"How much would you sell them for? All the baskets?"
"They all sell for different amounts. How should I know-?"
He shook his head impatiently. "If I were to buy them all, how much would you want me to pay for them?"
"You…? But why?"
"To sell again," he said, surprising her with his candor. "Baskets that fine don't usually find their way to the Neck. They may not all sell today, but they'll sell eventually."
Still she frowned, regarding her wares now, as if uncertain as to whether to part with them. "I don't know."
"It would be gold in your pocket, Licaldi. Perhaps not as much as you would have gotten had you sold all of them yourself." He smiled. "I'd need to make some profit, after all. But it would be more gold than you have now."
"I could have sold them for twenty sovereigns."
"I'm sure you could have. But I won't pay that much. I'll give you ten." "Ten? For the lot?" She shook her head and went back to packing. "That's ridiculous."
"That's what I'm prepared to pay."
For a long time she refused even to look at the man, though she knew he was watching her. Finally, she sat back on her heels and sighed. "Fifteen."
"Twelve. That's as high as I'll go."
She glared at him. "You're taking advantage of me."
"Yes. I'm a merchant. It's what I do."
Lici had to laugh. "Very well, then, merchant. Twelve sovereigns for the lot."
She pulled the baskets out once more and began to hand them to him. He placed them on the table from which he'd been selling his goods-blankets mostly, though also some clothes, blades, and tools. When he had rearranged his table to fit her baskets, he returned and counted out twelve sovereigns into her slender hand.
"If you come back this way with more of these baskets, I'll be interested in them as well," he told her.
"I won't be in such a hurry then," she said. "And I'll expect more gold."
He found that amusing. The fool was still laughing as Lici walked away, her two large baskets tucked under her arms, empty save for the blankets. It was only midday. She had time to retrieve her cart and start making her way to the next Y'Qatt village. She wasn't even certain which one she'd go to next. There were so many. And she intended to find all of them.
Torgan Plye had been a merchant for the better part of ten fours. He'd traded in every part of the Southlands, from Eagles Inlet in
Aelea to the Lost Bay of Senkora Island, from Briny Point, at the southern tip of Naqbae, to these cold, isolated villages near the Companion Lakes. In the course of his travels, he'd done business with Eandi and Qirsi alike. He'd sold wine and delicacies to the Eandi of Tordjanne and Qosantia, as well as to the Talm'Orast and H'Bel; he'd sold weapons to the warriors of Stelpana, and also to the Fal'Borna and T'Saan; and he'd traded horses from the plains of the J'Balanar for fish from the waters off the Aelean coast.
He'd seen fat times and lean, and everything imaginable between the two. Early on, when he was still trying to establish himself as a merchant of some renown, he made the mistake of borrowing gold from a coinmonger in Medqasse, in central Tordjanne, near where he grew up. An older man, another merchant, had promised to sell him a shipment of red wine that he swore was coming from a place called Sanbira in the Forelands. But he needed some gold to help secure the shipment. One hundred sovereigns would do it, he'd said, and one hundred more on delivery. It would sell for three times that amount. The man swore it on the memory of his poor mother. And Torgan, ass that he was, believed him.
He never saw the man again, nor the one hundred sovereigns he'd paid up front. He paid the coinmonger the one hundred he had left, plus another thirty that he'd managed to put away for himself. But by then, with the daily fees accruing, he owed nearly three hundred, and when he couldn't pay, the coinmonger's cutthroats took out his left eye. That was the lowest of the lows.
But he survived. Better one-eyed than dead, he decided. He never borrowed again, nor did he ever pay up front for anything he couldn't see with his own eye. He left Medqasse, and spent a few years on the sea, earning gold as a merchant sailor and learning his profession. Less than five years after losing his eye, he had enough gold to quit the sea and try once more to make it as a land merchant. This time it took. He worked hard, he wandered more leagues than he cared to count, he trusted no one but himself. And he scraped by. Until at last, ten or twelve years back, he was rewarded for his perseverance.
He was in R'Troth land, in the foothills to the Djindsamme range, a lone Eandi merchant in the mining country of the white-hairs, when he stumbled upon a cache of raw gemstones. They were in an old canvas bag that had been tucked away in a shallow cave near the headwaters of the Iejony. They'd been there for years, it seemed. The bag had moldered and was covered with bat droppings. As best he could tell, they had been stolen years before, hidden in the cave, and forgotten. Perhaps the thieves had been unable to find the cave a second time. Maybe they were dead. Torgan didn't care. He sold them for over seven hundred sovereigns.
He could have quit then. He could have settled down along the Qosantian coast or in the Aelean Highlands near Lake Naaf. But he would have gotten bored. He hadn't many friends, and even before he lost his eye, he'd never had women flocking to his side, or more to the point, to his bed. And he'd never been a man to put down roots.
Torgan couldn't remember the last time he had spent more than three nights in the same city or town. Even three seemed long. After two, his feet began to itch, he began to feel hemmed in, the way a wild horse would feel in a paddock. He had no knack for words or music or swordplay, or any of the other pursuits to which wealthy men of his age were drawn. He was happiest in the marketplace. His single talent was making the sale. Some men collected blades or horses. Some collected women. He collected gold.
After he found the gems, his good fortune continued. A year later, he bought twelve carved bowls from one of the finest wood turners among the A'Vahl. Three days later, the man was killed in a sudden flood. Torgan sold the bowls for three times what he paid for them. Suddenly it seemed that every deal he made turned out well. It was as if the gods had finally decided to smile upon him. Or maybe they were merely compensating him at last for the loss of his eye. Truth be told, he didn't care why it was happening; he merely resolved to enjoy himself for as long as he and the gold lasted.
That wasn't to say that he made no concessions to his new wealth. He no longer had any need to work as hard as the other merchants did, particularly the younger ones. They kept to regular schedules, making their way from city to city, keeping to those places where they knew they could turn a quick profit. Torgan liked to wander, and so he allowed himself to range far and wide across the land. Most merchants traded with the A'Vahl and the M'Saaren, the Talm'Orast and the H'Bel, the Nid'Qir and B'Qahr. Fewer bothered with the seafaring folk of the D'Krad, though their smoked fish was the best in the land, or with the miners of the I'Prael, though their mines produced the finest grade of silver and copper. These clans were on the fringe of Qirsi land. There was less profit in roaming so far, so most merchants traded in inferior products. It made perfect sense.
But Torgan could afford to take the time to go all the way to the Nahraidan Peninsula or to cross the A'Vahl into D'Krad land. He was willing to venture north into Y'Qatt territory in search of somethinganything-that another merchant might miss. He had the time and the gold, and he enjoyed seeing so much of the land. He knew that most other merchants hated him. They resented his wealth. They thought him unreasonable and hard and arrogant, and he was all those things. Again, he could afford to be. No deal was so important to him that he had to make it, which meant that he could walk away from any sale if the terms weren't to his liking. The willingness to walk away: a merchant had no greater weapon. But though few traders liked him, all knew that he sold the finest products. If a lesser merchant needed fine wine for a wealthy client, or the best blade for a discriminating swordsman, they always came to Torgan Plye. Put quite simply, he had the best goods.