Chapter 410: The Crux of Her Refusal

As the host, Ariel found it impossible to refuse such an enthusiastic guest.

By the time she came back to her senses, she had already led Black Rose to the busiest commercial street in Stormhaven.

"How did I end up going shopping? Weren't we here to do business?" she wondered to herself.

Despite Ariel's bewilderment, Black Rose continued acting like a close friend, linking arms with her and pulling her from stall to stall with cheerful abandon.

The Umbral Depths had its hardships, but gold was hardly a concern. Black Rose spent with breathtaking abandon, tossing fistfuls of gold at anything that caught her eye. Within a short while, she had bought out half the street.

The deep-sea vein that was the Ragetide Kingdom's primary source of gold might generate perhaps a few dozen million gold coins in all.

In the Umbral Depths, it would have been considered a vein too poor to be worth mining at all.

Ariel watched with wide eyes. Even as a princess, she had never spent so lavishly.

She had started out mildly irritated at the time being wasted on shopping, but the sight of the merchants' delighted faces made her smile. Letting the vendors benefit from Black Rose's largesse was hardly a bad thing.

With that thought, her mood shifted. She warmed up considerably and began enthusiastically introducing Black Rose to every Ragetide specialty in sight.

Aged salted fish; large, perfectly round pearls; ocean-blue stones the size of a fist—everything within view was presented as a rare local treasure, unavailable anywhere else in the world.

Black Rose played along, smiling and spending her gold as they walked.

By the time they reached the end of the street, Ariel was feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

Black Rose had spent nearly two thousand gold on that street alone.

Two thousand gold! Gold was what the Ragetide Kingdom needed most desperately. Two thousand gold was enough to buy a grand estate in Stormhaven.

A good portion of those purchases had been at inflated prices. The vendors, reading Black Rose's generosity, had named whatever figures they pleased. Ariel had hesitated but said nothing—and Black Rose had paid ten times the going rate for what were essentially tourists' trinkets.

By the time the walk was over, Ariel was thoroughly unsettled. She had helped the local merchants turn a profit, yes, but in doing so, she had allowed this generous queen to be fleeced. That didn't sit right with her.

Black Rose herself seemed entirely unbothered. She asked with genuine interest where else she might find Ragetide specialties, as if she hadn't spent nearly enough yet.

That made Ariel feel worse.

After a moment's hesitation, she said, "I'm sorry, Your Majesty. You've spent far too much. Those things weren't worth what you paid for them. I'll have the difference returned to you."

Black Rose looked surprised. "Not worth it? What do you mean? They were all wonderful things I'd never seen before."

Ariel pursed her lips. "Everything in the Ragetide Kingdom comes from the sea. These supposed 'rare ocean treasures' are usually pretty common and not worth much gold at all."

"Is that so?" Black Rose said warmly. "Ariel, you really are unusually kind-hearted. Most people in your position would have already dragged me down the next street for more shopping, and never said a word."

"Our kingdom is very poor," Ariel admitted, a little embarrassed. "When people see this much gold all at once, it's hard to hold back. But you're our guest, and that's no way to treat a guest."

"No, there's no need. Let's just keep going. Ariel, that honesty of yours is worth a hundred times more than any gold. I'd be honored to call you my friend." Black Rose tightened her arm around Ariel's.

"A friend?"

Ariel's mind was spinning. She had deceived someone, been praised for admitting it, and somehow ended up with a new close friend. How had any of that happened?

Black Rose gave her no time to think it through. She turned to the attendants behind her and said: "Everything we bought today, give it all to my dear Ariel. Consider it a gift from me."

That announcement left Ariel incapable of coherent thought.

Several thousand gold worth of gifts—the equivalent of an estate in Stormhaven, handed over as a present for their first meeting. It was far too much to accept. Ariel said so, repeatedly.

But she was no match for Black Rose. After a few rounds of protests, she was neatly cornered by, "So you don't want to be my friend?" and found herself, expression thoroughly dazed, accepting the gifts.

In the course of one shopping trip, Ariel and Black Rose had gone from cautious counterparts at a negotiating table to something close to genuine confidantes.

After that, Black Rose made no move to discuss business at all. She simply said that she had had a long flight, was tired, and hoped to rest for the night.

By this point, Ariel had entirely lost track of whether the undead got tired at all. Without stopping to think about it, she arranged for Black Rose to be housed in the royal palace.

As the night grew quiet, Milena finally couldn't help herself. She asked the question that had bothered her all day. "Mother, why did you go shopping with the princess and let her charge you so much?"

She had noticed something was off even during the day. At the pearl stall, for instance, pearls had been one gold when they arrived and ten gold by the time Black Rose reached for her purse. Even Milena had seen through that.

Black Rose was quietly pleased. Her foolish daughter had at least noticed her irregular behavior—that was welcome progress.

She explained, "We came here with two objectives. The first is to finalize your father's business arrangements. That requires essentially no effort on our part. Your father said that no one in the Ragetide Kingdom will be able to identify the flaws in the agreement, because every clause is written to appear enormously favorable to them. We could hand over the documents and say nothing, and they would sign regardless. Ragetide has no way of turning down an offer to dramatically expand their national strength.

"So my friendship with Ariel has nothing to do with that transaction. It's for the second task your father gave us: making sure Aiolos doesn't marry her. But we're outsiders. What standing do we have to tell a foreign princess who she should or shouldn't wed? Your father also won't want to create bad blood with Ragetide over it, which means a different approach is needed.

"Once Ariel and I are friends, I'll have every right to weigh in on a friend's marriage. Do you understand now?"

Milena's eyes went wide. So that was her mother's plan! Then a new question occurred to her. "But why didn't Father mention any of this before we left?"

Black Rose smiled. "Because this is a method only a woman would think to use. How would your father have planned for it in advance? Besides, he didn't need to brief me in detail. He trusted me to handle it."

That was indeed how Ambrose operated with Black Rose. Raw strength alone couldn't govern a kingdom, and the forceful manner Black Rose usually projected was only one of her many facets. She was hardly lacking in intelligence.

Milena thought she understood her mother now. "So what do we do next? Can we just tell Ariel not to get married?"

Black Rose shook her head. "It's not that simple. We're friends, but our friendship is still untested. The time isn't right for that kind of conversation. Give it a few more days. Once the contract is signed and Ariel has seen for herself that I mean what I say, then we can start talking about more intimate matters. But before any of that, there's one crucial piece of information we need."

Milena perked up immediately. "What piece of information?"

Milena adored the idea of unraveling a mystery step by step. The last time Ambrose had brought her along to go undercover among the drow had been enormous fun, even if it had ended too quickly. She was already growing excited about being let into a scheme.

Black Rose thought for a moment. "From today's conversation, I gathered that people in the Ragetide Kingdom marry very young. Women can be wed as early as twelve. Ariel is twenty-eight, old by their standards, but she has never married. That's unusual for this kingdom. We need to find out why before we can approach the subject of her marriage at all."

"Can't we just ask?" Milena said.

Black Rose gave her daughter a look. "At twenty-eight, Ariel is considered practically an old maid by Ragetide custom. Ask her directly and you'll almost certainly offend her. You're a woman too. How do you not understand this?"

Milena frowned. She was barely over a year old. How was she supposed to know what a twenty-eight-year-old woman was thinking?

Black Rose had long since given up expecting her daughter to have sudden flashes of insight. She said patiently, "Don't worry. Finding out shouldn't be difficult. Ariel is the crown princess and the only heir to the kingdom. Her marriage is a matter of national concern. Ask around casually and the information will come easily enough."

"Then I'll ask!" Milena said eagerly. "I'll go to those merchants who overcharged us today and—"

"That isn't asking around," Black Rose said, exasperated. "You'd only be turning yourself in. Do you want everyone to know we're looking into Ariel's personal affairs? Stay quiet, watch, and follow my lead."

Milena deflated. "All right. Whatever you say."

This was nothing like Ambrose's undercover adventure with the drow. She had no chance to do anything at all. Traveling with Father was far more exciting.

Black Rose paid Milena's complaints no attention. Over the next few days she continued building her relationship with Ariel, and the contract negotiations proceeded exactly as smoothly as Ambrose had predicted. The people of Ragetide had no framework for thinking about labor costs—to them, fishing was work, and working for Ambrose was work, and the latter paid considerably better. That was the entirety of the calculation.

Ariel herself had not expected the terms to be so favorable. The way the contract read, Ragetide seemed to be giving up very little in exchange for a lot—grain, materials, airships, and a substantial supply of alchemical goods and weapons. It was, by any measure, an extraordinary deal for the kingdom.

Her father, the king, sought her out and asked her seriously whether she had made any private arrangements with the lich, because there was simply no other explanation for terms this generous.

Ariel could only swear that she had met the lich exactly once and had agreed to nothing at all.

The king thanked Thanos for his blessing repeatedly, then signed the contract with barely contained excitement.

By the time the contract was concluded, Black Rose had also quietly gathered, through careful and indirect inquiry, the key to understanding why Ariel had never married.

Her betrothed, Monge Greywater, had recently perished.

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