159 A New Partnership

While Jayde, Raven and the boys strolled through the city streets to visit the bakery. Priest Vasserac's assistants were waiting at the bottom of the staircase. They stood undecided at the bottom of the stairs, they had been waiting for nearly an hour and hadn't seen anyone. After an intense debate between the two, one of the assistants decided to go up to the private suite and see if anyone was still there, while the other assistant would wait downstairs just in case.

When the assistant entered the private booth, he was dismayed to find it empty. Rushing back downstairs he informed his partner that the private suite was empty. The two had no idea how the female had bypassed them and only assumed that she must have run away before they arrived. Filled with dread, the two returned to Priest Vasserac to face his wrath.

Meanwhile, Jayde had just left the bakery, swearing to herself never ever to promise to buy Reiko as many cakes as he wanted. That damn shadowbeast, Jayde thought as she walked out of the bakery followed by three bemused teenagers. He wanted every single cake on display, Jayde groused to herself. Now those three think I'm a pig, she thought.

Jayde wasn't wrong, Ash, Nova, and Raven had been astounded when Jayde bought every cake in the shop, instructing the cakes to be delivered to her cottage.

"Er... Jayde are you really going to eat all those cakes?" Raven asked hesitantly.

"Um, I wasn't quite sure which I would one like," Jayde said, quickly coming up with an excuse for why she had ordered over thirty cakes.

"Ah, okay. Just don't eat too many sweets, it's not good you," Raven said with concern.

"Hmm," Jayde said nodding. Thank the gods they didn't see me ordering a weekly standing order for Yinxin and Reiko, she thought.

While Raven, Ash, and Nova had been busy with their own orders, Jayde had spoken with the proprietress and arranged to have fifteen cakes delivered every week. The proprietress had been ecstatic to receive Jayde's order since Jayde had paid upfront for six months. Well, that should get those two foodies off Isha's back, she thought glumly.

After leaving the bakery, the four friends decided to go their separate ways since they each had their own errands to run and to meet at a local favorite tea room called The Tea Terrace in three hours.

Jayde followed the directions given to her by Raven to a local seamstress, she was in desperate need of new clothing. Her current wardrobe only consisted of the homemade leathers, the tunics she had bought in the small village outside of Aeris as well as her school uniform.

On the way to the seamstress shop, Jayde ducked into a small alleyway, after making sure that no one was around she quickly stored her new sword in her spatial ring, leaving the alley Jayde made her way to the seamstress shop.

Jayde was pleasantly surprised when she walked into The Golden Thread. It was brightly lit with glowstones. There were comfortable chairs lined against one of the walls for customers. A couple of wooden mannequins stood on display with ready-made outfits. Behind the large sales counter, there were rolls of different types of fabrics in numerous shades.

When Jayde walked in a sales assistant immediately walked over to assist her, when Jayde asked if the shop could make custom made outfits, the sales assistant asked Jayde to wait while she called over the owner.

A few minutes later, a tall, willowy woman walked over to Jayde, she looked as though she was in her early thirties. Her chocolate brown hair was tied up in a neat bun on top of her head, the dark color offsetting her flawless ivory skin. The woman was beautiful with an oval face,high cheekbones, pert nose, and plump rosy lips. Her arched dark brown eyebrows emphasized her slate gray eyes.

The woman introduced herself as Maianna Belezin. When Maianna found out that Jayde required numerous custom made outfits, she requested Jayde to follow her to her office. Once seated Jayde removed pages of parchments from her satchel. Jayde handed over papers to Maianna, each piece of parchment had designs of various outfits that Jayde had created for herself.

Maianna looked over each page, surprised by the uniqueness of each design. While Jayde wasn't an artist, her drawings were clear and detailed with extra notes jotted down to explain specific details. Maianna couldn't help feeling a sense of reverence looking over the diagrams. Fashion in Doha had stayed the same for centuries.

"You designed these all yourself?" Maianna asked.

Jayde nodded, then pointing to diagrams she asked: "Will you be able to create these outfits?"

"Hmm, I don't see a problem..."

Maianna voice trailed off as she came to the last couple of diagrams, looking at the picture drawn on the sheet, Maianna was perplexed.

"What are these for?" she asked indicating the image in front of her.

Jayde leaned closer. "Oh, that's underwear," she said.

"Underwear?"

Jayde explained the benefits of adequately made underwear, especially bras. Jayde had been horrified when she questioned Lucia and Raven about women's underwear available in Doha. From what she had discovered the people in Doha still hadn't come out of the dark ages when it came to fashion. The women still wore stripes of cloths to wrap their breasts, similar to strophiums❶ worn by ancient Romans, and their panties were identical to the ancient subligaculums❷ worn by Romans.

Maianna couldn't help becoming excited as she listened to Jayde's explanation, just looking at the simple designs in front of her, she couldn't believe that no one had ever thought about this before. Jayde had a similar thought after her conversations with Lucia and Raven. Jayde theorized that this was due to Doha's civilization being based on magic, they had never had any reason to invest in technology, which Jayde thought was a severe problem with the society as a whole.

After reading through some history books and discussing the history of Doha with Raven and Ash, Jayde had come to realize that the people of Doha had stagnated, there had been no changes or advances as a whole for many centuries — the mages of Doha only researched spells and anything else related to magic.

Even the armor used by mages only relied on magic runes sewed into the cloth, no one had even thought about using different materials. The biggest problem about using rune magic as protection for armor was that the magic-infused thread lost its potency over some time. A mage had to remember to infuse the threaded runes before donning on his clothes.

Jayde had included a full set of various types of underwear including halter bras and corset brassieres. For armor, she had designed leather bracers, greaves, armor corsets with and without pauldrons, cuirass as well as thigh and full legged leather armor sets. For the thigh armor sets she had included various sheaths for her blades as well as pockets to hold small items, with leather ties to tie around her thighs.

Jayde had wanted to search the inter-dimensional market to see if they had any books available for her to buy that contained information on how to increase the strength and protection of her leather armor, instead of just relying on runes, but with White hijacking her for training every time she returned she hadn't had an opportunity yet.

"Jayde would you be interested in forming a partnership, and allowing me to sell these designs in my shop?" Maianna asked.

Maianna couldn't help feeling nervous as she waited for Jayde's answer. As a commoner without a noble family's backing, she just didn't have the resources to compete with other shops. It was a common problem in the Lower Realm. Most smaller clans struggled to eke out a living, the noble and larger families dominated the market.

But if I can offer these designs, I am sure that I will be able to stand toe to toe with those bigger shops, Maianna thought, especially these items called underwear. Just look at the brassieres illustrated by Jayde Maianna couldn't wait to make herself some of them, they look so comfortable, she imagined.

Jayde paused to think over Maianna offer, glancing towards the nervous looking woman. "Sure," she finally said. "What sort of deal are we talking about here?"

Maianna heart leapt at Jayde response. "A fifty-fifty split, you come up with designs and I will manufacturing the clothes as sell them."

Jayde thought Maianna was too generous, as Maianna would be doing most of the work, when Jayde bought up her concerns and suggested that they should instead go for a sixty-forty split, Maianna was adamant about sticking to her original offer. Jayde finally accepted Maianna proposal.

Jayde had been racking her brains on trying to come up with a way to approach the Cotta clan, one of the largest merchant clans in the Lower Realm, and now she finally had a way to broach the subject with Camelia and Atia to arrange a meeting with their patriarch.

Part of Jayde's plan to bring down the Freehold clan was to cut off their financial support, and she was only going to be successful if she had a powerful group supporting her. Jayde didn't just want to kill a few members of the Freehold clan, she wanted to decimate the whole clan, and ensure that they never had a chance to rise up again, that is the vow she had worn to the previous soul, and one that she intended to carry out before she left the Lower Realm.

The two women started to discuss their partnership, with Jayde giving Maianna many tips on how to increase the turnover of her shop. When Jayde began to talk about chain stores,Maianna couldn't help feeling a sense of awe for the young girl sitting in front of her. She would never have dreamed of any of the ideas that Jayde was coming up with.

Maianna quickly pulled out a piece of parchment and jotted down their agreement, once written she handed the contract over to Jayde to sign. Reading through the partnership contract Jayde and seeing that it contained no hidden surprises and had all the terms that they had agreed to, Jayde picked up a quill and signed the agreement.

After Jayde and Maianna finalized their partnership, Jayde promised to return the following Restday with more designs. Jayde still insisted on paying full price for her outfits overriding Maianna objections. After leaving The Golden Thread, Jayde made her way to The Tea Terrace.

Since her meeting with Maianna had taken so long, Jayde was running late for her meeting with Raven, Ash, and Nova at The Tea Terrace. Slightly out of breath when she walked up to the three sitting in a private booth, Jayde apologized for making them wait.

While Jayde and her friends were enjoying themselves, Priest Vasserac's assistants were facing an enraged mage. Priest Vasserac couldn't believe that he had lost the fire sword and he had no idea who had bought it. Even when he tried to strong arm the Aeris Auction House to reveal the buyer's details, they had refused to budge and had also dared to forcefully remove him from the premises, threatening to have the Temple of the Light banned from their auction house.

With a heavy heart Priest Vasserac had no choice but to back down and return to the Temple of the Light's Aeris branch, cursing the woman who had evaded him. He now had the unpleasant task of informing his superiors that he had failed in his mission to obtain the fire sword for High Priestess Sharlin. He was still confused why a mage from the Radiant Realm would be interested in the sword or even how she even knew about it, but he hadn't dared to question his superior when he had been given the mission to obtain the sword.

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