“Am I to actually believe you would allow me to have an equitable share in the treasure, when you hold the key to my very life or death?” Iskondra asked.
“Equitable?” Mauricio repeated. “When you find the treasure, you’re free to take as much as you can carry for yourself. I expect that will be as far from an ‘equitable’ share as it will be from making a difference to my share, but it will also make you wealthier than even your most avaricious dreams. More mineral wealth was lost in the fall than has been mined in all the years since, and much of it went down with the fleet. Do you realize how many tetrae you would have to melt down before you could extract even an ounce of gold? Even a handful of gold coins would pay your debts. Another handful would set you up for life.”
“Heard wizards say ‘words have power’,” Tauri said. “Never realized how much believe it.”
“As much as I am loathe to agree with the furred fiend, I must say that you are indeed needlessly and tiresomely verbose. In any event, with our lives in your hands, it would seem you need not offer us even a handful of gold,” Iskondra said. “Why hold this reward out?”
“Because I want you to be more motivated towards finding my treasure than trying to find ways to circumvent the runes,” he said. “Not that you’d be able to remove them, but without the promise of a reward, you could waste a lot of time in safe but fruitless activities that technically fulfilled the geas. Oh, yes, I could exert my power over you more directly if you were to dally too long, but… one does hate to second-guess such things. What if I decided you were taking too long and I inflicted a burst of excruciating pain on you, right as you reached some pivotal juncture? No, I want you to understand that you’re under my control… but I also want you moving forward on your own initiative.”
“Small problem,” Tauri said.
“Ah, yes, you don’t care about any amount of wealth,” Mauricio said. “Your incentive is that you get to stay close to your target, for the moment when you are once again free to pursue your own goals. The moment I no longer believe that this is enough to make you contribute to the search will be the last moment of your life. I would rather have two agents working for me than one… especially when one is under a compulsion not to kill… but I can trust that she will continue to bend every effort towards finding the treasure even if you’re not present. I can’t say that the reverse is true.”
“How about ‘especially’ if he is not present?” Iskondra said. “I’ll look even harder if I know that finding it won’t immediately result in an attempt on my life by an assassin to which I’ve been metaphorically and metaphysically shackled.”
“You’ll look as hard as you can regardless, because the only thing you value more than gold is your own life, and finding the former lets you keep the latter.”
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