by Scott Warren
We made one short detour before leaving the city, into a small district of workshops that crowded a narrow street (and no-doubt lowered the value of nearby homes). I disembarked to knock on one particular door along the row. After a moment, it swung open with a puff of acrid fumes and revealed the alchemist, Jess in a stained and scorched leather apron. Once his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, he smiled and pulled off a thick glove to shake my hand.
“Master Kelstern! I just had word from Lethorn! Nice timing with the Kaharan glass, I must say.”
Gone was the man so nervous when sitting before a banker with his pockets turned out. Here, among the dangerous and often unpredictable alchemical components, Jess was in his element. “Did you receive my message?” I asked.
“Yes, yes. One moment,” he replied, and then ducked inside. He leaned his head back out. “Um, best you wait here. My project is proving… volatile.”
That only made me more curious. “What are you working on?” I asked as he disappeared into the gloom.
“A lantern that burns without oil,” he called, reappearing with several volumes in his arms. He passed them over to me, and I accepted them one by one. “Here we are. Based on what you described, I think you should find an answer somewhere in there.”
“Many thanks,” I said over the stack of books.
“It’s my honor, Master Kelstern. You really saved my hide, you know.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said. I started to turn back toward the carriage but paused. “Really don’t mention it. I’d appreciate if this matter stayed between us.”
Jess winked at me. “Of course, Master Kelstern. Safe travels.”
I returned to the carriage, and soon the City of Borreos gave way to the countryside. Both the city and the country are named for the vast stretch of sandy desert and harsh badlands that split the continent of Varshon from east to west on this side of the Redfangs. On the clearest summer days, you can see the sun glint off the tallest of the white dunes in the northwest like massive cresting waves while the sun-baked rock makes the air shimmer like quicksilver in towering thermals to the northeast.
The following days were uneventful and, if I’m being completely honest in this accounting, somewhat miserable. I have never liked travel—merely endured it. Any philosopher will tell you that the importance of a destination is greatly outweighed by the road traveled to reach it. Any banker will tell you that this is nonsense, and probably the reason that philosophers are perpetually penny-poor. So rather than regale you with myriad descriptions of the evils I suffered at the hands of rural innkeepers, I will suffice in saying that the rooms were hot, the walls thin, and the meals cold. And we were delayed for two days when the carriage threw an axle in a village whose name I could not remember for all the silver in Borreos. Two nights I was forced to pitch a tent and sleep in the wilds before reaching Spardeep, and I awoke both mornings with a terrible pain in my neck. In fact, I was still massaging my neck as we began climbing into the foothills and first caught sight of the mining operation.
When most people envision a mine, their brain conjures the popular shared fiction of a hole in the side of a cliff, held up by two vertical spars and a rafter laid across to keep the mountain from reclaiming its tunnel and blocking off access to Varshon’s natural resources.
What a mine really looks like is people. Many, many people. People going in, coming out, hauling carts and ore, providing services and construction and repairs. A mid-sized mine like Spardeep was the size of a modest village, but instead of wheat fields their crop was iron ore, and they harvested it by shovel and pick and lantern light. I have seen operations in northern countries big enough to have a smelter on location, but the absence of abundant nearby fuel would make such an expense here economically untenable.
Men of sweat and dirty faces paid disinterested glances to the carriage and hired security as we passed through the outskirts and toward imported timber offices erected in the shadow of a sandy cliff. There were no elegant domes or arched vaults here. No canvas-covered arcades or towering minarets, just the simple, efficient (boring) northern-style architecture.
Summer was in full swing now, and the air wavered above the pale red gravel. I surveyed the operation through the window, shielding my eyes from the sun until they could adjust. The clamor was impressive: a cocktail of shouting, sawing, and the baying of oxen and draft horses filled the air. And behind it all, the faraway clank of repetitive metal on stone.
Captain Destain dismounted and cast a look about the general area. He looked bored, which I felt to be a positive sign in a man tasked with my safety. Once he was satisfied with his reconnoitering, he opened the carriage door and addressed me.
“We’re expected inside.”
“Lead the way,” I said, pulling my stack of ledgers and notes out of the carriage behind me. My neck popped painfully as I did so, and the distraction caused me to miss the step down and stumble.
Destain was quick to catch me, at the expense of ruffling my silk jacket when he grabbed my lapels. I righted myself quickly, but I felt the hard press of the platinum bar under his hand. The mercenary must have too because he removed his hand almost before I was upright, nearly negating his effort at sparing me a spill in the dirt.
“Sorry, sir,” the captain mumbled, heading off to organize his men and see to their mounts.
Bendric stepped down behind me, sending a look after the man, then straightened my shirt and dusted off the twin handprints Captain Destain had left on the silk. “Are you alright?”
“Fine, fine,” I said. My heart was beating a league a minute. A sudden fall will do that, as will someone discovering the vast wealth you’ve sequestered in your coat pocket. Bendric returned to the carriage for his own notes, and I took a moment to calm myself.
My driver, Dannic, dismounted with Cas. They had become fast friends along the way (or even before the trip, perhaps), and the vagrant typically trotted alongside the carriage or rode on its roof with his shortbow at the ready. For a man who seemed to doze from ninth bell to sunset in the shade of my courtyard, his endurance was admirable, if redundant. The closest we’d come to suffering an attack along the way was an overcautious farm dog that tried to gnaw off the vagrant’s leg. He’d proven himself a deft hand with that shortbow by bringing small game back to the camp both nights in the wildlands, though I could not bring myself to sample squirrel.
Dannic tugged a lock in my direction, and I handed him a pair of silver pennies to see after feed and stabling for the animals. In the best of cases, we would still be staying at least one night. He and Cas led the horses away, and I was not sad to see them go. While carriage is my preferred method of travel, several days cooped inside one will make any man long for open sky. I wondered if I could have petitioned Lady Arkelai to transport me as she had during my visit to Bastayne. Such a thing would have saved over a week. Of course, both times she had done it, she’d robbed me of my senses and likely carried me in talons the size of…
Rather, I decided, another eight or ten days in the carriage would not be so bad.
Bendric spoke to me as we made our way to the office, his own notebook raised in front of his face and covered in a cipher of his own making. The alien symbols made it look more like a wizard’s journal, not to say that I had ever seen a wizard’s journal, but this looked as one might expect. His coding was critical as it contained information on more than just numerical figures. Just as Tokt studied ships, shipping, and currents, so too did Bendric study people. Their habits, their wants, their weaknesses. I often wondered what his ciphers said about me but was not interested in being lied to and so I did not ask. Men are entitled to their secrets.
“We’re meeting Lady Tilia. She’s a countess. Widowed, lives with her children in the northern plains but oversees Spardeep,” said Bendric.
I compared his information to my own notes on the mine itself. “A widow presides over the second-highest producing mine in the Redfangs? Interesting. If she lives in the northern
provinces, how did you get this meeting?”
“She has a taste for wine. I sent a bottle of Eastern Red along with a letter of introduction, and she replied rather quickly to compliment my taste and insist that we call upon her during her yearly visit here.”
“Just like that?” I asked?
Bendric stopped in his tracks. He glanced at me, brows drawing together in concern. “You’re right. It shouldn’t have been that easy,” he said. The use of bribery and gifts in Bendric’s home city of Kaharas was so commonplace that it was practically considered a local dialect of the Trader’s Cant. But even with such economic lubrication, securing a meeting with a landed noblewoman, even a minor one, typically took weeks to arrange.
As soon as we entered the dusky gloom of the office, we were treated to a basin of water for washing off the road dust, which had somehow managed to find its way through the carriage windows. I was grateful, as water was not in ready supply along the road this far west of Borreos.
After washing, we were made to wait. After all, the gentry expect to be waited on. But this was also a negotiating tactic and an opportunity for Lady Tilia to review her own information on my banking house and the clients I represented. After all, there aren’t many reasons for merchant bankers to call upon nobles in such a place. I’m sure she had surmised our intent before ever she offered the invitation. Once she’d had ample time to prepare, we were invited in.
She was wearing trousers and a loose silk blouse that billowed as an attendant fanned her. The countess had a gold bar across the top of each ear and topaz stones in each lobe. Her family’s signet ring idly spun between the thumb and middle finger of her right hand. I was pleased to find Lady Tilia dressed in apparel suited to the arid environment, rather than the rich gowns befitting her station. It informed me that I was about to treat with a very sensible woman, and two sensible people can conduct business with much haste.
“Master Kelstern, Master Landaux! Come in, please. May I offer you water? Perhaps something stronger?”
“Tea would be a blessing from the Twin Mothers,” I admitted. Somehow, it had been neglected during the packing for the trip. I stood by my chair, waiting to be given leave to sit. Sensible or no, certain protocols were not ignored with landed gentry. Lady Tilia immediately gestured to the chairs before her desk and unfolded a hand fan to add her efforts at cooling to her attendant’s. Beyond those two, there was a third person in the room. He was short of stature with brass spectacles sitting on his nose, and he had the look of a clerk. That is to say he looked suited for little else. I correctly pegged him as Tilia’s secretary. Seeing him made me keenly aware that my own better half (in the professional sense of the phrase) was likely relaxing in the banking house enjoying ice water at my expense and relishing the short reprieve during which I could not complicate her life. I begrudged her none of this as she had taken the brunt of Kuvtka’s scaling-up without complaint despite her aversion to pack animals. In fact, I had made sure that a small bottle of her favorite brandy would be discovered only after my departure. I am not a particularly charitable man, but I like to think I am a fair one.
“Tea? Tea?!” asked Tilia. At first, I thought I had somehow offended her, but the countess pushed herself to her feet and laughed. “How can you drink tea in this damnable heat?” she asked, doffing her low brimmed hat and wiping the sweat from her forehead with a sleeve. I tried to hide my shock at the mix of brown and gray hairs that spilled forth. My proficiency for judging age has never been finely honed, but I would not have placed the face of the countess at more than five years my elder. Now I realized she was at least ten. Her body was that of a woman who had seen her share of hard winters and birthed her share of children, not the soft spoiled figure I had come to expect from city noblewomen.
Lady Tilia resumed her seat and replaced her hat. With a wave, she dismissed her secretary to boil a pot and in the meantime served us herself from a pitcher of clear water. “Please excuse the lack of ice,” she said. “I had some placed in the shafts, but it’s all melted. My title and lands are yours if you can but hasten the frost!”
“There is nothing to excuse,” Bendric assured her. “We appreciate you meeting with us.”
“Yes,” said Tilia, lacing her fingers together and cradling her chin between them. “You wish to acquire Spardeep.”
“Not personally, My Lady. On behalf of the Dragon’s Daughter Trading Company.”
Tilia smiled. “Yes, that’s what interested me so. Dragon’s Daughter. Tell me, is this just a colloquial name or is the dragon’s daughter a real person?” she asked.
I shifted in my chair. While Lady Arkelai was the realest individual I had perhaps ever met in my life, I would hesitate to call her a person, per se, because I did not fully know what she was. “Arkelai is certainly real, and quite impressive if I’m to be honest. She has already made acquisitions of several other ventures,” is what I eventually settled on. I’d signed over a non-controlling share of Kuvtka’s Freight to the Dragon’s Daughter Trading Company and had begun acquiring a few other minor operations where I thought prudent. Bendric had yet to meet her in any real respect, though he had witnessed her delivery of Alkazarian’s wealth in Borreos. I also left off her unofficial honorific, as Arkelai had no legal claim to the title of Lady.
“Well, if we are being truthful,” said Tilia, “I had no plans for selling this mine.”
My heart began to drop; this news could have come as easily by messenger without the need for a week of hard roads.
“But,” she continued, “that was to rich lords who only wanted another game piece to push around. Your Arkelai, though, is an up-and-coming businesswoman building a fierce enterprise. That captures my attention on a very personal level.”
Tilia’s secretary returned with a kettle and two cups, and I gladly accepted one as Tilia turned to look at a local map of the Redfangs that had been drafted to outline her holdings.
“It was my husband’s favorite toy, Spardeep. He loved it here. Loved crawling through the shafts with the foreman exploring every new vein. I, however, do not. To me it’s not a toy but a spoiled child, constantly wanting more and more of my limited attention,” said Tilia. She looked at me, or rather past me, it seemed, to some vision of how the world could be.
“My time for enterprise is passed, Master Kelstern. I want to watch my children grow, and in a few years watch their children grow. I have no time for iron dust anymore, and these hills get hotter each passing summer.”
Tilia stood again, straightening her shirt.
“Come. I’ll see that you get a tour of the holdings. The Spardeep mine property stretches over one hundred miles west. It even crosses the Whadaen border somewhere in the Redfangs, though it’s inaccessible on the surface. After the tour, I expect the Dragon’s Daughter to make me a very generous offer.”
Chapter 17 – Securities
I never dreamed that it would be so easy to acquire a mine, especially one as active as Spardeep. But over the course of the next two days, Bendric and I negotiated an acquisition of the mine, all associated equipment and grounds, and the contracts of all skilled laborers for no more than forty-five thousand marks of silver. We had not touched Marlin’s personal loan, nor the bar of platinum hanging in my breast pocket. It gave me hope for the impending acquisition of the Harborlight Tin Mine toward the coast.
But despite Lady Tilia’s hospitality and insistence that she was glad to see the property go, I had misgivings about anything acquired with more ease than expected. Hardship may not intrinsically make a task worthwhile, but it certainly creates a barrier that keeps most other interested parties at bay. And if it were that easy to obtain a productive mining operation? Well, certainly everyone would have one by now.
On the morning we were set to return to Borreos, I pulled Bendric aside.
“I need you to stay here,” I said.
Bendric offered a half-smile. “I knew you were going to say that, Sailor. It’s itching at you too, eh?”
Perhaps Lady Tilia was being earnest, wishing to wash her hands of the heat and the dust and hand the mine off to a worthy successor. Or perhaps there was something deeper here that she feared we would uncover in the course of due diligence. If that turned out to be the case, our acquisition might be difficult to resell quickly. And to do so would be seen as a slight against Lady Tilia’s reason for selling to us. But in the world of finance, one cannot be afraid to break hearts.
I had Dannic and Cas unload Bendric’s trunk from the carriage. Cas was in high spirits when I pulled him aside.
“You’ve been a great help these past days, Cas.”
The man shrugged, a toothy smile spreading across his face with far fewer gaps than I had expected. “It’s no great thing, Master Kelstern, eh? Them city walls was starting to swallow me up. ’Sides, I wanted to see if them rumors were true, eh? Been a spell since I seen the ’Fangs up close.”
“Regardless, you’re not on the captain’s payroll. Those in my employ are paid weekly for their service, so by my accounting you are three days overdue,” I said, drawing forth my purse. I counted out ten silver pennies. Cas came close to accept them. Despite his not having bathed the entire trip so far as I could tell, the vagrant’s earthy odor still did not offend. He looked at the silver in his hand, mouth slightly open. It was likely as much as he’d ever seen between his fingers at one time before, and he held the pennies in his cupped hands like a parched man might hold his last sip of water in the desert.