Chương 171: 17. A Clever Calculation 2

"I'll register temporary tags for you inside the house beforehand. No real names—origins vague, purpose vague, price uncapped. Too specific draws investigation. Too vague makes people restless. Once you're in, bidding won't open immediately. I'll hold you in the side pen for a quarter hour."

"To be observed," I said.

"To create anxiety," Marro corrected.

"In that quarter hour—whoever approaches first, whoever inquires about price first, whoever contacts brokers first—I observe everything."

"What if someone moves directly?"

"Uncommon inside the house," he said.

"But uncommon in Blackbeard Bay has a value of approximately half a copper coin. So I bring my people. You bring your nerve." I couldn't help asking: "And if someone offers a price so attractive that refusing becomes genuinely difficult?" Marro looked at me and actually smiled slightly.

"Then we discover whether you're worth more to me than their gold." Now I finally understood why everyone in Blackbeard Bay spoke of this man like he was a cursed blade that chose its own master. Because he wasn't aligned with anyone. He stood on the fulcrum itself. Whichever side carried more weight, he leaned toward—but if the other side became more dangerous, he was perfectly capable of overturning the entire mechanism.

Ignicia, who seemed to have long since accepted such people as facts of existence, added without heat:"In other words, tomorrow isn't about you protecting us. It's about us convincing you that protecting us generates better returns than selling us."

"Correct." For the first time, Marro answered with complete clarity.

"And that is your actual assignment." My throat went dry. Honestly, I hated that answer. Beyond hated—I found it revolting. I would rather cross blades with dragon-kin warriors than stand in a shed full of buyers, informants, brokers, and cutthroats—still reeking of salt I hadn't finished drying out of my clothes—waiting for strangers to evaluate with their eyes and their coin whether I deserved to continue breathing. But the problem was— I had no other ship. No other route. No other options.

From the moment we entered Blackbeard Bay, fate had systematically confiscated every contingency plan, leaving only this single road that looked precisely like a trap—while helpfully noting: You don't have to take it. You can just die where you stand instead. I hated fate. I hated Blackbeard Bay. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. And right now I particularly hated this one-eyed calculating bastard.

But hatred and utility weren't mutually exclusive concepts. I drew a long breath that tasted like rust and brine.

"What's step one?" I asked. Marro studied me—checking, I suspected, whether that question had finally been stripped of unrealistic optimism. Then he tossed the board back onto the table.

"Tonight you stay where I place you. Don't return to the Old Captain. That establishment is almost certainly under observation by now." My heart skipped.

"That quickly?"

"You considered your arrival discreet?" he asked.... Fair point. One of us had been dragging waterlogged equipment like a shipwreck survivor. The other was a woman whose presence bled through her cloak—beautiful enough that existing in a place like this constituted a hazard in itself. Calling us discreet would have been an insult to the vocabulary.

"Second," Marro continued, "before dawn my people will change your clothes, adjust your scent, and apply convincing marks. Not actual injuries—relax. Just enough to make you appear genuinely familiar with cargo operations. Too clean and nobody believes the story." My mouth twitched.

"Adjust our scent?"

"Tar, aged timber, cheap perfume, dried straw, honest sweat." He listed them like ingredients in a recipe.

"I won't have you smelling like a fish market that exploded. You have my word." I turned to Ignicia.

"You heard that? My life's ambition has been reduced to not smelling like an exploded fish market."

"Congratulations," she said without expression.

"Your expectations have finally achieved realistic calibration."... Even her.

"Third," Marro said, completely ignoring our pathetic attempts to preserve dignity, "once we enter the house tomorrow—no improvisation, no script changes, no sudden attacks of conscience, and definitely no sudden attacks of bloodlust. Especially you—" He looked directly at Ignicia.

"If someone speaks offensively, you endure it." I expected her to produce that cold smile, or perhaps reply with something like then they'd better finish their sentence quickly. Instead she was quiet for half a breath, then asked evenly:"And if they touch me?" Marro's expression didn't shift.

"First time, I handle it. Second time, you decide whether to break their hand or leave it functional so I can use their desperation to drive the price higher." The back of my neck went cold. How had this conversation devolved into risk management protocols for a high-value livestock exhibition? What made it worse was that Ignicia actually nodded thoughtfully. She was genuinely weighing breaking bones against market impact assessment. Was I traveling with a princess, or with a natural disaster?...

Actually, those categories weren't mutually exclusive. Finally, Marro looked at me.

"As for you, boy."

"What now?"

"Lose that expression—the one that says I find this entire situation morally and logistically absurd. Starting tomorrow, you're not a shipwrecked swordsman, not a guard, not anyone of consequence. You're nobody who moves cargo for daily wages. The more forgettable you are, the more valuable you become." I ground my teeth.

"Understood."

"No, you don't. Not yet." His single eye locked onto mine.

"The first lesson you need to learn for tomorrow is this: even if someone stands directly in front of you and examines her like livestock at market—you do not draw your sword first." That sentence drove into my chest like a physical nail. I looked at Ignicia before I could stop myself. She wasn't looking at me. She just kept her eyes lowered, her profile cold and sharp under the lamplight. But somehow, I knew— It wasn't that she didn't care.

She had simply arrived, one step ahead of me, at the same brutal arithmetic: if we wanted to leave this place breathing, certain things would have to be swallowed first, no matter how they tasted going down. I was silent for a long time. Long enough that even the sound of the wind off the water seemed to be coming from somewhere very far away. Finally, I let the breath out slowly.

"... All right," I heard myself say.

"First step. I accept." The moment the words left my mouth, I felt it—a cold stone settling somewhere in my stomach with no intention of moving. The shock was still there. The unease was still there. If anything, both had been present from the start, never disappearing, only shoved forcibly to one side to make room for the single immediate priority of surviving until tomorrow. Marro watched me for two seconds, as if confirming this wasn't the bravado of a young man talking himself into something he'd regret.

Then he finally nodded.

"Good," he said.

"Starting now, you'd both do well to think of yourselves as cargo." I had been about to say don't worry, I'm already halfway there emotionally. I swallowed it.