There was nothing that particularly stood out about Tabb’s mill. It was where the village milled its grain that hadn’t been sold or traded. But today, it was where Aelric’s father intended to turn his fortunes.

Aelric had listened to his father’s plan on the ride to the mill sitting on the family wagon, drawn by a mule borrowed from Ket, their closest neighbor in the village. The back of the wagon was filled with bags of wheat, a third of the season’s harvest by Aelric’s guess given the weight of the bags when he hauled them to the wagon bed.

It was a good plan as far as Aelric could tell, and he was happy to think on it as a distraction from his heartbreak. He had said nothing to his father about Feyna, and he had no intention to let anything show. But perhaps his father had already caught onto his misery given the cheery and hopeful tone in which he shared his plans.

Although Greytown was only four hours by foot in distance, it was unusual for farmers to sell their own produce. Unusual, but not unheard of. It was far simpler for a farmer to focus on what they did best—farming—and let the traders do the transport, milling, and selling of their grain.

Miller Tabb told Aelric’s father as much when they arrived. “Just give it to Trader Lorrek after the festival,” Tabb said with a shake of his head. “It’ll take you away from the farm and Heleric knows how long it’ll take you to sell your harvest at market.”

There was a crease in Aelric’s father’s smile. “Trader Lorrek doesn’t offer us fair prices. Not since the elders ended the village barter. He does not act in good faith.”

Aelric stood in astonishment to hear his father say this. He could count on his hands the number of times his father had a poor thing to say about someone else. He had not known the price Trader Lorrek had offered his father, only that it was lower than the other families.

It had not always been that way. When Aelric was a child, the entire village received the same rate for a litra of grain. And each year that rate was renegotiated based on the total harvest of the village and how much they could sell. But all that had changed since Trader Lorrek had arrived.

He convinced the elders to allow him to make deals with families individually as he claimed he could not sell the grain of a full village. In the beginning this didn’t seem to hurt anyone. The families with large estates received better rates by working directly with Trader Lorrek instead of the village barter. But over time, Trader Lorrek’s purchases grew, and he began to work with every family individually, until there was no grain left to be bartered as a village. Then he began offering the smaller families less.

The other grain traders vanished as Trader Lorrek took hold as the primary grain trader in the region. Aelric and some of the impacted families tried to complain to the elders, but they shrugged their shoulders and told them there was nothing to be done.

Aelric had a sneaking suspicion that the elders and their families still received high prices, but most families now got less than the village barter. Anyone who kicked up a fuss directly with Trader Lorrek’s buyers risked not receiving a purchase that season and would be sstuck selling their harvest to faraway traders or in the markets as Aelric’s father now intended to do. No one kicked up a fuss.

“It’s your grain Aelryn,” Tabb said. “If you want it milled, I’m not one to complain. And seeing you’ve got plenty more than the usual, I’ll even cut you a discount given I've got no other orders going and we've got fine winds this morning, which'll save me some arcana."

It was a fine price. The miller was offering to take only ten percent of the milled flour as payment. Usually, his prices ranged from twelve to fifteen percent, but the winds were indeed blowing this morning and the great blades of the mill spinning happily. But Aelric’s father did not readily accept the offer.

“Actually, Tabb… I was thinking I’d do this batch of fine. A hundred litras. Perhaps you’d give me a discount there too?”

Miller Tabb’s brows raised and wrinkled his bald pate at that. “Fine, you say? You got merchant blood in you that I don’t know about, Aelryn?”

“If all goes well, perhaps my grandchildren will have some in them,” Aelryn said with a hopeful smile. He gave Aelric a squeeze on the shoulder. “Perhaps sooner than we all expect given how often Aelric goes off to see Feyna.”

Usually such a comment would have made Aelric blush. But today it only made him want to weep. He turned away and said nothing. Miller Tabb seemed to take it as embarrassment all the same. “Ha, don’t think the village doesn’t know what you two have been up to, lad. Well, I won’t say no to you, Aelryn. Perhaps this shall be the start of a new enterprise. If it goes well, I hope you’ll remember ol’ Miller Tabb.”

“Of course, I will,” Aelryn said. “Assuming ol’ Miller Tabb is a friend and light on my purse while the winds are flowing strong.”

Miller Tabb smiled at that. “As long as the winds are doing the work, I’ll give you seventeen on a hundred for finely ground wheat.”

Miller Tabb ended up doing even better than that. After taking the cut of grain for his payment, he poured the remainder into the mill’s grain funnel that connected to the grindstones. The winds had blown strongly for most of the morning, and then petered out for an hour before picking up again. During that hour, Miller Tabb cast Fan Wind several times to stirr the turbines of the wind mill.

Aelric watched in wonder as yellow light blossomed from Miller Tabb’s hands, condensing into a giant fan that flapped up and down against the windmill and kept the milling machine churning. Grinning at Aelric's awe, Miller Tabb explained that there were more powerful spells out there that could control the wind directly.

"What are they?" Aelric asked.

"Beats me," Miller Tabb said. "They say sea ships use them to keep their sails full. But mine works just fine for milling."

When the first round of milling was done, Miller Tabb cast another spell Sift Flour, which to Aelric appeared as a dark blue blanket that raised up through the milled flour, picking up large and unwanted impurities.

When the first round was completed, the freshly milled flour was poured into the mill again for a second round of milling and the process was repeated.

"Is there a spell that does the milling without the mill?" Aelric asked Miller Tabb when the winds were going again. Aelric could imagine big arcana gears that glowed yellow grinding the wheat.

Miller Tabb laughed. "There may very well be, but I'm sure I don't know it. And even if I did, I bet it'd cost a lot more than one on ten or seventeen on a hundred. The reason I can keep my prices low is because I've got the mill and the wind to do the work on its own most of the time."

It was late morning by the time they were done, and the fresh scent of flour filled the entire mill. The three men smiled at each other and at the fine white powder gathered in the bag between them. Miller Tabb weighed the bag on a hang scale and handed it to Aelric’s father. The job was officially done.

Aelric’s father had started with a hundred litras of wheat and now just over sixty-three litras of finely milled flour. Aelric was a little shocked at how much weight was lost. Miller Tabb had only taken seventeen litras as payment, but Aelric knew that finely ground flour had a lot of wastage but not how much. The volume had diminished considerably, but even Aelric knew that their potential for profit had drastically gone up. For one, he had only tasted bread made of fine flour during harvest festivals when the wealthier families brought it to the feast. Fine flour was the most expensive raw material that their farm’s harvest could produce.

Aelric’s father looked up at his son and smiled. “It looks like we’re right on time. We’ll be able to make a trip to the market today after all.”

They said their goodbyes to Miller Tabb and loaded the flour bag onto the wagon and headed in the direction of the town. As they rode, Aelric felt his spirits rising. If they were able to sell their product as planned, it meant he might have a bright future after all. A future that could include Feyna.

“Just how much can we sell this for, Pa?” Aelric asked his father.

Aelric’s father smiled. “First, let me tell you that a pound of unmilled golden wheat sells for up to ten arcas at the market. Trader Lorrek offered us two arcs a litra.”

“Two arcs!?” Aelric was shocked, then angry. “That’s robbery.”

His father nodded. “You won’t sell a full season’s harvest for ten arcas a litra, but two is unheard of. When the village had its barter, every farmer earned six arcas a litra in an average season.”

Even this seemed too low given what people were purchasing it for in town. “That’s still so little compared to the market.”

“Traders have to eat too,” Aelryn said. “Not only does market selling take time, they have to pay for the mules and labor to bring the grain into town. And even then, they sell it to other traders at a lower price who carry it across the province.”

“How much is flour at the market?”

“I have it on good authority that a litra of coarse flour sells for eighteen arcas. That’s probably about five or six arcas of profit for anyone going through the trouble of milling their wheat after fees and milling loss.”

“And for fine?” Aelric held his breath.

“And a litra of fine flour sells for thirty-five arcas.”

“Thirty-five…” Aelric breathed. He could hardly believe it. It was over ten times more than what Trader Lorrek offered for grain.

“I don’t count on selling it all at once of course,” Aelric’s father said. “But if we can sell even ten litras today, we’ll have made our keep.”

Aelric knew that it wouldn’t be enough. His family owed many debts, not the least of which was to Legionnaire Kallow who owned the county that contained Village Aldin. Taxes were half of the harvest of each thiff of land a family worked or a minimum fee of arcas.

Aelric's family farm contained only twelve thiffs. Each season only two third of the land could be sown and harvested while the third was left to fallow. Their taxes were less than other families because their plot was smaller, but the difficulty of meeting them was all the more difficult.

Most families could farm eight hundred to a thousand litras per thiff of land. But Aelric’s arcana was nearly nonexistent and his father and mother’s were meager as well. Between that, the poor rains, and his father’s worsening health, they barely averaged five hundred litras per thiff this season. A hundred and fifty litras per thiff would need to be saved for seeding the next year’s crops. Then there was the costs of running the farm and feeding themselves. The unpaid portion of last season’s taxes and this season’s taxes combined would take most of what they harvested.

All they truly owned was likely in the flour bag in the cart at their backs. Aelric suddenly felt terribly afraid for the contents of the wagon. It was all that was truly theirs.