The next morning Nedric made his way over to the boardway station in order to meet Rialto. It was over a year since they had last seen each other and he was looking forward to meeting him again. He wondered if he would recognise his friend. Nedric had grown so that he was now an inch or so taller than most men.

As it was, he recognised Rialto straight away, despite his friend having grown a small moustache and wispy beard. He couldn’t help himself and instantly started to make fun of his friend’s facial growth.

“What’s that animal on your face?”

Rialto looked slightly hurt and then grinned.

“It was meant to make me look older but I guess all it does is itch so I’m going to get rid of it sometime.”

“Good thing too. If you are going to have a rodent on your face it ought to be a Nonny.”

“Strange you should mention them. I just bought quite a few from a merchant from the far south and I don’t know what to do with them.”

“Then why did you buy them?”

“He offered me such a good deal.”

The woebegone look on his friends face made Nedric laugh and Rialto was soon laughing as well. The two moved away from the platform and towards the nearby restaurant.

“So how goes it in the merchant business?”

“We aren’t doing too bad. Father is getting almost obscenely rich and we are doing our best to catch him up.”

Nedric was somewhat puzzled. Rialto had twice used ‘we’ in his sentence but if he wasn’t talking about his father, whom was he talking about? Before he could ask Rialto was reaching into his bag and pulling out a sheath of papers. He passed them over to Nedric.

“These are for you to keep, they are as current as I could make them at short notice.”

The papers were a list of holdings for RAN Supplies and a financial statement listing the values of goods owned and current earnings and expenditures. At the bottom was a series of numbers that gave the overall state of the company.

“This looks like the company is going to be successful over the long term.”

“It will be if we don’t go bankrupt within the next few weeks. I’ve been expanding rapidly and the money coming in hasn’t grown as fast as I expected. Seems like everybody is getting slightly worried, what with all these disappearances.”

“Well couldn’t you just sell some of these shops you’ve bought to cover the shortfall.”

“Well I could but it would be an expensive loss and I thought that I ought to consult my partner first.”

“So what does he say?”

“I don’t know, what do you say?”

Nedric was taken aback. Did Rialto really mean what he was suggesting?

“I’m your partner? Why? And why didn’t you tell me?”

“You hadn’t worked it out?” Rialto looked smug. “I thought it was fairly obvious from the name if nothing else. Why do you think I kept asking you to do the work in Esteril?”

“I thought you were taking advantage of my better nature!”

“What better nature? Anyway my father gave me a loan and the profit we made from Nigh paid it back. All the rest of the profits have gone into expanding the business along the route from here to Esteril.”

“That’s probably a bad move at the moment. You do know that there is likely to be a war with Nothering?”

“I’ve heard rumours but there are always suggestions about war with Nothering, nothing has happened in the last few years to make me think that it will happen.”

“The war is likely to start within the next few months. Can the company cope?”

“Well I can cut back on some of the expenses and if we don’t buy any other buildings we can probably just about survive but it will be tight, very tight.”

“How tight is that?”

“Well if you have a couple of golds to spare I could do with them.”

“How about a couple of hundred golds?” Nedric pulled his credit note from out of his pack.

Rialto looked at Nedric in amazement.

“With that sort of money I could restock with more appropriate goods. We might even make a healthy profit out of this war. Where does the money come from?”

“Try to remember that I’ve been working for a living whilst you’ve been playing at being a merchant.”

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Rialto didn’t know whether to look indignant at the suggestion that he was playing or happy that he was going to be able to continue. In the end his natural enthusiasm won and he clapped Nedric on the back.

“You’re sure that you don’t need this money at the moment?”

“I’ve got nothing to spend it on and I’m likely to be earning more in the near future. We ought to transfer it over to the company now. Carrying this note is making me nervous.”

The two finished their light meal and walked over to the merchant’s district. Nedric still didn’t know his way around but it was clear that Rialto was much more conversant with the city than he had been previously. They headed for another imposing building made of granite. Nedric was beginning to believe that the same person had designed every important building as they all had the same solid look.

This one had ‘Theofeld’s Bank’ carved in ornate lettering above the door. Inside they were greeted by a man who seemed overjoyed to meet them. He invited them to a desk and offered them drinks.

“What can I do to help you young masters today?”

Rialto did all the speaking. He conducted himself in a way that suggested to Nedric that he had done this many times before.

“We would like this credit transferred to the account of RAN Supplies.”

“Why of course sirs. You realise that there will be a five gold fee.”

“Certainly.”

“I shall arrange things now. If you would care to wait.”

The man scuttled off and Nedric turned to Rialto.

“Five golds?”

“That’s how these places make money. One gold in fifty goes to them.”

“But that is a weeks wages or more just for doing a transfer of money.”

“The world is unfair. If I were transferring a hundred times that amount they wouldn’t have charged me more than fifty golds. They take advantage of the small business.”

“Perhaps we can avoid using them.”

“If you find a way you will be the first. Unfortunately the banks are an evil necessity. What’s more they know it. You should see how much they charge if you want to borrow money from them.”

“Which reminds me, I will need a little spending money as you just took all my earnings.”

“Well I have a little gold on me, that you can have. If your going to be working then you can draw your money directly from the company and then you don’t have to go through a bank.”

“Then I have all this money just asking to be stolen.”

“That’s another reason why banks are a necessity. Your money is safe, because if they weren’t safe no-one would use them.”

“I still don’t have to like the costs.”

The man returned with a piece of paper that indicated that the money had been transferred and showed the current balance of RAN supplies. Rialto barely glanced at it and placed it in his case. He thanked the banker and the two young men left. They made their way to a nearby tavern and sat at a table outside. A woman appeared and took their order, returning almost immediately with their drinks.

Rialto wanted all the details of Elsebeth’s kidnapping. Nedric by now was getting used to the request and told the story with a little elaboration that tended to enhance the danger that he had been in.

“Tell me again, how you got out of the shed?” Rialto sounded enthusiastic.

“I noticed the shed was made of grey oak and impressed two of the logs. When the guy opened the door it must have looked to him like they had been knocked from the wall. He came inside to investigate and I basically fell on him! The hardest bit was bracing myself in that position for the five minutes or so it took him to go into the cabin, get me some food and cross over to the shed. If he had taken any longer I’d have been lying on the floor unable to move. As it was, I could barely walk as I tried to get away.”

“So how did you know he was coming in the first place?”

“Oh, I heard the brothers discussing me. It was the worst part of the plan. I could have hidden by the door but he was probably expecting that. I hoped that he didn’t have the imagination to look up when it was possible that I had already escaped. Fortunately he wasn’t particularly bright.”

“Neither were you, leaping before you looked.”

“That was truly scary. I didn’t think I was going to catch that tree. It was pure panic that made me cling on. If I had been able to think I would probably have been shouting and he would have known I was there. I guess I was lucky in more than one way.”

“Anyway, enough about me. Where have you been and what are you going to do with those Nonnies?”

“I’ve mainly been going back and forth along the boardway between here and Waterfall. I know you haven’t had time to look through the figures but we have trading posts at every station, which now means about twenty. Some of them are only little kiosks but in the smaller towns we are becoming well known. It helps that all the travellers who use the boardway know we stock the things they need. We can also get new items to our customers quicker than most as we have our own carriages. The rights to use the boardway are VERY expensive, one of our biggest costs.”

“So what about the Nonnies?”

“Oh, I was down at the southern border, meeting a trader who supplies cloth. It was a favour for my father actually. He had these cages full of Nonnies and wanted to get rid of them quickly. I should have wondered why at the time. He offered me a ridiculous price and so I bought them. I can’t find anyone who wants to buy one. Seems there were some got into a granary in Herit and it cost the owner a fortune. It is certainly costing me a lot just to feed the ones I’ve got.”

“You could just let them loose!”

“It seems cruel. They don’t like the colder climate here and they’d all die in winter. Perhaps I can find a rich animal lover to buy them from me.”

“I wonder if we could sell them to the army? They would make a great form of sabotage to the Nothering supply chain.” Nedric smiled at the idea.

“It’s even colder in Nothering in the winter.”

“Then you should try and get rid of them quickly! There’s the whole summer for them to cause damage.”

“If your idea works I’ll buy you a drink.” Rialto raised his glass and they both drank.

Once the idea had been planted in Rialto’s head he didn’t want to sit around losing money and soon wanted to be away. He made arrangements to meet Nedric the next week and was away.

* * *

After Rialto’s visit, Nedric was at a loss as to what to do. He still had most of a day to waste and he spent the time wandering around Elseth. The news that he half-owned a company had set him to thinking about business opportunities. He wasn’t half the merchant that Rialto was but he made sure that he knew what RAN Supplies had to offer and what they needed to get rid of quickly. The biggest problem was the large number of items that Rialto had bought because they were being offered at extremely low prices. If people were in the mood to buy, then this wouldn’t have been a problem but just by walking around he could see that people were only buying essentials. The stalls were much quieter apart from the cries of merchants who seemed much more desperate to sell their goods.

Nedric would have liked to sell stuff to the army. He didn’t know how he could go about doing this and he didn’t want to try and exploit his connection with Bethel. This left him with no approaches but he had suggested to Rialto that he looked into the matter. Nedric was going to see if there were further markets to be found within the boardway company.

There hadn’t been any word yet on the raid and even though he hadn’t expected to hear anything so soon, he was getting a little tense. He wasn’t the only one. The atmosphere that evening was slightly strained. Nedric spent most of the evening reading through the paperwork that Rialto had left him and trying not to think about Elsebeth.

It was becoming apparent that Nedric would have to find somewhere else to stay and that he would have to do it in such a way as to not seem ungrateful. Fortunately the location of their house, the opposite side of the city to the boardway, was going to be inconvenient. He would need a place near work very shortly.

He would also have to visit the site and talk to the Over-engineer. Bethel had sent across papers that stated that the military were taking over the running of the boardway whilst there was a strong possibility of war. Nedric wanted to try and smooth things over before the other impressors arrived.

He had paperwork to say that he was being placed in charge of all the impressors and intended to visit the site the next morning. He wanted to see Rhianna’s face when he walked in and showed her his new orders.