She climbed the narrow, steep stairs, which felt very familiar to her, as they were not so very different from a waterwheel’s use of different levels of water. She had received only a bit of profit out of her short employment there, but had learned much. She continued up the steps and soon arrived at the fourth floor.
What greeted her there was surprising, as she had expected to find a hallway and a door, which would have given her a chance to catch her breath.
Having run up the stairs in such a hurry, she was out of breath in a most embarrassing manner. And yet the moment she reached the top and rounded the handrail, Fleur was immediately greeted by the sight of a bored Milton eating a piece of bread.
“… Hello there,” said a surprised Milton after swallowing his bread.
Fleur tried to respond but found that the words would not come. Flustered, she produced the letter and held it out. “Look–” she finally managed.
Truly important matters often did not require words.
Milton stood from his chair and rushed over. “The ship?”
Fleur nodded, which made Milton hurry to fetch his cloak.
Cutting through the heavy traffic of humans and horses that congested the port, they nearly flew to the Jones Company. The company employees stopped in their work to regard the pair with dubious eyes, but neither Fleur nor Milton cared.
“Where is Mr. Hans?” asked Milton, whereupon everyone – whether they were engaged in negotiations or taking inventory – pointed to the interior of the building.
Mumbling their thanks, Fleur and Milton hurried inside. The first step on their road to riches awaited them inside, after all.
“Hans!” said Milton in a strangled-but-still-loud voice, upon spotting Hans emerging from a room with a colleague.
He was exiting the room while looking down at a bundle of parchment in his hands, but as soon as he spotted Milton and Fleur, he gave the documents to the other man, along with some short instructions.
Perhaps they were part of a large deal, as Hans seemed a bit nervous, but they had nothing to do with Fleur. The other man bowed and headed the opposite way down the hallway at a trot, and Hans watched him go before turning to regard Milton and Fleur.
“Ah, your order? It’s arrived.” He flashed a too-perfect merchant’s smile and brought his hands together in front of him as he did so.
Perhaps it was some sort of joke among merchants, since when Fleur smiled an awkward smile, she glanced at Milton, who was doing exactly as Hans had done.
Was she the only nervous one? Fleur wondered.
“Your goods have safely arrived at the docks. The winds were uncertain and it looked as though they might be delayed, but fortunately our company was able to live up to its reputation.”
Fleur smiled at Hans’s mild boasting, but she couldn’t help letting a bit of impatience creep into her expression.
Perhaps Milton noticed this, or perhaps he merely felt the same way himself. “So–” he interrupted. “We’d like to take delivery of them. Will today be possible?”
Speed was of the essence in business.
Hans nodded magnanimously, well aware of that fact himself. He pointed farther into the building. “The goods are secured in the rear loading dock. I’ve already asked to have the order document brought up. We must make sure there aren’t any discrepancies between your order and the goods, after all.”
That must have been the content of the exchange between Hans and the other man they had seen just moments earlier. They were very efficient. Olar had told her over and over again to check the goods carefully before taking receipt of them. Complaints stated after the fact would be too late.
They followed Hans as he led them down the hall, Milton ahead of Fleur. In the hallway, traces of the grandeur of the Jones Company could be seen – beautifully embroidered maps and portraits hung on the walls.
They passed an open door and through it caught a glimpse of a room filled with barrels, crates, and large earthen pots, the very existence of which made crystal clear that this was the intersection of sea and land. As they walked down the narrow hallway that led to the rear entrance, even Hans – whose position in the company was not at all low – had to step aside to allow others to get by as they busily traveled the passage.
They were all sorts, too – apprentices and young merchants and big, brawny men.
As they exited the hallway, Fleur was immediately struck by the fragrance of wheat. Perhaps it was the first crop to result from the spring thaw, and the dock was white and dusty with the flour. Workers carried burlap sacks of flour large enough to hold an adult man, and as they worked, the flour in the air caked their sweaty bodies.
Fleur and Milton were led to a corner of the room. The crates and barrels lined up there had yet to become covered in flour dust, which made clear just how recently they had been left there.
The attendant from earlier returned bearing under one arm a rolled parchment, which he gave to Hans.
Next to the crate stood an iron bar flattened at one end; perhaps it would be used to open it.
“Everything fit in one crate?”
The question was put to the attendant. The youth seemed to be even now enduring the sort of hardships that Hans had spoken of earlier, his keen eyes lively and body strong.
He nodded wordlessly and picked up the iron bar. “May I open the box?” he asked, careful to observe the correct protocol.
For a moment, the two former nobles felt as though they had never been asked such a question in their lives.
Milton stepped forward as their representative and nodded, and Hans gave the signal to continue.
The flat end of the iron bar was wedged under the crate’s lid, and a little pressure brought the lid slightly open. The young attendant then set the bar aside and used a smaller tool of similar shape to begin removing the nails that secured the lid.
“We’ll reuse the nails, you see. Although when we want to appear prosperous, sometimes we just break the crates open.”
The pair nodded mutely at Hans’s words. It seemed everything they were watching transpire had a meaning.
Having very cleanly removed all the nails from the lid, the youth stepped away, as though making it clearer than was strictly necessary that he had not touched anything inside the crate.
Hans cleared his throat and held out the roll of paper that held the invoice for the order. Fleur accepted it, and Milton gave her a faint nod, then took a step forward. The first step in their great trade – the first step in their participation in the merchants’ great game.
Milton looked inside the crate.
Then–
“What?” It was not Milton’s voice, but Fleur’s.
Milton shied away from the crate, as though having seen something he should not have, spinning around and facing Fleur.
His face was ashen.
Milton didn’t speak, instead looking again inside the crate, then back to Fleur, this time snatching the invoice out of Fleur’s hand.
“What is going on here?” he groaned in a voice that seemed to come up from the abyss.
Fleur recoiled at his obvious rage. If it had been directed at her, she might very well have collapsed on the spot.
“What do you mean, ‘What?’”
“Do not joke with me!” Milton’s fury seemed likely to send the flour dust on the floor a scatter.
The loading dock buzzed with activity, with merchants hurrying this way and that. A single shout could have easily gone unnoticed, but Milton’s was enough to make him the focus of all eyes and ears present.
“I’m sorry, a joke? No.” Hans’s face remained completely calm, even faintly teasing, as he reassured Milton.
“This… this order is an outrage!” Milton could barely speak through his rage. The parchment crumpled noisily in his clenched hand.
“An outrage? Not at all. I swear in God’s name that we have committed no errors. These are the items you ordered in the quantities you specified.”
&nb
sp; Despite his fury, Milton seemed to notice something amiss in the calm quality of Hans’s voice. He seemed to remember the invoice in his hand, and with trembling hands, he reopened and read it.
As he did so, Fleur took two steps forward and looked inside the crate. Inside it were clothes entirely in black.
As black as her future now was.
“This… this can’t be…”
“The goods are exactly as stated on the order.”
“That’s absurd!” Milton roared, his voice hoarse. He dropped the invoice and glared at Hans with eyes full of rage.
Hans, meanwhile, seemed entirely unconcerned. The moment Milton took a step toward Hans, the youth from earlier came between them, his sword at the ready.
“That’s the problem with nobility; they always want to duel. Unfortunately we are but merchants. Contracts on paper are everything to us. Surely even you can understand that.” Hans’s gaze was cold and his smile faintly mocking.
Fleur looked down at the paper beside Milton’s feet. There upon it were hers and Milton’s signatures and the list of items they had written.
They were all bright, colorful pieces, perfect for the fashion of the approaching spring. So why…?
She bent at the knee and picked the paper up, looking over it again, then rubbed her eyes as though dizzy. It was not an accident. The colors of the items written there had somehow changed.
A few short strokes had been added to characters here and there. That was all it took to change the colors of the specified items to black. All black.
How could this be?
Moreover, the order for four pieces of silver jewelry had been changed as well. Two strokes had been added to the word, and one of the existing strokes was smudged away and erased. Now instead of reading “silver,” it clearly stated “amber.”
Her vision dimmed, and she put her hand to her forehead in shock. The company’s tricksters had far exceeded her imagination and were perfectly content to discard all morality. Olar had scrutinized the contract with Milton so closely in order to avoid exactly this situation – using difficult words whose spelling was unmistakable and difficult to alter and writing them very clearly.
But the truly astonishing thing was not just that they had so brazenly altered the contract. No, it was Hans’s instincts that were most terrifying.
Perhaps having realized the contract could be rewritten the moment he saw it, he had immediately signed it. If Fleur or Milton had thought to ask for a copy to be made, they might have been able to protect themselves now, but Hans had carefully never given them that opportunity.
He had simply signed it on the spot, put it in his desk, and given them a merchant’s smile.
Fleur couldn’t even bring herself to cry.
Monsters. Merchants were monsters.
“A contract is a contract,” said Hans, placing his hand on the shoulder of the young man who blocked Milton’s way. “Now, if you please, the payment.”
Hans’s faithful servant held out his master’s thick ledger book and quill pen.
A candle burns brightest the moment before it goes out.
As though to prove those words true, Milton’s fury had vanished in the time it took to carry their cargo from the loading dock, and he said not a word.
Receiving help moving the crate from anyone in the Jones Company was humiliating, but it would have taken too much time with Fleur alone. With the help of one of the workers on the loading dock, they got the entirety of the order loaded onto a single mule with much effort. In place of any thanks, Fleur spared the man a few copper coins.
“My thanks,” he said.
Fleur wondered if she was doomed to become a greedy merchant who saw the world only through the lens of money. A bitter taste arose in her mouth. Yet if she had been one of the greedy merchants she so loathed, she would not have most of her assets turned into garbage by such a simple trick.
That was the source of Milton’s silence. The clothes they had received were essentially garbage. She felt guilty for thinking it, but while they might be able to sell them for a reasonable price, they could never make back what Fleur had paid.
Meanwhile, the Jones Company had managed to sell dark, shabby clothes for a huge profit. All that was left to her were the clothes as dark as her future and Milton, who was a hollow husk of a man.
Well, that and the contract she had signed with Milton.
“The clothes,” Fleur said, unable to stand any more silence as they trudged down the street. Milton did not look in her direction, but she could see his body stiffen. “They aren’t all dark colors.”
Even though she knew it was little comfort, this was not something to utterly despair over. She wanted to say as much, but Milton first looked back at the mule that plodded slowly along behind them, then to her, his lips curling up in an exhausted smile. “Like silver turned to amber, our hopes have turned to trash.”
“That’s–” Not true, she tried to finish, but stumbled over the words.
Milton smiled. He smiled an angry smile and shook his head. He excelled at selling fine clothes to the nobility and so knew all too well that the cargo they were carrying was worth very little.
Fleur was only acting resolute because she did not understand the true way of the world.
“… How much do you think we can sell them for?” It couldn’t be nothing, after all. Surely for 70 percent of what they’d paid – surely.
“…” Milton wordlessly opened his hand. He showed four fingers.
Forty percent.
“Even if a few of the pieces have some value, the rest are essentially worthless. If the fabric isn’t poor quality, such dark colors are fit for funerals and not much else.”
When a person was truly desperate, their smile quivered pathetically at the edges. Fleur thought of the last time she had seen her former husband.
But unlike then, she did not hate the person she was now looking at.
“But if we can make back forty percent, that’s good enough, is it not? We’ll just need to find trades that’ll double our money in four deals, then do that four times, and we’ll be back to where we started.”
Milton looked at Fleur blankly. He seemed about to say something and then snapped his mouth shut. And then, unable to help himself–
“Stupid.”
His face was distorted in disgust, and he seemed unable to articulate his own thoughts. Fleur herself did not understand what he meant by that single short word.
Before Fleur even had enough time to reply, Milton turned away, diverting off the street.
“Mil–” Her voice vanished into the tumult of the crowd, naturally far from sufficient to stop Milton. He was gone almost before she realized he was going. Left behind were Fleur and her goods, worth at most 40 percent of what she had paid. That and the mule that carried them.
This hurt more than the loss she had taken and more than being deceived by Hans.
Fleur took the mule’s lead and trudged back toward her home.
She could not clearly remember the expression on Olar’s face when she arrived.
“There is nothing to be done.”
The next morning, Fleur awoke and descended the stairs to the first floor, gazing despondently out into the rainy courtyard and desperately wishing the previous day’s events would turn out to be a bad dream – but when she came to the table, those were words Olar spoke without even turning around.
After speaking, though, he did turn around. Despite the gloom, she caught sight of a small piece of glass in his hand.
The glass was a lens, the sole thing he had managed to recover when a company he worked for long ago had fallen to ruin. Fleur imagined that he had been examining the documents she brought back with her, trying to find some way out of the predicament.
When she looked at the table, she saw a burned-down candle sitting in the candlestick there.
“There is nothing to be done. He was very thorough.” Olar sighed in a weary voice, free of anger or frustra
tion. More than anything else, he seemed exhausted, which pained Fleur deeply.
“I’m sorry.” She murmured again the words she had said over and over again the previous night.
Olar only narrowed his eyes and said nothing, but as Bertra brought in some warm sheep’s milk, he gestured for her to sit.
“By my guess, the clothing is worth about half what you paid for it. But our man Post’s estimate is probably more accurate, since I don’t keep up on the latest fashions. Still, I must admit I’m impressed the company had these clothes stored away for so long. It’s true, though, there was once a time when dark colors like these were quite popular,” he said, gesturing to the contents of the crate that sat beside the table.
Fleur remembered Milton’s words: “Such dark colors are fit for funerals and not much else.”
“Still, it’s fortunate that you did not take on any debt to buy these. You won’t owe interest, nor are you facing immediate ruin. The clothes that will sell will sell, so to turn them into money… unfortunately, I’m afraid you’ll have no choice but to do the hard work yourself.”
Fleur nodded at Olar’s plainspoken words.
Bertra was adding honey to the milk in a cup she had carved herself.
Fleur knew that this was not a time for tears, nor for apologies, but she could not yet force herself to look up. What she needed to do was to raise her head and proudly proclaim it: I will not fail next time! Never!
But no such energetic, undaunted voice was heard – only the emptily echoing sound of the rain outside.
Just like the politics of a noble banquet, merchants tried to overcome suspicion, gain trust, and then use that trust to their own advantage. And now she had gotten a glimpse of the true nature of that world.
They cared nothing for human emotion and would happily use it for monetary gain, always trying to take the best course, at the best time, to reap the best outcome.
Because no matter how it was earned, money was money. That’s what Olar would say. And it was true.
“… I’m so sorry,” murmured Fleur, holding the cup in both hands and wishing she could pour her shame into it.
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