Coming of the Warlord, Chapter 3

“It isn’t possible, Trademaster.”

Velira looked from the window in the tower’s wall to the merchant that dared say that to her. Her face whipped by her hair as she spun, the speaker was granted a moment before her eyes fixed on him. She gave him that time to retract his comment, or failing that, to prepare himself.

She leaned down on the table that covered the center of the room, spreading out from the middle to just a few paces from the windows that formed most of the wall for the room. For all its size, for all the room that it covered, the table seated no more than seven others, besides herself, and each person that occupied a seat was looking with fear at the Trader that had spoken up.

“I don’t like to hear the term ‘impossible’, Trader Nevara,” she said. She kept her eyes locked on his, even when he started to tremble and took a step back. “Improbable, unlikely, and difficult, I have heard and I can deal with. But I don’t like to hear the word ‘impossible’ without a good reason. Why don’t you tell me why you consider this matter to be something impossible?”

She flicked her eyes to the other Traders that gathered around the large table in the center of the room, warning those that supported Nevara to keep to their seats. Others, just looking towards the door, were likewise warned. They stared at her, some in fear, some in anger, but they sat in their chairs again, and were silent.

Turning back to Trader Nevara, she said, “I know that you received some bribes from the lesser merchants to voice their concerns here, Nevara, but I will not have you saying that our efforts are impossible. Tell the weapons merchants that we have to increase our shipments to Indona for the coming fall season. There are enough problems keeping them part of the alliance that we can ill afford to offend them.”

“Besides, the smiths of Gallas Island will likely appreciate the extra work we’ll be tossing their way. They like making things,” Velira threw in. She pulled out a ledger, and pushed it across the table. “The lesser merchants will have to put together more men to transport the weapons to Indona, and to pursue the negotiations with the lords of the cities, but the alternative-“

“Voira take the alternative!” Trader Nevara shouted, flinging the paper from the table. He slammed his fist on the table, panting softly. “We don’t have any need for them, Trademaster! The people of Indona have been nothing but trouble the entire time they’ve been part of the alliance, always demanding more and more advantages, more perks. What the hell do they have to offer us that is worth giving them all of these extra trade rights, this preferential treatment?!”

Velira slowly lowered herself into her chair at the head of the circular table, leaning her head back against the cushioned headrest. It surrounded her head like a throne might, granting the appearance of a crown, even though there wasn’t one. She stared at her naysayer, and propped her head up on a fist as he ranted and raved, shouted and screamed.

When he stopped, panting and leaning on the table, she gestured to the paper that he had flung from the table. “If you’re going to waste my time, Nevara, put that ledger back on the table and get out. If you want to actually hear what I have to say, sit down and calm down. I don’t want to have to repeat myself more than once, and quite frankly, I’m not sure if you’re worth explaining it to even once.”

When he didn’t immediately sit down, she fixed him with her glare again. It was an effective tool, particularly on those whose greed was stronger than their spines, and Nevara was no exception. He picked up the ledger, though crumpled, and placed it on the table, slowly sitting on his chair as he did so.

“So,” he muttered, looking down at the ledger. “So, why is it so important, Velira?”

She raised an eyebrow at his impertinence, but she didn’t call him on it. That would wait, for later. She had brought him down enough in front of the others here. More would have to wait for a more secluded time. Gesturing at the ledger, she said, “The people of Indona have a very simple reason for why they can extort so much from us. They are the closest island to the eastern continent, and they have the most contacts with the tribes there. All it would take would be for one of the city governors there to become angry with us, just one, and we could have a full scale invasion.”

The silence from the rest of the room was more or less what she had expected. Even the members of the Merchants Council that were Traders did not really explore the possibilities of the eastern continent, not like they should. All of them, however, immediately grasped how badly war would impact their trading, as well as their fortunes. Weapon sales would increase, of course, but as it was, they hardly shipped enough of those to call a profit as it was. The demand would be more than they could supply.

There was also the simple point that an invasion was something they were simply not equipped to handle, either.
One of the traders, a small, whiny voiced little man by the name of Reluva, looked up from the ledger. “But…surely they wouldn’t turn on their neighbors, on us? We traded with them before they became part of the alliance, and traded with them favorably after. Why would they attack us?”

Velira didn’t bother to answer immediately. Rather, she pointed out the window, towards the ships they had in the harbor. She pointed at them, at the little dots that moved up and down the docks, the traders and crewmen, and at the little dots that remained stationary on the ships.

“You remember the guards that you are so proud of, that we are all so proud of?” she asked. The nods were expected, but slower than she would like. At least they seemed to understand where she was going with this. “It is only through great effort that we’ve managed to make the people of Indona ignore this. They feel themselves kin to the warriors of the eastern continent, and they look for any excuse to make a complaint about us keeping them as soldiers on our ships. If they were given the excuse to have another go to war with us, to free those kinsmen of theirs, I would imagine they would take it, don’t you?”

They nodded again, this time a little less hesitantly. At least they weren’t total idiots, she thought to herself, even if that might be a little easier to deal with. Still, it would mean having to do all the work herself. She pointed to the ledger once more, bringing their attention back to it. “If you’ll read that, you’ll see that I’ve managed to put together a plan for increased weapons shipments to them at a cost that will at least bring in enough gold for us to cover expenses. No profit from it, but at least we won’t lose anything.”

“And…the alternative?” Trader Nevara asked, looking down at the ledger rather than meet her eyes. She noticed that Trader Reluva did the same.

“The alternative is continuing to ship the meager weapons we already send to them, and handing them an excuse to invade. I’ve already deployed forty galleons to Indona with an advance shipment, all that we had, but we’ll need more by Fall’s Height,” she said. By the Four, but they would need more. And in only three month’s time, what was more. It did not surprise her that the lesser merchants would have protested this, considering the great level of work needed, with so slight pay promised in return.

She looked around the table, gauging their reactions as best she could. Most of them were staring out the wall windows to the ships below them, in both the eastern and western harbors. The guards that kept to the ships outnumbered the home guard of the island, and if there was an invasion, there was no chance that they’d be on the side of the Traders. She knew what was going through their minds. She knew, because it had been running through her mind as well.

Trader Nevara sighed softly, and rubbed his forehead. “It seems that there isn’t much choice in the matter. I would say that we move on with the Trademaster’s plan…particularly considering she has dispatched most of our ships already, under the assumption that we would vote to go along with her,” he said, looking at her through his eyebrows, with his head lowered the way it was.

Velira nodded once, and leaned back with an inner sigh of relief as the rest of the Merchant Council slowly added their votes of assent. “Then the matter is agreed. The Council is dismissed,” she muttered, waving her hand at the grumbling group of men as they stood up and walked to the door on the southern side of the room, directly opposite from her chair.

Before long, the room was empty, save for her.

Velira took a few deep breaths when she was sure that the various Traders were far enough down the stairs to be unable to hear her. It had been a bit of a close call, when Nevara had defied her, and called her demands impossible. Of course, she had expected the lesser merchants to bribe one of the Council, that was little more than tradition, but she hadn’t expected it to be him. Nevara was a hot head, but he was usually a fairly supportive member of the Council. The lesser merchants in the arms business must have scraped together a formidable sum of gold to get him to put that aside. She would have to look into that. Bribes were all well and good, but when one group got together that much, it generally meant that they were stealing away more than what she already knew.

The ledger she had prepared was nothing more than a pack of lies. It had no purpose other than to give a show of preparation for the shipments that had to happen. Nevara had to know that, when he looked at it. He was the only member of the Council, other than her, that cared to keep an eye on the island’s treasury as well as his own. She was thankful for him for keeping the truth of the matter out of this discussion.

The truth was, financing this was likely to bring most of the weapons merchants to their limits, and likely impoverish a lot of them. It wouldn’t be easy to keep the people of Indona satisfied, even with the weapons that the people of Helles made, but it had to be done.

She couldn’t risk a war coming here.

Pushing herself out of the chair, Velira looked down at the sprawling city of wealth below her. The golden beacon that was Veleran looked like the physical embodiment of a promise of wealth, to people that didn’t live there. To those that did, it was a maze of gilded walls and beasts leashed in the corners, waiting to bring down any that might come near, and leash them to work. To Velira, who ruled the entire city, it just looked like a mess that she had to keep cleaning up.

She looked up at the glass itself, and sighed at her appearance. That certainly didn’t make her task any easier. She didn’t really care about her lack of great beauty, as that would have had the men of the Council just acting as if she were nothing but a trophy of theirs, but she did wish that she had been blessed with some level of attractiveness.

Her reflection copied her as she smoothed her hair back, the dark brown hair flowing around her fingers. It would have been pretty, save for the lines of gray that she traced. She was barely twenty four years old, but she already had gray in her hair. If that had been the worst of it, she would have been happy. She almost couldn’t make herself do it, but she slowly looked down over the rest of her body.

Hands slid down a body with almost no curves, and definitely none that would show through her clothing. She had nothing to her body that would normally draw a man to pay attention to her, and though it was something that she said long and loud that she was thankful for, as it had allowed her to learn without distraction, and not worry about a member of the Council seducing her or dealing with her as less than an equal, it still grated from time to time.

“I guess the Four decided to grant one of us our father’s brains and the other mother’s beauty,” Velira muttered to herself, snorting to herself shortly afterwards. “As if that could possibly happen.”

“Still haven’t accepted the possibility that the Four are real, Velira?”

Velira turned around, her reflection forgotten as a smile spread across her face. “It’s time for your visit already, Petila? I thought that you’d still be down at the furnaces, considering the orders that you got earlier,” she said.

“You’d be surprised, Velira.” Petila smiled at her, flipping her twisting locks out of her face as she circled around the table. She flung out her arms and wrapped them around her, making her squeak from the strength of the hug. Only barely managing to get her arms out and wrapped around her sister, Velira did her best to return the hug.

It was a lost cause from the start, considering her sister’s greater body strength, but Velira didn’t care. At least Petila was here. It made her day to see her sister, particularly the way her day was going. Her sister’s hugs were sometimes all that let her get through the day, and she figured that this would be one of those days.

Velira held tight to her sister for nearly a full minute before she let go, not that her slackened grip meant that the hug was over. Petila held onto her for another thirty seconds before she, too, released her grip. Slipping into one of the chairs that had been occupied by the Council only minutes ago, Petila looked up at her with a grin. “So, how did the meeting go with the old Traders? Did you have to sentence anyone to the Burning Sea of Death to get their cooperation this time?”

“When will you call it by its real name?” Velira asked, slipping into her chair. She smiled, despite her sister’s impertinent tone. “But no, I didn’t have to sentence anyone to anything today. For a change, they were all quite reasonable. Then again, they kind of had to be.”

“Threat of invasion again?” Petila asked, leaning on her fist. Her biceps bulged lightly at that simple action, reminding Velira of the sheer difference in their lifestyles, as if the tight hug from her hadn’t been a reminder enough. “Was it from Indona again?”

“Where else? Civon doesn’t have enough troops to deal with their own wars, and the rest of the Alliance wouldn’t want to bother us,” she said with a shake of her head. She gestured to the harbor. “We’ve got enough ships to deal with anything short of a full on invasion from Indona, but if they somehow managed to organize the tribes on the eastern continent, we’d lose everything.”

She slumped back in her chair, rubbing her forehead, kneading it as if that motion could carry the worries and fears from her mind. Oh, how she wished it could. It would have saved a fortune on all the other tricks and techniques she had tried over the years.

Petila’s rough hand pressed down on hers, and she looked up at her sister. She patted her hand a few times, and then squeezed it. “You’re doing all you can, Velira. That’s what you do, what you’ve always done. Considering how well you kept me alive after mother died and father went to sea as a Trader, I think that our island is in as good a pair of hands as can be found.”

She smiled and gripped her sister’s hand, squeezing it for all that she was worth. Petila didn’t flinch at all. She might as well have squeezed a brick with her bare hand and tried to squeeze water from it. She would have likely gotten better results.
“Thanks for that, Petila,” she muttered, squeezing her sister’s hand once more before letting go. She looked to her left and her right, looking down at the twin harbors on each side of the island. It was amazing, really, just how many ships came to the harbors of Reman Isle every single day. In fact, she could see several more ships coming from both east and west.

The eastern harbor was mostly empty, which was good, considering the twenty ships coming in from the west. She recognized the large galleons that she had sent south, twenty of the forty that had been sent out. They likely had a good bit of room in them, but there was the possibility that they had a little bit to unload. She could ignore that, and trust the harbor authorities to deal with the familiar ships.

However, to the west, one particular ship caught her eye. It rode the waves faster than the others around it, keeping a few hundred meters ahead of them at any given time. It wasn’t of a design that any of the Trade Isles used, as far as she could tell.

“Hmm, haven’t seen any ships from the continent of Civon in a while,” Velira muttered to herself. She pulled herself to her feet, looking to her sister again. “Sorry about cutting this short, Petila. I’d like to spend more time with you, but duty calls.”

“Something I don’t know about?” Petila asked, cocking her head. “I thought the only real duties you had was keeping track of the old busybodies of the Council.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you to learn a little more respect for them, Petila,” Velira said, though she knew her face was fighting a smile and losing. “They do a great deal of work for the island, after all.”

“You mean they do a lot of work after you tell them to do it, sister,” she said with a shake of her head. Sighing as she stood up, she added, “I know that you have a lot to do, Velira, but don’t be such a stranger, huh? Come down to the glassworks. I think that the employees miss you, though I can’t imagine why.” Smiling even as she gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes, she turned and walked to the stairway. She disappeared with a wave over her shoulder.

“Irreverent as always,” Velira muttered softly, turning to look at the western harbor again. The strange ship was already turning to make port, faster than she might have thought it could move. It seemed capable of cutting across the sea at the same speed as one of the smaller Trader ships that carried the lighter, but more perishable shipments across the ocean. It wasn’t something that she liked to see.

Speed was the primary advantage of the trading fleets of Reman Isle after all. If that was negated by something else, particularly from the west, it would make their economy a lot shakier.

“I wonder who the captain of that craft is,” Velira muttered, watching as it made its way to the outermost pier of the docks. “He certainly found a good ship.”

“I look forward to taking it from him.”

Smiling to herself, Velira turned from the glass top of the tower, and walked down the stairs. It was going to be a long descent, from the top of the tower to the ground level, but that was alright. It would give her the time to think about what she could do to take that ship from the unlucky captain.

#

She had forgotten how crowded the docks could be during the day. During the night as well, for that matter, but that was neither here nor there. She didn’t want to think about how much more difficult things would be here on the dock if she were walking along the stone piers at night, with the sea water slicking the stone and making each step treacherous, threatening to drop her into the waters below. In the night, it would be impossible to find a ladder and pull herself to safety, and would only result in her drowning like numerous others that had worked the docks.

Velira shivered as she shook that image from her mind. It was daylight. Daylight. There was no chance of falling into the water now, not unless she was shoved by one of the workers or traders on the docks.

Admittedly, that was a bit of a worry. They were moving around quite fast, moving hither and yon across the docks. People moved from ship to ship, carrying cargo. Sometimes they deviated their course to carry their goods to the warehouses just outside the limits of the city proper, still on the lands that the harbor used. Other men, used as security for the ships docked in the western harbor, occasionally shoved those that loitered in some places, causing them to splash in the cold harbor waters. Some of them gave her a look that looked as though they thought she needed a good dunking, but they never went so far as to actually push her into the waters.

They knew the consequences of that.

Walking around a few of the smaller ships that were just picking up cargo to take down to Ethetania, or perhaps to Antovis, Velira didn’t take long to reach the strange ship that had outrun most of the others on the sea. Passing by its starboard side, she read the name that was inscribed along the side. The Caronal, it was called.

“An interesting name,” Velira muttered to herself, walking along the pier until she reached the plank that allowed one to disembark or embark from the ship.

Two people, most obviously not crewmen, stood on deck and were walking to the plank. One man, shorter than her and anyone else that she could see, had red hair, and a terrible fashion sense. No one should wear a black vest with a white shirt, and then wear baggy blue pants. It made him look absolutely terrible, garish.

The other, however, caught her eyes for a few minutes longer. Well muscled, and close to her height, he carried several burn marks across his face, like cinders had landed across his face and stuck there. He also had a birthmark of sorts that sliced along the side of his neck, reaching near to his jawline. His broad body covered by thick, brown leather leggings and a thick white shirt, he presented a rather handsome figure. He obviously didn’t come from money, carrying his own possessions, but he seemed accustomed to it, swinging a sack of something over his shoulder as he walked down the plank towards her.

Clearing her throat to attract their attention as they reached the halfway point of the ramp, Velira lifted a sheaf of paper. “I imagine this is your first time to Reman Isle. This is the first time I have seen this ship, at least, and I don’t imagine I would have forgotten seeing such a magnificent craft before.”

“It’s my first time,” the taller man said, shrugging his shoulders as he did. “I think that my friend here has been here before, but he’s a traveler, like me. The Caronal isn’t his ship, so he might have been here before.”

“Well, then, if it is your first time, you have some paperwork to fill out,” she said. She waved to one of the guards around the ship, and called for him to bring them a table, as well as ink and writing tools. “If your friend has been here before, there will be records of his previous time here on the island. But for now, let’s get you set up, shall we?”

The table was brought swiftly, and she sat down on one side, while the muscled man sat down on the other side. She pressed the papers over to him. It was a rather standard form, one for registration of name, intentions of travel, and other things that were needed to keep track of the many traders and shoppers that came to Reman Island every day, every hour, for that matter.

“So, why are you the one doing this?” he asked her as he started filling out the spaces.

“What do you mean?” Velira asked in return.

“You seem to be a rather important woman, not to mention possessed of some beauty. I’d think that there are a great deal of people that could do this. Why you?”

Velira revised her opinion of this man. He wasn’t merely handsome, and muscled. He definitely had some good instincts as well. Not much taste though, if he was calling her beautiful. She half wondered if he had some sort of problem with his eyes, if he called her that, and decided she would check his form for mistakes, just in case.

Until then, however, she would answer his questions. “It’s true enough that there are others around that could take your forms and answers, but I need something to do. Besides, I needed to check on this ship for a moment, see who owned it, what it is like, and probably a few other things as well,” Velira said. “It’s faster than most of our ships, after all. I don’t see that often, and I want to…congratulate…the owner on his purchase.”

From the corner of her eye, over the handsome man’s shoulder, she saw the short man go pale. Interesting. He didn’t seem to have a reason to act like that, particularly if he hadn’t been here before. Was he hiding something? She didn’t know, but she intended to find out.

Before she could turn her attention fully to the red haired traveler, however, the form that the muscular man had been filling out was passed back to her. “There,” he said. “I hope that’s enough. I want to find the shop that I purchased, before dark, if that’s possible.”

She blinked, and picked up the papers. The handwriting was atrocious, but readable, if only by the loosest translation of the term. The first thing she checked was his name. Garen Tallas. A smith, then, from Gallas Island, she thought to herself. Must be a good one to be leaving the island and setting up shop here. He’d probably have the weapons merchants in an uproar, if he was any good.

“Your shop is in the southern district, right?” she asked, checking the information on the form. “It should be, if you bought the deed to the shop recently.”

“Well…”

She lifted her eyes, though not her head. Peering over the top of the form, she arched an eyebrow.

“To be honest, I haven’t purchased a shop yet,” Garen said with a small wince. “I was hoping that I’d be able to look through a few that were for sale, see what ones looked good, and pick one up at a good price. What?”

His question had to be a result of her sudden giggle, and the way she’d pulled the form up again, hiding her face. The fool, the pure, simple-minded fool! Coming here, of all places, and expecting to find a shop for sale was akin to going to Indona and finding your way through their coral reefs without an island guide. It was impossible. Locals had a hard enough time breaking into the merchant business on the prosperous years, with everyone grabbing onto this or that piece of architecture and turning it into a shop.

The form shook in front of her, and Velira realized that she was going to laugh whether she wanted to or not. It shouldn’t have mattered to her if she did or didn’t, but she wanted to put a dignified face to the post of Trademaster, not the face of a giggling idiot. She particularly didn’t want to put the idea of a giggling idiot into the mind of this man, this Garen Tallas, for some reason she couldn’t figure out.

Desperately seeking something to distract her, she latched onto the face of the red haired companion that followed Garen around. She hadn’t got a good look at him before, but there was something about him that struck her just as much as Garen had, though in a different way.

The more she looked at him, the more he tried to ignore her. His eyes went up and down, looking to the waters, to the ship behind him, at anything but her. Her gaze, on the other hand, didn’t waver in the slightest. She saw something familiar in him, something that grew with each second she watched him. It niggled at the back of her brain, nibbling at her memories.

Then he looked down at her, meeting her eyes with his own, and she recognized him. Her eyes going wide, Velira opened her mouth to order him to reveal himself.

As her tongue began to speak the words, a shockwave and an explosion of sound ripped through the harbor.