Chương 194: Chapter 191 [Backdoor Deals]

The gates of Ebonreach came into view as the company approached, its high walls meant to protect those within doing nothing to temper the disdain Camdon felt for the place. He knew all too well the sort of things happened here on Krell's word, even if the man never dirtied his own hands doing it himself. The guards at the gate wore Krell's colours, technically, though calling them guards felt generous.

Hair unwashed, armour mismatched, one of them with his sword drawn and resting loose across his shoulders like he was hoping someone would give him a reason. They stopped the company at the gate long enough to collect the toll, one of Krell's many mandatory little taxes, coin changing hands with no receipt and no pretence that it was going anywhere but a pocket. Camdon paid it without argument and was glad, not for the first time, that he wasn't planning to stay more than a few hours.

Further in, the city didn't get any kinder to look at. He rode slow through the outer streets, taking in what he always took in on the way through, though it never got any easier. Thin faces in doorways, children with ribs he could count through torn shirts, a huddle of beggars camped at the mouth of every alley wide enough to hold them.

Off a side street, two of Krell's men, off duty by the look of their loosened collars, had their arms round women working out of a low, shabby building that didn't bother hiding what it was for. And further still, close to the market square, the cages. Camdon didn't look long. He never did. But he saw enough, same as every visit, beast-kin mostly this time, a couple of others besides, iron collars catching the light, tails hanging flat and still, clothes worn through at the knees and elbows.

One of them had bruising down the side of her face that hadn't come from any accident. A merchant stood near the cages calling out prices to anyone passing close enough to hear. Camdon spat, once, quiet, and kept his horse moving. Vermin. The word came easy, the way it always did here.

He'd never once managed to do anything about it beyond that, and it sat in him the same sour way it always did, knowing the men who ran this place and the men who let it run were one and the same, and knowing there wasn't a thing a travelling trader could do to change either. He kept his eyes forward after that, his company close, and made his way further into the merchant district without drawing any more attention than the carts themselves already brought.

Camdon left the wagon with Orin and headed for Marco's offices on foot, the boxes riding heavy against his ribs beneath his coat. Better to have them there than sat exposed on the cart if Krell's men decided to take a closer look at anyone doing well today, and the knives and cutlery could wait an hour or two without much harm done. Marco's offices sat above the guildhall, three floors up a set of stairs that always left Camdon slightly out of breath by the top.

Marco himself was already coming round his desk by the time Camdon reached the door, tall, dark hair kept neat, beard trimmed close and greying at the temples. It suited him even if he seemed to be going gray before his time.

"Camdon." He clasped his hand.

"Come in, sit, sit. I wasn't expecting you back so soon."

"Neither was I, if I'm honest."

"No, I mean it." Marco waved him toward the chair, settling back into his own.

"It's been what, four days? Five? I can't imagine what would drag a sensible man back to this city that fast, given the choice." Camdon almost laughed. He'd thought something close to the same thing himself, more than once, on the ride down.

He looked at Marco properly now, settled behind a desk that ran one of the largest trading concerns in the whole of the Empire's northern reach, and felt the familiar low ache of it, the unfairness of a good man stuck answering to a city run by someone so far beneath him in every way that mattered. Kestrel and Vane was bigger than Krell could ever hope to touch outright, and everyone in this city knew it.

That didn't stop the man taxing every cart that passed his gates, didn't stop his thugs eyeing Marco's own shipments the same greedy way they eyed everyone else's. It just meant he had to be cleverer about how he did it.

"I've something for you," Camdon said.

"Needs keeping quiet. If Krell hears so much as a whisper of it, he'll come asking questions neither of us wants to answer. My backer especially." Marco went quiet for a moment, then leaned back, the easy warmth of a moment ago giving way to something more careful.

"You know this office. Nothing said or shown in here leaves it." A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Camdon took a breath and drew the three boxes from beneath his coat, laying them out on the desk between them, then pushed them across.

"I've a backer up north," he said.

"New contact. This is a fraction of what they've got, from what I understand. Wonders like nothing else in the Empire, or so I've been told, and I'm inclined to believe it now." Marco opened the first box. He went very still.

"Gods," he murmured, and reached for the loupe he kept in his top drawer, the small, precise one that had cost him more coin than most men saw in a year. He fitted it to his eye and bent low over the ring, turning it slow beneath the enchanted light on his desk.

"The cut," he said, mostly to himself.

"I've never seen a cut like this. Not on anything I've handled, not on anything the Core's finest jewellers have ever put in front of me." He opened the second box, then the necklace, laying all three out side by side now, loupe moving between them like he couldn't quite settle on which deserved the longer look.

"This setting alone. Whoever made this understood the craft better than every master artisan I've ever met."

"High praise," Camdon said.

"Not high enough." Marco finally straightened, pulling the loupe away, though his eyes didn't leave the pieces.

"Where did these come from?"

"Can't say yet. I've met one of them and they are being secretive. That makes sense given what they have to offer. I'll know more the next time I'm up that way."

"Then you'll forgive me for asking outright." Marco looked up properly now.

"This changes things, Camdon. Not just for me. For the market entirely, if there's more where this came from. What would something like this fetch, do you think, sold properly, in the Core itself?" Camdon considered it.

"More than I could put a number to with any confidence. That's rather why I wanted your opinion on it before I went any further." Marco was quiet a moment, turning the ring once more beneath the lamp.

"A piece like this, in the right hands, in front of the right buyer? I'd want to say a small fortune, probably enough to settle comfortably in the higher districts in the capital, if not the noble district itself. I'd still feel like I was underselling it." He set it down carefully.

"Whoever's making these, tell them Kestrel and Vane would very much like to talk. Not as competition to whatever you've already got arranged. As a partner, if they'd have one."

"I'll pass it along," Camdon said.

"Can't promise anything on their end."

"Understood." Marco closed the boxes one by one, sliding them back across the desk.

"Just don't forget to mention it." Time passed the way it always did in that office, low voices and the occasional scratch of a pen, figures exchanged, terms settled, the two of them working through what came next. By the time Camdon left, the light outside had shifted toward afternoon. Marco had offered him a stall near the guildhall entrance on his way out, better placed than his usual spot, and Camdon took it without much thought. Word travelled fast in a market like this, and the location alone was enough.

He'd barely finished setting the last of his wares out before the first buyers arrived, and within the hour the stall stood empty, every last item gone. That should have felt amazing in any other city. But a part of him, the part that had kept this business alive for as long as he had, didn't much like how fast it had gone. Quick sales meant a full purse. They also meant eyes, and eyes in this city rarely belonged to anyone worth being noticed by.

He put it out of his mind and made his way toward the materials yard, the way Marco had directed him. Back in the office, Marco had taken the original list and made a copy of his own to send ahead, along with word that Camdon would simply present himself as any other buyer.

"Afternoon," Camdon said.

"Looking to buy some wares, if you've got them to spare." He passed the list across. The man took it, already knowing full well what was written there, and made a proper show of reading it anyway, eyes moving down the page slower than the list required.

"We've some of this in stock. Can load your wagons with what we've got today." He looked up.

"How will you be paying?"

"Credit. Camdon Wright." The man made a show of it, pulling out an enchanted ledger and running a finger down the names logged there, as if he hadn't already been told exactly who to expect and what his credit would allow.

"Ah. I see." He closed the ledger, satisfied.

"Very well. Give me a moment to sort what we've got."

"Thank you," Camdon said.

"I'll take what's ready. Rest can wait for next time." Merin had been plain about it before he'd ever left Stonehall. Take what could be had in a day, load the wagons, and go, rather than linger waiting on the rest. He knew well enough what kind of man ran this city, and he'd rather Camdon come back with less and come back safe than wait around for a full order under Krell's nose. He'd also offered Camdon a cut of the sale, his by rights for doing the actual selling. Camdon had turned it down without much thought.

Carrying even a small share of coin that size on the road home was as good as painting a target on the wagon, and there was more to be gained long term from a proper introduction to the buyer than from a handful of extra coin now. Camdon watched the loading go on a while, sacks and crates disappearing one after another into the wagon's storage well, the space folding them away far past what the cart's modest frame should ever have been able to hold.

Nothing unusual in that, not for a trader's wagon, though he'd long since stopped marvelling at how much a cart like his could actually carry once it was properly loaded. By the time the last of it was secured, the light had started to head for the horizon, gold spreading over the rooftops, and neither he nor his company saw much reason to linger any longer than they already had.

"Right," he said, swinging back up into the saddle.

"Let's get out of this place."