A New Trade Master

“Here” you say, handing Sabine an amulet. It was an amulet with a depiction of the sun on it, made out of pure sunlight of course. The amulet was four points arranged around a circle. Sabine took the amulet gratefully and slipped it over her neck, holding it between her hands and closing her eyes.

“It’s warm” the girl muttered. It was strange and you felt strange, like you could see the girl without your eyes.

“I’ve put an enchantment on it, only those who worship me, or the moon goddess Artemis will see it as a sun, everyone else will see a cross” you explain to the girl, her eyes locking on you and a smile shining on her face.

“I-if I come back to this spot and pray . . .” Sabine began, a blush settling on her face “Would you come a-and . . . you know . . . with me?” she asked, stammering. You smile at the girl before wrapping your arms around her.

“Of course, pre-dawn is a wonderful time to have sex and girls have needs” you tell her. She sighs in your embrace and you kiss her before letting go. “Best we get back to business, I don’t exactly have the followers to take on the church just yet” you tell her. A mischievous gleam suddenly takes hold in the girl’s eyes.

“Don’t worry, give me a few weeks and the other girls won’t know which god they are praying too” she tells you, locking eyes with you. You chuckle at her statement.

“Just be careful, revealing myself too early to my enemies will make things difficult” you tell her, with a subtle implication that you’d rescue her if necessary.

“Of course my lord” she says, bowing her head. “Thy will be done” she adds, an ear splitting grin on her face.

With a flick of your godly power, Sabine’s clothes picked themselves up from where they had been discarded and wrapped themselves around the girl, cleaning themselves as they did so. The girl tugged her outfit a little to get it to sit comfortably and then put her hands over her chest, right where her amulet would be.

“I can still feel the sunshine on my skin” the girl commented, closing her eyes to bask in the light. You frown, this was not a feature you had added to the amulet but decide not to worry about it anyway. Instead, you state the girl’s chin between your fingers and bring her in for a kiss, delighting in the softness of her lips.

“I’ll be watching, always” you tell her as you make the Pavillion disappear around you. Sabine nods and then takes a minute to school her features before heading off, back in the direction she came from.

With Sabine gone, you teleport back to the camp, finding Artemis outside of a storage tent.

“Morning” you greet and get a smile from the silver goddess.

“Yes, it is, isn’t it” the girl replies, a mischievous tone to her voice. “Enjoy your morning proclivities?” she asked with a grin.

“Quite, she’s even offered to start a cult in my name” you reply “honestly I just wanted a spy in the enemy’s camp” you add. Artemis chuckled in response. “So, what did you want me to do?” you ask and Artemis waved her hand at the tent.

“Make a whole bunch of pepper” the goddess said, a hungry look on her face as she rubbed her hands together in expectation. You chuckle and comply, filling the storage tent up with burlap sacks of peppercorns.

“EEEEP!!!” you heard cry out from the storage tent. Both you and Artemis dashed inside and found Cattleya buried under sacks of pepper. Knowing your secret was basically out by this point, you just flicked your god power and made the sacks vanish off the girl, letting her up again.

“Hello little Cat” you greet while Artemis helps the girl to her feet, checking her over for injuries.

“Uhh hi?” Cattleya returned. “What happened?” she asked.

“You got sacked” you reply, somehow keeping a straight face. Cattleya giggled softly in response. “So, whatcha doing here?” you ask “Empty tent out of the way of anything” you comment.

“I uhhh . . . needed some alone time” Cattleya replied, blushing madly and doing her best to not look at you. You smirk and shake your head at her response. “Wait” Cattleya said, stilling and looking around her at the newly filled storage tent. “This is all pepper?” she asked.

“Yeah, we’re going to sell it and make a fortune” Artemis replied, opening one of the sacks and running her hand through the pepper.

“But . . .” Cattleya began, stopping again and looking down.

“What’s the matter Cat?” you prompt, frowning at the girl.

“Wouldn’t it be bad to just sell all this?” the girl asked, turning to meet your eyes. She blushed again and looked down, wrapping an arm around herself.

“Bad how?” you ask “Don’t be afraid to speak, I want to hear what you have to say” you add. That got an even brighter blush from the girl but she straightened up and looked you in the eye again.

“W-well, when there’s too much gold it doesn’t buy as much right? And when there’s a lot of grain it doesn’t cost as much gold right? But if there isn’t enough grain, it costs heaps” Cattleya explained and you mulled it over thoughtfully. “Pepper is like, super expensive because it only comes from far away and has to go through lots of different people who all want it” she continued “Kings bankrupt their whole kingdom for a few handfuls of the stuff” she added and you nod to her words.

“So if people found out we had a lot of it, it would bring a lot of enemies down on our heads, not just the Federates” you mutter, looking around at the now suddenly dangerous goods filling up your storage tent.

“It’s not just that!” Cattleya said, slowly losing her blush in favour of her usual exuberance. “Too much and it slowly loses value but more than that people buy so much that they run out of money and then nobody has money for grain which means the farmers don’t get paid so they stop growing more than they need to eat which means the breadmakers run out of ingredients and the townsfolk blame the farmers and and and-” you stop the girl there, putting your hands on her shoulders. The girl blushed vibrantly, trying to look anywhere but at you.

“So you are saying that selling too much pepper will collapse the economy?” you ask and the girl nods. “You know an awful lot about this sort of stuff” you comment, taking a step back and letting the girl breath.

“Sometimes it gets boring sitting around with nothing to do” Cattleya told you.

“Do you still get bored?” you ask and the girl nodded. It would make sense considering she apparently had the time to be relaxing in an empty tent away from the rest of the camp.

“We get so many new people now that they don’t need me at the cookhouse anymore” the girl told you, sitting down on a pile of pepper sacks with a heavy sigh. “I keep getting told I need to marry” she muttered.

“You are way too young for that even by Roman Law” you tell her, anger colouring your voice just a tad. “How about we give you something important to do?” you ask, an idea forming in your head. Cattleya brightened and an expectant look crossed her face. “We, apparently, need someone to do this whole economics for us” you tell her, motioning between you and Artemis.

“Hey! I’m not the one that tried to get a bunch of merchants to do my bidding just cause I said so!” Artemis angrily fired at you.

“And I’m not the one who tried to collapse the Economy!” you shot back. A giggle brought your attention back to the teen in the room.

“You want me to do that for you?” she asked, eyes glimmering in excitement.

“We are uhh . . . busy . . . we don’t have the time to stop and think about things like we probably should,” you reply sheepishly.

“I’ll do it!” the girl cheered

“Great!” you say, meeting her enthusiasm with your own. The girl broke down into giggles and took a moment to get herself together. Once she wasn’t busy giggling, you summoned several piles of paper and some writing equipment. “Why don’t you come up with goods to trade, and how much to trade them, and what we should be trading them for” you tell the girl who nodded, scooped up her writing equipment, dashed forward, kissed you on the cheek and then disappeared out of the tent.

“I think she has a crush on you” Artemis commented.

“Well, I hope not, she’s too young” you mutter.

“Too young? We’re gods, we don’t play by the mortals’ rules” the goddess chided you.

“It’s not a mortals’ rules that worry me” you state before heading out of the tent yourself.