Deals Made, Deals Lost II

Synopsis

The day opened with rotten fruit. Dan woke in the Loshev cells to a serenade and a barrage of it, and Councilman Yullen Gemsmith woke to a live lamb and a florid note signed by Aldo, inviting the party to dinner. Between those two gestures lay a full day of errands in a town where every conversation is a transaction.

At the Gemsmith estate they found Leon Yaegar already there, setting out a game of Conqueror. Gemsmith took the Mól gem-cutting schematics and the small crystals and told Mikhail he had read the documents almost perfectly. Cut, quality and size all bear on whether a stone can serve a keep as its key. The small pure spinel, wanting the impurities that bias other stones toward fire or water or wind, might take any element at all. He kept the lot to appraise, and would not be paid for it. His news of the winter was worse: gnolls had burned homesteads on the outskirts, the Widukind distillers’ farm among them, and turned back only when the distillers discovered how greedily gnoll fur takes a flame. The gnolls carry fire themselves now, which they did not before. Leon’s reading of it was commercial: Draazstone may have paid for the chaos to soften the town ahead of a trade deal.

Cleven Gemsmith’s wing of the house was unbreathable, floral extract and vinegar laid over something sulfurous, and he would not say why. He walked them to the warehouse instead, confirmed they had won three volumes of the Mól Encyclopædia at auction, released the books on credit and fled. The others agreed Mikhail stood the best chance of drawing him out, so he came back alone that evening with the six gold owed, sat through the wax-seal ledger, and asked permission before asking anything at all. The answer was a toad, kept in secret because his father cannot abide them, and the smells kept to hide it. Mikhail told no one.

Nathan Fox named his price: exclusive rights to Draazstone’s metal ore, framed as a benefit to all of Loshev and intended for his family. He threw in his negotiator Arthur Freym for Leon’s journey, wine, two more encyclopedia volumes on loan, and an introduction to his niece, which fell to Aldo by elimination. He also handed over the lever on Torgun Kurvroc: the man is shunned in Draazstone for the very heritage he prizes, and wants nothing so much as its regard.

Koa spent the afternoon elsewhere. He sold a sapphire to a gem buyer who bargained him low, then walked out past the town with Phillipa and Philomena to the cairn they had set for Phil, beside the tree the fleeing Zahir once brushed past. He told them about the engagement gently and hummed Phillipa’s traveling song over the stones. Her egg contract now serves an influential patron in Ravenhold, and when she learned the eggs come from a bird that thinks, she agreed to be done with them. Then she gave him a porcelain bell whose twin hangs in her cart. Ring it, and she comes from wherever she is.

Kurvroc’s house is the oldest in Loshev and looks it, the lawn still studded with traps that rotted where they were set. He tore the door open and was closing it again when Aldo stopped him with praise for the building, which is less a building than a Mól ruin with a house grown over it. Electrum runs through its Hearth and its foundations; a complete thirty-volume encyclopedia stands on the shelves. Under the flattery Kurvroc softened into something nearly paternal and turned to his blood, naming the Muharib: Guardian-warriors of the old empire who broke away for the mountains of Vala and, by his telling, kept the tenets long after the empire had forgotten them. Sent for wine, Mikhail found an electrum ring engraved inside in Taal with the house motto, and confirmed by a handful of light that the estate stands on Mól stone throughout.

By the end of it Kurvroc had agreed to fund the Twisted Grove expedition and to sponsor moving the Forven prisoners to Loshev, where Beltran cannot reach them. He wants a public execution out of it, and offered Aldo the axe; Aldo kept his face still and agreed. Koa went to Fox afterwards to ask him to block any motion making the party executioners, and Fox will, if it is raised where people can hear it. The evening closed at the Gemsmith table with Hinta putting Koa’s finished greatsword into his hands.