“So, that potion you made was bunk? It was just fruit juice with hair? That’s so clever, but, and I don’t mean to be too pushy or mean because you’d turn me into a newt, but can I get my money back?” Jasmine babbled at Madeleine.

  “Non, pipelette. You drank it and it did what it was supposed to do, n’est-ce pas?” Madeleine responded, raising her teacup to her lips again.

  “...I guess! But that’s so mean, you could have just told me to go talk to him!”

  “And would you have listened, pipelette?”

  “...No.”

  “Then the potion worked, and it was money well spent,” Madeleine responded, her arms crossing underneath her breasts.

  I just looked down at my pekoe tea, as Jasmine had a cup of coffee and her pastries. “Jasmine, how are you affording all of that?”

  “I mean... It’s all 1 silver, so it’s not that much of my day’s wages,” she said, pulling her snacks closer to her. I shook my head, glad that I didn’t have to worry about copper pieces for tea.

  “Pipelette, you said you had a plan?” Madeleine interrupted, her voice quickening and her body leaning in. I looked around the café once more, but Jasmine was true to her word. We did have a private booth in the back.

  “Yes!” Jasmine excitedly said, pulling out a black little book from her inventory. “So, what do you know about money and laundering?”

  “Nothin’,” I admitted. Madeleine said nothing, taking a sip of her tea. She was definitely far more graceful than I was.

  “Good! That makes it easier. Let’s get this out of the way: you can’t really ‘hide’ who gave you a coin. You remember how that mean lady immediately knew that it was Adrian that gave it to ya?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, even if you took illegal money, they’d know the transaction history. But that just really means like...” She pulled out a copper coin and threw it on the table. “Pick that up, Ashley.”

  I looked at the copper coin, then at Jasmine. My hand moved forward and took the coin, half-expecting something to happen. Nothing did.

  “Cool! We just did a transaction, according to the ledger,” Jasmine said cheerfully. “If anyone were to check the history, I lost it, and you got it. The timing between the two would imply it was instant, or coins got traded!”

  “Okay...?”

  “That’s all [Money Divination] is. It’s not able to find out what it was used for.”

  “Pipelette, get to your point.”

  “No, spooky Martivian lady. I like talking, and you’re gonna listen to me talk.”

  Madeleine looked blank-faced at Jasmine’s response, but then she laughed. “Chérie, your friends are such a delight. Why didn’t you introduce me to her before?”

  “Because Ashley’s weird.” Madeleine nodded. I clicked my tongue. Jasmine, however, continued.

  “Back to my original point! So, if someone looks at it, they’d see you got a coin from me. I mean, if they did. For copper, it’s not likely anyone’s going to look at the history of that, but for gold and lots of silver? Yeah.”

  Jasmine then took my cup of tea and took a sip. “And, now, I had a reason to give you a copper coin.”

  “...You just drank my tea?” I said, looking down and then pushing the cup away now. Jasmine took it immediately.

  “No, I paid you for the tea.”

  “I wasn’t going to let you drink my tea if I knew that.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Prove that the coin I gave you wasn’t for drinking tea.”

  “I mean you just tol–”

  “Chérie, she’s telling you, with a good example actually, that a [Tax Collector] only knows that money was exchanged, not the reason why. She made up a story to give you a coin that isn’t true, but it’s not one that someone would be able to call a fib on. Outside of us three. Am I right, pipelette!”

  “Yes! You are, spooky Martivian lady. Madeleine? I’m gonna call you Madsy, then,” Jasmine cheerily stated. “So, anyways, that’s all we have to do – we have to give a cover story of why you have money from anyone. Not just Madeleine, but why some random person would be giving you money.”

  “I don’t get it,” I flatly admitted. I wasn’t interested in finances or economics.

  Jasmine smiled, though, and didn’t sigh. I had to admit, it felt good to talk to Jasmine. She might have talked a lot, but she never made anyone feel small. “That’s okay, Ashley! What I am saying is you need a reason to be getting paid a lot that has reasonable doubt. So, that brings me to part two.”

  We both looked at Jasmine, who refused to say anything more. Madeleine and I looked at each other, and I nodded at her. She watched my eyes, then rolled hers.

  “What’s phase two, pipelette?” she drawled out, rolling her words and waving her hand.

  And Jasmine soaked it up. “I’m glad you asked, Madsy!” She opened her book where a crudely drawn… stall, not even a storefront, was set up at the farmers’ market. On it were carrots. The sign though?

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The Hart Stop.

  “Get it! The Hard Stop, or Heart Stop!” Jasmine said, and Madeleine leaned in.

  “That girl is too small and not redheaded enough to be our Hart, pipelette,” she cooed.

  “No! It’s me! Ashley can’t do all of it at once, and if anything, it’d make her look even more suspicious.”

  “You want to set up a stall to sell… carrots, at the farmers’ market? Why do I need you for this?” I asked.

  “Because if you just bought a shop with your finances, Ashley, everyone would know you were funded by someone. And, unless you’re going to ask Lord Skye for a loan—” she paused. Both Madeleine and Jasmine looked at my face. They both laughed.

  “So, with no clean way to fund a shop, we start at the market. Once it’s established...” Jasmine flipped a page in her book.

  The next page was the most crudely drawn storefront I had seen in my life, with “THE HART STOP” written on what I assumed was meant to be a sign. Jasmine even filled the rows and shelves with carrots, but with her art skills, it looked like a giant blob drawn by a child.

  Madeleine oohed and aahed appropriately. “Maman will put this up on her cabinet, pipelette...”

  I couldn’t tell if she was serious, and that really bothered me. Jasmine shot her a sweet smile, which Madeleine returned.

  Yep, this would bother me.

  “Now, this is the phase that matters! At this point, we can begin laundering, since we have a store...”

  Madeleine finally properly interrupted. “Pipelette, do you know what Ashley is selling?”

  “Nope! And I don’t want to know! But it doesn’t matter at all!” she nervously shot back. “How this part works is interesting! By now, The HART STOP will be known for its vegetables, primarily carrots, and we can sell off bushels at a time. Hooowever, since only Ashley would know how much she’s actually producing, we can write whatever number is being sold as long as it’s reasonable.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Do you know why the old washing place was shut down, Ashley?”

  “There was a washing place here?”

  “Oh my god, keep up. It was only two years after you left, and it closed two years after that! It’s not that hard to find out about.”

  Madeleine nodded in agreement. I glared at her. “Don’t you start too, Maddy.”

  “I’m just agreeing with her, you should have known about something you weren’t here for, and don’t even care about!”

  “Exactly! I’m so glad you get it, Madsy.”

  “Are you both messing with me?”

  “No,” they both said in unison, before laughing. I wasn’t sure anymore.

  “They forgot to factor in handling costs, water costs, tool costs, and they had more people going through their shop in a day than there were people in town. Agent Marigold found them pretty fast,” Jasmine said.

  “The washing place?” I asked.

  “Yeah! So, basically, they never ran the water, or had legitimate sales. So we got to do this better. I’ll do the research for this project, but I have something I need to ask of you to make it work.”

  “Go on.”

  “I need you to start making Masterwork crops. It’s the only part that makes this work. Most vegetables are under a gold each, but Masterwork? A Masterwork carrot is 80 silver pieces at the vendor, but 1 gold piece at the open market.”

  My eyes bulged at that comment. I was just making common crops. Masterwork was top quality, and it needed two additional steps. Poor, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Masterwork.

  And at that point, a masterwork carrot would take an entire week to grow. I gulped.

  “Why not uncommon or rare?” I finally responded.

  Jasmine shook her head. “Income. I assume whatever you two are doing are high profit margins that only select customers would have an interest in, specifically not people in our town? You’ve got to give them a reason to care, and if some Lord, like Lord Elias, was just purchasing carrots from your shop that were just uncommon, everyone would look at it oddly.”

  Madeleine and I glanced at each other at the name. Jasmine was definitely more astute than she seemed.

  “So, I need Masterwork to justify why people are buying from my shop at whatever prices?” I repeated back to her.

  “Yes! Can you do that? Otherwise, this plan’s going to get risky. I can get into the whole point of cost of goods, how to properly do taxes, laundering to the church, slow depositing, and making false books, but without a proper product to sell, we won’t be able to go anywhere.”

  I looked at my hands. I couldn’t, but...

  “Madeleine, that thing you have in your basement, can... I have it? I can pay you back --”

  “The.. thing? Oh, you mean the ske—Oui, chérie. No cost, for a friend,” she cut me off, putting her hand on my thigh. I pushed her hand off, but she took my hand against hers and held it. “Very few people need an object like that, and I was hoping to find someone like you to tempt into helping me anyway. I don’t need it when we have each other already.”

  “That’s surprisingly generous of you, Maddy.”

  “I’m not the one who told…. The dinner last night was nice,” she corrected herself, looking at Jasmine. Jasmine shrugged it away, waving her hand. She clearly didn’t want to know what happened at dinner.

  I turned my attention to Jasmine then. “Assuming I could, when do you need it by, and how many?”

  “Whenever you want to start the operations, and as much as you can. Masterwork crops go quickly, so as soon as you have some and we make our first sales, you will probably have the capital to buy a storefront! But that’s when Madeleine comes in,” she said, shifting her attention to her

  “You have to start making something carrot-related too. Maybe around the same time? Carrot Juice Potions? So you have a justified need of what you're purchasing at such large amounts and for quantities, so it's not just weird. If it was a lord, it’d be seen as just food costs, but a singular person being a repeat customer?”

  I looked at Maddy. “Seems like if we want to be pure in the eyes of the law, I'll have to get you as my employee anyway.” I joked.

  Madeleine for her part laughed. “Seems so. Who knows, maybe I’ll get my money for my hut in Darkmire this year…”

  Jasmine’s eyes beamed. “Speaking of which, and I don’t mean to ask for much, but any thoughts on how much you’d pay me?”

  Madeleine took her tea to her lips, and her free hand waved me to go forward.

  “I was thinking 2 a day?” I made up a random number in my head.

  “Ashley! That’s not enough. I am making 60 silver a week, I can’t just live off 1–”

  “2 Gold,” I corrected.

  “Oh, 2 gold. Yeah, that’d be e—Excuse me, what the hell?” Her shrill voice rang out.

  “Do you want to know what I’m selling?”

  “No.”

  “Then, 2 gold a day is fine, maybe more if Madeleine and I can work something out.”

  Madeleine looked at me, and bit her lip. “Chérie, what she’s asking for directly improves your own income too, if you remember last night. If you were able to make that many, and then... The other thing at the same quality…” she didn’t finish her sentence, but just grinned.

  “This is a lot of weight to put on one failed [Farm Girl],” I admitted.

  “I mean, it's either that or being on the streets,” Jasmine grimly replied. “Hold on a moment,” she said, looking up at the sky. Her lips began to move as she read quietly to herself.

  “I accept,” she finally answered. Her eyes looked wide for a moment.

  “Girls, what’s a [Veil]?” she slowly asked, looking between the both of us.

  “Nope, you’re handling this one. Tell me what her new role is after, Maddy. I have to deal with the harder problem.”

  “Take care, chérie. Feel free to grab it from my basement if you need it right now.”

  “Will do, Madeleine,” I responded, heading out the door.

  Madeleine turned her attention to Jasmine. “So, a [Veil] is how the public sees you…”