Irons in the Fire (4 page)

"There's talk of another levy for repairs on the roads around Hanchet, Trimon curse it." The third man scowled. "Why aren't the Hanchet Guilds bearing the cost? That's what I'd like to know."

"Spend a penny to earn a gold mark." Malcot the cloth merchant was philosophical. "We can't shift our goods if our wagons can't roll."

"We smiths will be paying," the black-gowned man agreed.

So the man was a smith, but all manner of metal working was done in the city. What exactly was his trade, and what was his name? Tathrin tensed as he realised he didn't remember it from Master Wyess's greeting. He listened more closely.

"You can afford to, Garvan. You and Malcot make more profit than Wyess and I do with furs, wagon weight for wagon weight." The dissatisfied man sniffed. "I shall be voting against it."

His long nose was red with the thread-like veins that Tathrin's father had warned him indicated an unwise drinker. He'd note that down against this man's name. Kierst, he remembered that one.

"You get the better bargain trading towards Selerima, Wyess," the disgruntled fur trader continued. "More than any of us who trade to the south and west. All those towns along the East Road know it's in their best interests to keep the highway in good repair."

"Wine, masters?" A Guild servant proffered a tray of goblets.

Tathrin waited to see the other three attendants each take one before doing so himself. As Wyess drank, Tathrin merely moistened his own lips. He wondered how he might go about learning the names of the other merchants' attendants since they evidently weren't going to be introduced.

"Aldabreshin glass." Garvan, the black-clad smith who'd heard that the mountain rivers were flowing again, studied the elegant goblet. "Does anyone know what the Guilds of Col are planning to do about those accursed corsairs plaguing the Caladhrian coast? I had a half-share in a cargo that left the Archipelago last Summer Solstice. It was lost somewhere, never to be seen again."

Tathrin listened carefully. He thought the smith was from Lescar, but whatever dialect coloured his words was so faint as to be unidentifiable.

"I hear the Justiciars are issuing licences to any privateer who can round up a ship and a crew," Wyess commented. "There's rumour the Guilds are planning to approach the Archmage, to ask him to send wizards to defend their waters."

"You don't have much to worry about," sniffed Kierst, the fur merchant who was so unhappy with the notion of a road levy. "No corsair ship has ever yet come as far north as Col and that's as far south as you trade." He raised his glass and drained it.

Tathrin wondered how much the man had already drunk that evening. His accent wasn't Lescari, nor yet of Vanam. Was he from one of the unschooled city-states like Friern, to which the university paid little heed for all the volume of their commerce?

"Rumour?" Garvan shook his head, his black hair sleek with perfumed oil. "I'll believe in wizards getting their hands dirty when I see it."

Malcot, the russet-clad cloth merchant, was more hopeful. "This Archmage has interested himself in mainland affairs more than most of his predecessors. He might be persuaded it's in everyone's interests to send those corsairs to the depths. Let them explain themselves to Dastennin." He lifted his glass in a salute to the god of the sea.

"I'll gladly see them all drowned," Wyess agreed. "But even if the Guilds ask, I cannot see Archmage Planir breaking with so many generations of tradition and sanctioning the use of magic against them."

Kierst the other furrier was still aggrieved. "The Guilds of Col will squeeze as much coin as they can out of us to cover whatever costs they claim to be bearing to ward off these corsairs. Why aren't the Caladhrian lords unlocking their strongboxes to buy in some mercenaries?"

"The coastal lords would hire in swords and ships readily enough," Malcot the cloth merchant protested, "but they cannot do anything without a majority vote and a decree sealed by that parliament of theirs."

"While the inland lords won't agree to financing ships they don't need," Garvan the smith observed.

"So they carry on as they have done for countless generations," Kierst scoffed. "No individual lord will undertake anything of substance on his own initiative because they're all bound by their oaths to Ostrin and Drianon to uphold harmony and unity." He snapped his fingers to attract a lackey with a tray of full goblets. "Hidebound and hobbled, more like. Fools and farmers, the lot of them."

At least if all the Caladhrian lords do is talk, Tathrin thought bleakly, it keeps them from fighting each other.

Malcot was clearly thinking along similar lines. "Your dukes of Lescar and their endless quarrels are all the warning the Caladhrians need of the dangers of uncontrolled dissent among their lords."

That remark merely confirmed Tathrin's initial conclusion that the cloth merchant was Vanam, born and bred.

He watched the Guild servants covering trestle tables with snowy linen cloths, bringing out the first of the rich dishes. The merchants would be feasting on rabbit and bacon pies, braised fowl, minced mutton, artichoke hearts stewed with beef marrow, cinnamon wine-sops and apple fritters.

His father and the guildmasters back home might share a bottle of wine over a dish of stewed herring, if they had managed to save some coin after paying their spring rents. They couldn't vote on the need for road repairs. If they didn't pay up, the dukes would send their militias to collect the coin. Or worse, sell the right to collect the levy to some mercenary band who would ransack houses and break open strongboxes and seize whatever silver they found over and above the sums owed.

Tathrin regarded the freshly garlanded statue of Talagrin at the far end of the hall with dislike. The Furriers' Guild might honour the god of the wild places but Tathrin couldn't forget how many mercenaries claimed his sanction for their abuses. Had the sight of Talagrin's tokens on the men hunting the lower town's feral pigs sparked such hateful memories? he wondered.

"Caladhrians." Kierst drained his second glass and handed it to his silent attendant. "When it's
our
wagons left with broken axles and
our
horses lamed by ruts in the Great West Road, they're so sorry but they cannot make repairs without the vote of their parliament. Come the turn of For-Autumn, when their cattle are fat and their fields and vineyards are ripe for harvest, they're quick enough to find the money."

"It's a good thing wheat and cattle don't need the parliament's permission to thrive," Garvan commented dryly.

That prompted a laugh from Wyess and Malcot and dutiful smiles from the other merchants' attendants.

Tathrin struggled to match their expressions. These people mocked the Caladhrians but that wouldn't curb the trade each merchant did with Caladhrian lords. The guildmasters and merchant families of Ensaimin's greatest cities of Col, Vanam and Selerima didn't much like each other. They didn't have to. They all knew the value of cooperation as surely as they knew the value of every coin struck in each different city's mint.

Which is why these people can waste peas and beans on children's festival games, Tathrin thought bitterly, instead of hoarding every last one for spring sowing and then praying their crop doesn't get crushed by a battle before summer's end.

If the dukes of Lescar could only set their differences aside, just for a while, surely they'd see how peace and trade could improve life for everyone, from highest to lowest?

"Does anyone have news about the state of the high road beyond Caladhria?" Wyess asked casually. "Or the current relations between Lescar's dukes?"

"You're looking eastwards?" Garvan studied him with raised brows. "Thinking of expanding your trade into Tormalin?"

Wyess smiled easily. "It never hurts to keep one's ears open."

"And one's options." The black-gowned smith nodded. "I hear some ill-feeling boiled up between Draximal and Parnilesse over the winter. Though I've yet to hear any two explanations that agree."

"Do you think it'll come to anything?" Malcot was interested. "My cousins made a handsome profit a few years back lending Duke Orlin of Parnilesse money to equip his militias."

"Did you hear how much the Silversmiths' Guild lost when they lent Duke Secaris of Draximal a chest of coin to pay his mercenaries?" Garvan countered. "When bandits stole it?"

Kierst shook his head belligerently. "I'll sell goods to any duke who pays me in Tormalin gold, but Lescar's no place to make money through speculation."

Tathrin did his best to keep his face expressionless. At least Parnilesse and Draximal were on the far side of Lescar, over towards the Tormalin Empire. Any fighting between those two dukedoms shouldn't come near his family in Carluse, which was closer to the Caladhrian border on the western side of Lescar. As long as Carluse's Duke Garnot didn't see some advantage to involving himself in the quarrel.

"It'll just be the same old nonsense over their claims to be High King," Kierst continued with loud contempt. "You might as well expect sense from hounds snapping over a mouldy bone."

Tathrin's jaw tightened with indignation. As he looked away, lest his expression betray his resentment to the other merchants' attendants, he noticed that the disgruntled furrier's loud voice was turning heads nearby.

"I wouldn't trust anything to the Great West Road. If you're looking to trade into Tormalin, Wyess, send your goods down the White River to Peorle. Have them carried across Caladhria by wagon, and then ship them down the Rel on sail-barges. The Relshazri will cut themselves a fat slice from your profits but it'll still be worth your while paying to get the goods onto a galley that can take them straight to Toremal."

What of the livelihoods of all those people, his own family included, who earned their bread by sheltering and supplying the travellers along the highway? Tathrin burned to ask Kierst that question.

"I don't think I'd send goods by that route," Garvan said thoughtfully. "If Parnilesse goes to war, mercenaries will flock to the ports all along the Lescari coast. The ones who can't find a captain to hire them often turn pirate."

Tathrin saw that one of the other merchants was listening intently. An older man, his bushy white brows were drawing together in a frown.

"Risk good furs on the road through Lescar and brigands will seize the lot." Kierst shook his head disdainfully. "Appeal to whichever duke supposedly rules the land where your goods were taken and he'll just throw up his hands, claiming it's nothing to do with him." He laughed without humour. "When the chances are better than even that the thieves were in his pay all along and he'll be selling your goods to line his own pockets."

"You can prove such accusations, Kierst?" The white-haired merchant strode over to poke a gnarled finger hard into the fur trader's chest. "You can introduce me to someone who's actually suffered such a loss and been scorned by a duke? Or is this merely one of your tales, some friend of a cousin's misfortune?"

"Everyone knows--" Kierst began feebly.

"No one knows," the white-haired merchant snapped before turning on Wyess. "You'll let him abuse our countrymen, will you? Not a word in defence of your Carluse blood?"

"Come now, Gruit." The philosophical cloth merchant raised placatory hands.

"Come now, Malcot," the white-haired merchant mocked. "You should be ashamed of yourself," he said with sudden savagery. "Is that all warfare in Lescar means to you? Opportunity to lend money for profit? Why not lend money to both Draximal and Parnilesse and be certain of a good return, whoever wins? No need to concern yourself if the coin comes stained with blood. Innocent or guilty, water and lye will wash it off."

"No one wishes warfare on anyone," Garvan protested.

"No?" Incensed, Gruit rounded on him. "When half the Smiths' Guild keeps journeymen busy through the winter hammering out swords and spear-points? Selling wire to the mail-makers so they have a stock of hauberks ready and waiting? Don't you think there might be a year without fighting if you weren't so ready to sell blades and armour to whichever dukes Malcot and his cronies lend their coin to?"

The entire room fell silent as the last threads of other conversations died away. Everyone stared at the white-haired merchant.

"Have you nothing to say for yourselves?" Gruit challenged them all. "I hope you have some answer when Saedrin calls you to account at the doors to the Otherworld!"

"What's it to you if Draximal and Parnilesse go to war?" Kierst rallied. "You're from Marlier."

"What of it?" Gruit picked a stony-faced man out of the gathering with a jab of his forefinger. "You were born in Draximal. And you--' he fixed another individual with a ferocious glare "--how many brothers did you leave in Carluse?" His probing finger found another target, and another, and another. "Your wife's from Triolle, isn't she? As were your mother and father. You, you've one grandsire from Sharlac and the other from Parnilesse."

He turned his wrath on the whole gathering. "How many of you acknowledge the blood that runs through your heart or in the veins of the wife who tends your hearth, who bore your children? You wrap yourself in Vanam cloth and muffle your true voices. Have you no pride? Have you no honour? Our fine guests here joke about Lescari folly and Lescari thieves and you show your teeth in a meek little smile. You should be snarling!"