mate, we’re about to go flying across the desert in giant magic toboggans. If that doesn’t eke out any childlike wonder, then you might want to check your soul’s still in there.”
“He does have a point, Ern,” Phoebe said, patting Ernest on the arm.
“Everyone just get on the skimmers, please,” Ernest said. He shook his head at Phoebe, who flashed Jason a grin.
Ernest and Phoebe took the first skimmer, while Jason sat behind Humphrey and Gabrielle on the second. Mose and the two remaining adventurers took the last one. Three of the workers who had unloaded the skimmers took the front seat in each vehicle. Jason could sense the presence of a single essence from each driver’s aura.
A vulture-like bird came swooping out of the sky, then transformed into a sand-coloured lizard, flailing its limbs in the air as it fell into Humphrey’s arms.
“I’ve had Stash scouting as a bird,” Humphrey said. “I waved him off when we were fighting the elementals. I didn’t want anyone mistaking him for another monster.”
“My familiar wasn’t much good there, either,” Jason said. “Leeches don’t eat sand.”
The driver started feeding spirit coins into a slot next to his seat and the vehicle powered up with an audible hum. Sigils around the propulsion ring lit up and the skimmer floated half a metre into the air.
“Coin-operated,” Jason laughed. “I love it.”
Soon the skimmers were rushing over the desert sand, hot air whipping into the passengers’ faces. Like the airboat, the sand skimmers’ propulsion rings drew in air from the front to blast out the back. In the arid desert, this dried the eyes out quickly. The drivers all wore goggles, as did Humphrey, who gave an extra pair to Gabrielle.