The Merchant Prince

Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

RISPAN

“Mooren!” I heard Mira shout as she slammed out of the door from the house. “I need to spar! Now!”

I watched as Mooren grabbed those shyngur he was so fond of and barely got them up in time to avoid strikes from Mira’s staff. She was scary good with that thing. But then, Mooren was pretty good, too.

Something was wrong. I’d never seen the intensity of emotion I now saw on Mira’s face. She occasionally got a little melancholy, but she would pull herself out of it within a few minutes. She’d never talked about it, so I’d never asked. I was there for her. Always. No question. But I would respect her privacy, too.

This was different.

Something had upset her. Badly. I turned my eyes to the door of the house.

Mira’s scream brought my gaze back to her. She was crying and Mooren had his arms around her.

Mira was crying.

I stormed across the yard and through the door to where Gralbast was sitting at his table.

“Rispan.” He nodded to me.

“What happened?” I demanded.

Gralbast sighed. He put his pipe down and reached over to a side table. He picked up a glass and set it down next to the partially full one that already sat in front of him. He gestured to the other side of the table as he poured from the bottle. The chair across from him was knocked over, so I picked it up and sat down. He slid the glass toward me.

“What happened?” I asked again.

“She asked, and I answered.”

“What did you say?”

I listened as he repeated the story he had told Mira. By the time he was finished, I was angry enough to want to kill Arugak and anyone who stood with him. But I could see how this would hit Mira. Mira was too good. She cared too much. Not that I would ever say she was weak. She was one of the strongest people I knew. But she always saw the good in people. Always believed that the best things would happen in the end. I knew better. I knew life was a s**t-show and you just make the best of it while you can.

My time in the kid’s home hadn’t been horrible. But it hadn’t been wonderful, either. I’d been a little small for my age for as long as I could remember. There were always those who would take advantage.

That’s why I didn’t hate the Urgaban. I knew that Ulané Jhinura could be just as cruel. Maybe not to the point of eating other races, but you know what I mean. Wherever you went, there were good and bad people. Ulané Jhinura. Urgaban. Ashae. Whatever.

I took a swallow of the goblin grog he’d put in front of me.

“It might have been better to let her find out about it over time,” I said to him.

He shrugged. “Perhaps. But then she wouldn’t trust me if I’d kept it from her.”

Gralbast was a trader. He made his living by making deals. By getting people to buy whatever he was selling. I knew he was good at it.

“I think it’s time you and I came to an understanding,” I said to him. “I don’t know what your goals are or what plans you have. And I really don’t care. But if you ever betray her or hurt her, I will be feeding you your own guts.”

I don’t know what I expected. Anger. Denial. Some sort of confrontation. But his eyes softened as he looked at me.

“Ah lad, I know that.” He nodded. “You forget. I was there the day she came for you and your friend. When she charged through the whole forest on a pony she didn’t know how to ride. How she put herself in danger for your freedom. And I saw your face.”

I nodded once, remembering.

“No lad.” He shook his head. “Enemies, she’ll have aplenty, but I won’t be one of them. If she survives, she will bring a lot of change to Daoine. She can’t help it. But it will be a good change. For Ulané Jhinura. For Urgaban. For other races. So, I will do what I can to help her.”

“If she survives.”

“Yes.” Gralbast leaned forward on the table, refilling our glasses. “Why don’t we see what we can do to make sure that happens.”

That’s when I started secretly working with Gralbast. He knew the people who needed to be watched or listened to. After my years in the kid’s home, I had become very good at getting around quietly without being noticed. Mira knew — I should say Raven. Raven knew I was sneaking out to gather information, and as long as I was getting results, she was happy and didn’t bother me with other assignments very often. But she didn’t know that I was getting my targets from Gralbast.

We weren’t trying to work around her. We were working to support her. She had Sabela, Shaluza, and Ergak gathering general information while Mooren and Réni were in place to keep her cover as a trader working. Gralbast had already provided the general information, but she had to confirm it with her own team before reporting it. I was working with Gralbast to get answers to the questions she didn’t know she needed to ask yet.

Another thing I got from Gralbast: an enchanted ring. Most Urgaban spoke Urgan instead of the common tongue. The ring’s enchantment made it so that I could understand what the rest were saying in their language. I could even respond in kind if needed. He said it wasn’t uncommon where mixed languages were spoken, so it wouldn’t be suspicious if it was discovered. I was pretty sure Raven’s amulet did something similar.

I mainly spent the first several days walking the streets of the city to get familiar with the layout. Gralbast had given us maps, but there’s nothing like seeing it firsthand. It was the only way to really know important things about a city. Like foot traffic patterns. Where people were walking or where they tended to gather. Knowing where to find different kinds of shops or businesses, and what kinds of people frequented them.

There were also subterranean levels to the city, but they weren’t very extensive. It seemed that a lot of the city was built before there was any real plan. And even when the area seemed to have a plan, it wasn’t consistent. This was nothing like Su Lariano, where everything was meticulously planned.

It was surprising that not much of Pokorah-Vo was underground. I’d gathered that Laraksha-Vo was similar to Su Lariano in that much of it was built into underground caverns, but the builders of Pokorah-Vo evidently hadn’t wanted to work that hard. I’d hated City Maintenance duty, so I could relate. Though I had to say, this mess did give me a better appreciation for all the work that went into Su Lariano. After I’d gotten familiar with the city layout, he started sending me to watch and listen to people. Specific targets. What they were saying and who they were saying it to.

Tonight, Gralbast had given me a name. Darusa. She would be paying a visit to someone named Valdeg at his business after hours. I had no idea how Gralbast had come across this information. The Urgaban clearly had resources he didn’t talk about.

The sun had long since set and I waited in the shadows by an alley across the street where I could watch the building and its approach. My clothes were dark to match the shadows.

Darusa wasn’t hard to miss. She walked with two guards ahead and two behind. They looked very alert and competent. I was still getting used to the hairlessness of the Urgaban. Especially on the women. Raven’s newly shaved head kept catching me by surprise, too. Though I couldn’t deny her disguise was pretty effective for anyone who didn’t know her well.

Two of the guards followed Darusa in and the other two took a position outside the door. The guards presented a problem, and I was going to have to get a lot closer to find out what was going on in the meeting.

I ducked back down the alley to circle around a couple of buildings so I could cross the street where the guards wouldn’t see me in the dark. I crossed the street and went down an alley on the other side to come up behind Valdeg’s building. There was a door in the back, but my gentle nudging got me nowhere. It was likely barred from the inside.

I could hear voices inside, but not well enough to make out the words. If only Gralbast’s ring could make voices louder, too.

I could see light coming out of a window on the side of the building. I crept up to it, hoping I could hear better. As I reached the edge of the window, I nearly stepped into a hole that angled from the alley toward the building. Some kind of animal warren. I could easily have twisted or broken my ankle if I hadn’t seen it at the last moment.

I’d started to reach for my dagger to pry up the window, but I was in luck, and it was already cracked open. Darusa and Valdeg were in the room beyond.

“We just need to be patient,” the male voice must have been Valdeg. “That’s worked for us so far.”

“The situation has changed,” a woman’s voice. Darusa. “We must change with it.”

“That i***t Vegak is still following our lead,” Valdeg returned. “The merchants aren’t going to get any traction so long as he opposes them.”

I’d already learned that Vegak was the current king of Pokorah-Vo. Grandson to the monster Arugak, their first king.

“But they are getting traction,” Darusa insisted. “The Merchant Guild Council is split down the middle, and some of the conservatives are starting to waver. This new partner of the merchant Gralbast isn’t helping, bringing in these new goods and promising more volume. They’re going to want a piece of that business.”

“What if we give them a small piece of the slave trade?” he suggested. “Say a merger between the Slaver and the Merchant Guilds?”

“Nonsense! The Slaver Guild would never give them an inch.”

“Then what would you suggest.” Valdeg sighed.

“Maybe we should look at removing some pieces from the board.”

“If we are too blatant,” he objected, “they will align against us. It’s too risky.”

“I don’t need you to teach me how to grow mushrooms!” She napped. “Of course, we can’t be blatant.”

“Apologies,” his voice was heavy with sarcasm. “What did you have in mind?”

“What if this new partner of Gralbast had brought in something volatile, and it caused a fire? It would be a shame if he and his partner were to perish in the blaze.”

“We would still be suspected.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “But if we get the rumor of a secret substance going first, we can easily manage the optics. Give me a few days and I’ll have everything ready.”

There was a pause before Valdeg answered. “Agreed.”

“Now, on to other business.”

A guttural hissing sound from near my feet snapped my attention back to the alley. I looked toward the sound to find a relak on its hind legs, staring at me with angry, beady eyes, its claws extended from its raised, front legs. Relaks were large rodents, their bodies about two feet long. They could be vicious, but rarely attacked people. I was guessing that didn’t hold true if you were standing on its doorstep.

It hissed at me again, threateningly, and I slowly moved away from it towards the back of the building. The thing watched me the whole time, hissing. I’d almost reached the corner when one of the guards stuck his head into the alley from the front of the building. I instantly froze.

The guard said something over his shoulder and started down the alley. Slowly, I pressed myself against the building.

“It’s a relak!” he called out as the thing spun to face him, hissing at a new target.

“Well kill the zergish thing,” came the answer.

The guard backed away from the relak.

“Not me,” he said. “I hate those things. You want it dead? You kill it.”

The other guard was laughing loudly.

“Don’t mock me!” The first guard angrily stomped back toward the street. “You’re not the one with the thing hissing in his face.”

Quietly I turned the corner of the building and moved away. Their voices fading with the distance. I didn’t find out as much as I hoped, but I was glad I’d found out what I did.