I Married A Dragon (Prime Mating Agency)(67)

“What?!” Cedros exclaimed. “The Council is aware of these practices?”

“Of course they are. Some of their own offspring have done it,” Aldyr said with a disgusted expression. He ran a hand over his horns before coming back to sit behind his desk in front of us. “It is all a stupid political and economic game that apprentices, especially commoners—are caught in. We’ve repeatedly asked for the right to normalize the use of faulty stones for training. We already supervise their summoning. Had they done what you witnessed earlier here in the Conclave, one of the Gate Master mentors would have swiftly dispelled the portal. No one would have been harmed, especially not off-worlders.”

“So why the hell don’t you?” I asked, confused.

“The Council refuses to make it legal,” Aldyr spat out.

“But why?” I insisted, baffled. “It makes logical sense not to waste premium material for training purposes, if there is a cheaper, but safe, alternative.”

“Economics,” Cedros replied with contempt. “It would significantly increase the value of faulty stones, while decreasing the scarcity of proper shadow obsidian stones. As long as people have to juggle between using them for transport or burning them for their offspring’s training, the prices stay up. But if every family no longer had to waste their stash of good stones for education, they would start hoarding them instead, and their prices would plummet.”

“And that is only one of their concerns, an absurd one at that,” Aldyr continued. “Sure, the price on shadow obsidian stones would go down, but that simply means demand would go up as more people could buy and use them instead of being forced to traipse around the black gate to save credits. But the real reason is that they want to slow down people’s ability to elevate their plateaus.”

“What?” I asked, wondering what that had to do with anything.

“Faulty stones are usually ground into shadow obsidian dust, which is used to elevate the plateau their lair is built on,” Cedros explained. “Because they are faulty, there is usually a great amount of waste created. But not with a proper stone. A skillful Stone Master will perfectly grind every part of a good stone. If they become more affordable and more readily available, commoners will be able to acquire large amounts of dust quickly and elevate their status faster.”

Anger surged through me, no doubt reflecting on my face. “And as you need less dust to climb at lower levels, the nobles want to prevent the plebs from ever catching up to them. So they create unnecessary scarcity and high prices.”

“Yes,” Aldyr said with a tired sigh.

“Be that as it may, what your students did was wrong and caused deaths. This needs to be reported. There needs to be consequences and, more importantly, it needs to stop,” I said in a stern voice.

This was the part of my job I hated. There was no question in my mind that the apprentices had meant no harm. I also believed that, had they known, they would have stopped or taken greater security measures. They were fighting for a better future and living conditions for their families. Should they be cast out now or face criminal consequences, it would only perpetuate the circle of poverty and hardship for them and their loved ones. Yet, because of their actions, people had died. That couldn’t simply be swept under the rug.

“I agree,” Headmaster Aldyr said, taking me aback, having expected some major push back from him. “I fully expect you or the Shadow Lords to write a report to the Council. I will do the same. Just so you know, I will fight to save these apprentices from being expelled. While their actions may have been the trigger, those deaths were accidents, ones they didn’t even know they’d caused. And I will fight to make safe training with faulty stones the new norm, even if that costs me my position. For now, I will go have a serious talk with all the Scribe apprentices.”





Chapter 18





Cedros





In the month that followed that momentous discovery, our collective reports to the Council created quite a stir, further compounded by the UPO’s displeasure. It turned out that a far greater number of apprentices—and Scribe Masters—had been using faulty stones for portal summoning. The former had done so to speed up their training at a more affordable cost, and the latter to save on their stone consumption for personal needs.

While Kaida—with Nero’s confirmation—had identified the three apprentices she’d encountered in the void, no criminal charges were laid against them. The main reason for this? Too many other people had either been identified as well or confessed to have also done this on a regular basis. Half of the current cohort of Scribe apprentices and Scribe Masters would have been incarcerated or banned from the profession. That several of them were nobles or their offspring greatly cooled anyone’s eagerness into prosecuting.

I had mixed feelings about it. Like my Kaida, I believed it unfair that no justice would be found for the victims. On the other hand, aside from the fact that the Scribes appeared to have been genuinely unaware of the consequences, it would be impossible to pinpoint who had been responsible for which incident.

However, with all of this being made public, the population at large demanded a thorough revision of the shadow obsidian policies. The legalization of the usage of faulty stones—which the nobles and the Council had feared and tried so hard to prevent—would likely come to pass. The countless security measures put forward by their proponents were sound. But more importantly, they went a long way in pacifying the UPO.