1          Soul Bound

1.2        Taking Control

1.2.4      An Artful Carnivale

1.2.4.25   The stakeout

She pointedly took Tomsk’s arm and walked over to look at the other boards on display around the edges of the large room. Ship arrivals with declared cargos and due dates, the share prices of companies and the current exchange rates being offered between coins from different cities and regions all had their place. Most of the wall space, however, was taken up with the prices of fungible commodities. Food from Savada, wool from Mezelay, timber from Kalzburg, copper and crystals from Rovograd and furs from Lilleheim. The price of copper and crystals both seemed to be inching upwards, and several tables worth of traders appeared to be watching them closely.

Kafana: {Alderney, when you check out the 1st floor, see if you can use the thief skill that lets you track where people are looking to see which commodities are being watched by which traders.}

Alderney: {Can do. I’m currently checking out the basement where the pit and kitchen supplies are. I think there’s a secret passage down here somewhere. It leads to the sewers if the smell is any clue. Wellington, you ought to come down - lots of guys appear to be waving at each other across the pit and making rude gestures with their hands.}

Bulgaria: {I’ll take the gardens and kiosks, if you and Tomsk want to check out the other floors when you’re done there?}

Tomsk: {Sounds a plan. By the way, Alderney, see if you can get a DNA sample from Jolanda. Something was off about the way she threw a cup. I think she might be more dangerous than she appears.}

The commodities that caught her eye in particular were the herbs and woods listed as rare. She had a quest from High Master craftsman Giovanni to obtain some magical wood suitable for making a top quality enchanted violin, and it would be good to know what was available. As to the herbs, perhaps they could be used in cooking? She and Tomsk split off from Wellington and Bulgaria who huddled together in the southwest corner away from the stairs and bar; their backs were turned and she couldn’t see what they were up to.

The cheapest magical herb was Lamb Fruit from Lukomorya. The most expensive currently available was Ambrosia at nearly 3000 zecchi per kilogram. Some, like Wound Moss or Seers Laurel seemed self-explanatory. Others, like Dire Moly or Zemaljski Kljuc she’d no idea what to do with. The only one that tempted her was Arcanic Wolfsbane which Alderney would probably like, but this was the wrong place to buy - all you could do was bet on future price movements.

The timber was harder. She asked around until she found a dandily dressed young noble with his dark hair tied in a tight queue down his back who appeared to be studying the timbers calmly. He introduced himself as Pasini Frassoni, second son of Lord Frassoni, and they spent a pleasant quarter of an hour discussing the merits of Whispering Oak versus Twice Twisted Maple for the back plate and of Dathic Ash versus Thousand-year Spruce for the top plate. In the end they agreed that there were several options for the back plate and the main criteria should be matching the density, but that for the top plate only Spruce from the very highest peaks of Alpinus would do. The price was high too, but she could afford it. She was just glad it wasn’t going to need Kalpa or Blinde wood. She added a todo item in the party’s proposed event queue, to visit the warehouse holding them in order to pick out just the right planks.

She and Tomsk made their way up the stairs to the 2nd floor. There were half a dozen or so brokerages, each with its own table full of books and files, well separated from the other tables to ensure privacy. Along one side of the table sat several clerks on a long padded leather bench wrapped in a high-backed padded leather booth. In the centre of the room, near the hole looking down, sat merchants sipping coffee and occasionally looking at the number painted onto a wooden disk they each held, indicating which of them would be next to be seen. Some of them were reading a broadsheet, “The Gazzetta”, whose banner proudly proclaimed its independence and accuracy.

Wellington: {Can everyone get into a position where they can see as many people on your floor as possible. A piece of news is about to arrive, and it would be good to know which individuals act upon it or react strongly to it. I’m going to flip out and will be watching your streams and sending you information via direct message.}

Tomsk: {2nd floor covered, these stairs don’t go higher.}

Alderney: {1st floor covered. Gaze tracking is working nicely.}

Bungo: {Ground floor covered. I’m pretending to watch a game of 4-way Sassari Chess. From this position I can see the people in the room and the wager boards.}

Bulgaria: {I’ve got the Kiosks covered, and can hear everything said. Garden isn’t covered, but they are unlikely to hear the news out there.}

Kafana: {Wellington, think I’d be safe casting magic?}

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Wellington: {Kafana, your mind is protected by your emerald so I’ll give you a head’s up. Don’t mention this to anyone except Bulgaria who’s protected too. He received a report from the Basso District Irregulars that Beltrame has an agent stationed near Mud Gate who lets him know when couriers announcing ship arrivals have entered the city. I don’t know how he gets the ship name from the couriers - probably mind magic - but in about two minutes he’s going to receive word that three vessels from the Scandic Union are about to arrive that he wasn’t expecting. It should cause a lot of activity on the trader’s floor, and hopefully smoke out who the interested parties are.}

Kafana: {Wellington, heading down there now, to give Alderney backup. How did you know about the vessels?}

Wellington: {Kafana, an adventurer who was live streaming caught sight of them on the coast. I asked Bulgaria, and he has a contact in Muspel who dug up an inventory of the cargo. Their tonnage is small but the cargo is valuable - mainly rare metals, and some herbs from Avalon. And weapons of course - they are Scandic. But their main purpose is to escort their new ambassador to Torello, and a tree-wed (whatever one of those is). They don’t trust the Etruscan ships to not get sunk by pirates.}

Kafana: {You could have made a fortune with that sort of advanced information.}

Wellington: {You already have a fortune. I did one better. I wrote down my predictions in a letter to Marco, the Landi’s trade factor, and asked him to bring it along unopened to Palazzo Landi during the visit we’re making there on Saturday.}

Kafana: {Thus providing evidence that you could have made a lot of money out of bankrupting the Fiorio’s market makers, but chose not to?}

Wellington: {It should win us quite a bit of reputation with those wanting the system to remain stable like Pantalone and Ugolino Trinci.}

Kafana: {Nice. I’m in position. Safe to cast magic?}

Wellington: {Go ahead, just avoid affecting luck or minds.}

She gave Alderney a thumb’s up, brought her into gestalt, and stealth cast buffs for their sight skills and information processing. Time seemed to slow down a little, as though her mind were racing and she had ample time to take each action, each turn of her head. She pointed Alderney at the ship arrival board and the metals, and took the herbs herself, offering up a hummed prayer to Rac, deity of plotting and secrets, trying to make the hum resonate with the room.

In fact, why not? She prepared gestalt definitions for each board, for the groups of boards, for changes to a board, to traders, to traders changed by changes in a board, and everything else she could think of. Think of it as DNA resonance, except with linkage being numeric information rather than biological. She used her overlay to highlight relevant bits, and talked through what she’d done with Alderney while they waited. Waited.

Origin Destination ETA Type    Name

Muspel Torello    2bFi drakkar Ormurinn Langi

Muspel Torello    2bFi knarr   Geri

Muspel Torello    2bFi knarr   Freki

Origin Destination ETA Type    Name

She started marking on her overlay people who switched from looking at the arrivals board to looking at the rare herbs listing, using the body readings from Truesight to colour code them by the amount and type of interest. When she’d got several of each sort, she added them to her prepared gestalts, feeding in a little mana until she felt them resonate and golden threads of order mana appeared linking them together in her enhanced sight.

She stood next to Alderney now, as they worked together, and it got easier with practice. There were those excited with a feel of opportunity who wanted to place bets on the price of metals going down. There were those triumphant, who already had such bets in place. There were plenty of uncertains. There were some who were anxious, because they’d had bets in place upon the price going up; some of these were desperately trying to sell, some were hoping the ships didn’t contain metals despite being from the major rare metal producing area, and some seemed resigned to weathering the storm, hoping to make out in the long run. The room was alive with animated huddled discussions and tension, as they waited for the exact inventory to come through once the courier reached the main exchange where Beltrame’s observer could copy the information for the boards in this room.

There was one anomaly, though. He wasn’t depressed or happy. He was angry. Furious in fact, like he’d been personally let down and somebody was going to pay. She could tell it from the pattern of blood flushing his face, the hormones in his bloodstream, the tension in his muscles. The buff to her healing sense let her read the details of his body like never before. She pointed him out to Alderney.