The Dragon's Banker

by Scott Warren

  A panoply of expressions played across the commodore’s mouth as she bit back one response, then another. She finally raised her fist, and I thought her about to strike me until her finger extended toward the impound dock.

  “That monstrosity tied up on my dock and the pointy-eared creature you put in charge of it. That’s your offense. I should have burned it the day I first laid eyes on it and drowned you both in the bay. Your elf opened the flood gates. Soon every smuggler and pirate will be sailing through the Kraken’s Teeth to harry my waters.”

  Her attitude was a caustic reaction toward Jassem Bol’s nautical achievement. Frankly, I found it disproportionate. But I had to admit we had made her duties more difficult in the short term. The navy would have to react, and the elf had unwittingly kicked off an arms race between Yasmin and the black markets she sought to quash.

  There was opportunity there. Not to make money, but to staunch the bloodletting that might occur some months in the future. It would require a sacrifice. One could compare it to a gout-stricken man cutting off his foot to save the rest of his leg.

  “Commodore, what if I could give you the Kraken’s Teeth?” I asked. One of her eyebrows quirked up under the wide hat, and I continued. “The ship design is only half of the equation. The hull treatment is the other, and likely even more important. It requires some key alchemical compounds. Compounds I currently have a monopoly on.”

  Yasmin sneered. “You stand to make a pretty profit then. Now that your secret is out, the price of those compounds is going to climb like an albatross.”

  “Not if I agree to hold them without sale,” I said.

  Yasmin blinked. Her eyes shifted to the sergeant, and she gave the barest perceptible nod. The pressure on my arms loosened, and pins and needles shot through my flesh. She resumed her walk but jerked her head, implying that I should follow.

  “Now why would you do a thing like that?” she asked.

  I shrugged, both to make a point and to work some feeling back into my arms. “To prevent them falling into the wrong hands. I’ve been fending away off-record offers since the harvest. You could declare enough of those compounds contraband to stop them from spreading like wildfire. I have the storage space and security to protect them.”

  Yasmin laughed, a surprisingly soft and musical thing for such a hard woman. “In case you didn’t know, Master Kelstern, smugglers do not follow embargos. That’s what makes them smugglers.”

  “True enough,” I said. In fact, I had forgotten that detail entirely. With my businesses above-board (or as above-board as a dragon-financed company can be), I often forgot the nuances of the black market. But I was quick enough on my feet to turn catastrophe into opportunity. “But it will slow it down and give you enough time to design and float your own vessels using the alchemicals I will give you.”

  We arrived at the port authority’s office, and Yasmin brought me inside past a dozen senior officers. “And I assume you want something in return for all this?” she asked.

  “Just an understanding that we will provide for the Queen’s Navy’s needs by safeguarding the alchemical unguent in the future. I have secure overland transport available to carry the needed reagents from Whadael.”

  “Not to sell me the unguent itself?”

  I shrugged again. “I can broker the deal if you prefer, but the transport, mixing, and storage is profitable enough.”

  We reached Commodore Yasmin’s office, and she dispatched the sergeant for a secretary and notary. “I can’t believe I’m even considering this,” she said. “This means no more of your little cutters.”

  That was the foot I would be cutting off.

  Yasmin plopped down in her chair and crossed her boots across her desk. “That still leaves me with a problem. Those ships have to be built, and I need a solution now.”

  The next part I knew no one would like, not Jassem, not Tokt, and least of all not Lady Arkelai. But it had to be done. To save the rest of the leg, and by extension the body of our entire operation.

  “Jassem has two ships nearly complete. Their hulls are already treated, and they’ll be ready for sea trials within a week or two. Issue them a Letter of Marque, and crew them with marines.”

  “Turn them into privateers…” Yasmin mused, her finger brushing her chin.

  “They can patrol the Teeth under lease from Bol’s Shipwright, and they’re fast enough to run down any ship on the open water.”

  The notary and secretary arrived, the latter with quill and ink. He produced a roll of vellum, which he dropped in front of me.

  “You’ve just thought of everything, haven’t you?” asked Yasmin. I wish I had. Those two ships had been critical to my forecasting, and without them practically all of my numbers were useless. Less cargo would come by sea, which meant less freight for Kuvtka to haul and fewer dragon-eyes to lease in Borreos, Whadael, Kaharas, and Lethorn. But with the unguent declared contraband, it would render all of those hulls Brackwaldt was building behind Barron Dancin’s shipping office only half-finished and keep our monopoly on the Kraken’s Teeth intact just a little while longer.

  Yasmin sat up straight. “There’s one more thing. I’ll also need your sources for the alchemicals and a list of attempted buyers before the formula went public,” said Yasmin, handing over another scrap of parchment. I scrawled these from memory and handed it back. She dropped the details into an envelope, sealed it, and scratched a name on the back. I only caught the corner, and the letters “s-s-a” before her secretary disappeared with it.

  The final agreement would need Jassem’s signature. The ships were ultimately his, and he had the controlling interest. I did not look forward to explaining why handing over the final two vessels to a woman who had attempted to seize his first was the only alternative to being buried beneath an avalanche of competition. And I did not relish the thought of telling Lady Arkelai I had spent a significant portion of her father’s funds on alchemical stores that we could not resell just when they were about to reach peak value. I was treading on a den of snakes and hoping none would bite.

  And the winter marched on toward the thaw.

  Chapter 32 – A Matter of Pride

  High winter proceeded to be the coldest in living memory, and I kept Dragon’s Daughter operational by the grace of the dragon-eyes heating our warehouses and by firing the smelter at Spardeep. My own personal dragon-eye heated my office. A teacup’s worth of diluted seawater from a flask on my desk let the flame burn low and warm for a day, enough for me to pass my hand over without burning. Once, born of curiosity, I used a measure of coffee instead. It simply made my office stink of burnt grounds for the day and made the flame sputter with a dark orange aura.

  The passes were completely snowed over, and even Kuvtka’s hardy caravanners had been forced to turn back from Kaharas when they found the roads north of the Wastes under a man’s height of snowdrift. Jassem Bol would not brave the Kraken’s Teeth, pummeled as they were by winter storms. Even the elf captain was forced to take the long way around with the deep draft merchants. He still had not forgiven me for promising his last two ships to the Crown and cutting off his supply of unguent.

  Lord Brackwaldt never managed to locate a route and had slowed his construction of new hulls as soon as Yasmin declared the unguent contraband. His ships were still fast and nimble and greater in number, but they would never conquer the Kraken’s Teeth. For now, we were limited to only five ships that could navigate those churning canyons. But it was five more ships than anyone else had.

  The only spot of good news in the last several weeks had been Heja’s success breaking through the thin vein to find a richer seam of iron ore. She had begun to excavate, and as her pace improved, so too did the mountains of ore ready to be shaped into bar iron that would be sold in the spring. I hoped that would be enough to placate Lady Arkelai when she returned. I had not seen her since the Feast of First Winter, and I expected her to check on our progress in the coming weeks. But as I left my home one mornin
g, I found her waiting for me at my usual breakfast bakery.

  Seeing her at an outdoor table with short sleeves and a deep-cut blouse despite the season was such a shock to my senses that I did not immediately register what I was seeing. At least until the faint spicy odor of her smoke entered my nostrils. She reclined in an oiled reed chair, one leg crossed over the other as a mug steamed on the table. Her ringed fingers held a sheet of the news, my news I somehow knew; the bake shop always had a print ready for me.

  What tore me away from the sight of that printed page was the heat of her eyes upon me. I do not mean this as a turn of phrase—I literally felt the intense regard of the dragon’s daughter upon the flesh of my face and neck and found her eyes aglow with the barest yellow light, at odds with the otherwise glacial winter morning.

  “Sit,” she commanded, and I slid into the chair opposite her.

  “You’ve been busy, Master Kelstern,” said Lady Arkelai. That single sentence worried me. From our first meeting, she had called me Sailor.

  “Your enterprise is very diverting, Lady Arkelai,” I said with caution.

  “Yes, I imagine so. Lots of moving pieces,” said Arkelai, tapping a finger to her lips. “Take, for instance, the alchemical stores I didn’t know I had. Which apparently I cannot use or sell at the behest of the Crown.”

  I winced.

  “Or perhaps the additional two ships that are filled with royal marines instead of cargo.”

  “That was necessary-” I said.

  “It seems that when you are not losing my father’s money to roadside thugs, you are spending it on frivolities and erstwhile wastes of time.”

  I bit back my retaliatory comment and looked around. It was early yet, but people had begun to fill out the seats and booths at the tea shop, and one or two had even stopped to witness Arkelai’s beratement. I was keenly aware that this was a conversation that should have been taking place behind closed doors (and perhaps even an anti-eavesdropping charm if a legitimate magician could be located).

  “Lady Arkelai, perhaps we should continue this discussion in my office,” I said.

  “I think not,” she replied. “I haven’t finished my tea. And you have until I do to convince me why you should continue to manage the Dragon’s Daughter Trading Company.”

  I sputtered. This was a complete turn from the Lady Arkelai I had seen at the Feast of First Winter.

  “My Lady, I built the company. No one knows its workings better than I, and no one else could have led it to its current state so quickly. Your enterprises are generating profit in less than a year. I expected it to take twice this long. Trade has slowed in the winter months, but it’s a cycle that affects everyone. We still have exclusive passage through the Kraken’s Teeth, and there are powerful actors who can no longer ignore the advantage that monopoly brings. The Crown is one of them.”

  I should have stopped there, but my pride bade me continue. If there is one thing you cannot match against a dragon (discounting size, weight, strength, greed, and flight), it’s pride. “Besides,” my foolish mouth said, “you sought me out because you needed my talents. No one else could have turned Spardeep around.”

  Arkelai’s eyes narrowed. “Your talents?” she asked. “I needed your talents? No, I needed a pawn, one to move my father’s wealth and help him transition into this new system. I needed someone so damaged that no one would look twice at him with anything but pity and someone so disposable that no one would flinch at his departure. But you’ve made yourself indispensable. Each hole you dig, you fill with dirt from the next one.”

  She threw the newsprint down in front of me. “But now you’ve gone and dug too deep, and there’s no specialist you can hire to blast your way out of this one. I have to inform my father of this. As for Spardeep? Sell it. If you still can. Consider your contract terminated on the first day of summer. I’ll return then, and you’ll see the Dragon’s Daughter for what she really is.”

  Arkelai stood up, dropped two silver pennies on the table, and departed in a flurry of gold and platinum while I picked up the print with shaking fingers. Once I saw the primary story, there was little I could do to soften the blow, except order a strong brandy.

  Disaster at Spardeep! Reckless explosive excavation leads to major collapse, flooding at recently purchased iron mine…

  Chapter 33 – Burden of Obligation

  By the time the first blossoms of spring rolled around, the Dragon’s Daughter Trading Company had managed to staunch the worst of the bleeding. The collapse at Spardeep was due in large part to allowing Heja free rein to blast. As it turned out, those spots of standing water were the prelude to cracks forming beneath an underground river. Its flow had now diverted to both major shafts, drowning both seams below flooded tunnels. Bendric managed to find a buyer for the mine and its defunct operation for a mere eight thousand silver marks. It was twenty percent of what we originally paid, but it was by far the best offer we received, and it was cash-in-hand. The new owner retained the majority of the mining staff, so very few personnel were displaced. Still, it is never easy to be taken for so much.

  I was not present for the sale, nor for Kuvtka’s informing Marlin Fost that he was scaling back down to four caravans. With the loss of Spardeep’s ore and without more cargo from the two ships we had leased to the Borrean Navy, he could no longer support six wagon trains. I was able to place many of his new personnel at security positions in the dockside warehouses. Most of the rest of winter was spent in my office with my head cradled between my hands as I watched the profit projection figures dwindle in my notes.

  I stopped dreading a return to Bastayne. There was a brief period of fear when smoke was seen rising from the mountain some weeks ago, but it passed without incident. Lady Arkelai was due to return in just a few weeks’ time, and I wondered what other disaster could befall us in that narrow window.

  It turned out the next blow would come from within our organization from an idealist elf artist who sought to build ships as the ultimate form of his expression.

  He paid a visit to Kelstern Merchant Banking, and this time I could not dodge the obligation. I met him in the courtyard, and he followed me back to my office, where the dragon-eye softly burned on its dish.

  Jassem had changed a great deal in the months that I’d come to know him. Or perhaps I was simply better-equipped to understand his idiosyncrasies. In either case, I was not surprised by what he had to say.

  “I want to leave Borreos, Sailor,” he told me.

  I nodded. “You’ve stayed longer than you intended, I imagine.”

  Jassem sat—or perched, rather—on the arm of my guest chair. “Yes. Ur’s Gift is a ship that represents the freedom given to all elves, but I’ve found myself under another set of chains because of it.”

  “Mine,” I said.

  The elf flinched. “Please don’t think me ungrateful, Sailor. I will never forget the things you did for me at a time when no one else would. You helped me tame the Kraken’s Teeth, and instead of one ship, I have seven. But there are other seas to sail, and I cannot be bound to your city and your schedules any longer.”

  I leaned back. That was the closest thing I would ever get to ‘thanks’ from an elf. “It’s not in your nature, is it?”

  “No,” he said. I believe he understood me then. Any other elf would have taken the ships and left without a word. But I owned forty percent of his company, and Jassem knew that breaking these chains in his usual way would do me real harm. So he had come to give me the opportunity to unlock them out of friendship. It would still do harm, but Jassem Bol had sacrificed enough for the Dragon’s Daughter.

  “I understand,” I said. “Use of the grotto shipyard, the two ships on lease to Commodore Yasmin, and one besides. Would that be agreeable to you?”

  It wasn’t exactly fair. You can’t divvy three percent of a ship, after all. But for a year of hard work, the elf was walking away with a small fleet of four ships, the fastest four ships on the Borrean Sea (at leas
t outside the Crown’s control with their sorcerer-sailors). And I was getting one. A single ship. Perhaps once this business with Dragon’s Daughter was over, I could use it to ferry the alchemical components that so interested me.

  If I survived the parting with Lady Arkelai, that was.

  Jassem stood to clasp my hand, and as I took his, I noticed the pot of water-fearing unguent sitting next to the dragon-eye. I hefted the little clay jar, raising an eyebrow at him. “In case you decide to build another?” I asked.

  “Keep it,” said Jassem, folding my hand over it. “The one who showed me how to mix it said it had other uses. Perhaps you will find one in your books, eh?” he said.

  I frowned. “You didn’t discover this formula yourself?” I asked.

  The elf shook his head. “I’m no alchemist, no more than you are a sailor, Sailor.”

  “Then where?” I demanded.

  Jassem shrugged “A Westerner gave it to me in trade for several sketches of himself.”

  “What was his name?”

  “He never gave it. But…”

  “But what?” I pressed.

  “He smelled of mint,” Jassem replied. He dug in his folio and withdrew a somewhat crumpled sketch, spreading it on the desk before me.

  A shiver ran down my spine. Jazalkorin stared up at me from the parchment. There was no mistaking his narrow eyes and arrogant grin. The dragon’s second daughter may have helped Jassem Bol navigate the Kraken’s Teeth. But the dragon’s second son had given him the alchemical formula needed to do it. But why? It didn’t seem like the actions of a wayward son acting against his father. If my sense of schedule was correct (it was, in fact, impeccable), then he had done it before Lady Arkelai had ever reached out to me. It had not been simple happenstance.

  As Jassem left, I looked at the unguent on the desk again. Other uses, he’d said. What other secrets did Alkazarian’s children have?

  ***

  Bendric arrived in Borreos four days later, and Tokt with him. With Spardeep turned over to its new owners and Jassem leaving for distant shores, there was little reason for either of them to be gone from the city. I greeted them both as I came in to work. Marlin I greeted with something else: a pair of deeds to his two new ships. Never mind that they were on semi-permanent lease to the Borrean Navy. Each had been appraised at twelve thousand silver marks on account of the dwindling number of ships still capable of navigating the Kraken’s Teeth.