Draz Steel

Draz Steel comes out of Draazstone, and by Hinta’s reckoning there is no better metal to be had for several hundred miles. Its virtue is what is missing from it. There are fewer impurities in it than in what the markets carry, and it is less flawed, so anything made of it comes out tougher: a weapon, armor, or whatever else is wanted hard. The only superior metal within reach is Tazion steel, and to find that in any market you go north to Zatichsk at the least, and pay what it costs there.

There is not much of it left. The veins under the mountains at Draazstone once ran wide and deep, and they have been mined off and on for hundreds of years and possibly for thousands. Little remains in them.

The company’s ingot was a gift, handed over unpriced by the three Draazstone callers, and it carries the smelter’s stamp of the clan that moved it: the House of Keth, who trade rather than dig. Hinta read the gift twice over. It is a handsome one. It is also a welcome mat laid down for a visit to Draazstone, which she called a bit of a trap, and by trap she did not mean an ambush. She meant that none of the three of them would do well there.