"So… about you kicking me yesterday? What was that about? You usually have a good reason for committing violence on anyone's person, and I feel I deserve to know what it was in this instance as the person in question."

It was the following day, and they were in the alcove on the second level that Rian slept in when there was a dragon passing overhead. Once more, Lori considered setting aside a space to act as her office, and once more violently rejected the idea. If she had a room for talking to people, people would go to that room to talk to her. Usually she had these talks at her dining table after breakfast, but Rian had begged for this to take place in the second floor where it was slightly cooler. He was supposed to be telling her as to how the trading trip to Covehold had gone, but for some reason he had begun with this.

Still, she decided to humor him. "You are not to inform Taeclas and—" she reached into her pouch, picking at the rocks there, "—Kolinh—"

Lori paused, then sighed and took out all of the rocks in her belt pouch, glaring at them.

"Maybe you can make the name rocks for Taeclas and Lidzuga out of bone instead of rock?" Rian suggested. "Or shapes. Theirs can be triangular, Kolinh's could be rectangular. since he substituted for me?"

Lori sighed. "Remind me to do that at the end of this discussion. As I was saying, you are not to inform Taeclas and Lidzuga that I am in possession of Deadspeaking primers, or any sort of primers at all."

"Yes, I understood that, subtle as it was. Why though?"

"Because I said so."

"Also understood, but why are you saying so? If I don't know that, I might follow the letter of your order and you know how this goes in plays and novels."

Lori glared at him. "Shanalorre is not to be trained further in Deadspeaking. She's useful the way she is. I will not have her being taught enough to become a threat to me."

"Ah. Um, shouldn't this be something you need to tell the people actually capable of teaching her?"

"I will be dealing with the matter directly. However, you asked."

"So you kicked me because you didn't want Tae to know you had primers… because you didn't want her to start teaching Shanalorre…" Rian frowned, then sighed. "All right, two issues. First, the lack of primers is unlikely to really stop her—or Lidzuga—if they really want to teach Shanalorre about Deadspeaking. Secondly… could you find some other signal to tell me to stop talking that doesn't involve kicking me? You're the Dungeon Binder, can't you just blast air into my forehead or something?"

"As I said, I intend to deal with the matter directly."

"So… you're saying the kick to my leg was completely pointless in the long run because you'd have told them anyway?"

"Rian, cease digressing, you said you would give me a report about the trading trip."

Her lord sighed, but opened the leather folder that he gotten from his house after breakfast. "Just please consider the alternative to kicking me… All right. You don't care about the actual physical trip as long as we reached our destination and back safely, you care about the profits, right?"

"Of course."

"Right…" He opened the folder and drew out some papers. "These are the terms we agreed on, but there are several points that the merchant house would like to renegotiate next time, with your authorization. The first point is that they ask the beads be sold by weight instead of per bead."

Lori raised an eyebrow. "By weight?"

Rian nodded. "They say it's 'a more reasonable measure', but I think it's because it makes it easier to round the price up and down on their part, letting them shave the price a little at the edges. For the record, I was able to get a measure of the average weight of the large wispbeads you made, but there's a very small chance that the scales or weights had short weight. It's unlikely, since I chose the merchant house partially due to their reputation for honesty, but I thought you'd want independent confirmation and a basis to calculate our own price."

"What was the other reason you chose their merchant house?"

"Convenience," Rian said promptly. "They were the only ones willing to come to our boat to pick up our goods instead of requiring we bring our goods to them. Given the amount and weight of our goods, I thought it best to minimize the chance that we'd be robbed on the way to the merchant's."

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Lori nodded slowly. Yes, she hadn't considered how they'd transport their goods on arrival, had she? The boat hadn't even had a hand cart on it. "I see. Continue, then."

"Right. I would recommend agreeing to selling the wispbeads by weight—again, once you've ascertained the weight of the beads to your own satisfaction—but only if the overall order of beads is above a certain threshold… say, five sengrains. If the amount of beads is over five sengrains, then the price is calculated by weight. But if it's less than that, the price is per bead. The contracts allows for renegotiating the price of the beads, something I secured because I wasn't sure you would be satisfied with the price I managed to get."

Lori frowned. "What price did you get for them?"

Rian told her.

––––––––––––––––––

After Lori stopped starring at the wall, contemplating the interplay of supply, demand, bead consumption, and bead renewal going on in Covehold, they continued the discussion. Despite herself, she couldn't really find all that much fault in Rian's reasoning for the price he'd established. While the people of the demesne could ignore the restriction the demesne of Covehold had placed on the swallowing and use of beads in bound tools, completely using up the supply of small and small-mid denomination beads would for all practical purposes force people to redesignate larger-denomination beads, effectively leading to…

No, they were continuing the discussion!

In addition to requiring a minimum number of beads before the price was calculated by weight, Rian had suggested that they renegotiate the price of individual beads to 11 bead-tani to give the merchant house incentive to order the minimum amount of beads for the by-weight price, which they'd calculate so that the average price per bead was in the vicinity of 10 bead-tani.

"As your lord trying to help you maximize profit for the benefit of the demesne, I'd suggest that arrangement," he said. "As the one who handles 'dealing with people' matters for you, I'd advise against it. A venture like this relies on trust and good will between ourselves and the merchant house we've partnered with. The fewer complications we impose on them, the fewer complications they'll put us through in return. Complications are more costly for us since we won't know about them until we get to Covehold, and given some might require your input, that could be weeks lost going back and forth on the Coldhold. It might even be so complicated you yourself might be forced to leave the demesne to resolve it. You hate leaving for River's Fork enough as it is, imagine having to leave for Covehold. In the long term, it's in our mutual interest to make the exchange as straightforward as possible."

"Hmm…" Lori 'hmm…'-ed. On the one hand, not trying to go for maximum profit grated on her soul. On the other, she was well aware of how the petty contract clauses that companies, merchants, houses and factors liked to impose on each other could act as an impediment to profit…

…

Well, she already had her monopoly. All that was needed to make a profit was time. And since her demesne's economy was all but completely isolated from Covehold Demesne and the other demesnes around it, they wouldn't be affected by price fluctuations in the other demesne unless they deliberately involved themselves in the demesne's economy, that is, bought something. All she had to do was sit back, not have to leave her demesne, and simply wait for the beads to roll in—

"Rian," Lori said sharply, "where are my beads?"

"In my house," Rian said promptly. "You were passed out the day before and busy yesterday, so I didn't have the opportunity to give them to you. Don't worry, the receipt for them is here—" he handed her a sheet from the folder, "—less the beads we had to spend on expenses while we were in Covehold."

Lori took the sheet of paper, glancing over it. "And all these expenses are…?"

"First, let me begin by saying I trusted the preserved food we made ourselves to be safe to eat for a long time…"

––––––––––––––––––

Once Lori had finished giving him flat, unamused looks and Rian had managed to justify their expenses to her satisfaction—even she had to admit the desire to eat fresh bread and something other than stew was a reasonable one—as well as agreeing that any raw meat they purchased in Covehold might be questionable, she had him bring down the chest of beads. It was, as he said, a very nice chest, and the knot he'd described was still in place.

"Have the smiths make a proper lock for this," she said as she cut the knot she recognized the style. It was a stylized knot that merchants used when they didn't have any other way to secure something available. While it was complicated looking, it wasn't that hard to do. Its advantage was that it was difficult to knot manually, especially with the ends of the cord snipped off, so it had to be cut off. Not impossible to counterfeit, but a reasonable protection and guarantee that whatever was sealed was unopened, especially if the merchant house used a distinctive cord. "It needs to be more secure."

"What are you going to use it for?" Rian asked as she opened the chest.

"Where else are we going to keep the beads you'll be bringing home on the next trading trip?" Lori said absently as she stared at the wooden trays filled with double-large beads…

…

...

…she'd never seen beads in denominations this high…so many beads…

…

…

…she could buy so many books with these many beads…! With just one bead!

…

…

The lid of the chest slammed shut, and Lori winced. She hadn't thought she'd closed it that forcefully.

"As your lord, I need to remind you that you tried lying down on beads before, and you said it was like sleeping on lumpy rocks. I doubt that's going to change just because the beads you've planning to use have denomination markings."

"The reminder is noted."

"They also make for terrible pillow stuffing, in case you forgot."

"Again, noted."