Well, occasionally wrong.
Over the following few days, the marketplace was finally busy. We learned that its tranquility had been because Dashski was away. Without him to suck up to, his faux courtiers had no need to parade on the manor grounds and had been at home with their families or tending to their real businesses. I wondered whether they found the pretense as foolish as I did. For they were no true courtiers, holding no titles or ancestral lands of their own. Instead they were fellow merchants, or traders, successful at their craft —though not as well off as Dashski—and elevated in status simply so the merchant-lord of Veir Dasha could play at being real nobility. I had expected them to be thrilled at the ruse, but perhaps I’d underestimated the lot.
The market was now bustling en
