Chương 192: Chapter 190 [What in Elyndra's name is this...]

..] Camdon swung down from his horse the moment the company cleared the gate, boots hitting familiar ground with a sense of relief that often came when a man who'd been in the saddle for too long finally got a chance to rest. Around him the company was already breaking apart into loose knots, someone laughing at something Petra had said, one of the pack horses shaking its whole body out the way they did after a long stretch on the road.

"Right," he called over the noise.

"We're not moving again till morning. Get fed, get some proper sleep. You've earned it." A ragged cheer went up, and the company scattered toward the guest lodgings Stonehall kept for traders passing through, Orin and Petra among them, already arguing good-naturedly about who'd claim the better bunk. Dressel stayed close, though, unhitching his own horse slower than strictly necessary, glancing once toward the stable and once toward Camdon, clearly deciding which was actually his job right now.

"You don't need to hover," Camdon said.

"Force of habit." Dressel took the reins of Camdon's horse as well as his own.

"I'll see to these. Go find Merin." Camdon nodded and left him to it. A few minutes later he made it to the elder hall and found Merin waiting for him, though there was a young man seated beside him this time that Camdon didn't immediately place, parchment laid out in front of him, eyes slightly glazed over. Maybe he was bored? Between them, in the middle of the table, something sat beneath a cloth with more than one shape to it, several distinct little rises and edges he couldn't place from here.

Camdon gave it half a glance and set it aside in his mind for later.

"Camdon." Merin rose properly to greet him.

"Good journey?"

"Quiet enough, thank the gods." Camdon took the offered seat, eyes flicking briefly to the stranger. Odd clothes on the lad, though he couldn't place exactly why, beyond the fact that nothing about the cut or the weight of the fabric matched anything he'd handled in twenty years of trade.

"This is Jeff," Merin said.

"Helps us with correspondence."

"Pleasure." Camdon's attention was already sliding back toward the covered shape on the table.

"So. What's all this, then?"

"Straight to business as usual I see," said Merin with a smile.

"This is part of a deal we'd like your help with. I'll show you what's under the sheet in a moment, but first I'd like you to listen to our proposal." Camdon nodded.

"Sure, consider me intrigued." Merin nodded again.

"We've recently become close with a large group of people who've made their home in the area. They have access to many unique items, the sort you won't find in the core, and I'd wager not abroad either. I can't go into detail on where these goods come from, or their history, not yet at least. What we would like is for you to take some of these goods, trade them to find out how much of a market there is and then return with resources we want. We have a list for you." Camdon didn't answer right away.

This deal sounded like something he should be wary of, a stranger's goods, no clear origin, an elder asking him to carry mystery cargo south on nothing but trust. He'd walked away from stranger offers than this over the years, usually for good reason. But this was Merin asking, and Merin had never once given him cause to doubt his word in near twenty years of dealing together. That counted for something. He decided to give the man room to finish before he made his mind up either way.

Merin, watching him closely, seemed to read the hesitation anyway.

"You'll keep a portion of whatever the goods bring in," he said, before Camdon had asked anything at all.

"And going forward, if this works the way I think it will, you'll be buying at a better rate than anyone else we deal with. There's more besides, if you're interested. We're planning further ahead than just this one run. Trade routes, expansion, that sort of thing. There'd be a real place for you in it, if you wanted one."

"That's a lot to offer a man before he's even seen the goods," Camdon said.

"It is," Merin agreed.

"I'd rather be upfront about what's on the table than have you wondering what I'm not telling you." Camdon considered that a moment longer, then nodded once.

"Go on, then. Show me." Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Merin reached over and drew the cloth away. The spread underneath was more than Camdon had expected.

The folding knife sat at the centre, plain and unremarkable at first glance, but around it lay a scatter of other things entirely, a handful of eating utensils in some pale, unmarked metal, a coil of thin, oddly uniform twine, a small square of fabric folded neat, and two boxes, closed, set slightly apart from the rest. He reached for the knife first, drawing the blade slow, turning it in the low light from the wall sconces.

The edge caught even that dim glow with a sharpness he could see without needing to test it against his thumb, and the folding mechanism itself moved smooth and silent under his hand, precise in a way no smith he knew could match without years of practice and a great deal more coin than made sense for something meant to see actual use.

"Where'd you come by this?" he asked, setting it down and picking up one of the utensils instead. Light, far lighter than it should have been for metal this rigid, the surface near seamless.

"Part of what I can't tell you yet," Merin said. Camdon turned the fork over, then set it aside for the fabric, rubbing the square between two fingers. Fine, tight weave, no seams he could find anywhere along the edge.

"And this?"

"Same answer, I'm afraid." He picked up the twine next, testing its strength with a sharp tug that didn't so much as fray.

"This alone would sell well on its own merits. Strong as gut cord, half the weight." He set it down and reached for one of the boxes.

"That one's not for open sale," Merin said, as Camdon's hand found the box.

"We'd want it sold to a private buyer. Someone trusted, if you know of such a person." Camdon nodded slowly and opened it anyway. He went still. The ring sat nestled in the box, a single stone set at the centre, smaller ones worked into the band around it, and even in the low light of the hall it caught and threw back more brilliance than anything he'd handled in years of trade, more than anything he'd seen outside a noble's own collection.

The cut was flawless, every facet precise in a way that spoke of tools far beyond anything a village smith could manage, the setting itself so fine it barely seemed to hold the stone at all, as though it floated there on its own.

"What in Elyndra's name is this," he murmured, turning the box slightly to catch the light.

"This alone could set a man up for life, sold to the right buyer."

"That's rather the hope," Merin said. Camdon looked up from it slowly.

"And you want this one kept quiet from the lord as well, I take it."

"More than the rest combined," Merin said.

"If word of this piece alone reaches the wrong ears, it won't matter how careful you've been with everything else." Camdon set the box down carefully, though his eyes lingered on it a moment longer than the rest of the spread had earned.

"I've traded through every village worth the name on this border near twenty years. I'd have heard of a smith turning out work like this. Any of it, let alone that." Merin didn't answer immediately, and the pause told Camdon plenty on its own.

"We've a partner," he said eventually.

"Skilled. Resourceful. For reasons of their own, they'd prefer to stay unknown a while longer." He held Camdon's eye.

"I won't pretend that's not frustrating for a man in your position, wanting to know exactly what he's carrying and where it's come from. But the goods are exactly what they appear to be, and nothing about this is meant to put you at more risk than an ordinary run would."

"And if I prove useful?"

"Then perhaps, in time, an introduction could be arranged." Merin gave little away in the offering.

"I can't promise more than that today. Only that it's not out of the question."

"That would be nice," he said, setting the knife down for good.

"I do like knowing who I'm working with, in the end."

"Then let me start that properly," Merin said, and glanced toward the young man beside him.

"Jeff here can tell you a little more than I can, within reason." Jeff set his parchment aside and leaned forward.

"That'd be me, then. Partially." He offered a hand.

"Good to meet you properly." Camdon shook it, and it was only then, close enough to actually take him in, that the odd details started adding up to something. The shirt beneath the young man's coat bore some kind of image worked into the fabric itself, colours too vivid and too precise for any needlework or dye technique Camdon had ever seen, finer than anything a hand could manage, the material smooth in a way that made him think of silk though it plainly wasn't.

His boots weren't boots at all really, some low, sturdy thing with a tread unlike anything built for a stirrup or a cobbled street. And the coat itself, a deep, near-unnatural blue, bore some manner of crest stitched clean across the chest, a design Camdon had never once seen on any banner or house sigil in two decades of trade.

If the cloth on that table was rare, whatever had gone into making the lad's own clothes was rarer still, and it hit him then that this wasn't some smith working alone in a hidden forge somewhere. Whoever these people were, they clearly had more than raw materials alone. Knowledge, too, of a kind that put the Core's own craftsmen to shame, quietly kept somewhere no one had thought to look.

"I can offer a little more, if it helps," Jeff said.

"Not names, not places. Just enough you're not walking in entirely blind." He glanced toward Merin, some silent agreement passing between them.

"We're not from anywhere close by. Further than you'd guess. What we make, we make well, and there's plenty of it." Jeff paused to take a breath and looked Camdon in the eyes.

"What we need back, more than anything, is raw material. Metal, ore, worked stone, whatever can be spared." Jeff's tone had gone more serious now.

"We've building to do, and not much time to do it in. Sooner we've got what we need, sooner we can get properly settled in. That's worth more to us right now than coin or anything else. The list Merin mentioned has what we need." Camdon studied him a moment longer, taking the whole picture in properly now, the shirt, the boots, that impossible blue coat, the ring still sitting open on the table like proof of a people who could change what he knew of the world.

He'd been trading for decades but he'd never come across anything close to what was being offered and something in him, the part that had kept this business alive for twenty years on instinct alone, was already doing the sums on what a partnership like this could actually be worth.

"Well," he said slowly.

"Suppose I'll find out properly, one way or another."

"One way or another," Merin agreed.