Breaking a Promissory Note pt. 2

“That’s odd,” he said, looking through her file again, “I thought we already bought that.” He checked through the paperwork for another five minutes without finding anything.

“No sir, we only borrowed against our the land and Karius’s military stipends.”

“It seems you’re right,” he said finally. “Alright, let’s see what we can do.”

“Your options are somewhat limited I’m afraid,” he began. “While Karius’s military service and physical strength is a boost to the value of your potential offspring, as is your physical strength, and there are some scholars in your ancestry that give it an
extra boost, that doesn’t change the fact that you’re human. We just don’t have many buyers for human first-borns, I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” she said. It felt like her strength had been punched out of her with a few select words and it was noticeable in her voice. She stood up to leave, when Sorar grabbed her arm.

“I didn’t mean there were no buyers,” he explained, “just that the price wasn’t very high. Sit back down and we’ll discuss your
options.

“Now, a baby elf would probably fetch around 40,000 gold, depending on the family, if it’s an elemental, the parents and a bunch of other stuff we don’t need to go into. A prime human, under the best scenario can expect closer to 6,000 gold, maybe 7,500.”
That was better than she had hoped! It was enough to stock up on food, make a few payments on the farm and survive for the next couple of years. These were still negotiations though and she needed to keep control.

Laesra took a deep breath and tried her best to look contemplative, as though she could easily walk out at any moment. Sorar just seemed bored though and that made her nervous, a feeling she did her best to stifle. It was just so hard to pretend not to need something that could be their only way to survive.

“Since I’m here we might as well do the tests,” she said, hoping she sounded as bored as it seemed in her head. He nodded and removed a little box no longer than her finger and no wider than two fingers held together. He instructed her to put a finger inside and when she did it bit her!

“What the fuck!” she exclaimed, covering the bleeding pin prick with her sleeve.

“It’s just a little test, it’s harmless. Although it will cost 2 gold, but we can deduct those from your transaction. We also have a healing spell for an addition 3 gold.”

“I’ll manage,” she hissed, unable to hide her acidic tone.

They waited, watching the box for.. whatever it was supposed to do. She was offered some water and after making sure it was free, accepted, doing her best to seem polite and cheerful. Her hand was twitching as the desire to throttle his neck was growing every second, but she knew it had to be controlled.

His office was really nice, she marveled while they waited. It had professional produced wooden tables, magical lights that hovered, an ink well and quill, but no ink spots around. It was probably one of those non spilling inks. Nearly every item in the office seemed to be endued with some type of magic. Even the chair had runes carved into its legs, for what purpose she could only guess.

Finally, the box shook and beams of light escaped through the cracks. Sorar removed a tiny scroll, which instantly grew to the size of a normal piece of parchment. He made guttural “hmms” and “oh”’s as he read and she fidgeted and used her sleeve to wipe off some sweat.

“Well?” She asked, finally.

“Preliminary data are unclear. We’re getting anything from the 2,000 gold mark to the 4,000 part. Normally when this happens we just split the difference.”

3,000, great, even less than she expected. Just goes to show what a terrible body she had.

“However, you’ve been with Karius long enough to know he’s going to be the father, right?” She nodded. While many couples married expanded their marriage, sometimes marrying as many as fifteen at once, they were still a long time off from that.

“If we test him and his lineage proves strong it could move that number up, possibly even past the 4,000 mark if he’s good enough. Although he could also move the needle down below 2,000, so you know, it’s a gamble. Technically I’m supposed to require both potential parents get tested, but you’ve been a loyal customer, so I’m willing to offer some wiggle room.”

“Could I have some time to think about it?” She asked.

“Of course my dear, we offer one week for contemplation after a consultation. After that week though you’ll need to take another test, who knows how much your fertility would have degraded in that time.” She nodded and thanked him for his time, wanting to get as far away from the bank as possible.

Outside she could think again, although that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Karius wasn’t going to like this, he’d been against the whole idea of selling Children’s Futures from the beginning and he wasn’t likely to go along with it. There were other things they could do to make ends meet, like… … …

Well, maybe Dartha at work would want to get married and help out at the farm, that might be able to bring in some extra money. They’d talked about it and she expressed interest, but this seemed like the wrong way to go about marrying her, it was just so crass. Sighing, Laesra kept walking home, praying it hadn’t been a waste of half a day off.