I tell her, of course.
It is the golden rule of regression stories that you are not to tell anyone about the truth of your regression. For one, no one will believe you; for two, even if they do, they will exploit your knowledge of the future. I am not afraid of either of these possibilities with my mother. She has lived eighteen years of her life telling a story that no one else believed. And even if she does wish to exploit my knowledge for her own gain, I am okay with that; in fact, I intend on doing the exact same thing.
In this life, I will make my mother the most revered woman in the kingdom. She will become richer than the gods and more powerful than the royals themselves, so that even my idiot father would beg for her forgiveness.
I explain everything from now until our execution. I tell Mama that in my past life, I sold all of my books to a secondhand shop down the road for a fraction of their true value, happy to get them off my hands. I left later in the afternoon to Master Odric’s estate, trained under him and was approved as an apprentice, and set sail on a seven-year journey around the globe. In that environment, I thrived. I always had a penchant for trade and politics, and soon my mastery surpassed even that of Odric. Since he had no children of his own and was hoping soon to retire, he named me as his beneficiary and heir, with plans to revise his will when we returned to Saol Eile. I do not recall the details, but if Odric had prepared the paperwork in advance with the royal palace, perhaps that is how they were able to learn of my travels abroad, and how they were able to serve me with summons while I was halfway across the globe.
Master Odric and I had argued valiantly to resist the summons, as we had easily another year left in our journey. But a royal summons cannot be ignored for long. We sailed back to Saol Eile, unsure what we would face when we did. As soon as we sailed into port, we were both arrested. I do not know what ultimately came of Master Odric, but as for me, I was dragged back to the house on Lavendel Road in chains. They compelled me to identify Mama, and without another choice in the matter, I did. We spent the next two weeks starving in the royal dungeons. The rest is history.
Mama takes all of this in with a thoughtful silence, chewing the last of her breakfast slowly. Thankfully, she seems to believe me without a shadow of doubt.
“Will you still be leaving today?” she finally asks.
“Gods, no.” I shake my head. “Well, I ought to inform Master Odric that I am declining the apprenticeship. So I will be leaving to visit, but I should return shortly.” I have other plans in Belsie Port, but I am not sure how long they will take, so I will not say anything for now.
“I see…”
Mama looks down. Clearly she is unsettled. To hear of one’s own future death is no simple thing, and she is pondering it carefully.
“I have to think about this, Ellie. This is…a lot.”
“I know. If it helps, I am still thinking through it too…I intend to write all this down, everything I learned from my past life; I don’t want to get confused or forget anything. I can show you what I write. And I’ll need to brush up on what I know of regression.”
“You have all those fairytale books,” says Mama, with a smile. “More like survival guides, now.”
“I suppose I can’t sell them off anymore,” I chuckle.
I explain to her that I still intend on selling some of the books, but will take careful stock of them. In lieu of the stipend payments that I would have received from Master Odric, I will need to begin accumulating funds as soon as possible. The books will help. Anything relating to regression, magic, military history, politics, economics, or the lineage of the Saol Eile royal family I will keep; everything else unrelated, like my childhood mathematics and language textbooks, shall go to the market. Mama is still not very happy about it, since the books are the only “gifts” I have from Prince Edgar, and he might be upset if he finds out I simply sold them. I reassure her worries with the original receipts of delivery that came with the books. It is a miracle we kept them all these years, since they are invaluable to me now.
“Look at the return address,” I explain to Mama, flipping through the receipts. “The name is ‘Exchange Words, LLC.’ That’s not a person, that’s a bookbinding company. The address is their warehouse.”
“Which means…” Mama frowned, “that these didn’t come from the palace?”
I snap my fingers. “Exactly. If Prince Edgar sent these, then he placed an order through a company, who delivered them straight to us. Here’s where it gets interesting.”
“I’m glad you think it’s interesting,” she laughed.
“If you look down here to payment information, you’ll see that this was an anonymous cash transaction. Usually, when making a large order like this, it’s customary to conduct the transaction through your bank, since the bank will preserve the records for you. They get multiple copies to archive, ensuring a paper trail that can be looked up later. But here, since the buyer paid in cash, it’s likely they only gave him one copy of a paper receipt. How likely is it, you think, that he kept a paper receipt?”
“Well, we kept them,” Mama points out.
“Of course we kept them,” I nod. “But I don’t think he did.”
“Why not?”
“Each of these orders was no less than fifty obols each—this one, from around my seventh birthday, was about three hundred obols. That’s a lot of money for us! But Edgar’s a prince. Moreover, he’s a prince who paid in cash. This means three things. One, that his conception of money is way different from ours—”
“Fifty obols is pocket change to him.”
“—and two, that he was trying to keep this off the books. He wasn’t acting under authority of the royal house. If he was, he’d just have charged it to the royal bank and let them do the work. Instead, he withdrew the lump sums of money himself, carried it to the bookbinding company, and paid there.”
“He didn’t want anyone to know,” Mama whispers.
“And third, because of that,” I finish, “he probably threw out the receipt. Burned it, if he’s smart.”
The last of the book deliveries arrived around my eighth birthday. Ten long years ago. So even if Prince Edgar learns about me selling the books—if he cares at all—chances are slim that he remembers all of his purchases. I can safely get away with selling, at most, half of my hoard.
I spend the rest of my afternoon and night sorting, cleaning, and logging the books. My seven years of being a merchant in my past life are paying off in this one. I could just sell them to the thrift store up the road again, but they ripped me off last time, paying fifty obols for a haul worth at least thirty or forty times that. Now I know better. Most of the books are in great condition, and if I am patient, I may be able to get close to mint-condition price. If I had a few months to spare, I could reach out to schools or private tutors, who are always scouring the secondhand market and would give me a better price than if I sold the books in bulk.
But I do not have that sort of time. I have two weeks until Master Odric sets sail, and by extension, only two weeks to make my mother the wealthiest woman in Saol Eile.
I find it easier to organize my thoughts on a typewriter. Next to the books, it is the most precious thing I own, but unlike them, I saved for this precious device with my own money. Weeks of thankless labor in a tailor’s stockroom allowed me to purchase it about one year ago, and it was about that time that it became invaluable to me in applying for Master Odric’s apprenticeship. In my last life, when I left aboard his trading vessel, I took it with me. This faithful little device saw much use writing hundreds of memos and letters in my career as a merchant. Now, it will serve its purpose again and amass for me wealth beyond imagination.
MEMORANDUM
TO: Eloise Rossach
FROM: Eloise Rossach
RE: Regression Returns Strategy, Proposal
DATE: September 3, 489 AR
I regret that I know little of Saol Eile’s political climate, as I spent much of the last (or next) seven years fleeing it. The civil war was (or will be) brutal and bloody. While war is sometimes profitable, death is quite unprofitable, so Master Odric and I saw fit to avoid it at all costs.
It is not clear even to me who was the victor, or what was the result. The only thing I know for certain is that the war ended when Edgar was coronated the Crown Prince Regent.
As of this moment, he is nowhere close to the title. He is, instead, the relatively powerless youngest child of the royal family, a distant fifth in line to the throne. So what changed? With my uncertainty, I am not equipped to make any judgments as to specific political happenings within Saol Eile. And without my apprenticeship to Master Odric, Mama and I are bound to live here in Saol Eile—and, by extension, to live under the power of Prince Edgar and the shadow of our impending fate.
On the other hand, I am well attuned to the rise and fall of value on the global scale. And if there is anything I know about royalty, it is that power always has a purchase price. The crowns would have us believe that their wealth is intrinsic to their precious bloodline. What a hilarious lie! I have seen the other side of the contract. For one skilled in the art of persuasion, no royal blood matches in power. With the right bargain, the the filthiest beggar can become a prince of his own kingdom. Thus, my only goal in this life will be to get a one-way ticket out of this doomed country. If I am wealthy, I may purchase land in a foreign country, acquire a mighty steam vessel for trade and transport, perhaps even secure a private militia to protect us. In short, I will make my mother the queen of her very own kingdom.
First, I will liquidate the only assets of value that I have, which are my father’s books. For a fast sale in bulk, I will get the best price from the book bindery that produced the volumes, who can then resell the best quality books or recycle materials from the ones with heavier wear and tear. The sale should be cash.
Second, I will use that money to invest in businesses that I know will do well in the next few years. The books will net me a small fortune on their own, but hardly enough to invest in any meaningful amount of steady, respectable stock. I, however, have an advantage that few other venture capitalists may boast — I know exactly which risky startups and genius new investments will take flight and soar.
And finally, once I have reaped what I have sown, I will take my profits and sail away with Mama. We ought to live modestly so as not to burn through our earnings, but should have enough to retire in luxury and comfort beyond what we ever knew here. If all goes well, I will never even need to lay eyes on my father.
How refreshingly simple. Reviewing my childhood books on regression, all of the female leads are content resigning themselves to palace intrigue and royal family drama. I have no need for that nonsense. Really, was the course of my last life truly so off the mark? In this life, I will still leave the kingdom and become a wealthy woman, only this time, I shall take my mother with me. And this time, I will make sure that when Edgar tries to kill us — whether he is the distant fifth in line, a Crown Prince Regent, or even the next King of Saol Eile — he can never touch us again.