The Dragon's Banker

by Scott Warren

  “For those listed assets and the contract, I am prepared to offer you one hundred thousand silver marks, on the condition that you refrain from entering competing enterprises in Borreos. I am also prepared to make Lady Arkelai an offer of ninety-five thousand marks for Spardeep.”

  Two hundred thousand in silver. It was ten times the amount of Marlin’s personal loan and nearly twice what the combined holdings were actually worth. And all I would have to do in exchange was walk away a very rich man. With that much, it wouldn’t matter that I couldn’t work in Borreos. I wouldn’t have to work at all for five years, or ten for that matter. And his offer was more than twice what we had paid for Spardeep, which was still struggling.

  “That’s a generous deal,” I said.

  “I think you’ll find that I can be a generous man at the best of times,” said Brackwaldt. He refrained from mentioning the type of man he could be in hard times. His thug’s dagger said that clearly enough.

  It would be a lie to say the offer was not tempting. The past five months had been increasingly stressful and had scattered my trusted staff to the four winds just to scrape together a few bank notes. I had parleyed with dragons and almost lost my life both on the road and at sea. I had lost and regained an old friend. And I had built a small empire of wood, sail cloth, iron, and oxen. Even if Lady Arkelai were inclined to let me transfer the contract, I was not ready to give it up. Alkazarian was my client, not Brackwaldt’s. I had fought for him—I had bled for him. And the deal had the same scent as the garnish of Brackwaldt’s pastry—that of Jazalkorin.

  “I’m afraid I must refuse,” I said. “Lady Arkelai was very insistent that I enter her service, and she would not look kindly upon my leaving it.”

  “How curious,” said Brackwaldt. He pushed his cleared pastry dish aside, where it was collected by a servant, and wiped the crumbs from his mouth with a cloth. “There is no accounting for taste, I suppose.” He sighed. “Very well, Master Kelstern. Should your ventures falter, there will not be a second offer. Do be sure to stay clear of my lands and property.”

  “You’re letting me go?” I asked.

  “You’ve monopolized enough of my morning, and I have other appointments,” he said, standing. “Gentlemen?”

  Rough hands clapped on my shoulders, and I jumped under the touch of the Gold and Silver twins. I was pulled to my feet and ejected from the front door so forcefully that I rolled partway down the carriage drive, reawakening the hurts of the prior night’s bruising. It was fortunate I still wore the sailor’s ensemble, as any of my usual clothes would have been ruined by the ordeal.

  The door slammed shut behind me, and I cast a glance back. I should have been mad at the treatment, but in truth I was simply grateful to have left a different sort of dragon’s den more or less intact. It seemed Brackwaldt would not countenance murder or brutality in his presence (or rather in his dining room). Else he did not see me as enough of a risk to deal with the hassle.

  He was, after all, a gentleman.

  Chapter 29 – A Short Reprieve

  My bruises healed in time, and autumn drew to a close in a favorable fashion. While the Feast of First Winter approached, we finished another of Jassem’s ships and built a supply of over one hundred dragon-eyes. Marlin had begun using them to heat our warehouses, a practice hitherto unknown in Borreos that even Lord Brackwaldt could not discourage his allies from discreetly utilizing. Many of our rival companies began using our dockside space to hold high-value alchemicals, books, and elven cloth, which could be ruined by cold and moisture.

  The greatest of our rivals had fielded his next ship and conquered Andil’s Hammer with such success that it spurred the unsurprising purchase of incorrect reagents. I conspired with my alchemist cohort, Jess, to purchase several promising reagents. While they were useless, we sold them back to Brackwaldt at a handsome profit, and I made my friend another small fortune. Jassem and Tokt had done their work well, though my body paid for it in aches and bruised ribs. And Brackwaldt was still fielding three ships to each one of ours and beating us to nearly every new discovery from Aedekki. He also offered to buy Spardeep through a proxy for eighty-five thousand silver marks, nearly twice what we paid for it. But it was Alkazarian’s mine, and his daughter nixed the prospect.

  Snow had begun to fall on the tips of the Redfangs, and it would not be long before the passes to Whadael and Lethorn closed for the season. Kuvtka was running all six caravans now, but his operation would need help to remain solvent through the winter. Worse yet, despite the new smelter, the output at Spardeep had begun to slow again, and we were once more bleeding silver. I sent a request for Lady Arkelai to meet me at the iron mine so that I could check on the smelter’s operation and see this blasting specialist for myself.

  My carriage arrived on the eve of the Feast, traveling alongside the caravan master for security. Lady Arkelai arrived just before me to a deserted mine. The foreman had called a two-day holiday for the Feast, and the miners were enjoying what revelry there was to be had at the foot of the Redfangs.

  The late season and the high altitude had made the mine cold enough for a few flakes to find their way to the furs of my coat, and each breath was a plume of vapor as I climbed down from the carriage.

  Bendric greeted me, with Lady Arkelai off behind him, smoking. She wore her usual short-sleeved jacket that showed off her golden armlet and gave no indication that the cold touched her. The platinum against her bare skin would have raised gooseflesh on a normal woman. Of course, Arkelai was anything but. To my knowledge, this was her first visit to Spardeep. Despite its proximity to Bastayne where her father made his lair, an iron mine must have been a comparatively less interesting affair. When comparing two holes in the ground, one containing the wealth of kingdoms is much more interesting than one containing a dwindling supply of iron ore.

  “Sailor!” said Bendric. “You’re just in time. There’s a feast tonight for the senior staff, and they should just be pouring drinks now.”

  My mouth watered at the thought of a hot cider. One of Kuvtka’s return trips had garnered a shipment of Nightbloom Canyon apples, which were grown in Lethorn to the northwest and made the finest ciders, pies, and pastries to be had anywhere.

  I nodded to Arkelai as she joined us, and we proceeded to the low office adjacent to the laborer’s galley. It took most of the walk before I realized what bothered me so, in that I was used to hearing the mine full of activity. With nothing but the crunch of our boots on the cinder gravel, it felt as though we were walking through a city of specters.

  The atmosphere shifted immediately as we entered the operations office. Heat, laughter, and the smell of roasted cloves and cinnamon greeted us. Bendric pushed inside with Lady Arkelai and me in tow, and a low cheer greeted us. The new foreman, assistant foreman, and most of the shift supervisors had received generous bonuses upon our acquisition of the mine, and Bendric had worked hard to ensure that displaced workers were repurposed instead of laid off. The blasting and smelting required a different skill set than fire setting.

  Speaking of blasting, I spotted our specialist immediately. She was the only grenndrake in the room, and tattoos traced lines over her lower snout back across her jaw to the spines jutting from her cheek bones. Those bony protrusions had been drilled through and sported a collection of tiny iron and brass hoops. Her jewelry was identical on both sides, and I took it to be an expression of aesthetics instead of wealth. I stood by the open seat next to her and across from the assistant foreman, waiting for Lady Arkelai to take her seat before taking mine. Once I did, I introduced myself.

  “Sailor Kelstern of Kelstern Merchant Banking,” I said, extending my hand. The grenndrake looked at it, then took it carefully.

  “Heja,” she said. Her right hand was missing several fingers. I tried not to react, but she picked up on my surprise immediately. It’s possible she was expecting it, or at least used to it. She lifted the maimed appendage.

  “This happened when I was only s
ixteen summers, Master Kelstern,” she said. “All the best black-powder masters are missing a few digits.”

  “And what about the ones that aren’t?” I asked as one of the shift supervisors poured cider into my cup.

  “They have not yet learned the most important lessons.”

  Bendric appeared on my other side. “Don’t let her scare you off, Sailor. She plays tough and loves her explosions, but she won’t bite,” he said.

  The first round of drinks was finished and replaced with a set just as splendid as the first. After such a cold carriage ride, being in the almost-stifling heat of the operations office softened my head nearly as much as the cider, and I once again grew curious about my neighbor.

  “I’ve never met a female grenndrake,” I said. “I thought your women typically didn’t leave the peninsula.”

  “Grenndraki,” said Heja.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My people are grenndraki. Drakes are fictitious creatures that your kind conjured to entertain each other.”

  Fictitious. I glanced across at Lady Arkelai, who was speaking with the mine’s foreman. If she’d heard Heja, the dragon’s daughter offered no indication.

  “My apologies. I will not make such an error again,” I said.

  Heja nodded. “Think nothing of it. And you are correct, but most of our women don’t possess my skill set. I out-earn a full squad of riflemen.”

  I looked across her to Bendric. “Just how much are we paying her?” I asked.

  “Less than she deserves,” said Bendric. He was faring better than I when it came to handling his alcohol. He waved in a server with plates of sweetened pumpkin soup. “She’s kept the mine on its feet for a whole season.”

  Heja shrugged. “A smart blaster would have told you to go suck clams. But I admit it was a challenge I didn’t want to pass up.”

  “A smart banker would have just shorted the operation in the first place,” added Bendric.

  I frowned. “Typically, one does not short their own employer,” I said.

  A voice interrupted from across the table. “What is shorting?” asked Lady Arkelai.

  I looked between her, Bendric, and Heja. “It’s an investment technique, Lady, for making money when others lose it,” I said. At her quizzical expression, I continued. “Say our blasting specialist here wanted to make a few silvers on the eventual demise of the mine. Well, all your enterprises offer loans of stake to a certain non-controlling limit. She could borrow shares of the Spardeep stake and sell them to a third party for their current worth. Then, imagine the mine’s output went down, and those shares dropped in value.”

  “Then,” said Bendric, “she would have bought shares at the reduced price and used them to fill the loan’s obligation and made a tidy profit on the difference.”

  “There’s only one issue,” I said. “Since the arrival of our illustrious grenndraki specialist, the value of our stake has increased and may likely increase further over the winter. Our smelter and Mistress Heja make shares in Spardeep very interesting to novel investers.”

  Lady Arkelai looked at the grenndraki woman. “So, if you had borrowed shares and still came to work for us…”

  “She would have had to repay the loan with higher-priced shares, and the difference would have been a deficit she would have to make up from her own pocket,” I said.

  The dragon’s daughter ran a single filed nail across her chin in thought. “Sailor, does this phenomenon happen often?”

  “It’s less common than more traditional investment,” I admitted. “It carries a great deal of risk, and you can lose more than you have because you are borrowing instead of buying. Any shares you sell are not, strictly speaking, shares that you own.”

  “Are we engaged in this practice?” asked Arkelai.

  “No,” I said. “Past experience has led me to believe that such things are more risk than they are worth.”

  “But have you considered it?”

  I shook my head. “As I am not gifted with the clairvoyance to see which of our competitors’ enterprises will succeed or fail, I shall instead endeavor to best ensure the ones that we can affect continue to prosper.”

  “Sailor, I think it’s at least worth exploring.”

  “My Lady,” I said, perhaps emboldened by the cider, “I can assure you that it is not. And I will not partake in the practice on your behalf.”

  “But why?”

  My cheeks burned with anger at memories I wish were more distant and less biting than the winter cold. But time had yet to work its magic. “Because,” I said, “shorting companies is how I lost most of Lord Brackwaldt’s money.”

  I made two realizations there. The first was that the room had gone completely silent, and the second was that at some point I had risen to my feet with such force that it tipped my chair back and it now lay toppled over on the floor.

  “I opened the initial share loans under his account. The principles were sound, or so I thought. But when the businesses began to flourish instead of flounder, he prevented me from cutting the losses and insisted we wait to see if the trends reversed. By the time the merchants demanded the loans’ return, the price of their stake had increased tenfold and nearly half a million silver marks vanished with the stroke of a pen.”

  The details of my disastrous relationship with Lord Brackwaldt had never become fully public, only the aftermath where I had refused to falsify records for Brackwaldt to hide the blunders. Kelstern Merchant Banking still reeled from the blow to my reputation. It was why before Lady Arkelai I had to content myself with risky ventures like the Alchemist Jess and his ship full of caustics. And Brackwaldt’s projection of blame did terrible damage to my own personal credibility as well.

  I straightened my chair and refilled the cup I had also tipped (mercifully while empty). Since I was already standing, I lifted my cup. “I am not risk-averse. It is only the undertaking of risk that allows new progress to break ground and forge new paths to the future of commerce. Thusly, Heja!”

  I moved my cup toward the grenndraki, who joined it with hers, and a chorus of her name circled the table.

  I watched the others drink to the toast, but I refrained. It was clear that I’d had enough already.

  Chapter 30 – Due Diligence

  The visit to Spardeep was not one of pleasure, though it turned out very pleasurable—despite my over-sharing at the feast. I awoke twice in the night. The first time was to relieve myself of the copious spirits I had imbibed. Thankfully, they came out the proper end. The second time was when the Spardeep accounting clerk with the pretty silver anklets collected her accoutrements, dressed, and left. I do not believe she intended to wake me with her departure, and so I merely enjoyed the sight of her jewelry vanishing beneath a dark linen dress.

  Indulging in such a tryst may seem strange to some, but I am still human. Even I am not entirely liberated from base pleasures. With certain urging (and the proper application of spirits), I have occasionally succumbed to feminine charms.

  Both awakenings allowed me to savor the early winter morning, a brief respite before I resumed the mantle of managing Alkazarian’s financial affairs. While I quite enjoyed the intense pressure of growing businesses, at times the weight could be staggering. We weren’t here just for the smelter. A drop in measured output had called us to Spardeep. And the holiday could only delay the inspection for so long. By the time light began to creep over the horizon, I had risen and dressed.

  I found that I was the first into the galley, and I was greeted by the smell of sizzling flatbread and butter. There was no tea, only ale, so I drank that while I waited on Bendric and Heja. There was no printed news, either, but as those miners with nowhere to go for the holiday began to trickle in, I was able to absorb fragments of gossip. New spots of standing water had begun to appear in the deepest shafts, water that smelled of bitter minerals. In other places, wood beams had begun to sag, and dust was heavy in the air. Ore had to be pulled from deeper and deeper, and so
me men were convinced that they were burrowing practically all the way to Whadael in search of new seams.

  The operation at Spardeep was large enough that anybody within earshot took me for a clerk, rather than one of the mine’s chief operating officers. Not everything said at the tables was something that should be said in front of men in my position, but it was valuable to know what was on the minds of the men charged with hauling back that precious ore.

  Bendric stumbled in a quarter-hour after I finished eating and took a seat next to me. Heja followed soon after, with Lady Arkelai just behind. My junior partner indulged in coffee and lament for the excesses of the previous night, to which Heja agreed. Lady Arkelai showed no sign of fatigue or hangover. In truth, I don’t know if her unique physiology granted an immunity to the effects of alcohol or merely a strong tolerance, but I had watched a non-trivial number of strong drinks pass through her cup without apparent effect. Perhaps whatever glamour she employed was somehow responsible and underneath that human face she was as miserable as the others.

  In any case, it was the Feast of First Winter, and so I had gifts for all three. For Bendric I had a collection of tales, outlining the deeds of the Sorcerous Crimes Division of Kaharas. Little of what those books contained was likely to be grounded in fact, but my junior partner had a propensity for bombastic fiction.

  For Heja I had a volume on volatile western chemicals and caustics acquired from Jess after his profits were fully realized. I thought she might find it an interesting diversion from mixing her black powder. She delighted at the illustrations illuminating the pages.

  For Arkelai I had something of a different gift, and she looked with suspicion at the small wooden box.

  “What is this?” she asked. She brushed back her red hair as she took it, and my heart skipped a half-dozen beats as I spied the tip of a white-gold horn poking through the hair above her ear. The alcohol had affected her glamour after all. I looked around. Perhaps my wealth-attuned eyes were the only ones capable of spotting such a brief flash of her true nature, but I was glad we would soon be in a darkened tunnel.