I was on edge during the reasonably short trip back to the port. After all, two other companies had already tried to rob me during my time on the island and I wasn’t very excited about it happening a third time. Not this close to the finish line anyway. Although we did pass, or get passed, by other expeditions on our way to the port nobody did much more than give us some long, hard stares. We were heavily laden with valuables while most of the other contingents returning to town did not seem like they had done quite as well. I am certain that if we were farther up the mountain, someone would have tried to make a move. Apparently reputation mattered this close to town, though. It was easy to see, but it was also easy to be seen and nobody wanted their expeditions slaughtered out of hand because of the potential threat that they posed.
The port itself hadn’t improved since my last visit. It was still a stinking cesspool of microbial soup waiting to contaminate the slightest cut to claim its next victim. Once one of the governments actually took over, I imagine that it would be cleaned up in short order. Nobody could have a prosperous settlement that looked like this, at least not long term. And these people wondered why they lost so many slaves to disease in transit. Their complete lack of attention to basic hygiene and humane living conditions lit the fuse for diminished profit. All it took was once infected slave and the cramped squalor of a long return voyage leading to numerous deaths.
If you are getting the idea that I still didn’t like the place or the people who lived in it, you are absolutely right. I despised it. If I was given the power to do so, I would wipe it from the map and start over. Right now I needed it though, which made me feel really conflicted.
Once we reached the town proper, I was able to relax a little bit. There certainly were pickpockets and cutpurses plying their trade in town but if I kept my wits, I could defend against those. There were much easier marks all around me anyway. The drunks staggering from tavern to tavern and the men coming out of the brothel, contented but with the first stirrings of an unfortunate itch, were better targets.
Caider mentioned that Tikter had spent quite a bit of time in town monitoring the markets, so we followed him. He seemed to know where he needed to go. I imagine that the primary market that Tikter monitored was the one for the horse piss flavored alcoholic concoction that was manufactured on the island. After all, the two of them had a lot of time on their hands and they needed to fill it somehow. That somehow did not involve pitching in with the work, that’s for sure.
We walked back through town and once we hit the beach we turned left and headed for the tannery I had noticed when we had disembarked. I thought the rest of the town stunk but as we got closer and closer to the tannery I had to fight the urge to gag, retch and vomit. We apparently weren’t the only people who let our hides start to rot and the air smelled thickly of death. Worse yet, leather tanning itself looked to be fairly rudimentary in this world. The hides were prepared in vats of urine overlaying the odor of decay with the scent of a poorly cleaned outhouse. I knew that in ancient times, both animal brains and vats full of water and feces had been used to tan skins. I really wasn’t interested enough to find out what method these people were using. I purposefully tried to breathe through my mouth instead of my nose. It didn’t really help.
I let Tikter take the lead in negotiations. For one thing, he seemed completely unbothered by the smell. I, on the other hand, could hardly see straight because my eyes were watering. Glancing at Aleyda and Bowen, I noticed they were having some trouble as well.
When the transaction was completed, we really hadn’t made much profit. Although the furs and the bear pelt were likely worth many gold each back on the continent, here they were common. And the tanners knew that they were the only show in town so they could engage in monopolistic pricing. If we didn’t sell to them, the hides would be largely worthless, rotting in the sun. The couple of hundred pounds of fur and hides we had spent a lot of effort lugging up and down the mountain netted a total of fifteen gold, and that was after some hard bargaining on Tikter’s part. He kept five gold and suddenly we were ten gold richer. I wasn’t certain it had all really been worth the effort.
It was a lot easier to move now that we were unburdened by the stacks of hides. Our next destination was to try to dispose of the bags of feathers. Every step we took away from the tannery allowed me to breathe a little easier but I still knew that I would be scrubbing off in the stream by our camp before the day was over. The smell was in my hair and clung to my garments. Thankfully, we had brought a small amount of soap from home. We would need it.
Once we got closer to the main part of town, Tikter stopped, a perplexed look on his face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I am trying to think about where we will get the best price for the feathers,” he replied.
I had the urge to snark at him. Why couldn’t he have been doing that on our walk into town? It’s not like he was carrying anything.
“Aren’t there merchants who deal in that sort of thing?” I asked.
“Oh, I am sure there are,” he responded. “I’m just not certain who they are.”
“What’s your plan to find out?”
“Well, we could ask around,” he said. “But anyone we ask for help will want a cut of the profit.”
“Wonderful,” I said, trying but failing to sound patient.
“Why don’t we rent a stall in the market and let the buyers come to us?” Bowen asked, having understood enough of the conversation to form an opinion.
“What did he say?” Tikter asked.
“He suggested that we rent a stall in the market and let the buyers find us,” I replied.
“That’s not a bad idea. I wonder what the stalls rent for?”
We headed to the market area and stomped around until we found someone in charge. Like most things on the island, the market was a private enterprise. Some industrious merchant had arrived early, claimed the land, and erected a series of crude market stalls. I don’t know how many owner’s hands the market had subsequently passed through, but like slumlords everywhere the current owners of the place had kept it running while trying to minimize their expenses. This meant that most of the stalls were in poor repair with no evidence of recent attempts at upkeep. The price to rent a stall was exorbitant in my opinion, a gold piece a day. Yet the place was mostly full and bustling. We rented a stall but because it was fairly late in the day, most of the good ones were already taken. After I paid for the rent, after being assured by Tikter that I would get that money back before profits were split, we were led to an out of the way corner of the place. The stall itself was rickety and looked like it was on the verge of collapsing, but since feathers don’t weigh much it mattered little. And that’s how I became a feather merchant.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Digging through one of the bags, I selected a few of the feathers that were noteworthy either because of their size or their pleasing appearance and displayed them on the stall. We had to grub in the muck at our feet to find stones to weight them down or they would have blown away. For the first half an hour or so, we had a lot of people glance at our wares. Some of them made favorable comments but it seemed like nobody was in a buying mood.
That all changed when a short, fairly young and elegantly dressed human came over to our stall. He navigated through the muck with mincing steps, attended by a couple of assistants who looked like they wanted to be anywhere but here. His manner of dress was wildly inappropriate for the island -- elegant silk brocade trimmed with pristine white lace. Of course, the lace located on the lower parts of his body was no longer elegant or white, having been exposed to the mud of questionable origin. This could be promising, I thought to myself. It at least looked like her had some money.
He walked up to our booth and selected a couple of feathers, picking them up and studying them. Examining them closely, he held them up to the light, rotating them one way then another to admire their iridescent sheen. While he was doing this, he never said a word. Then, he placed the feathers back onto the counter and selected a couple more, repeating the process. Then he turned and nodded at one of his retainers.
“Young Master Mills is interested in your product,” the servant said in a haughty tone of voice. “How much can you supply?”
I glanced over at Tikter, but he just stood there with a confused look on his face. “Did you understand him?” I asked.
“Not really,” Tikter replied. “His accent is a little thick.”
“I think I got the gist of it,” I said. “His employer is interested in the feathers.”
“You’re going to have to do the talking,” Tikter replied. “I caught maybe one word out of three and I don’t want to say anything that leads to a misunderstanding.”
I turned back to the servant. “How much volume are you interested in purchasing?” I asked.
“Why, all of it of course,” the assistant replied.
“Well, you are in luck then because we have a lot of feathers.” I reached behind the counter and retrieved the bags that held the bulk of our supply. Then, I opened them to show how much we actually had to sell.
Finally, Young Master What’s His Face deigned to speak.
“That’s quite an impressive amount. Pray tell what sort of creature did you harvest them from.”
“They’re from a couple of birds,” I replied. “They were vicious, flightless things a little bit shorter than you. They had talons and teeth. I have never seen a bird with teeth before.”
“You obviously don’t travel much,” he replied. “I offer you five gold for the lot of them.”
Oh, so this is how it was going to be. He thought he could sweep in with a low ball offer and take advantage of a few rubes. When I first got to this world I would have been that rube but that was before I started to get a sense of what things should cost.
“Thanks for the offer, but given their apparent scarcity and the effort we had to expend to win the fight and harvest the feathers, I don’t think that is a very fair offer,” I said. “Worse comes to worse and we will just haul the lot of them back to the continent when we return. There, I expect we could probably net a gold piece a feather.”
He winced when I said his offer wasn’t fair. I don’t know what he was wincing at, though. He and I both knew that the statement was true.
“Let me offer something different, then,” he said. “I will give you ten gold if you tell me where these birds were located. Then, I can send out my men and we can harvest our own supply.”
“I’ll take that deal,” I responded. “But you should know we went tromping all around the island and we never saw any more of the birds. That doesn’t mean there aren’t more. I am certain that there probably are. They just don’t seem to be very common.” Then, I held my hand out expectantly to receive my ten gold.
The two servants exchanged hard looks with one another when their employer started talking about sending out an expedition to find more of the birds. I think I knew who would be leading the expedition and neither one of them seemed very happy about the idea. One of the servants tried to get the Young Master’s attention. After he had caught his eye, they retreated from the stall to have a private conversation. After a few moments, they returned. Instead of the fop speaking to me again, the servant took the lead in the negotiations.
“We won’t be paying for that information because we won’t be launching any expeditions,” he said. “We came here to trade and not fight. I think your estimate of value is a little off. Even on the mainland, these feathers wouldn’t sell for more than three quarters of a gold piece each. Of course, if you wait until then to sell them you will have to find an appropriate buyer, which takes connections, time and effort. You risk spoilage and loss along the way. And if we buy them, we need to make a profit as well. We are not a charity. I think our final offer is one gold per three feathers.”
I turned to Tikter. “He is offering us one gold per three feathers. Is that fair?”
Tikter didn’t say anything, but he did wiggle his hand to get my attention low and out of sight from our customers. He pointed his thumb upward and moved it up and down in a small thrusting motion.
I turned back to the man I had been speaking to. “If you sell them for three quarters of a gold piece, that means three feathers are worth two and a quarter pieces of gold. I agree that you need to make a profit, but that profit is a little rich. How about one and a quarter pieces of gold per three feathers.”
The man got a pained look on his face but the expression never reached his eyes. I could tell that he was well versed in the art of negotiation.
“I’m afraid that we will have to pass at that price,” he said.
“That’s fine,” I replied, starting to pack the feathers we had on display back into our bags. “I guess we will just have to take our chances when we get back.”
Young Master Mills flushed scarlet when he saw what I was doing. He grabbed his associate and pulled him away for another private conversation. All the while, I continued making preparations to leave.
After a short time, the three approached once more.
“The Young Master is quite taken by your feathers. In his munificence he has agreed to your deal.”
Munificence, my ass. I thought my original estimate of value was probably closer to reality, but we needed money now. The gold wouldn’t do us any good if we only received it after we had the chance to help Segerick and his people.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s count feathers.”
We ended up having to count each bag twice because our totals didn’t match the first time. In all, there were about a hundred and fifty of them. That netted us fifty gold. Actually forty nine as I immediately paid myself back for the stall rent. After giving Tikter the company’s cut, which came to sixteen and a third gold, I turned to Bowen and Aleyda.
“Let’s go shopping before everything closes for the night,” I said. I didn’t have a whole lot of money, a little more than a hundred gold, but we would have to make due.