“Oh, it’s all anyone’s talking about down at the Trader’s Guild,” Cadimer Auldmaer said as he set a plate of fruit pastries between us on the desk in his office, still warm enough to be slightly steaming. “They were able to salvage a bit of their stock—but it got thoroughly soaked in the course of ‘salvaging’ and every bolt of fabric now has to be unwound to be dried and laboriously checked for mildew before it can be sold. To be honest, I’m rather glad you left them a bit, Lord Seiji, that was a good touch. That much shimmersatin should sell for enough to cover at least most of the expenses of the trip, but Crown Rose won’t be pulling in a profit on it.”

“And, most importantly…?” I prompted.

He couldn’t hide his pleased grin. “We’ve already broken even, just since I opened up the office this morning! News like what happened at the North Road waystation spreads faster than…well, than wildfire. Never mind setting my own prices, the news that most of the Crown Rose shipment was lost has kicked off a bidding war! And since it’ll be at least two days before their stock is ready to sell, I’ve had customers beating down my door. It looks like I’ll not have any satin left to bring to the marketplace; between the Clan highladies and the inner ring tailors desperate to be the first among their peers to have real dark elf shimmersatin to show off, they’ve been hounding me since before dawn. This will set the Auldmaer Company up handsomely for the foreseeable future.”

He took a pastry from the plate and bit into it, gesturing me to do the same.

“I’m glad this has worked out as you hoped,” I said, following suit. Immediately I had to pause to collect myself before chewing. There was that flavor again… “Tell me something, Master Auldmaer. What local fruit is it that tastes so…tart? I’ve encountered it in jam, wine, and now pastry.”

“Ah, you’re becoming acquainted with a Dount specialty,” he said with a pleased smile. “Did you never have the chance to try sour flavors in your home country?”

“Well, we have sour candy. It’s a…specific taste, but not uncommon.”

He nodded. “Then it’s very likely that candy was made from Dountol sour syrup. It’s one of the island’s principal exports.” I very much doubted that, but he was on a roll and the last thing I wanted was to explain the lack of interplanetary trade. “It’s not actually fruit, Lord Seiji. I believe these tarts are strawberry. It’s the extra kick you’re tasting, sour sap from a type of khora that grows in few places, and Dount is one of only two islands I know of that has an actual plantation to cultivate them. Alas, it doesn’t travel terribly well in its raw form, so the processing is done here. What is enjoyed as a rare delicacy for the elite throughout the archipelago is a common seasoning found in practically everything on Dount. We Fflyr do enjoy our strong flavors.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed the heavy spicing in… Now that I think of it, everything except the bread.”

“Well, you’ll only find bland bread if it’s being used as a vehicle for sour jam or pepper sauce,” he said, eyes glimmering with amusement. The expression faded, though, and he slowly lowered his half-eaten pastry, gazing at me seriously. “I hope you won’t take offense if I abbreviate the pleasantries, Lord Seiji. I am very much cognizant that I owe my current good fortune to you and I wouldn’t want to seem ungrateful—”

“From what I’ve learned of Fflyr nobles, you’ve probably had some bad experiences with them,” I said, keeping my voice mild. “Just for future reference, I won’t be offended if you come right to the point, Master Auldmaer. In fact, I’m pretty hard to offend. It’s my policy not to get mad at people for having reasonable concerns.”

“Reasonable,” he said, setting down the pastry. “Right. It’s just…I can’t help feeling concerned about the initial rumors I’ve heard about last night’s events, especially as I share some responsibility for them. Burning down a whole Kingsguard waystation…”

“Is that what you heard?” I didn’t have to fake the amused little smile this brought to my face. Ah, gossip—whether via social media or horseback messenger, some things are universal. “I’m sure that’s the word going out because it makes for a better story than what happened, and that matters to the kind of people who spread stories. But no, the waystation is undamaged. Nobody died, there were only a few injuries, and those caused by panicked animals rather than the fire directly. There was superficial damage to multiple parked caravans, but the fires were mostly put out pretty quickly, thanks to a couple of Blessed on hand and a remarkably well-organized bucket train. The Crown Rose caravan had the ‘bad luck’ to be right in the path of the only major incursion of wildfire past the firebreak the guards put up. Nor do you need to take my word for it; within a day or two you should be able to get a more accurate account of what happened from others who were there.”

“Ah.” Auldmaer relaxed visibly. “Well, I confess that relieves me. Somewhat.”

“Nor is it my intention to sugar-coat this,” I said flatly. “Last night’s event was a disruption of trade, with all the repercussions that always has. People were put in danger, and property was destroyed—including that of uninvolved third parties who just had the misfortune to be nearby. You and I bear the responsibility for that, and we’ll have to live with it.”

“You don’t favor subtlety in your methods, do you, Lord Seiji?” he asked.

“I favor it heavily,” I countered, leaning forward. “In your line of work, is there a single tactic that always works the best in every situation, or do you need to adjust your approach to each separate event?”

“Ah.” He lowered his eyes, making a rueful expression. “Yes, I see your point.”

“The issue here was the extreme specificity of this job,” I lectured. “There was one person exactly who benefited from the destruction of that shipment of shimmersatin. If it had been taken out on the road in any kind of targeted attack, Auldmaer, right now you’d be getting visits from thugs in the employ of the Crown Rose Company, not desperate customers. I may be new in town, but something tells me a merchant syndicate that rich wouldn’t bother reporting you to the Kingsguard. As it is, I’m concerned how the outcome of the apparent natural disaster looks to them, even though I’m extremely confident no one saw solid evidence it was anything but that. Still, there was no way to do this without it looking at least somewhat suspicious. If I’d used a more subtle and specific approach… That would have been a dead giveaway.”

“I see. Yes, I follow your logic, Lord Seiji.” He hesitated, clearly screwing up his courage before continuing, meeting my gaze directly. “Then, with regard to the reason you approached me. You wish to make this a long-term partnership, as I understand it. Must I expect to be complicit in more attacks like this?”

“I’m not going to conclusively rule it out,” I admitted, “but do understand why this had to happen the way it did. It was a desperate defensive action we had to take because your company’s neck was on the chopping block. It would be naive to declare we’ll never be in a similar situation again, but I want to be clear from the outset that I intend to avoid that if at all possible, and I’ll expect you to do the same. We must be careful, think ahead, and avoid splashy displays of violence. With the benefit of forethought and time to plan, we can execute more targeted actions at opponents who can afford the losses, and avoid collateral damage. Partly because it’s just good strategy not to create a fuss or draw attention—everything we do from here needs to look like the normal effects of Fflyr Dlemathlys not having enough standing forces to purge bandit gangs from the outskirts. But also because messes like the one we just made leave a bad taste in my mouth and I just plain don’t want to do that again if we can avoid it.”

He let out a short breath. “Well, we’re of one mind about that, Lord Seiji. Yes, I do see your point. Ah…I have to admit, you are my first ever criminal contact; I’m afraid I’m not well-positioned at the moment to take advantage of access to your talents. Not that I am putting you off!” he added hastily. “It’s just going to take time to study the situation in Dount and its connected trade routes and identify a good next opportunity. I’ll have to create a whole new strategy for my company’s growth… Especially if, as you say, we’re to take care from here on out to avoid drawing too much attention. In the short term, I…I’m afraid I may have little to offer you.”

“That’s fine,” I reassured him with a smile. “In fact, I was counting on it. I need to build my own forces a bit before I’m ready to start taking on merchant trains with any regularity. Also, you need to lie low. You’ve just benefited immensely from a suspicious event; I strongly recommend you keep a squeaky clean image for a while. In fact, the windfall you’re getting from our recent success seems like a good opportunity for some nice, conservative, boring investments, at least until the other players in the merchant community get tired of eyeballing you.”

“Again we agree,” Auldmaer said in clear relief. “That being the case, what can I do for you? It doesn’t escape me that our partnership so far has consisted of you doing all the work and me gaining all the benefit.”

I had another bite of sour fruit pastry while considering my response. The phrasing, not the content; all of this I’d planned out in advance. At this point, the challenge was keeping Auldmaer calm and optimistic enough about this not to panic, while not obscuring the seriousness of the situation. He knew how dangerous I could be, and now I needed him confident I wasn’t going to turn on him, but without forgetting what would happen if he turned on me.

Damn it, I am not a people person. I’d never tried to manipulate someone before. Nobody had ever had anything important enough to me to be worth the effort.

“I sought you out because I need the economic connections you can offer, Master Auldmaer. I will need income, as everyone does, but at the moment liquid capital is less useful to me than essentials it can buy. Material supplies to keep my people safe and healthy when encamped in a khora forest, and perhaps tools and building materials to repair—that is, improve our…residence.”

“Ah!” Auldmaer’s expression brightened. “Now, that I am well-positioned to aid you with, Lord Seiji. In fact, the nature of nice, conservative, boring investments creates opportunities to redirect supplies. The day-to-day trading and speculation between merchant companies looking to turn a quick little profit from price fluctuations involves a lot of very mundane commodities changing hands and being moved around the city in patterns that would seem arbitrary, even nonsensical to anyone not watching closely. Plentiful opportunities for the occasional shipment to appear in an unexpected place, or disappear entirely.”

He stood up, turning to one of the cabinets behind him, and pulled it open. Using only the hand which had not recently touched a fruit tart, the merchant began leafing through papers. I was impressed at how much paper there was in this office; if I recalled right, paper was a luxury commodity in medieval societies on Earth, but the Fflyr at least seemed to be far more literate than any comparable culture I was familiar with.

“Let’s see…food, medicine, asauthec, clothing, tools… Yes, yes, plenty of that moving around. Clothing and medicine might be tricky, tools possibly, but raw staples like grains, dried meats, asauthec, beans, spices…easily acquired. Stockpiles like that spend as much time being traded about by the likes of me as used for their intended purpose at the end of their long journeys. Fabric and thread would be easier to obtain discreetly in quantity than finished clothes. Ah, provided you’re not particular about fancy quality.”

“Luxury goods would be wasted on us anyway. I won’t need medicines, if that helps, and I don’t believe clothing or tools are immediate concerns. Things like that I can probably just buy from shops in the Gutters, that seems least likely to attract notice. What about weapons?”

“Mmm…more challenging. Obtainable, though, at least in most cases.” He shut the cabinet and opened another one, extracting different papers. “I can get you any number of knives, arrows, and hunting bows. Spears are military hardware and thus controlled, though there are such things as boar halberds which I’ve heard of bandits using.”

There were boars here? Wait, you needed halberds to hunt boars? “Or if it comes to that I can lash a knife to a pole.”

“Well, yes,” he acknowledged, grinning. “Swords are technically controlled tools, but the Clans have been flouting that decree for so long it’s practically an institution. They’re obtainable even by upstanding merchants such as myself for a modest additional fee for the illegality.”

“Best to hold off on that for now. We’re behaving, remember.”

Auldmaer nodded, shutting the cabinet and returning to his seat behind the desk. “The one thing I unequivocally cannot obtain for you are crossbows. Those are restricted to military use and that decree is enforced. Firmly.”

“Oh? What makes them such a hot commodity?”

“Why, they’re a force multiplier,” he said as if surprised I needed this explained. “A frighteningly user-friendly one. Using a sword, or longbow, or spear effectively requires substantial training. It’s expensive to raise and then maintain an army full of men who can do it. With a crossbow, the expense is all up front in the creation of the comparatively more complex mechanism; thereafter, you just need an engineer or two to repair and maintain them, and you can put them in the hands of any idiot peasant who is then capable of killing one of your very expensively trained soldiers. Give that idiot peasant comparable training, and they can kill soldiers very efficiently.”

I nodded slowly, digesting this. The way he described them, crossbows were sort of a precursor to firearms, the great equalizer. Was that accurate? My knowledge of military history was limited to amusing anecdotes from around the world that appealed to my sense of irony: Pickett’s Charge, the campaigns of Scipio Africanus, pretty much everything Miyamoto Musashi had ever done. Isolated little stories like that with only the bare minimum of context needed to understand them. I was out of my depth in this discussion. Still, Auldmaer’s description made sense. If you thought of crossbows as pre-guns…

Fflyr Dlemathlys was, politically speaking, a King who barely held a semblance of control over a patchwork of feuding noble fiefs and a peasant populace which had abundant reason to resent the lot they’d been handed, plus a generous dollop of banditry. Oh, yeah, there was no way the Kingsguard could tolerate something like that getting into the hands of just anyone.

What I took away from this conversation was that I needed crossbows.

Master Auldmaer was having a very busy morning, and while his good fortune was mostly thanks to me, I didn’t want to take too much of his time. This relationship had to work in a certain way, which precluded me obstructing his business. Despite the large number of questions I had about…well, everything…we settled on arrangements for my gang to be provided with some material that would be useful in the next stages of my overall plan, and regular shipments thereafter. I needed North Watch to be well-stocked as much as I needed it cleaned and repaired. My “army” might be just seven people now, but I meant to begin gathering more in the near future and I wanted to be ready to incorporate more warm bodies.

Next time we met I intended to pump him for information at my leisure, but everything didn’t have to be done this moment.

Auldmaer started to escort me politely from his office to the door, but was quickly intercepted by one of his scurrying employees, and I stepped aside to let him tend to business. I could see myself out, and more importantly (given how recognizable my features were in this country) I didn’t want to create the impression that I was someone particularly important to him. The Auldmaer Company had plenty of employees ranging from clerks to teamsters to guards, and the warehouse complex in which Auldmaer had his own office was currently teeming, between them and a handful of disproportionately well-dressed individuals come to view the merchandise.

I caught a glimpse of the famed shimmersatin as I was making my way around the edge of the warehouse toward the side door; a clerk was holding up a stretch of it to show a woman in a dress that already looked more expensive than anyone needed. Whatever it was made of, shimmersatin gleamed and seemed to shift in the light, its surface glimmering like water reflected from a pool. I could see why rich people would pay through the nose for this stuff.

On my way to collect Aster and go, I slowed, finding her in conversation with someone near the door. Another woman, in scuffed leather armor over a knee-length coat, with an artifact sword belted at her hip. I hadn’t seen her this close previously, but I recognized her. There was no way I’d fail to.

I had heard her scream in the deepest extremity of pain. I’d been the cause of it. Her name was Larinet and it was going to stay burned into my memory.

Fortunately I was spared the torture of making conversation with my onetime victim: upon my approach, she exchanged nods with Aster, folded down hands at me, and made a discreet departure toward the back.

“Ooh, thanks!” Aster said as I handed her the spare pastry I’d taken from Auldmaer’s office. She bit into it without hesitation even as we stepped out of the side door into a broad alley. “Mm, I’ve gotta say this job comes with nice perks. How’d you know sour strawberry was my favorite?”

“It’s just what the host was serving, but I know that now.” I fell silent, dithering over whether to ask until we had turned a corner onto a main street. Ultimately, I had to. “How is she?”

“Seems Auldmaer half-took your advice,” she said after swallowing a bite. “He didn’t fire her. Didn’t pay her for the job, but…well, that’s not so unreasonable. Larinet isn’t complaining; I wouldn’t either, in her shoes. Guards who run don’t get paid. Even when running is the only sensible thing to do, the whole job is to stay and fight. A lot of employers would’ve sacked her, blacklisted her across the whole island and gotten her in hot water with the King’s Guild over that. Auldmaer withheld her wages for that job but is keeping her contract. Could be a hell of a lot worse.”

“I guess it’s a hard life all around,” I murmured.

“Harder if your job involves getting set on fire,” a muffled voice said from within Aster’s coat.

I edged close enough to her to swat the pocket with the back of my hand. Lightly. Relatively lightly. Biribo emitted a disgruntled noise but offered no further commentary.

“Hey, hey, keep it above the waist,” Aster said mildly, nibbling her tart and stepping away from me. “We’re in public, here. Speaking of, what’s the plan for today’s trip to town, Lord Seiji?”

“Well, I’ve lined up the supply shipments we need. Much as I’d like to go dither at the luthier’s or stop by the King’s Guild to play their keyboard, we need to start making ourselves scarce around the inner rings. Next stage of the plan will be focused on the Gutters, and I’m not going to want our activities there associated with Lord Seiji just yet. So if you have any important business here…?”

“What business would I have?” she asked around a mouthful of strawberry tart. “Well, I guess as a Guild member I should check in from time to time, but there’s no reason you particularly need to come along for that. You’re a lot more recognizable in Gwyllthean than I am, Lord Seiji.”

“Yeah, no kidding. To that end, the only other thing I want to get squared away before we head down to the Gutters to look for Gilder is acquiring some disguises.”

“Ooh, sounds fun. Also difficult. I have to warn you, I have zero experience with, uh…espionage.”

“Don’t worry, all you’ll need to do is stand back being all silent and menacing. What I have in mind is pretty simple—we should be able to put it together with bits and bobs from any clothier’s shop. But not the guy from last time. Some place more low-class, run by somebody who’ll just sell me shit I ask for and not turn every interaction into some kind of battle of wills.”

“Funny. I had the impression from our last visit here that that’s exactly how the tailor would’ve described you.”

“No doubt, but that doesn’t make him correct. I am not in the mood to be tested by idiots today.”

“For you are Lord Seiji, vanquisher of tailors.”

“Big talk from the vanquisher of strawberry tarts.”

“That being said, wouldn’t it make more sense to just buy stuff like that in the Gutters?”

“It may come to that, but we’ll see. Like I said, the point is to cultivate a consistent appearance while in that district which is recognizably not the one I’m wearing around right now. If possible I’d prefer—”

“Omura-san?”

I slammed to a halt in the middle of the street. We were surrounded by the anonymous bustle of urban living, guaranteed a modicum of privacy even in public by the universal fact that cities are full of strangers who don’t give a shit about one another’s business. The voice which called out to me cut through the noise and seized my full attention, though, and not just because nobody here should know that name. I recognized that voice. I knew what I’d find even before I spun around to face the speaker.

“Yoshi!”