The Almighty Dominance (by Sunshine) novel Chapter 742

Alex came onto the fourth floor with one sheet of paper and set it face down on Beatrix's desk.

"Before you turn that over," he said, "tell me how Red Tower makes its money."

Beatrix looked at the paper, then at him.

"Fire," she said. "Everything that burns on purpose. Every forge in the state runs on a Red flame-charm, and every one of those charms has to be renewed by a Red magician every month, for a f*e. Same charm in half the kitchens in New Avalon."

"Every month."

"Every month, for five hundred years." She shrugged. "It's the best business in this country. Nobody stops cooking."

"Black."

"Cleanup and curses." Beatrix ticked them off. "You want a building taken down, a field cleared, a warehouse of spoiled stock disposed of — you hire Black, and they charge what they like because nobody else does that work. And then there's the other half."

"Say it."

"Curses." Her mouth thinned. "Hexes for hire. A merchant pays Black to put something on a rival's shipment and the rival's cargo rots in the hold. Everyone knows it happens. Nobody says it out loud, because everyone's either bought one or is afraid of one."

"And Ferrowgate?"

"Ferrowgate is bleeding. The Boosting Sticker took half their equipment line and it isn't coming back." Beatrix paused. "But they've still got the Meridian."

"The flying car."

"The flying car. Kessler's grandfather built the first one and this whole country has been buying them for sixty years. It's the only thing left holding that company's name up." She looked at the paper again. "Why are you asking me things you already know?"

"Because I wanted to hear you say them in order," Alex said. "Turn it over."

...

There were four lines on the page.

Beatrix read them twice. Then she set the sheet down very carefully, the way you set down something that might go off.

"This is a target list."

"Yes."

"Alex, this isn't a product plan. Every single one of these is aimed at somebody."

"That's what a target list is."

She picked it back up anyway.

"Flame core," she read. "Talk."

"A brick. Sits in a forge or a stove and burns as long as you want it to." Alex sat down across from her. "No charm. No renewal. No monthly f*e, no Red magician at your door on the first of the month. You buy it once and it lasts a year. Cheaper."

"How much?"

"Twenty dollars."

Beatrix went still.

"A Red flame-charm is nine dollars a month," she said slowly. "Every month. Forever."

"I know."

"You just ended their business."

"I built a better stove."

"Alex."

"Next line," he said.

...

"Breaker rod." Beatrix's voice had gone flat and careful. "That's the Black one."

"Clears a field in an afternoon. Takes a building down in sections instead of all at once, so you can sell the stone afterward instead of paying somebody to cart it off." Alex leaned back. "Black charges four thousand dollars for a warehouse demolition. The rod costs sixty and a farmer can use it himself."

"So half of Black's income."

"Half."

"And the other half?"

Alex didn't answer right away.

Beatrix read the third line out loud, and her voice changed on it.

"Curse-breaker."

"Yes."

"Explain that one to me very slowly."

"It's a charm. You wear it." Alex kept his voice level. "Any hex Black Tower has ever laid stops working. Any hex Black Tower lays after this stops working before it lands. It doesn't compete with them. It deletes them."

Beatrix put the sheet down.

"Do you understand what you just described?"

"I do."

"No, I don't think you do." She stood up, walked two steps, came back. "The other three are business. Cruel business, but business — you make a better thing, people buy the better thing, that's the game. This one isn't a product. This one is you standing in the middle of the Arcanum State and announcing that Black Tower's curses don't work anymore."

"They don't."

"They believe they do. That's the entire thing. Half of Black's clients pay them out of fear, not for a service — the fear is the service." Beatrix's hands were flat on the desk now. "Alex, if you sell this, you're not taking their customers. You're taking their whole reason to exist, in public, where everyone can watch it happen."

"Grandmaster—"

"Anyone who applies. Anyone who can hold a wand and shows up on the day." Alex laid a hand on the enrollment ledger and closed it. "No f*e. No family name. No letter from anybody. Not this year — ever."

Elias sat down slowly.

"No tower has ever done that," he said. "Not one, not in five hundred years. Every school in this country has only ever taught the students who could pay."

"I know."

"Do you know what that means for the ones who couldn't?"

"I know exactly what it means," Alex said. "That's why I'm doing it."

...

By the week of open enrollment there were nineteen thousand names on the list.

They came from everywhere. They came in on foot. Farm kids, dock kids, kids from the old quarter whose parents had never once in their lives said the word tuition without laughing at themselves afterward. Kids who'd been told at eleven years old by a Green recruiter or a Red one that they had the talent, absolutely, no question — and then been asked what their family did.

A boy came up the White Tower road with a letter he'd written himself and stood at the gate for a long time before he went in, because he'd been turned away at three towers already and he'd learned to expect the walk back.

Nobody turned him away.

That was the thing that traveled. Not the flame core, not the Lark, not even the curse-breaker.

The thing that traveled was that there was one tower in the United State of Magic that didn't ask.

...

It hit all at once.

Red Tower's renewal income dropped forty percent in three weeks and their elders held an emergency session about a twenty-dollar brick. Black lost nine demolition contracts in nine days, and then something worse started happening — clients calling to cancel curse-work they'd already paid for, because the target had bought a charm and the target's cargo hadn't rotted. And the competitors were healthy after wearing the charm.

At Black Tower, an elder told the room not to panic.

"Nobody stops paying for a curse," he said. "Fear doesn't go out of fashion."

He said it on a Tuesday. The curse-breaker had shipped a hundred and forty thousand units by Friday.

And in a glass office sixty miles away, Silas Kessler watched the Meridian's order book empty out one line at a time, and did not move for a very long while.

The Arcanum State had spent one season learning that Alexander could kill a Line-Commander in a single move, and a second learning that whatever he touched got built in a month instead of a year.

Now it was learning the third thing.

He wasn't buying his way to the top of the seven towers.

He was taking the floor out from under them, one at a time, and handing what fell through to anybody who'd been standing underneath.