"I create my own network," it sounded cool the first time.
The white carriage was gone, and the kids were back to throwing pebbles at the fountain like nothing happened.
Inside Marta's Inn.
"You what???" said Elin.
"I help you, making more coins." He looked at the bar counter, then back at her, before explaining about the bundles of Silverleaf from the pile under the barn tarp he saw yesterday at her family house. "Starting with those," Daniel ended.
"Those are almost rotten because the buyer didn't show up. Besides what we picked yesterday is for Velvet's merchant, including tomorrow's basket." argue Elin.
"And those 'almost rotten' are what your mother uses to make the silverleaf brew," said Daniel. "I will turn it into your mother's homemade spice."
---
In Marta's kitchen smelled like onions, and she was in a mood about it. "Good heaven, my soup spice is almost finished." looking at the soup spice jar. "I'm making soup out of water and good intentions," she sighed.
Daniel walked behind the counter. "did i smell trouble?"
"I might sell bowls of boiling water tomorrow if the merchant doesn't show up," Marta said.
"Ohhh.. So you're out of the spice?" Daniel leaned on the table. "That will bring me and whole Meiden a fortune."
Marta looked at Daniel with a clueless face, then laughed. "Oh young man, is that an insult or are you just drunk in the middle of this afternoon? Why would my trouble bring Meiden a fortune?"
"Na..A..Aaaa..your trouble can't, but~... someone I know can, and you will benefit from it too."
"What are you trying to say now, young man?" bluffed Marta.
Daniel looked a quick left and right.
"Here's my idea. I'm gonna sell you something. But I need to know how much the merchant is charging you for the spice?" Daniel said with a slower voice and a little serious.
"The price is never fixed. When he shows up, sometimes a jar can be 80c to 1s. If he really shows up." Marta said with an annoyed face.
"I will sell you something you can use temporarily for 45c a jar, and in return I... get the room and food." He spread his hands. "Everybody happy."
"Haha-!...and where are you going to get spice that cheap?"
"You don't have to worry about it yet. I already proved to you I'm a merchant myself before, right?"
Marta laughed, the big one. "Then bring it to me. As soon as you can, or we all eat boiled water until the merchant comes."
"Well, the catch is you have to pay for it first."
"Urrghh..okay, make sure you bring me the spice or you will be the soup."
Marta put a small pouch on the table containing forty-five copper. Daniel picked it up and pressed it into Elin's hands before both walked out of the inn.
"Forty-five," she whispered. "How is that possible? What did you say to Marta?"
[Fair deal closed: Silverleaf Spice (Presale). +40 XP (On hold until delivery).] [XP: 30 / 200]
Elin marched straight home and poured thirty onto the family pile and kept fifteen for jars and salt. Daniel started telling Liesel about the spice Marta needs.
[Side Quest: Trapped in a Spiderweb.] [Goal: 1 silver. Progress: 52 / 100 copper.] [Time remaining: 6 days, 18 hours.]
Liesel picked up a coin and held it to the light. "It's a real coin," she said. "Are you sure about this? Will it be okay to sell her the dried marinated silverleaf?"
"Trust me. I tasted the silverleaf brew and your soup. It's not better than the spice from the merchant, but it's better than plain water in a bowl."
"HEH-HEH, guess we need to get working now, eyy." Ron just counted the pile twice and went out to the barn to pick the ingredients Liesel needs.
That night Daniel lay in Marta's spare room, listening to the inn creak, and let himself feel it for a minute. "Ahhh finally.. a progress."
But is it...
---
Day 4. The first jar was already sealed and curing in Liesel's kitchen, and Marta would get it by tomorrow. Mid-morning, Daniel walked to the guild and saw Elin come back from the forest with a full basket and a face like she'd swallowed a frog.
There was a new notice nailed to the guild door. The paper was thick and creamy, the kind you could smell money on. At the bottom there was a little pressed rose in red wax.
*BY THE KIND ORDER OF THE ROYAL TRADE STEWARD,*
*for the safety of all honest sellers and buyers:*
*Any gathered goods outside the walls of Meiden are goods CARRIED into Meiden,*
*and shall be sold immediately to the designated merchant and obliged to pay contribution.*
*Any stockpiling of goods is prohibited and will be seized.*
*With warmest thanks, V. G.*
Daniel read it.
"Onion Fries..." He swear. "Why am I not surprised anymore."
"No one is," said Mira, at his shoulder. He hadn't heard her come out. "It has a seal. That makes it an official rule." She adjusted her glasses. "Now adventurers who bring goods from Arden Forest will have to pay contribution, and no one can keep it at their house."
"Wait, that means..." Daniel walked fast, heading to the Gastolin house.
"Guess someone is in trouble." Mira looked at Daniel walking away.
At the farm side, a merchant was standing in the Gastolin's house lawn.
It's Elin's one-copper man(Velvet's merchant). Narrow, neat, with a moustache trimmed so carefully it looked painted on. Behind him were two of Turan's men, already gathering the almost-rotten silverleaf piled under the barn tarp to the black carriage.
"Elin Gastolin," said the buyer, bowing. "We will be seizing all of that because it is illegal now to keep stock, and this..." He lifted the cloth off Elin's new basket and sniffed it like wine. "Ahhhh... this one is still fresh. Well, I wish I could pay you more, but under the new rule, one third of this is contribution pay."
"That is too much. Those you seize are almost rotten anyway," said Elin.
"And you'll be paid, of course." He smiled. "One third taken as contribution. Ten copper for the rest. Be grateful."
He counted ten coppers onto the table, one at a time, slow, so everyone could hear each click. Then the Turan men carried out all the baskets.
Daniel arrived at the Gastolin house, and it was probably too late.
"Easy there, friend." Big smile. "Did I hear you say one third? And who decided that? Cuz I don't see it written in the notice."
"And who might you be?"
"Daniel, the merchant," Daniel added.
"Ah, so you're the guy from the rumors."
"So how do we know you're not cheating?" asked Daniel.
The moustache twitched. "I'm buying them under permit. Also authorized." He tapped the wax seal on his coat. "Would you like to tell Madam Velvet her rules are wrong? She'd love to hear it. She loves feedback."
He stepped around Daniel like he was a puddle.
---
A rumbling sound like horses and a carriage. Velvet arrives.
Not with a speech this time. No crowd. She just walked to them in a dark red travelling dress, gloves on, roses in the air, and sat down at the chair beside the doorway with the merchant beside her.
"Daniel," she said warmly. She took off one glove, finger by finger. "Fancy seeing you here, darling.. and I heard the Gastolin family was keeping a pile of silverleaf."
"Oh no, I'm more fancy seeing you here," said Daniel. "Come on, it's almost rotten. That won't be any use for you, right?"
She laughed, low and pleased, like he'd given her a present. Up close she was in her forties and not hiding it. She didn't need to. She looked at him the way a cat looks at a fish it has decided not to eat yet.
"You're charming. I like charming. Meiden has so few charming men." She leaned in. The neckline of the dress leaned with her, and Daniel looked very hard at the salt shaker. "So I'll be clear, because I like you. Rules exist for a reason. When I make a rule, I expect people will respect them. And you do not question them. I see you're a merchant too, then why not come to my estate and we can talk about it." She patted his hand. "Maybe you might find something interesting."
"For what? Making me one of your pawns?"
"Darling." She looked genuinely hurt. "It's an offer. I'm only giving it to you." She stood, pulled her glove back on. "Do come to me when you want a permit. We'll find a price for a charming man."
Then she was gone with all her men. His hand was still warm.
Liesel then quietly got to the front door. "I only managed to make one."
Daniel heard her voice and look back, "One? so we actually have one?" Daniel let out a relieve breath "Haaaaahhh...i thought we miss everything already. One is enough, at least for Marta. I try to figure a way for the next one".
---
Daniel came back to the guild and stood near the counter across from Mira. His eyes went once around the room.
"Of course some of them were her people," said Mira, like she'd read his face. "Some love her too much.. like Garrick."
"Everything Velvet did was 'legal'. Every copper. On paper she's a saint. And now every act is one more name she can squeeze," said Daniel with confusion.
From that moment Turan's men watched the gate and the roads. Every movement of the people is like going in out between prison.
Daniel sat on the edge of the fountain after dark with his salesman brain and his empty purse and stared at the water.
Bram limped past with a lantern, saw his face, and sat down next to him for a second.
"You look like a horseshoe somebody bent backwards, lad."
"Nah, worse than that.. I'm a horseshoe hung above doorways." Daniel replied.
"Well." Bram stood up again with a grunt. "If you ever need a cart that doesn't ask questions, mine's behind the forge. It's too dumb to talk." And off he went, laughing at his own joke.
Daniel watched the lantern bounce away.
"A cart that doesn't ask questions? What kind of dad joke was that."
---
Daniel looked at the stars, scattered like points on a map. "That's it.. a map." Daniel said with slow voice, "It tells you the route exactly where the supply chain stands and doesn't."
The Velvet merchants. Turan's men. Everything Velvet controlled, she controlled because she knew exactly where the money comes. From the merchant, along the routes, through a gate. In front of a ledger.
"And what didn't go past that?"
He remembered a man in a dead-leaf cloak, smelling of Stinkweed, pointing into the trees with half a broken bow. Yes... he is Fred Chew Ken. Remember?
"Main path's muddy past the frog rock. I take the deer trail left, it comes out behind the farm." Daniel muttered. "Not through the gate".
Daniel stood up so fast he almost fell in the fountain.
"Fred," he said out loud. "FREDDD CHEWW KENNN. FRED!!!"
---
Fred was not hard to find even at night. He was easy to smell.
He was sitting at the Arden Forest edge, gutting a rabbit by the last of the light of his fire pit, and he could sense Daniel running to him from afar.
"Alone?" Fred said.
"Nohh-, I bring two ghosts with me. Of course I'm alone, Fred." Daniel said while gasping for air.
"A merchant alone by the edge of the Arden Forest. Rare." Fred wiped the knife on the grass.
"Fuh that...exhausting...Haahh quick question." Daniel crouched down, which in a suit who knows when he did the last laundry. "Those deer trails of yours. Does anyone ever use them or know about them?"
Fred finally looked at him. The scar through his eyebrow moved.
"None as my eyes can see. No one walks in the mud."
"And where do those lead to? Past the gate?"
A long pause.
"Behind the fields near Meiden." Fred pointed with his finger.
"Sweet." Daniel muttered slowly.
"Here's the deal," said Daniel. "I need you to help me move some goods through those trails quietly."
"Tell me why?" said Fred.
"Ain't nothin but a heartache~" Daniel sang the lyrics. "There is a merchant I happened to know a few days ago named Tobin. I sold him red spices. Apparently he doesn't have a permit and he still bought it, so technically he is an illegal merchant—"
"Enough, I know the story already.. tell me why?" said Fred.
"Ain't nothin but a mistake~.. sorry, I just can't hear those words." He sang again. "Elin needs help. Her family needs money right now to pay Turan. Tobin is the only merchant I know who will buy shady goods. And only you could move the goods through those trails. If you don't want to help me, help Elin. Plus you owe her for saving you from that Kevin the boar."
"Too risky. I might get arrested."
"Relax, my brother from another world," Daniel admitted. "It is. But... nobody's gonna know. It's your trail, right... how are they gonna know?"
Eight years of dressing things up, and for once he just said it straight.
"There's always pay for a risky job, Fred. I do the arrangement and let you know where and when. You get the task done, and you won't need to risk your life living in the Arden Forest to survive. I make sure Tobin buys your hunt too at a better price, and you get an extra 2c for each goods moved." Daniel held out his hand. "Go or no go. Elin's family's fate is in your hand now."
Fred looked at the hand for a long time.
"Kevin broke my bow," he said finally. "She saved me."
"And I helped you too." Daniel added
Fred shook the hand once, hard, like a door closing. "Two coppers. And if Turan's dogs come, I drop the bag and I don't know you."
"We have a deal then."
"I'm returning a favor."
And the world went gold.
[Deal closed: Establishing Route (Danial ↔ Fred Chew Ken). +100 XP.] [Bonus: Unveil secret Trade Route. +70 XP.] [XP: 200 / 200]
[LEVEL UP!] [Danial. Class: Merchant. Level 3.]
[Contact updated: Fred Chew Ken. Trust: Owes you one → Partner.]
[New Skill unlocked: Trusted Circle (Lv. 1)] [Shown on every Trade Ledger contact: Ally / Neutral / Hostile, with success chance.]
Daniel sat down in the mud. Hard.
"What's wrong with you?" asked Fred.
"Nothing. Now I have to find Tobin, who knows where he went," said Daniel.
He opened his Ledger screen.
[Marta: Ally. 82%.] [Elin: Ally. 90%.] [Fred Chew Ken: Ally. 71%.] [Tobin: Neutral. 48%.]
"Tobin is not far," said Fred. "Hunters hear carts. He came this way a few days ago. If the road is the same, he walks it again tomorrow."
"Guess luck is on our side. Then we meet him tomorrow." Daniel grinned.
The System flickered:
[Side Quest: Trapped in a Spiderweb.] [Goal: 1 silver. Progress: 52 / 100 copper.] [Time remaining: 5 days, 22 hours.] [Pending: Silverleaf Spice delivery — +40 XP on hold.]
*End of Chapter 5.*
ns216.73.217.61da2
and then Add to home screen.