A Dragon's Curiosity

Nisha tilted her head and pondered over the words coming from the head of the Dharnas house.

As a matter of fact, the elf had quite a guess what exactly the man was talking about, yet she did not see why it was an issue for him.

Therefore, she decided to sound out the situation first.

“Well, I only visited a single business, you are probably talking about that.

I am not sure why that shop has a less than stellar esteem, there have been no signs of that when I’ve been there.

And now that I think about it, I stayed out late and just returned, who exactly told you that I have visited a shop previously?”

Not even Nisha herself had known what exactly the Golden Heel had wished to discuss when she got the invitation, nor where the meeting was going to take place.

“You see, there was a servant employed at our estate that coincidentally passed through the area and saw you entering the red light district. 

We only want to make sure that you are alright and what exactly happened that drew you to a place with such a dubious reputation.”

Luthais put away the report on his desk and folded his hands on the empty table.

The half elf did not really want to question the girl in front of him.

Although he was also unclear on the details, his late father entrusted him with Nisha and he also knew of her true nature.

Thinking about a dragon frequenting a human brothel almost made him show a grin, fortunately he kept his expression schooled completely neutral and waited for an answer.

Rather than the head of the House, it was the butler behind the elf who reported about her excursion and insisted that they get to the bottom of the matter.

“Dubious reputation? And why red light district? I did not see any red lights.

I did visit one shop tonight, the [Red Night Palace]. Is the entire district named after one shop?”

Wondering about the meaning behind the name, Nisha candidly admitted to her nightly adventure.

She even felt somewhat proud, the merchant house founded by the maid sisters and herself already secured their first order, and a big one at that.

Galan, on the other hand, jumped forward like a shark that smelled blood.

“So you did enter the [Red Night Palace]! What affair are you involved in to go to a pleasure house secretly?

The servant was barred entry to the upper floors, but we already know you went up!”

The old servant never really believed that his old master had an affair after the death of his wife.

He had served the couple from the time they got married until they grew old together.

All of a sudden, the  old master sent the girl and a letter to the capital and claimed that she sprung forth from an unknown descendant the late master Eldrin sired at an unknown time prior to this.

Nevertheless, no matter what doubts the elderly servant had in mind, he was unable to voice them as Duke Dharnas accepted the elven girl as a member of the household.

Now, he had a chance to investigate the sphere of influence Nisha moved around in.

The servant he had tasked with following her almost lost her several times.

Finally, when he tried to follow her in the upper floors inside the [Red Night Palace], the guards at the stairs threw him out of the building no matter how much he plead with them.

“Pleasure house? I don’t really know what you are talking about, but if the neighbourhood there has a bad reputation, why was a servant employed by the Dharnas estate there in the first place?

Do you know what he was doing there, too? Or are you only interested in my affairs?”

Nisha turned her head over her shoulder and blinked at Galan.

She previously had noticed several familiar faces when the dragon strolled through the city, but dismissed the idea of being followed, the city was home to many people and it was inevitable to run into familiar faces.

Now, however, the entire ordeal did not seem quite as simple as before, since the old servant implied that there was indeed someone paying attention to her when she moved around in Thurgau.

Irregardless, the query by Luthais made it clear that they were concerned for her, and not questioning her.

Galan might have used harsher words, yet the elf had previously experienced elderly people who intentionally acted harsh on the outside due to the concerns they felt embarrassed to voice otherwise.

“That’s not the important thing here! The man had a good reason to pass through there, he was on an errand and for nothing else!

You still haven’t answered what you were doing in that pleasure house, so stop diverting the topic!”

The unintentional accusation shocked Galan and made his cheeks go red.

By the thought alone that an employee selected by himself and under his management would frequent murky establishments in that part of the city, his heart would not be able to take it.

Even though it was the head butler’s order that caused the man to be there, it still agitated Galan.

Nisha felt even more bewildered by the strong reaction, but she noticed that she acquired a liking for the term pleasure house.

Indeed, everyone inside the [Red Night Palace] had lots of fun, the people downstairs ordered food and drinks, singing songs and dancing, while the top floor had many fun places like the pools and so on.

Pleasure house is a good term for a place with so much cool stuff.

While the dragon made a wrong connotation in her mind, she paid the gruff tone of the question no mind and easily replied.

“I was invited for a discussion there, I had no idea that the entire district had a bad repute, nor did I ever visit the [Red Night Palace] before that.

Earlier, I asked around for the merchant house that Annabelle and Lydia plan to set up in cooperation with me, and one of the contacts from that sent me a card.

When I got there, the contact was not there yet, but an employee from there offered to show me around and open a rest space for me until the person in question returned.

Since it was the first meeting, I had not grasped the perfect timing to visit and was too early.

Eventually, my contact arrived and we discussed a delivery contract, which I successfully acquired,”

Deep inside, the dragon laughed merrily as pride and satisfaction beamed from the incarnation inside her [Inner Space].

During her first negotiation, Nisha already secured a deal worth five thousand gold.

She did not quite grasp how large the volume traded by other merchant houses usually went for, but it was a major order in any case.

Sadly, not everyone shared her bright inner thoughts.

“A deal, you say. In the [Red Night Palace].

That cannot be allowed. As a member of the Dharnas estate, you have a name to uphold, you cannot throw away all the Duke’s face like that.”

Shock turned to numbness, and Galan’s face became grey like dried ash.

To think that a Dharnas lady agreed with a proposal from a pleasure house.

He was a hair away from suffering a heart attack.

To his great fortune, not everyone in the room lost their cool.

“Nisha, let’s go back a step and then go into more detail.

As far as I have understood you, you wanted to make inquiries for the merchant house you want to set up with Annabelle and Lydia when they finish their apprenticeship.

To that end, you made some contacts who had some influence in that area and they made contact with you via an invitation.

When you had arrived at the [Red Night Palace], there was a difference in the time schedule and had to wait for your contact to be available.

After waiting for a while, you discussed a deal in regards to the merchant house and only that, did I sum up everything correctly so far?”

Luthais often dealt with complicated situations as part of his duty as the commander of the forces in the capital.

Despite the misleading first impression, he captured the essence of the facts in Nisha’s narration and arrived at a different picture than his butler.

“Yes, that’s correct! I can give you a complete report of everything that happened too, if you want that.”

Happy to show off her achievement, Nisha recounted everything right after she met Velvet at the door of the [Red Night Palace].

At the start, Galan still looked physically ill and on the verge of a breakdown, but along the progression of the story, he gradually recovered a tinge of redness in complexion.

While going over everything in great detail again, the elf omitted some of the facts, such as the female servers and male patrons who shed part of their clothing or that the boss of Velvet had another moniker, the [Golden Heel] who ruled over the entire district as the face of the [Thieves Guild].

Luthais wrinkled his brows already at the mention of a boss level figure that held the negotiations, and the name Carmen was also vaguely familiar to him.

Nevertheless, there was nothing wildly inappropriate that made the two jump out of their skin like the earlier misunderstanding that Nisha somehow sold herself to a brothel.

“And so we agreed on an order, the [Red Night Palace] will purchase five thousand gold worth of grain at the market price through our trading house …”

Before she had the chance to finish, Luthais interrupted her quickly.

“Are you entirely sure that the order is for five thousand gold and not five thousand silver? This is important!”

Galan also perked up, the idea of a purchase on this order of magnitude never even occurred to the men when they heard that the elf managed to reach an agreement with the pleasure house.

Of course, this was not entirely to be blamed on them. An average farmer generally tended to one or two fields worth of grain or corn, perhaps some livestock as well.

Within one turn, such an estate produced about ten to twenty silver worth of foodstuff, of which only a part remained as profit for the farmer.

Smaller villages had around twenty farmhouses around them, to make the investment of a protection stone from the guild worth it, while larger villages could reach between fifty to a hundred before running out of space.

These were rather rare though, so the majority of produce came from small villages scattered throughout the provinces under the different Duke houses in Leandar.

Five thousand gold worth of grain would amount to more than each of the spheres of influence under any Duke produced per turn.

At least two of the provinces had to get cleared out to reach the required amount of villages.

“Yes! It’s five thousand gold worth of grain, not silver.”

Nisha had not doubted that figure, as she had no real understanding of how much space that produce would take up, she rarely spent money in the capital.

Sometimes, the elf went on an errand for Miss Thana, the priestess from the Hall of Life and Death in the [Seven Stars Temple], to purchase new batches of tea.

Since tea was counted as a premium good, sometimes imported from the distant northern desert or even further east than the Terus empire, she often spent several gold to make the purchases.

That undoubtedly warped her sense of monetary value.